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Quotations by Ambrose Bierce

789 sayings with source references.

DEINOTHERIUM: An extinct pachyderm that flourished when the Pterodactyl was in fashion. The latter was a native of Ireland, its name being pronounced Terry Dactyl or Peter O'Dactyl, as the man pronouncing it may chance to have heard it spoken or seen it printed.

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

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ORPHAN: A living person whom death has deprived of the power of filial ingratitude—a privation appealing with a particular eloquence to all that is sympathetic in human nature. When young the orphan is commonly sent to an asylum, where by careful cultivation of its rudimentary sense of locality it is taught to know its place. It is then instructed in the arts of dependence and servitude and eventually turned loose to prey upon the world as a bootblack or scullery maid.

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

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CLARIONET: An instrument of torture operated by a person with cotton in his ears. There are two instruments that are worse than a clarionet—two clarionets.

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

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JOSS-STICKS: Small sticks burned by the Chinese in their pagan tomfoolery, in imitation of certain sacred rites of our holy religion.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · JOSS-STICKS

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NIRVANA: In the Buddhist religion, a state of pleasurable annihilation awarded to the wise, particularly to those wise enough to understand it.

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

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RIDICULE: Words designed to show that the person of whom they are uttered is devoid of the dignity of character distinguishing him who utters them. It may be graphic, mimetic or merely rident. Shaftesbury is quoted as having pronounced it the test of truth—a ridiculous assertion, for many a solemn fallacy has undergone centuries of ridicule with no abatement of its popular acceptance. What, for example, has been more valorously derided than the doctrine of Infant Respectability?

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

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BOTANY: The science of vegetables—those that are not good to eat, as well as those that are. It deals largely with their flowers, which are commonly badly designed, inartistic in color, and ill-smelling.

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

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EPAULET: An ornamented badge, serving to distinguish a military officer from the enemy—that is to say, from the officer of lower rank to whom his death would give promotion.

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

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HEART: An automatic, muscular blood-pump. Figuratively, this useful organ is said to be the seat of emotions and sentiments—a very pretty fancy which, however, is nothing but a survival of a once universal belief. It is now known that the sentiments and emotions reside in the stomach, being evolved from food by chemical action of the gastric fluid. The exact process by which a beefsteak becomes a feeling—tender or not, according to the age of the animal from which it was cut; the successive stages of elaboration through which a caviar sandwich is transmuted to a quaint fancy and reappears as a pungent epigram; the marvelous functional methods of converting a hard-boiled egg into religious contrition, or a cream-puff into a sigh of sensibility—these things have been patiently ascertained by M. Pasteur, and by him expounded with convincing lucidity. (See, also, my monograph, The Essential Identity of the Spiritual Affections and Certain Intestinal Gases Freed in Digestion—4to, 687 pp.) In a scientific work entitled, I believe, Delectatio Demonorum (John Camden Hotton, London, 1873) this view of the sentiments receives a striking illustration; and for further light consult Professor Dam's famous treatise on Love as a Product of Alimentary Maceration.

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

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REPARTEE: Prudent insult in retort. Practiced by gentlemen with a constitutional aversion to violence, but a strong disposition to offend. In a war of words, the tactics of the North American Indian.

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

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