Quotations by Ambrose Bierce

PEACE: In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · PEACE

INDIFFERENT: Imperfectly sensible to distinctions among things.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · INDIFFERENT

REPRESENTATIVE: In national politics, a member of the Lower House in this world, and without discernible hope of promotion in the next.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · REPRESENTATIVE

MAGIC: An art of converting superstition into coin. There are other arts serving the same high purpose, but the discreet lexicographer does not name them.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · MAGIC

NONSENSE: The objections that are urged against this excellent dictionary.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · NONSENSE

GRACES: Three beautiful goddesses, Aglaia, Thalia and Euphrosyne, who attended upon Venus, serving without salary. They were at no expense for board and clothing, for they ate nothing to speak of and dressed according to the weather, wearing whatever breeze happened to be blowing.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · GRACES

HOSTILITY: A peculiarly sharp and specially applied sense of the earth's overpopulation. Hostility is classified as active and passive; as (respectively) the feeling of a woman for her female friends, and that which she entertains for all the rest of her sex.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · HOSTILITY

PROPERTY: Any material thing, having no particular value, that may be held by A against the cupidity of B. Whatever gratifies the passion for possession in one and disappoints it in all others. The object of man's brief rapacity and long indifference.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · PROPERTY

PESSIMISM: A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · PESSIMISM

DICTIONARY: A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · DICTIONARY

IGNORAMUS: A person unacquainted with certain kinds of knowledge familiar to yourself, and having certain other kinds that you know nothing about.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · IGNORAMUS

RANK: Relative elevation in the scale of human worth.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · RANK

EXPOSTULATION: One of the many methods by which fools prefer to lose their friends.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · EXPOSTULATION

OATH: In law, a solemn appeal to the Deity, made binding upon the conscience by a penalty for perjury.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · OATH

CERBERUS: The watch-dog of Hades, whose duty it was to guard the entrance—against whom or what does not clearly appear; everybody, sooner or later, had to go there, and nobody wanted to carry off the entrance. Cerberus is known to have had three heads, and some of the poets have credited him with as many as a hundred. Professor Graybill, whose clerky erudition and profound knowledge of Greek give his opinion great weight, has averaged all the estimates, and makes the number twenty-seven—a judgment that would be entirely conclusive if Professor Graybill had known (a) something about dogs, and (b) something about arithmetic.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · CERBERUS

DAMN: A word formerly much used by the Paphlagonians, the meaning of which is lost. By the learned Dr. Dolabelly Gak it is believed to have been a term of satisfaction, implying the highest possible degree of mental tranquillity. Professor Groke, on the contrary, thinks it expressed an emotion of tumultuous delight, because it so frequently occurs in combination with the word jod or god, meaning "joy." It would be with great diffidence that I should advance an opinion conflicting with that of either of these formidable authorities.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · DAMN

INCUMBENT: A person of the liveliest interest to the outcumbents.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · INCUMBENT

MONOSYLLABIC: Composed of words of one syllable, for literary babes who never tire of testifying their delight in the vapid compound by appropriate googoogling. The words are commonly Saxon—that is to say, words of a barbarous people destitute of ideas and incapable of any but the most elementary sentiments and emotions.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · MONOSYLLABIC

FORK: An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth. Formerly the knife was employed for this purpose, and by many worthy persons is still thought to have many advantages over the other tool, which, however, they do not altogether reject, but use to assist in charging the knife. The immunity of these persons from swift and awful death is one of the most striking proofs of God's mercy to those that hate Him.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · FORK

MOLECULE: The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. It is distinguished from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter, by a closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. Three great scientific theories of the structure of the universe are the molecular, the corpuscular and the atomic. A fourth affirms, with Haeckel, the condensation of precipitation of matter from ether—whose existence is proved by the condensation of precipitation. The present trend of scientific thought is toward the theory of ions. The ion differs from the molecule, the corpuscle and the atom in that it is an ion. A fifth theory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any more about the matter than the others.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · MOLECULE

FROG: A reptile with edible legs. The first mention of frogs in profane literature is in Homer's narrative of the war between them and the mice. Skeptical persons have doubted Homer's authorship of the work, but the learned, ingenious and industrious Dr. Schliemann has set the question forever at rest by uncovering the bones of the slain frogs. One of the forms of moral suasion by which Pharaoh was besought to favor the Israelities was a plague of frogs, but Pharaoh, who liked them fricasees, remarked, with truly oriental stoicism, that he could stand it as long as the frogs and the Jews could; so the programme was changed. The frog is a diligent songster, having a good voice but no ear. The libretto of his favorite opera, as written by Aristophanes, is brief, simple and effective—"brekekex-koax"; the music is apparently by that eminent composer, Richard Wagner. Horses have a frog in each hoof—a thoughtful provision of nature, enabling them to shine in a hurdle race.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · FROG

MAGNIFICENT: Having a grandeur or splendor superior to that to which the spectator is accustomed, as the ears of an ass, to a rabbit, or the glory of a glowworm, to a maggot.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · MAGNIFICENT

MONUMENT: A structure intended to commemorate something which either needs no commemoration or cannot be commemorated.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · MONUMENT

DEJEUNER: The breakfast of an American who has been in Paris. Variously pronounced.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · DEJEUNER