Ambrose Burnside quote: "The late brilliant actions in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas divided and weakened the enemy on the Rappahannock, and the auspicious moment seems to have arrived to strike a great and mortal blow at the Rebellion, and to gain that decisive victory which is due to the country."

I am in favor of a foreign policy that will cultivate relations of peace with all nations, and I wil...
AMBROSE BURNSIDE

I am in favor of admitting any territory into the Union of States as soon as it has fulfilled the re...
AMBROSE BURNSIDE

Being about to land on the soil of North Carolina, the general commanding desires his soldiers to re...
AMBROSE BURNSIDE

If you persist in your purpose of secession, there will be war - a bloody and cruel war. Not only wi...
AMBROSE BURNSIDE

The wastefulness of indiscriminate plunder impoverishes a country, while it adds nothing to the supp...
AMBROSE BURNSIDE

The commanding general publishes, for the information of all concerned, that hereafter all persons f...
AMBROSE BURNSIDE

So many men have so many times predicted the time of the end of the Rebellion, and been mistaken, th...
AMBROSE BURNSIDE

I am opposed to the wholesale giving away of the public lands to railroad corporations and other lik...
AMBROSE BURNSIDE

The general commanding congratulates his troops on their brilliant and successful occupation of Roan...
AMBROSE BURNSIDE

Snow isn't just pretty. It also cleanses our world and our senses, not just of the soot and grim...
JOHN BURNSIDE

If nature offers no home, then we must make a home one way or another. The only question is how.
JOHN BURNSIDE

All my life, I have been a celebrant of Halloween. For me, it is the most important day of the year,...
JOHN BURNSIDE

Clearly, any well-kept garden will be a source of pleasure in the summer months; in the bleak urban ...
JOHN BURNSIDE

One day I was talking about what I was going to do next, and just found myself announcing it: 'I...
JOHN BURNSIDE

The woods were a boon; all too often, the forest offered danger and mystery. Yet it could be liberat...
JOHN BURNSIDE

This is a truth that should be repeated like a mantra: to have any chance of a ful - filling life, w...
JOHN BURNSIDE

There is a red sandy beach in the Minas Basin in Nova Scotia that is unlike any other shore landscap...
JOHN BURNSIDE

Sometimes, when the wind hits hard and icicles form on the sea cliffs, we can all come together - an...
JOHN BURNSIDE

Many of the birds Audubon painted are now extinct, and still we go on killing them, more or less cas...
JOHN BURNSIDE

Part of the plan is to move from processing and notification ... and have people go out and look for...
ALEC BURNSIDE

Having come down so hard on the commission already, it is possible the court will give them a break ...
ALEC BURNSIDE

The European Commission overreached itself in the G.E.-Honeywell case. It pushed theories like the '...
ALEC BURNSIDE

That's nonsense. American businesses need to wake up to the reality that there is a merger review pr...
ALEC BURNSIDE

In many traditions, hawks are sacred: Apollo's messengers for the Greeks, sun symbols for the an...
JOHN BURNSIDE

A modern arboretum brings us that ancient forest and, with it, a changed apprehension of time, a ren...
JOHN BURNSIDE

The animal encounter poem is now so distinct a genre that it would be possible to create a full-leng...
JOHN BURNSIDE

What is essential - the one thing that could stop us being coarsened to other lives - is that we fee...
JOHN BURNSIDE

Given the right information to help them decide, people will opt for conditions that benefit our cre...
JOHN BURNSIDE

When I was ten years old, my family left a cold, damp prefab in West Fife and moved to Corby, Northa...
JOHN BURNSIDE

Sometimes, though only in my most unguarded moments, I can still think of Annette Winters as my firs...
JOHN BURNSIDE

The son of a Fife mining town sledder of coal-bings, bottle-forager, and picture-house troglodyte, I...
JOHN BURNSIDE

Worldwide, enormous areas of peatland are still being lost to agricultural development, drainage sch...
JOHN BURNSIDE

I think humans have to learn a new way of dwelling on this earth. A way of living with their compani...
JOHN BURNSIDE

The fabric of a garden is determined as much by its textures as by its tonal range and architectural...
JOHN BURNSIDE

'The Asylum Dance' was written after I'd moved back to Scotland and was a response to mo...
JOHN BURNSIDE

In time, we will have to recognise that it is not 'nature' that we need to protect, but ours...
JOHN BURNSIDE

I love long sentences. My big heroes of fiction writing are Henry James and Proust - people who reco...
JOHN BURNSIDE

What the flamingo teaches a child, at that subliminal level where animal encounters work, is that gr...
JOHN BURNSIDE

For a bird, especially for the more musically inventive, song is the defining characteristic, the pr...
JOHN BURNSIDE

It is common knowledge now that we depend on insects for our continued existence; that, without key ...
JOHN BURNSIDE

Irrationality interests me more than anything: sometimes it's very dangerous, but it can be incr...
JOHN BURNSIDE

We do not need to be heroes to save the world; all we need is humility, a critical view of the comme...
JOHN BURNSIDE

High Alpine meadows, like their near relatives prairie, desert and certain varieties of wetland, tea...
JOHN BURNSIDE

It may be a cliche, but cliche or not, I fear the day when the only marsh harriers or peregrines I c...
JOHN BURNSIDE

I don't want to suggest that matrimony was necessarily a tragic affair - some of our neighbours&...
JOHN BURNSIDE

I don't like the term 'mental illness.' I'd rather just say 'mad.' Just like...
JOHN BURNSIDE

What we should be doing is saving habitats, not single species, no matter what their cuteness factor...
JOHN BURNSIDE

Hunted for sport by the rich, then driven from large tracts of its natural habitat by agricultural a...
JOHN BURNSIDE

