Top 500 Ambrose Bierce Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “The poor man’s price of admittance to the favor of the rich is his self-respect.”

— Ambrose Bierce

152. “Road, n. A strip of land along which one may pass from where it is too tiresome to be to where it is futile to go.”

— Ambrose Bierce

153. “BABE or BABY, n. A misshapen creature of no particular age, sex, or condition, chiefly remarkable for the violence of the sympathies and antipathies it excites in others, itself without sentiment or emotion.”

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

155. “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

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

159. “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

160. “The wife, or bitter half.”

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

163. “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

164. “Cynicism is that blackguard defect of vision which compels us to see the world as it is, instead of as it should be.”

— Ambrose Bierce

165. “Habit: A shackle for the free.”

— Ambrose Bierce

166. “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

167. “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

168. “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

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

— Ambrose Bierce

170. “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

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

174. “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

175. “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

176. “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

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

181. “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

182. “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

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

— Ambrose Bierce

184. “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

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

— Ambrose Bierce

186. “LUMINARY, One who throws light upon a subject; as an editor by not writing about it.”

— Ambrose Bierce

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

— Ambrose Bierce

188. “POETRY, n. A form of expression peculiar to the Land beyond the Magazines.”

— Ambrose Bierce

189. “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

190. “Bore, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.”

— Ambrose Bierce

191. “DICTIONARY, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.”

— Ambrose Bierce

192. “Bigamy, n. A mistake in taste for which the wisdom of the future will adjudge a punishment called trigamy.”

— Ambrose Bierce

193. “LOGANIMITY, n. The disposition to endure injury with meek forbearance while maturing a plan of revenge.”

— Ambrose Bierce

194. “Peace in international affairs: a period of cheating between periods of fighting.”

— Ambrose Bierce

195. “THEOSOPHY, n. An ancient faith having all the certitude of religion and all the mystery of science.”

— Ambrose Bierce

196. “Woman absent is woman dead.”

— Ambrose Bierce

197. “PROJECTILE, n. The final arbiter in international disputes. With the growth of prudence in military affairs the projectile came more and more into favor, and is now held in high esteem by the most courageous.”

— Ambrose Bierce

198. “You are not permitted to kill a woman who has wronged you, but nothing forbids you to reflect that she is growing older every minute.”

— Ambrose Bierce

199. “Religions are conclusions for which the facts of nature supply no major premises.”

— Ambrose Bierce

200. “EPIGRAM, n. A short, sharp saying in prose or verse, frequently characterize by acidity or acerbity and sometimes by wisdom.”

— Ambrose Bierce