Top 500 Ambrose Bierce Quotes (2025 Update)
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451. “RICE-WATER, n. A mystic beverage secretly used by our most popular novelists and poets to regulate the imagination and narcotize the conscience.”

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

453. “RITE, n. A religious or semi-religious ceremony fixed by law, precept or custom, with the essential oil of sincerity carefully squeezed out of it.”

— Ambrose Bierce

454. “Patriotism: The first resort of a scoundrel.”

— Ambrose Bierce

455. “CLERGYMAN, n. A man who undertakes the management of our spiritual affairs as a method of better his temporal ones.”

— Ambrose Bierce

456. “Turkey: A large bird whose flesh, when eaten on certain religious anniversaries has the peculiar property of attesting piety and gratitude.”

— Ambrose Bierce

457. “PERORATION, n. The explosion of an oratorical rocket. It dazzles, but to an observer having the wrong kind of nose its most conspicuous peculiarity is the smell of the several kinds of powder used in preparing it.”

— Ambrose Bierce

458. “True, man does not know woman. But neither does woman.”

— Ambrose Bierce

459. “TAIL, n. The part of an animal’s spine that has transcended its natural limitations to set up an independent existence in a world of its own.”

— Ambrose Bierce

460. “TABLE D’HOTE, n. A caterer’s thrifty concession to the universal passion for irresponsibility.”

— Ambrose Bierce

461. “PICKANINNY, n. The young of the “Procyanthropos”, or “Americanus dominans”. It is small, black and charged with political fatalities.”

— Ambrose Bierce

462. “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

463. “PRESIDENT, n. The leading figure in a small group of men of whom – and of whom only – it is positively known that immense numbers of their countrymen did not want any of them for President.”

— Ambrose Bierce

464. “WOMAN, n. An animal usually living in the vicinity of Man, and having a rudimentary susceptibility to domestication.”

— Ambrose Bierce

465. “Opportunity: A favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment.”

— Ambrose Bierce

466. “DIGESTION, n. The conversion of victuals into virtues. When the process is imperfect, vices are evolved instead – a circumstance from which that wicked writer, Dr. Jeremiah Blenn, infers that the ladies are the greater sufferers from dyspepsia.”

— Ambrose Bierce

467. “OPIATE, n. An unlocked door in the prison of Identity. It leads into the jail yard.”

— Ambrose Bierce

468. “In the algebra of psychology, X stands for a woman’s heart.”

— Ambrose Bierce

469. “PREHISTORIC, adj. Belonging to an early period and a museum. Antedating the art and practice of perpetuating falsehood.”

— Ambrose Bierce

470. “PRISON, n. A place of punishments and rewards. The poet assures us that – stone walls do not a prison make.”

— Ambrose Bierce

471. “PROBOSCIS, n. The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him in place of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him. For purposes of humor it is popularly called a trunk.”

— Ambrose Bierce

472. “READING, n. The general body of what one reads. In our country it consists, as a rule, of Indiana novels, short stories in “dialect” and humor in slang.”

— Ambrose Bierce

473. “YANKEE, n. In Europe, an American. In the Northern States of our Union, a New Englander. In the Southern States the word is unknown.”

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

475. “He laughs best who laughs least.”

— Ambrose Bierce

476. “FROG, n. A reptile with edible legs.”

— Ambrose Bierce

477. “FEMALE, n. One of the opposing, or unfair, sex.”

— Ambrose Bierce

478. “INFALAPSARIAN, n. One who ventures to believe that Adam need not have sinned unless he had a mind to – in opposition to the Supralapsarians, who hold that that luckless person’s fall was decreed from the beginning.”

— Ambrose Bierce

479. “REPARTEE, n. 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

480. “MUGWUMP, n. In politics one afflicted with self-respect and addicted to the vice of independence. A term of contempt.”

— Ambrose Bierce

481. “RECONCILIATION, n. A suspension of hostilities. An armed truce for the purpose of digging up the dead.”

— Ambrose Bierce

482. “RIBALDRY, n. Censorious language by another concerning oneself.”

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

484. “Don’t steal; thou’lt never thus compete successfully in business. Cheat.”

— Ambrose Bierce

485. “LIVER, n. A large red organ thoughtfully provided by nature to be bilious with. The liver is heaven’s best gift to the goose; without it that bird would be unable to supply us with the Strasbourg “pate”.”

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

487. “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

488. “RACK, n. An argumentative implement formerly much used in persuading devotees of a false faith to embrace the living truth. As a call to the unconverted the rack never had any particular efficacy, and is now held in light popular esteem.”

— Ambrose Bierce

489. “Grief is an artist of powers as various as the instruments upon which he plays his dirges for the dead, evoking from some the sharpest, shrillest notes, from others the low, grave chords that throb recurrent like the slow beating of a distant drum. Some natures it startles; some it stupefies. To one it comes like the stroke of an arrow, stinging all the sensibilities to a keener life; to another as the blow of a bludgeon, which in crushing benumbs.”

— Ambrose Bierce

490. “In this world one must have a name; it prevents confusion, even when it does not establish identity. Some, though, are known by numbers, which also seem inadequate distinctions.”

— Ambrose Bierce

491. “RATTLESNAKE, n. Our prostrate brother, “Homo ventrambulans”.”

— Ambrose Bierce

492. “Even the laws of justice themselves cannot subsist without mixture of injustice.”

— Ambrose Bierce

493. “Self-evident, adj. Evident to one’s self and to nobody else.”

— Ambrose Bierce

494. “UNDERSTANDING, n. A cerebral secretion that enables one having it to know a house from a horse by the roof on the house. Its nature and laws have been exhaustively expounded by Locke, who rode a house, and Kant, who lived in a horse.”

— Ambrose Bierce

495. “MULTITUDE, n. A crowd; the source of political wisdom and virtue. In a republic, the object of the statesman’s adoration.”

— Ambrose Bierce

496. “NEWTONIAN, Pertaining to a philosophy of the universe invented by Newton, who discovered that an apple will fall to the ground, but was unable to say why. His successors and disciples have advanced so far as to be able to say when.”

— Ambrose Bierce

497. “Something that is supposed to typify or stand for something else. Many symbols are mere “survivals” – as funereal urns carved on memorial monuments. We cannot stop making them, but we can give them a name that conceals our helplessness.”

— Ambrose Bierce

498. “ORTHODOX, n. An ox wearing the popular religious joke.”

— Ambrose Bierce

499. “Scriptures – The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.”

— Ambrose Bierce

500. “Cannon: An instrument used in the rectification of national boundaries.”

— Ambrose Bierce