The great pleasure that comes from reading poets such as Mark Doty and Marianne Moore is the realisa...
JOHN BURNSIDE

Anyone who has ever stopped to watch a hawk in flight will know that this is one of the natural worl...
JOHN BURNSIDE

The trick and the beauty of language is that it seems to order the whole universe, misleading us int...
JOHN BURNSIDE

My father was one of those men who sit in a room and you can feel it: the simmer, the sense of some ...
JOHN BURNSIDE

My editor, Robin Robertson, is one of this country's finest poets, so I listen to him when he of...
JOHN BURNSIDE

I really like to try my hand at everything, and I think it's probably dangerous to let oneself b...
JOHN BURNSIDE

Thatcherite economic policy was most acutely felt in the coal industry, where tens of thousands of j...
JOHN BURNSIDE

Growing up, I lived in a house without art: no picture books on the shelves, no visits to museums, n...
JOHN BURNSIDE

A forest - the word dates back to the Norman occupancy, when it meant an area set aside for England&...
JOHN BURNSIDE

I know that the only reason American landscapes sometimes disappoint me is that, just a century befo...
JOHN BURNSIDE

I went for a walk in the Arctic Circle without map or compass. Fortunately, I was only lost for hour...
JOHN BURNSIDE

Once upon a time, forests were repositories of magic for the human race.
JOHN BURNSIDE

It takes a true encounter to realise that real animals, wild animals, have all but passed from our l...
JOHN BURNSIDE

I realised I'd spent a lot of time in my poetry trying to find a way of talking about that where...
JOHN BURNSIDE

I have never understood why so many gardeners favour straight lines and narrow, regulated borders; p...
JOHN BURNSIDE

The poem builds in my mind and sits there, as if in a register, until the poem, or a piece of a long...
JOHN BURNSIDE

It's important to have quiet time and isolation.
JOHN BURNSIDE

That's the wonderful thing with nerds: they're enthusiasts. Not having a life means you get to love ...
JOHN BURNSIDE

For a boy of ten, used to the coal bings and rust-coloured burns of Cowdenbeath, the fields and wood...
JOHN BURNSIDE

If you had to lose everything, what would you miss most? It wouldn't be anything gross, like the big...
JOHN BURNSIDE

For the Yupik, all life was continuous, animal with human with 'spirit', and recognising tha...
JOHN BURNSIDE

The Botanischer Garten in Berlin has one of Europe's finer winter trails, leading in careful ord...
JOHN BURNSIDE

We kind of became his parents for that time, and he was great to have in the home he followed all...
JOE BURNSIDE

He was here about a year before he moved in with me, and we were the sixth actual house he'd been in...
JOE BURNSIDE

I couldn't even understand her. I wasn't sure what she was saying to us. Here is a 19-year old girl ...
JOE BURNSIDE

Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
AMBROSE BIERCE

When I go to Rome, I fast on Saturday, but in Milan I do not. Do you also follow the custom of whate...
SAINT AMBROSE

It is ingrained in all living creatures, first of all, to preserve their own safety, to guard agains...
SAINT AMBROSE

The best way to use the gold of the Redeemer is for the redemption of those in peril.
SAINT AMBROSE

Many a sin has sullied me in body and in soul because I did not restrain my thoughts nor guard my li...
SAINT AMBROSE

Nothing graces the Christian soul so much as mercy; mercy as shown chiefly towards the poor, that th...
SAINT AMBROSE

Take away the contests of the martyrs, and you have taken away their crowns.
SAINT AMBROSE

In some causes silence is dangerous.
SAINT AMBROSE

God is not accustomed to refusing a good gift to those who ask for one. Since he is good, and especi...
SAINT AMBROSE

Let us take refuge from this world. You can do this in spirit, even if you are kept here in the body...
SAINT AMBROSE

It is not enough just to wish well; we must also do well.
SAINT AMBROSE

One of the duties of fortitude is to keep the weak from receiving injury; another, to check the wron...
SAINT AMBROSE

God, who preferred the correction rather than the death of a sinner, did not desire that a homicide ...
SAINT AMBROSE

God created the universe in such a manner that all in common might derive their food from it, and th...
SAINT AMBROSE

There is nothing evil save that which perverts the mind and shackles the conscience.
SAINT AMBROSE

No one is good but God alone. What is good is therefore divine, what is divine is therefore good.
SAINT AMBROSE

A kindness received should be returned with a freer hand.
SAINT AMBROSE

Where a man's heart is, there is his treasure also.
SAINT AMBROSE

When in Rome, live as the Romans do; when elsewhere, live as they live elsewhere.
SAINT AMBROSE

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

I always liked the guys who lasted a long time in the match and had endurance. People like Ric Flair...
DEAN AMBROSE

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

We played one warm-up gig at this bar that was kinda like that bar in 'The Blues Brothers' w...
LAUREN AMBROSE

Eisenhower had the clearest blue eyes. He would fix them on you. In my every interview with him, he ...
STEPHEN AMBROSE

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

WWE is like showbiz boot camp.
DEAN AMBROSE

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

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important th...
AMBROSE REDMOON

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

Photograph is a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art. It is a little better than th...
AMBROSE PIERCE

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

Friendships are different from all other relationships. Unlike acquaintanceship, friendship is based...
STEPHEN AMBROSE

A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
AMBROSE BIERCE

The flowers anew, returning seasons bring! But beauty faded has no second spring.
AMBROSE PHILIPS

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

The late brilliant actions in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas divided and weakened the enemy on the Rappahannock, and the auspicious moment seems to have arrived to strike a great and mortal blow at the Rebellion, and to gain that decisive victory which is due to the country.

Ambrose Burnside

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