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ABATIS, n. Rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside.


Ambrose Bierce

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If you're going to make rubbish, be the best rubbish in it.
RICHARD BURTON It matters, it always matters, to name rubbish as rubbish … to do otherwise is to legitimize it."<...
SALMAN RUSHDIE They are rubbish wickets really.
SCOTT STYRIS Rubbish is immortal, it pervades the air, swells up in water, dissolves, rots, disintegrates, change...
IVAN KLíMA RUBBISH, n. Worthless matter, such as the religions, philosophies, literatures, arts and sciences of...
AMBROSE BIERCE Operation Drive Out the Rubbish.
ROBERT MUGABE I am a rubbish flirt.
DAWN FRENCH Good riddance to bad rubbish.
RODMAN PHILBRICK It is absolute rubbish,
BARBARA CHARONE [They also argued the Dorgan amendment would prevent the United States from negotiating improvements...
BYRON DORGAN Make good use of bad rubbish
ELIZABETH BERESFORD The interviewers asking an interviewee as how much business he can generate for their organisation h...
ANUJ SOMANY This is what bipartisanship looks like; constant rubbish from both sides of the aisle.
GEORGE F. WILL Networking is rubbish; have friends instead.
STEVE WINWOOD I hate Shakespeare. I think Shakespeare's rubbish.
ALLAN CARR I use paper, plastics, textiles and rubbish,
CHRISTIAN KOCH It was a tremendous turnaround because we were rubbish in first half.
ALAN SHEARER This statement can be described only as utter rubbish.
SIZWE KUPELO This was the Prime Minister's prerogative. It's rubbish to say there's been a tussle.
ARJUN SINGH There has been so much rubbish written up in the papers over the years.
RONALD BIGGS If you're reading this, then I guess someone, somewhere does go through the rubbish and read every p...
ALEX SCARROW Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.
AMBROSE BIERCE Great and pure thoughts cannot be deposited in minds accumulated with rubbish.
MICHAEL BASSEY JOHNSON I love dressing up, though I have to hide my rubbish hair in a hat.
SOPHIE MCSHERA Hatred is like fire -- it makes even light rubbish deadly.
GEORGE ELIOT When stupidity reaches its highest level, we act rubbish knowingly
DURGESH SATPATHY There used to be a rubbish heap under the great tree in Dhoby Ghaut with a sarabat stall parked next...
GREGORY NALPON Personally, I think universities are finished. So much rubbish gets taught.
A. N. WILSON A lot of stuff written about me is rubbish. I don't know where they get it from, sometimes.
AGYNESS DEYN An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise.
ROBERT SOUTH This whole segregation between famous people and other people is complete rubbish.
MAISIE WILLIAMS The idea of strictly minding our own business is moldy rubbish. Who could be so selfish?
MYRTLE BARKER My function as a writer and a speaker really is as a rubbish clearer. I try to sweep away a little b...
ADRIAN PLASS Worn old shoes need a good cobbler to be repaired; but worn old thoughts, only a rubbish bin!
MEHMET MURAT ILDAN If you keep your mind sufficiently open, people will throw a lot of rubbish into it.
WILLIAM A. ORTON When coming in to land at Santiago, Chile, I saw the area between the city and the Andes mountains w...
MICHAEL FOREMAN I don't want to see pictures of Hollywood stars in their dressing gowns taking out the rubbish. It r...
SARAH BRIGHTMAN I was absolutely horrified when I became aware of this agenda of the homosexual lobby to promote thi...
PATRICK O'NEILL I love rock-n-roll. I think it's an exciting art form. It's revolutionary. Still revolutionary and i...
NICK CAVE It is pathetic. It is rubbish and we shall dismiss it the best we can.
ALEX FERGUSON Women's tennis is two sets of rubbish that lasts only half an hour.
PAT CASH It does not come to me in quite so direct a line as that; it takes a bend or two, but nothing of con...
JANE AUSTEN Why is everything I own rubbish?’ said Ron furiously, striding across the room to unstick Pigwidge...
J.K. ROWLING Tristan and Isolde were lucky to die when they did. They'd have been sick of all that rubbish in a y...
ROBERTSON DAVIES When I write sometimes I strike gold, sometimes I labor in vain and keep producing rubbish
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA All that self-expression has just created a generation of morons, hooked on an endless appetite for ...
VIVIENNE WESTWOOD Fact "I tolerate any rubbish but don't over do it coz u might find yourself in the trash can....."
IRENE GOODWILL The stream is as good as at first; the little rubbish it collects in the turnings is easily moved aw...
