Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Gwinnett Biercewas an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist. He wrote the short story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and compiled a satirical lexicon, The Devil's Dictionary. His vehemence as a critic, his motto "Nothing matters", and the sardonic view of human nature that informed his work, all earned him the nickname "Bitter Bierce"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth24 June 1842
CityMeighs County, OH
CountryUnited States of America
ART, n. This word has no definition. Its origin is related by the ingenious Father Gassalasca Jape as "One day a wag - what would the wretch be at? Shifted a letter of the cipher RAT, And said it was a god's name! . . ."
ZOOLOGY, n. The science and history of the animal kingdom, including its king, the House Fly ("Musca maledicta"). The father of Zoology was Aristotle, as is universally conceded, but the name of its mother has not come down to us.
PILGRIM, n. A traveler that is taken seriously. A Pilgrim Father was one who [was] not permitted to sing psalms through his nose [in Europe], followed it to Massachusetts, where he could personate God according to the dictates of his conscience.
DELUSION, n. The father of a most respectable family, comprising Enthusiasm, Affection, Self-denial, Faith, Hope, Charity and many other goodly sons and daughters.
TEDIUM, n. Ennui, the state or condition of one that is bored. Many fanciful derivations of the word have been affirmed, but so high an authority as Father Jape says that it comes from a very obvious source --the first words of the ancient Latin hymn _Te Deum Laudamus_. In this apparently natural derivation there is something that saddens.
Doubt is the father of invention.
The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge.
Lawsuit: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me.
Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
Edible - good to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.
Ardor, n. The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.
We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.
Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.