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Ambrose Bierce
American author and journalist; b. 1842; d. 1913
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Aphorisms Attributed to This Aphorist
<< < 10–29 (29) · Submit an Aphorism
# · Not So Good (46 ratings) · submitted 1997 (updated 1999)
Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Love and Hate and Success and Failure
The Devil's Dictionary (paperback)# · Not So Good (46 ratings) · submitted 1997 (updated 1999)
Prescription: A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Health and Disease and Life and Death
# · Not So Good (43 ratings) · submitted 1997 (updated 1999)
Beauty: That power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Life and Death and Men and Women
# · Not So Good (27 ratings) · submitted 1997 (updated 1999)
Vote: The instrument and symbol of a free man's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Law and Politics
# · Not So Good (45 ratings) · submitted 1997 (updated 1999)
Politeness: The most acceptable hypocrisy.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Altruism and Cynicism
# · Not So Good (57 ratings) · submitted 1997 (updated 1999)
Eulogy: Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Altruism and Cynicism
# · Not So Good (40 ratings) · submitted 1997 (updated 1999)
Egoist: A person of low taste, more interested in themselves than in me.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Altruism and Cynicism
# · Not So Good (49 ratings) · submitted 1997 (updated 1999)
Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Altruism and Cynicism
# · Not So Good (29 ratings) · submitted 1997 (updated 1999)
Accuse: To affirm another's guilt or unworth; most commonly as a justification of ourselves for having wronged them.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Law and Politics
# · Not So Good (41 ratings) · submitted 1997 (updated 1999)
Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Wealth and Poverty
# · Not So Good (28 ratings) · submitted 1997
Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.
# · Not So Good (9 ratings) · submitted 1997
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum — "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am."
# · Not So Good (21 ratings) · submitted 1997
Coward: one who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.
# · Not So Good (14 ratings) · submitted 1997
Diplomacy: The patriotic art of lying for one's country.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Law and Politics
# · Not So Good (11 ratings) · submitted 1997
Helpmate: A wife, or bitter half.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Love and Hate
# · Not So Good (30 ratings) · submitted 1997
In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary, "patriotism" is defined as the last resort of the scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer, I beg to submit that it is the first.
# · Not So Good (145 ratings) · submitted 1997
Incompatibility: In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Love and Hate
# · Not So Good (13 ratings) · submitted 1997
It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when it is thrust into the affairs of another, from which some physiologists have drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell.
# · Not So Good (8 ratings) · submitted 1997
Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify.
# · Not So Good (11 ratings) · submitted 1997
The covers of this book are too far apart.
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