JANE AUSTEN the ideologues of his council to arrange what he calls their revolutionary rubbish, such as sovereig...
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anyt...
ERIC HOFFER A man can believe a considerable deal of rubbish, and yet go about his daily work in a rational and ...
NORMAN DOUGLAS This perception that we can be stars without any work and just appear is rubbish.
DARCEY BUSSELL The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that...
THOMAS MERTON Melt all the tanks in the world and make them rubbish bins. They will be much more useful for the hu...
MEHMET MURAT ILDAN He has no place in the New York Fire Department. I lost too many friends that day to listen to that ...
JACK DUGGAN I love rock-n-roll. I think it's an exciting art form. It's revolutionary. Still revolutiona...
NICK CAVE People think that whatever comes out of the mouth of a wise man is the choicest gem, sometime it's u...
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA I was once timed at 99.97mph, but that's rubbish, I was miles faster than that [attributed]
JEFF THOMSON All the stuff about being a drinking club, or having players who were not good enough, I treat as ru...
BRYAN ROBSON He does not care for flowers. Calls them rubbish, and cannot tell one from another, and thinks it is...
MARK TWAIN I could see no reason why used tram tickets, bits of driftwood, buttons and old junk from attics and...
KURT SCHWITTERS An old Polish frog... with a huge casket of jewels... and she clicks her teeth and shrugs, "Only Rub...
CECIL BEATON Fear paralyses you - fear of flying, fear of the future, fear of leaving a rubbish marriage, fear of...
ANNIE LENNOX Many of these biographies are based on rubbish that just isn't true, ... All the traditional stories...
DAVID DOBSON The price of freedom of religion, or of speech, or of the press, is that we must put up with a good ...
ROBERT JACKSON Some of the most untidy writers have also been the most productive. Iris Murdoch, for instance, wrot...
CRAIG BROWN A few of the supporters behind me shouted that we were playing rubbish and I turned round and told t...
JIMMY BROWN I sit in places like Costa Coffee in Banstead and write rubbish. I need a deadline. I think about th...
TIM VINE The disciple of the truly enlightened Buddha shines forth by his knowledge among those who are like ...
FRIEDRICH MAX MULLER We were rubbish for 44 minutes. The best thing that could happen to us was that we were booed off. I...
CHRIS COLEMAN People often say that a very attractive woman is 'out of their league' Let me be clear about this......
NICK KINSELLA American cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash--all of them--surrounded by piles of wrecke...
JOHN STEINBECK You may have been born on the rubbish damp. But be careful not to believe that the rubbish damp was ...
ISRAELMORE AYIVOR I find myself sympathizing with the Americans. Why should they buy this rubbish? Even we aren't buyi...
GEORGE MICHAEL Every single time you make a merger, somebody is losing his identity. And saying something different...
CARLOS GHOSN A fresh and vigorous weed, always renewed and renewing, it will cut its wondrous way through rubbish...
WILLIAM JAY SMITH An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anyth...
ERIC HOFFER This bullying rubbish is absolute garbage, everyone who knows me and works with me said take no noti...
BILL SWEETENHAM There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.” ~ Ambrose ...
J.J. MCAVOY I'd cut an arm off to win that gold medal. The pole vault would be difficult but that's a rubbish ev...
DEAN MACEY Changing from biochemistry to law was easy because I was rubbish in the laboratory. I could never de...
MICHELLE PAVER If you win a bid for rubbish disposal, you are destined to be a long-time partner. It shows the impo...
XU LIANG Generally speaking, the best people nowadays go into journalism, the second best into business, the ...
AUBERON WAUGH The wannabe invariably attempts to get in on the conversations after he has had a few beers and then...
MR HOWARD I cut things off because I no longer want to be like a wall, or a rubbish bin where you dump anythin...
GERARD DEPARDIEU In the wild struggle for existance, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds...
OSCAR WILDE In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds...
OSCAR WILDE No formal course in fiction-writing can equal a close and observant perusal of the stories of Edgar ...
H. P. LOVECRAFT My second play, The Birthday Party, I wrote in 1958 - or 1957. It was totally destroyed by the criti...
HAROLD PINTER I've been hyper-conscious about staying away from rubbish. I don't eat white bread, white ri...
FLEUR EAST There's a lot of evidence to (peer review's) downside. Even the very best journals have published ru...
RICHARD SMITH ... but now men who could work preferred to beg, and the artists forgot that their calling was noble...
PAULINE GEDGE The stories of childhood leave an indelible impression, and their author always has a niche in the t...
HOWARD PYLE I am rubbish at the gym. I prefer to exercise by moving around - it doesn't matter whether I am ...
