Top 500 Ambrose Bierce Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “Here’s to woman! Would that we could fold into her arms without falling into her hands.”

— Ambrose Bierce

252. “PLATONIC, adj. Pertaining to the philosophy of Socrates. Platonic Love is a fool’s name for the affection between a disability and a frost.”

— Ambrose Bierce

253. “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

254. “A king’s staff of office, the sign and symbol of his authority. It was originally a mace with which the sovereign admonished his jester and vetoed ministerial measures by breaking the bones of their proponents.”

— Ambrose Bierce

255. “Hash, x. There is no definition for this word – nobody knows what hash is. Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable. 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

256. “A violin is the revenge exacted by the intestines of a dead cat.”

— Ambrose Bierce

257. “Curiosity, n. An objectionable quality of the female mind. The desire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is one of the most active and insatiable passions of the masculine soul.”

— Ambrose Bierce

258. “History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.”

— Ambrose Bierce

259. “A malefactor who atones for making your writing nonsense by permitting the compositor to make it unintelligible.”

— Ambrose Bierce

260. “They say that hens do cackle loudest when there is nothing vital in the eggs they have laid.”

— Ambrose Bierce

261. “SCARABAEUS, n. The sacred beetle of the ancient Egyptians, allied to our familiar “tumble-bug.” It was supposed to symbolize immortality, the fact that God knew why giving it its peculiar sanctity.”

— Ambrose Bierce

262. “WALL STREET, n. A symbol for sin for every devil to rebuke. That Wall Street is a den of thieves is a belief that serves every unsuccessful thief in place of a hope in Heaven.”

— Ambrose Bierce

263. “Women and foxes, being weak, are distinguished by superior tact.”

— Ambrose Bierce

264. “When you are ill make haste to forgive your enemies, for you may recover.”

— Ambrose Bierce

265. “Coronation: The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a dynamite bomb.”

— Ambrose Bierce

266. “PHYSIOGNOMY, n. The art of determining the character of another by the resemblances and differences between his face and our own, which is the standard of excellence.”

— Ambrose Bierce

267. “Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age.”

— Ambrose Bierce

268. “Doubt, indulged and cherished, is in danger of becoming denial; but if honest, and bent on thorough investigation, it may soon lead to full establishment of the truth.”

— Ambrose Bierce

269. “Contempt; the feeling of a prudent man for an enemy who is too formidable safely to be opposed.”

— Ambrose Bierce

270. “Fashion, n. A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.”

— Ambrose Bierce

271. “POVERTY, n. A file provided for the teeth of the rats of reform. Its victims are distinguished by possession of all the virtues and by their faith in leaders seeking to conduct them into a prosperity where they believe these to be unknown.”

— Ambrose Bierce

272. “Birth: The first and direst of all disasters.”

— Ambrose Bierce

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

273. “No country is so wild and difficult but men will make it a theater of war.”

— Ambrose Bierce

Featured in: Country Quotes

274. “KILT, n. A costume sometimes worn by Scotchmen in America and Americans in Scotland.”

— Ambrose Bierce

275. “INK, n. A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic, and water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote intellectual crime.”

— Ambrose Bierce

276. “Advice, the smallest current coin.”

— Ambrose Bierce

277. “UXORIOUSNESS, n. A perverted affection that has strayed to one’s own wife.”

— Ambrose Bierce

278. “The circus a place where horses, ponies and elephants are permitted to see men, women and children acting the fool.”

— Ambrose Bierce

279. “That part of your friend which it is your privilege to contemplate in your adversity.”

— Ambrose Bierce

280. “Youth looks forward, for nothing is behind! Age backward, for nothing is before.”

— Ambrose Bierce

281. “DAY, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent. This period is divided into two parts, the day proper and the night, or day improper – the former devoted to sins of business, the latter consecrated to the other sort.”

— Ambrose Bierce

282. “Cribbage, n. A substitute for conversation among those to whom nature has denied ideas.”

— Ambrose Bierce

283. “RECREATION, n. A particular kind of dejection to relieve a general fatigue.”

— Ambrose Bierce

284. “Abscond – to move in a mysterious way, commonly with the property of another.”

— Ambrose Bierce

285. “Cat: a soft indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.”

— Ambrose Bierce

286. “MANNA, n. A food miraculously given to the Israelites in the wilderness. When it was no longer supplied to them they settled down and tilled the soil, fertilizing it, as a rule, with the bodies of the original occupants.”

— Ambrose Bierce

287. “Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.”

— Ambrose Bierce

288. “To apologize is to lay the foundation for a future offense.”

— Ambrose Bierce

289. “INGRATE, n. One who receives a benefit from another, or is otherwise an object of charity.”

— Ambrose Bierce

290. “A miracle is an act or event out of the order of nature and unaccountable, as beating a normal hand of four kings and an ace with four aces and a king.”

— Ambrose Bierce

291. “TRICHINOSIS, n. The pig’s reply to proponents of porcophagy.”

— Ambrose Bierce

292. “GRAVE, n. A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student.”

— Ambrose Bierce

293. “Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.”

— Ambrose Bierce

294. “MAMMON, n. The god of the world’s leading religion. The chief temple is in the holy city of New York.”

— Ambrose Bierce

295. “Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another’s resemblance to ourselves.”

— Ambrose Bierce

296. “RICH, adj. Holding in trust and subject to an accounting the property of the indolent, the incompetent, the unthrifty, the envious and the luckless.”

— Ambrose Bierce

297. “April fool, n. The March fool with another month added to his folly.”

— Ambrose Bierce

298. “Aborigines, n.: Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.”

— Ambrose Bierce

Featured in: Country Quotes

299. “Riven and torn with cannon-shot, the trunks of the trees protruded bunches of splinters like hands, the fingers above the wound interlacing with those below.”

— Ambrose Bierce

300. “TELESCOPE, n. A device having a relation to the eye similar to that of the telephone to the ear, enabling distant objects to plague us with a multitude of needless details. Luckily it is unprovided with a bell summoning us to the sacrifice.”

— Ambrose Bierce