Top 500 Ambrose Bierce Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 4 of 10

151. “GEOGRAPHER, n. A chap who can tell you offhand the difference between the outside of the world and the inside.”

— Ambrose Bierce

152. “Battle, n., A method of untying with the teeth a political knot that would not yield to the tongue.”

— Ambrose Bierce

153. “The poor man’s price of admittance to the favor of the rich is his self-respect.”

— Ambrose Bierce

154. “Heathen, n. A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel.”

— Ambrose Bierce

155. “INCOMPOSSIBLE, adj. Unable to exist if something else exists. Two things are incompossible when the world of being has scope enough for one of them, but not enough for both – as Walt Whitman’s poetry and God’s mercy to man.”

— Ambrose Bierce

156. “DEGRADATION, n. One of the stages of moral and social progress from private station to political preferment.”

— Ambrose Bierce

157. “PHRENOLOGY, n. The science of picking the pocket through the scalp. It consists in locating and exploiting the organ that one is a dupe with.”

— Ambrose Bierce

158. “Compromise, n. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction of thinking he has got what he ought not to have, and is deprived of nothing except what was justly his due.”

— Ambrose Bierce

159. “The wife, or bitter half.”

— Ambrose Bierce

160. “APHORISM, n. Predigested wisdom. The flabby wine-skin of his brain Yields to some pathologic strain, And voids from its unstored abysm The driblet of an aphorism. “The Mad Philosopher,” 1697.”

— Ambrose Bierce

161. “Kindness n: A brief preface to ten volumes of exaction.”

— Ambrose Bierce

162. “TEETOTALER, n. One who abstains from strong drink, sometimes totally, sometimes tolerably totally.”

— Ambrose Bierce

Featured in: Strong Quotes

163. “COMMENDATION n. The tribute that we pay to achievements that resembles but do not equal our own.”

— Ambrose Bierce

164. “MEDICINE, n. A stone flung down the Bowery to kill a dog in Broadway.”

— Ambrose Bierce

165. “PHONOGRAPH, n. An irritating toy that restores life to dead noises.”

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

167. “Intolerance is natural and logical, for in every dissenting opinion lies an assumption of superior wisdom.”

— Ambrose Bierce

168. “Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.”

— Ambrose Bierce

169. “NEIGHBOR, n. One whom we are commanded to love as ourselves, and who does all he knows how to make us disobedient.”

— Ambrose Bierce

170. “HOMOEOPATHY, n. A school of medicine midway between Allopathy and Christian Science. To the last both the others are distinctly inferior, for Christian Science will cure imaginary diseases, and they can not.”

— Ambrose Bierce

171. “There are four kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.”

— Ambrose Bierce

172. “BRANDY, n. A cordial composed on one part thunder-and-lightning, one part remorse, two parts bloody murder, one part death-hell-and-the-grave and four parts clarified Satan.”

— Ambrose Bierce

173. “Habit: A shackle for the free.”

— Ambrose Bierce

174. “HATRED, n. A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another’s superiority.”

— Ambrose Bierce

175. “Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.”

— Ambrose Bierce

176. “INTERPRETER, n. One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter’s advantage for the other to have said.”

— Ambrose Bierce

177. “LECTURER, n. One with his hand in your pocket, his tongue in your ear and his faith in your patience.”

— Ambrose Bierce

178. “The covers of this book are too far apart.”

— Ambrose Bierce

179. “Optimist – A proponent of the doctrine that black is white.”

— Ambrose Bierce

180. “A large stone presented by the archangel Gabriel to the patriarch Abraham, and preserved at Mecca. The patriarch had perhaps asked the archangel for bread.”

— Ambrose Bierce

181. “Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver.”

— Ambrose Bierce

182. “Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.”

— Ambrose Bierce

183. “Immigrant: An unenlightened person who thinks one country better than another.”

— Ambrose Bierce

Featured in: Country Quotes

184. “A leech who, having penetrated the shell of a turtle only to find that the creature has long been dead, deems it expedient to form a new attachment to a fresh turtle.”

— Ambrose Bierce

185. “An egotist is a person of low taste – more interested in himself than in me.”

— Ambrose Bierce

186. “I was born to poor because of honest parents.”

— Ambrose Bierce

187. “Eloquence, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white.”

— Ambrose Bierce

188. “ELEGY, n. A composition in verse, in which, without employing any of the methods of humor, the writer aims to produce in the reader’s mind the dampest kind of dejection.”

— Ambrose Bierce

189. “Immortality: A toy which people cry for, And on their knees apply for, Dispute, contend and lie for, And if allowed Would be right proud Eternally to die for.”

— Ambrose Bierce

190. “DISOBEDIENCE, n. The silver lining to the cloud of servitude.”

— Ambrose Bierce

191. “BLANK-VERSE, n. Unrhymed iambic pentameters – the most difficult kind of English verse to write acceptably; a kind, therefore, much affected by those who cannot acceptably write any kind.”

— Ambrose Bierce

192. “RUBBISH, n. Worthless matter, such as the religions, philosophies, literatures, arts and sciences of the tribes infesting the regions lying due south from Boreaplas.”

— Ambrose Bierce

193. “There was never a genius who was not thought a fool until he disclosed himself; whereas he is a fool then only.”

— Ambrose Bierce

194. “LANGUAGE, n. The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another’s treasure.”

— Ambrose Bierce

195. “Success is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.”

— Ambrose Bierce

196. “PARDON, v. To remit a penalty and restore to the life of crime. To add to the lure of crime the temptation of ingratitude.”

— Ambrose Bierce

197. “Happiness is lost by criticizing it; sorrow by accepting it.”

— Ambrose Bierce

198. “ROSTRUM, n. In Latin, the beak of a bird or the prow of a ship. In America, a place from which a candidate for office energetically expounds the wisdom, virtue and power of the rabble.”

— Ambrose Bierce

199. “PRIVATE, n. A military gentleman with a field-marshal’s baton in his knapsack and an impediment in his hope.”

— Ambrose Bierce

200. “Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.”

— Ambrose Bierce