ERIN O'CONNOR There are so many cliches associated with mental health - such as the 'fine line between lunacy ...
JO BRAND These ancient huts were soon cleared of the rubbish covering them. I planned them, and removed them ...
HOWARD CARTER Feverishly we cleared away the remaining last scraps of rubbish on the floor of the passage before t...
HOWARD CARTER No one is ever really a stranger. We cling to the belief that we share nothing with certain people. ...
MARK HADDON I love make-up so much, but I'm a bit rubbish at skincare; I'm really disloyal and never sti...
POPPY DELEVINGNE He's engaged in a business of charging people for the movement of rubbish. To the best of our knowle...
DANA REED

More Ambrose Bierce

Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
AMBROSE BIERCE Belladonna, n.: In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the e...
AMBROSE BIERCE Divorce: a resumption of diplomatic relations and rectification of boundaries.
AMBROSE BIERCE Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.
AMBROSE BIERCE Immortality: A toy which people cry for, And on their knees apply for, Dispute, contend and lie for,...
AMBROSE BIERCE Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
AMBROSE BIERCE Suffrage, noun. Expression of opinion by means of a ballot. The right of suffrage (which is held to ...
AMBROSE BIERCE Laziness. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.
AMBROSE BIERCE Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.
AMBROSE BIERCE Doubt is the father of invention.
AMBROSE BIERCE Life - a spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.
AMBROSE BIERCE Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their ...
AMBROSE BIERCE Cabbage: a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.
AMBROSE BIERCE Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.
AMBROSE BIERCE Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.
AMBROSE BIERCE Deliberation, n.: The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on.
AMBROSE BIERCE Clairvoyant, n.: A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to ...
AMBROSE BIERCE Liberty:one of imaginations most precious possessions.
AMBROSE BIERCE Quoting: the act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
AMBROSE BIERCE Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.
AMBROSE BIERCE Success is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.
AMBROSE BIERCE Optimist: a proponent of the doctrine that black is white.
AMBROSE BIERCE Litigant: a person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bone.
AMBROSE BIERCE Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.
AMBROSE BIERCE Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
AMBROSE BIERCE OCEAN, n. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man -- who has no gills.
AMBROSE BIERCE ZEAL, n. A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced. A passion that goeth b...
AMBROSE BIERCE For every man there is something in the vocabulary that would stick to him like a second skin. His e...
AMBROSE BIERCE Education, n.: That which discloses the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understand...
AMBROSE BIERCE Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
AMBROSE BIERCE Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
AMBROSE BIERCE Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
AMBROSE BIERCE You don't have to be stupid to be a Christian, ... but it probably helps.
AMBROSE BIERCE Ocean, n. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man — who has no g...
AMBROSE BIERCE Fidelity. A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.
AMBROSE BIERCE Incompatibility. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination.
AMBROSE BIERCE The world has suffered more from the ravages of ill-advised marriages than from virginity.
AMBROSE BIERCE Marriage. The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, m...
AMBROSE BIERCE Bride. A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
AMBROSE BIERCE What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republi...
AMBROSE BIERCE Nominee. A modest gentleman shrinking from the distinction of private life and diligently seeking th...
AMBROSE BIERCE Learning. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
AMBROSE BIERCE Consult. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
AMBROSE BIERCE Happiness is an agreeable sensation, arising from contemplating the misery of others.
AMBROSE BIERCE Life. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.
AMBROSE BIERCE Acquaintance: a degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate ...
AMBROSE BIERCE An acquaintance is someone we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
AMBROSE BIERCE A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
AMBROSE BIERCE Beauty. The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
AMBROSE BIERCE Let me tell you what a writer is. A writer takes comprehensive views, holds large convictions, makes...
AMBROSE BIERCE Corporation. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
AMBROSE BIERCE Don't steal; thou it never thus compete successfully in business. Cheat.
AMBROSE BIERCE Philanthropist. A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his co...
AMBROSE BIERCE Age. That period of life in which we compound for the vices that remain by reviling those we have no...
AMBROSE BIERCE Success is the one unpardonable sin against one's fellows.
AMBROSE BIERCE Education is that which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understan...
AMBROSE BIERCE Destiny. A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
AMBROSE BIERCE Edible. Good to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pi...
AMBROSE BIERCE Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify.
AMBROSE BIERCE Erudition. Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.
AMBROSE BIERCE Saint. A dead sinner revised and edited.
AMBROSE BIERCE Insurrection. An unsuccessful revolution; disaffection's failure to substitute misrule for bad gover...
