Meaning of the quote

Liberty, or the ability to think and act freely, is one of the most valuable things that our imagination can give us. Our imagination allows us to dream up new ideas and possibilities, which can lead to greater freedom and independence. This quote suggests that the power of our imagination is closely tied to the freedom we have to explore and express ourselves.

About Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce was an American writer known for his short stories, poetry, and scathing satire. He was a Civil War veteran and his famous works include “The Devil’s Dictionary” and “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”. Bierce mysteriously disappeared in 1913 while traveling to Mexico to observe the Mexican Revolution.

More about the author

More quotes from Ambrose Bierce

Consult: To seek approval for a course of action already decided upon.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Liberty: One of Imagination’s most precious possessions.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Architect. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Alliance – in international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other’s pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Irreligion – the principal one of the great faiths of the world.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Suffrage, noun. Expression of opinion by means of a ballot. The right of suffrage (which is held to be both a privilege and a duty) means, as commonly interpreted, the right to vote for the man of another man’s choice, and is highly prized.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Convent – a place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Famous, adj.: Conspicuously miserable.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

The covers of this book are too far apart.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Women in love are less ashamed than men. They have less to be ashamed of.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Anoint, v.: To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Perseverance – a lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Destiny: A tyrant’s authority for crime and a fool’s excuse for failure.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Heaven lies about us in our infancy and the world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Success is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Spring beckons! All things to the call respond; the trees are leaving and cashiers abscond.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man – who has no gills.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Future. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Dog – a kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world’s worship.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Marriage, n: the state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Experience – the wisdom that enables us to recognise in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

It is evident that skepticism, while it makes no actual change in man, always makes him feel better.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Prejudice – a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Doubt is the father of invention.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

To be positive is to be mistaken at the top of one’s voice.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

A man is known by the company he organizes.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Impartial – unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Erudition – dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Litigant. A person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one’s own opinion.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

An egotist is a person of low taste – more interested in himself than in me.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Childhood: the period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth – two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Life – a spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Ambition. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Divorce: a resumption of diplomatic relations and rectification of boundaries.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Friendless. Having no favors to bestow. Destitute of fortune. Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Cabbage: a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man’s head.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Curiosity, n. An objectionable quality of the female mind. The desire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is one of the most active and insatiable passions of the masculine soul.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Bore, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Doubt begins only at the last frontiers of what is possible.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Optimism – the doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Fidelity – a virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Dawn: When men of reason go to bed.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Edible – good to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

There are four kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Genealogy, n. An account of one’s descent from a man who did not particularly care to trace his own.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Laziness. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Edible, adj.: Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

I believe we shall come to care about people less and less. The more people one knows the easier it becomes to replace them. It’s one of the curses of London.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Doubt, indulged and cherished, is in danger of becoming denial; but if honest, and bent on thorough investigation, it may soon lead to full establishment of the truth.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Creditor. One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial Straits and dreaded for their desolating incursions.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Deliberation, n.: The act of examining one’s bread to determine which side it is buttered on.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Abscond – to move in a mysterious way, commonly with the property of another.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Impiety. Your irreverence toward my deity.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Clairvoyant, n.: A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron – namely, that he is a blockhead.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Politeness, n: The most acceptable hypocrisy.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms agains himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Bacchus, n.: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Prescription: A physician’s guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman’s power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers. What I said was that all saloonkeepers are Democrats.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Historian – a broad-gauge gossip.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Who never doubted, never half believed. Where doubt is, there truth is – it is her shadow.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Land: A part of the earth’s surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the superstructure.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Alien – an American sovereign in his probationary state.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Insurance – an ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Fork: An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Sabbath – a weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Battle, n., A method of untying with the teeth a political knot that would not yield to the tongue.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Ardor, n. The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Admiral. That part of a warship which does the talking while the figurehead does the thinking.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Witticism. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted and seldom noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a joke.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Acquaintance. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Wit – the salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Present, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one’s voice.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Backbite. To speak of a man as you find him when he can’t find you.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Incompatibility. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Education, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Compromise, n. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction of thinking he has got what he ought not to have, and is deprived of nothing except what was justly his due.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Consul – in American politics, a person who having failed to secure an office from the people is given one by the Administration on condition that he leave the country.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Rum, n. Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another’s resemblance to ourselves.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Egotism, n: Doing the New York Times crossword puzzle with a pen.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Amnesty, n. The state’s magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Genius – to know without having learned; to draw just conclusions from unknown premises; to discern the soul of things.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

When you doubt, abstain.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Immortality: A toy which people cry for, And on their knees apply for, Dispute, contend and lie for, And if allowed Would be right proud Eternally to die for.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Belladonna, n.: In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Lawsuit: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Eloquence, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

To apologize is to lay the foundation for a future offense.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

What this country needs what every country needs occasionally is a good hard bloody war to revive the vice of patriotism on which its existence as a nation depends.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Enthusiasm – a distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Confidante: One entrusted by A with the secrets of B confided to herself by C.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Jealous, adj. Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth keeping.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Ambidextrous, adj.: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Forgetfulness – a gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Duty – that which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire.

Ambrose Bierce

American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist