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Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
AMBROSE BIERCE, The Devil's Dictionary
Beauty, n. The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
AMBROSE BIERCE, The Devil's Dictionary
To those who view the voyage of life from the port of departure the bark that has accomplished any considerable distance appears already in close approach to the farther shore.
AMBROSE BIERCE, "The Death of Halpin Frayser"
Youth is Gilead, in which is balm for every wound.
AMBROSE BIERCE, "The Moonlit Road"
Fear has no brains; it is an idiot.
AMBROSE BIERCE, "The Moonlit Road"
He to whom the portentous conspiracy of night and solitude and silence in the heart of a great forest is not an unknown experience needs not to be told what another world it all is - how even the most commonplace and familiar objects take on another character. The trees group themselves differently; they draw closer together, as if in fear. The very silence has another quality than the silence of the day. And it is full of half-heard whispers - whispers that startle - ghosts of sounds long dead. There are living sounds, too, such as are never heard under other conditions: notes of strange night-birds, the cries of small animals in sudden encounters with stealthy foes or in their dreams, a rustling in the dead leaves - it may be the leap of a wood-rat, it may be the footfall of a panther. What caused the breaking of that twig? - what the low, alarmed twittering in that bushful of birds? There are sounds without a name, forms without substance, translations in space of objects which have not been seen to move, movements wherein nothing is observed to change its place. Ah, children of the sunlight and the gaslight, how little you know of the world in which you live!
AMBROSE BIERCE, "A Tough Tussle"
Snow pursued by the wind is not wholly unlike a retreating army. In the open field it ranges itself in ranks and battalions; where it can get a foothold it makes a stand; where it can take cover it does so. You may see whole platoons of snow cowering behind a bit of broken wall.
AMBROSE BIERCE, "The Night-Doings at Deadman's"
Childhood, n. 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, The Devil's Dictionary
Fashion, n. A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.
AMBROSE BIERCE, The Devil's Dictionary
Future, n. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.
AMBROSE BIERCE, The Devil's Dictionary
History, n. an account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.
AMBROSE BIERCE, The Devil's Dictionary
Imagination, n. A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership.
AMBROSE BIERCE, The Devil's Dictionary
Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease is prevailent [sic] only among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages. It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient.
AMBROSE BIERCE, The Devil's Dictionary
Man, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.
AMBROSE BIERCE, The Devil's Dictionary
Marriage, n. The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.
AMBROSE BIERCE, The Devil's Dictionary
Patience, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.
AMBROSE BIERCE, The Devil's Dictionary
Peace, n. In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.
AMBROSE BIERCE, The Devil's Dictionary
Philosophy, n. A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
AMBROSE BIERCE, The Devil's Dictionary
Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
AMBROSE BIERCE, The Devil's Dictionary
Reality, n. The dream of a mad philosopher. That which would remain in the cupel if one should assay a phantom. The nucleus of a vacuum.
AMBROSE BIERCE, The Devil's Dictionary
Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
AMBROSE BIERCE, The Devil's Dictionary
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