AMBROSE BIERCE Revolution is an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
AMBROSE BIERCE Impiety. Your irreverence toward my deity.
AMBROSE BIERCE Deliberation. The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on.
AMBROSE BIERCE Take not God's name in vain; select a time when it will have effect.
AMBROSE BIERCE A prejudice is a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
AMBROSE BIERCE Bigot, one who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
AMBROSE BIERCE Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly un...
AMBROSE BIERCE Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration t...
AMBROSE BIERCE Admiration; is our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
AMBROSE BIERCE To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental result.
AMBROSE BIERCE A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
AMBROSE BIERCE All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.
AMBROSE BIERCE A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves a glorious success.
AMBROSE BIERCE Peace, in international affairs, is a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.
AMBROSE BIERCE Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.
AMBROSE BIERCE Optimism. The doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.
AMBROSE BIERCE An optimist is a proponent of the doctrine that black is white.
AMBROSE BIERCE They say that hens do cackle loudest when there is nothing vital in the eggs they have laid.
AMBROSE BIERCE Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
AMBROSE BIERCE Heaven lies about us in our infancy and the world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.
AMBROSE BIERCE As records of courts and justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolen...
AMBROSE BIERCE Before undergoing a surgical operation, arrange your temporal affairs. You may live.
AMBROSE BIERCE Politeness -- The most acceptable hypocrisy.
AMBROSE BIERCE A man is known by the company he organizes.
AMBROSE BIERCE Logic, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapaciti...
AMBROSE BIERCE Enthusiasm. A distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward ap...
AMBROSE BIERCE Egotist. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than me.
AMBROSE BIERCE An egotist is a person interested in himself than in me!
AMBROSE BIERCE Duty. That which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire.
AMBROSE BIERCE Opiate. An unlocked door in the prison of Identity. It leads into the jail yard.
AMBROSE BIERCE Insurance: An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comforta...
AMBROSE BIERCE Backbite. To speak of a man as you find him when he can't find you.
AMBROSE BIERCE Alien. An American sovereign in his probationary state.
AMBROSE BIERCE Miss: A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market. Miss, Mis...
AMBROSE BIERCE Witticism. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted and seldom noted; what the Philistine is please...
AMBROSE BIERCE Wit. The salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.
AMBROSE BIERCE A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man, who has no gills.
AMBROSE BIERCE Impartial. Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a cont...
AMBROSE BIERCE Dog. A kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the worl...
AMBROSE BIERCE Physician -- One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our dogs when well.
AMBROSE BIERCE Divorce. A resumption of diplomatic relations and rectification of boundaries.
AMBROSE BIERCE Consul. In American politics, a person who having failed to secure an office from the people is give...
AMBROSE BIERCE Forgetfulness. A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscien...
AMBROSE BIERCE A cynic is a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, and not as they ought to be.
AMBROSE BIERCE Confidante. One entrusted by A with the secrets of B confided to herself by C.
AMBROSE BIERCE The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
AMBROSE BIERCE Future. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is ...
AMBROSE BIERCE A funeral is a pageant whereby we attest our respect for the dead by enriching the undertaker.
AMBROSE BIERCE An accident is an inevitable occurrence due to the actions of immutable natural laws.
AMBROSE BIERCE To apologize is to lay the foundation for a future offense.
AMBROSE BIERCE An account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly k...
AMBROSE BIERCE Historian. A broad -- gauge gossip.
AMBROSE BIERCE Habit is a shackle for the free.
AMBROSE BIERCE Laughter -- An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarti...
AMBROSE BIERCE Litigant. A person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones.
AMBROSE BIERCE Appeal. In law, to put the dice into the box for another throw.
AMBROSE BIERCE Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, ad...
AMBROSE BIERCE Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age.
AMBROSE BIERCE Experience. The wisdom that enables us to recognize in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly tha...
AMBROSE BIERCE The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
AMBROSE BIERCE PROPHECY, n. The art and practice of selling one's credibility for future delivery.
AMBROSE BIERCE When in Rome, do as Rome does.
AMBROSE BIERCE To be positive: to be mistaken at the top of one's voice.
AMBROSE BIERCE Censor, n. An officer of certain governments, employed to supress the works of genius. Among the Rom...
AMBROSE BIERCE Bore -- a person who talks when you wish him to listen.
AMBROSE BIERCE Ambition. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by frie...
AMBROSE BIERCE Irreligion. The principal one of the great faiths of the world.
AMBROSE BIERCE Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things withou...
AMBROSE BIERCE Architect. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.
AMBROSE BIERCE Genealogy. An account of one's descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his o...
