Top 500 Ambrose Bierce Quotes (2025 Update)
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351. “CONGRESS, n. A body of men who meet to repeal laws.”

— Ambrose Bierce

352. “WIDOW, n. A pathetic figure that the Christian world has agreed to take humorously, although Christ’s tenderness towards widows was one of the most marked features of his character.”

— Ambrose Bierce

353. “DISCUSSION, n. A method of confirming others in their errors.”

— Ambrose Bierce

354. “Friendless. Having no favors to bestow. Destitute of fortune. Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense.”

— Ambrose Bierce

355. “A penny saved is a penny to squander.”

— Ambrose Bierce

356. “Christians and camels receive their burdens kneeling.”

— Ambrose Bierce

357. “Magpie, n.: A bird whose theivish disposition suggested to someone that it might be taught to talk.”

— Ambrose Bierce

358. “PIANO, n. A parlor utensil for subduing the impenitent visitor. It is operated by pressing the keys of the machine and the spirits of the audience.”

— Ambrose Bierce

359. “O God! what a thing it is to be a ghost, cowering and shivering in an altered world, a prey to apprehension and despair!”

— Ambrose Bierce

360. “PANTALOONS, n. A nether habiliment of the adult civilized male. The garment is tubular and unprovided with hinges at the points of flexion. Supposed to have been invented by a humorist. Called trousers by the enlightened and pants by the unworthy.”

— Ambrose Bierce

361. “ULTIMATUM, n. In diplomacy, a last demand before resorting to concessions.”

— Ambrose Bierce

362. “A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.”

— Ambrose Bierce

363. “Insurrection. An unsuccessful revolution; disaffection’s failure to substitute misrule for bad government.”

— Ambrose Bierce

364. “LEGACY, n. A gift from one who is legging it out of this vale of tears.”

— Ambrose Bierce

365. “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

366. “FLAG, n. A colored rag borne above troops and hoisted on forts and ships. It appears to serve the same purpose as certain signs that one sees and vacant lots in London.”

— Ambrose Bierce

367. “A man is the sum of his ancestors; to reform him you must begin with a dead ape and work downward through a million graves.”

— Ambrose Bierce

368. “An auctioneer is a man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a pocket with his tongue.”

— Ambrose Bierce

369. “To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental result.”

— Ambrose Bierce

370. “DIAPHRAGM, n. A muscular partition separating disorders of the chest from disorders of the bowels.”

— Ambrose Bierce

371. “Incompatibility. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination.”

— Ambrose Bierce

372. “NECTAR, n. A drink served at banquets of the Olympian deities. The secret of its preparation is lost, but the modern Kentuckians believe that they come pretty near to a knowledge of its chief ingredient.”

— Ambrose Bierce

373. “IDLENESS, n. A model farm where the devil experiments with seeds of new sins and promotes the growth of staple vices.”

— Ambrose Bierce

374. “A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced.”

— Ambrose Bierce

375. “CARTESIAN, adj. Relating to Descartes, author of ‘Cogito ergo sum’ to demonstrate the reality of human existence. The dictum might be improved ‘Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum’ ‘I think that I think, therefore I think that I am’ as close an approach.”

— Ambrose Bierce

376. “Hurry n: The dispatch of bunglers.”

— Ambrose Bierce

377. “Book – Learning : The dunce’s derisive term for all knowledge that transcends his own impertinent ignorance.”

— Ambrose Bierce

378. “DIARY, n. A daily record of that part of one’s life, which he can relate to himself without blushing.”

— Ambrose Bierce

379. “EMOTION, n. A prostrating disease caused by a determination of the heart to the head. It is sometimes accompanied by a copious discharge of hydrated chloride of sodium from the eyes.”

— Ambrose Bierce

380. “LOGOMACHY, n. A war in which the weapons are words and the wounds punctures in the swim-bladder of self-esteem – a kind of contest in which, the vanquished being unconscious of defeat, the victor is denied the reward of success.”

— Ambrose Bierce

381. “Rhubarb: essence of stomach ache.”

— Ambrose Bierce

382. “An archbishop is an ecclesiastical dignitary one point holier than a bishop.”

— Ambrose Bierce

383. “The money-getter who pleads his love of work has a lame defense, for love of work at money-getting is a lower taste than love of money.”

— Ambrose Bierce

384. “OPERA, n. A play representing life in another world, whose inhabitants have no speech but song, no motions but gestures and no postures but attitudes.”

— Ambrose Bierce

385. “NOUMENON, n. That which exists, as distinguished from that which merely seems to exist, the latter being a phenomenon. The noumenon is a bit difficult to locate; it can be apprehended only by a process of reasoning – which is a phenomenon.”

— Ambrose Bierce

386. “To Dogmatism the Spirit of Inquiry is the same as the Spirit of Evil.”

— Ambrose Bierce

387. “ACCOUNTABILITY, n. The mother of caution.”

— Ambrose Bierce

388. “To the eye of failure success is an accident.”

— Ambrose Bierce

389. “UBIQUITY, n. The gift or power of being in all places at one time, but not in all places at all times, which is omnipresence, an attribute of God and the luminiferous ether only.”

— Ambrose Bierce

390. “Conversation, n.: A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath is called the listener.”

— Ambrose Bierce

391. “Human nature is pretty well balanced; for every lacking virtue there is a rough substitute that will serve at a pinch – as cunning is the wisdom of the unwise, and ferocity the courage of the coward.”

— Ambrose Bierce

392. “CUNNING, n. The faculty that distinguishes a weak animal or person from a strong one. It brings its possessor much mental satisfaction and great material adversity. An Italian proverb says: “The furrier gets the skins of more foxes than asses.””

— Ambrose Bierce

393. “Botany, n. The science of vegetables – those that are not good to eat, as well as those that are. It deals largely with their flowers, which are commonly badly designed, inartistic in color, and ill-smelling.”

— Ambrose Bierce

394. “A less popular name for the Second Person of that delectable newspaper Trinity, the Roomer, the Bedder, and the Mealer.”

— Ambrose Bierce

395. “TRUTHFUL, adj. Dumb and illiterate.”

— Ambrose Bierce

396. “FIB, n. A lie that has not cut its teeth. An habitual liar’s nearest approach to truth: the perigee of his eccentric orbit.”

— Ambrose Bierce

397. “HERMIT, n. A person whose vices and follies are not sociable.”

— Ambrose Bierce

398. “AMATEUR, n. A public nuisance who mistakes taste for skill, and confounds his ambition with his ability.”

— Ambrose Bierce

399. “An army’s bravest men are its cowards. The death which they would not meet at the hands of the enemy they will meet at the hands of their officers, with never a flinching.”

— Ambrose Bierce

400. “BODY-SNATCHER, n. A robber of grave-worms. One who supplies the young physicians with that with which the old physicians have supplied the undertaker.”

— Ambrose Bierce