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
One of the greatest of poets, Coleridge was one of the wisest of men, and it was not for nothing that he read us this parable. Let us have a little less of "hands across the sea," and a little more of that elemental distrust that is the security of nations. War loves to come like a thief in the night; professions of eternal amity provide the night.
REPARTEE, n. Prudent insult in retort. Practiced by gentlemen with a constitutional aversion to violence, but a strong disposition to offend. In a war of words, the tactics of the North American Indian.
Riot – A popular entertainment given to the military by innocent bystanders.
What this country needs what every country needs occasionally is a good hard bloody war to revive the vice of patriotism on which its existence as a nation depends.
War: A by-product of the arts of peace.
Every patriot believes his country better than any other country . . . In its active manifestation-it is fond of killing-patriotism would be well enough if it were simply defensive, but it is also aggressive . . . Patriotism deliberately and with folly aforethought subordinates the interests of a whole to the interests of a part . . . Patriotism is fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave and blind as a stone.
Cannon: An instrument used in the rectification of national boundaries.
At war with savages and idiots. To be a Frenchman abroad is to be miserable; to be an American abroad is to make others miserable.
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.
WAR, n. A by-product of the arts of peace. The most menacing political condition is a period of international amity.
No country is so wild and difficult but men will make it a theater of war.
Men who expect universal peace through invention of destructive weapons of war are no wiser than one who, noting the improvement of agricultural implements, should prophesy an end to the tilling of the soil.
The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.
War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.