AMBROSE BIERCE Absurdity. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
AMBROSE BIERCE Abstainer. A weak man who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
AMBROSE BIERCE Woman absent is woman dead.
AMBROSE BIERCE The covers of this book are too far apart.
AMBROSE BIERCE Abscond. To move in a mysterious way, commonly with the property of another.
AMBROSE BIERCE Creditor. One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial Straits and dreaded for their deso...
AMBROSE BIERCE A coward is one who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
AMBROSE BIERCE Conservative. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from a Liberal, who wi...
AMBROSE BIERCE The Senate is a body of old men charged with high duties and misdemeanors.
AMBROSE BIERCE Compromise. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction of ...
AMBROSE BIERCE Alliance. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserte...
AMBROSE BIERCE ALLIANCE, n. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply in...
AMBROSE BIERCE Acquaintance is a degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor and obscure, and intima...
AMBROSE BIERCE ARSENIC, n. A kind of cosmetic greatly affected by the ladies, whom it greatly affects in turn."Eat ...
AMBROSE BIERCE Compromise. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction o...
AMBROSE BIERCE Convent. A place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.
AMBROSE BIERCE Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
AMBROSE BIERCE International arbitration may be defined as the substitution of many burning questions for a smoulde...
AMBROSE BIERCE DIPLOMACY, n. Lying in state, or the patriotic art of lying for one's country.
AMBROSE BIERCE Calamities are of two kinds. Misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
AMBROSE BIERCE Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
AMBROSE BIERCE A bride is a woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
AMBROSE BIERCE Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic.
AMBROSE BIERCE There are 4 kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.
AMBROSE BIERCE FIDELITY, n. A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.
AMBROSE BIERCE ZOOLOGY, n. The science and history of the animal kingdom, including its king, the House Fly ("Mus...
AMBROSE BIERCE HIPPOGRIFF, n. An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin. The griffin was a com...
AMBROSE BIERCE ZENITH, n. The point in the heavens directly overhead to a man standing or a growing cabbage. A m...
AMBROSE BIERCE YANKEE, n. In Europe, an American. In the Northern States of our Union, a New Englander. In the So...
AMBROSE BIERCE Hypocrisy: prejudice with a halo
AMBROSE BIERCE Forgetfulness. A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscie...
AMBROSE BIERCE One who is in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
AMBROSE BIERCE OBSESSED, p.p. Vexed by an evil spirit, like the Gadarene swine and other critics. Obsession was onc...
AMBROSE BIERCE Optimism. The doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.
AMBROSE BIERCE Women and foxes, being weak, are distinguished by superior tact.
AMBROSE BIERCE Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.
AMBROSE BIERCE QUEEN, n. A woman by whom the realm is ruled when there is a king, and through whom it is ruled wh...
AMBROSE BIERCE When you are ill make haste to forgive your enemies, for you may recover.
AMBROSE BIERCE Electricity seems destined to play a most important part in the arts and industries. The question of...
AMBROSE BIERCE Electricity is the power that causes all natural phenomena not known to be caused by something else.
AMBROSE BIERCE ECCENTRICITY, n. A method of distinction so cheap that fools employ it to accentuate their incapaci...
AMBROSE BIERCE LAND, n. A part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property s...
AMBROSE BIERCE The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
AMBROSE BIERCE Birth: The first and direst of all disasters.
AMBROSE BIERCE Dawn: When men of reason go to bed.
AMBROSE BIERCE Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affai...
AMBROSE BIERCE Amnesty, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.
AMBROSE BIERCE Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.
AMBROSE BIERCE Admiral. That part of a warship which does the talking while the figurehead does the thinking.
AMBROSE BIERCE Famous, adj.: Conspicuously miserable.
AMBROSE BIERCE Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
AMBROSE BIERCE Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
AMBROSE BIERCE Edible, adj.: Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake ...
AMBROSE BIERCE Jealous, adj. Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth ke...
AMBROSE BIERCE Dog - a kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the wor...
AMBROSE BIERCE Acquaintance. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
AMBROSE BIERCE Perseverance - a lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.
AMBROSE BIERCE Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities ...
AMBROSE BIERCE Prescription: A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the...
AMBROSE BIERCE Lawsuit: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
AMBROSE BIERCE Compromise, n. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction ...
AMBROSE BIERCE The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.
AMBROSE BIERCE TELEPHONE n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeab...
AMBROSE BIERCE Egotist, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
AMBROSE BIERCE Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
AMBROSE BIERCE Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
AMBROSE BIERCE Sweater, n. Garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.
AMBROSE BIERCE Sabbath - a weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and wa...
AMBROSE BIERCE