Ambrose Gwinett Bierce Quotes

PRESENT, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.

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BOTTLE-NOSED, adj. Having a nose created in the image of its maker.

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ELEGY, n. A composition in verse, in which, without employing any of the methods of humor, the writer aims to produce in the reader's mind the dampest kind of dejection. The most famous English example begins somewhat like thisThe cur foretells the knell of parting day The loafing herd winds slowly o'er the lea The wise man homeward plods I only stay To fiddle-faddle in a minor key.

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YESTERDAY, n. The infancy of youth, the youth of manhood, the entire past of age.But yesterday I should have thought me blest To stand high-pinnacled upon the peak Of middle life and look adown the bleak And unfamiliar foreslope to the West, Where solemn shadows all the land invest And stilly voices, half-remembered, speak Unfinished prophecy, and witch-fires freak The haunted twilight of the Dark of Rest. Yea, yesterday my soul was all aflame To stay the shadow on the dial's face At manhood's noonmark Now, in God His name I chide aloud the little interspace Disparting me from Certitude, and fain Would know the dream and vision ne'er again. --Baruch ArnegriffIt is said that in his last illness the poet Arnegriff was attended at different times by seven doctors.

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REALITY, n. The dream of a mad philosopher. That which would remain in the cupel if one should assay a phantom. The nucleus of a vacuum.

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FORMA PAUPERIS. Latin In the character of a poor person a method by which a litigant without money for lawyers is considerately permitted to lose his case.

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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 be a process of reasoning --which is a phenomenon. Nevertheless, the discovery and exposition of noumena offer a rich field for what Lewes calls the endless variety and excitement of philosophic thought. Hurrah (therefore) for the noumenon

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PRE-ADAMITE, n. One of an experimental and apparently unsatisfactory race of antedated Creation and lived under conditions not easily conceived. Melsius believed them to have inhabited the Void and to have been something intermediate between fishes and birds. Little its known of them beyond the fact that they supplied Cain with a wife and theologians with a controversy.

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Calamities are of two kinds misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.

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ETHNOLOGY, n. The science that treats of the various tribes of Man, as robbers, thieves, swindlers, dunces, lunatics, idiots and ethnologists.

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ENVELOPE, n. The coffin of a document the scabbard of a bill the husk of a remittance the bed-gown of a love-letter.

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A penny saved is a penny to squander.

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POPULIST, n. A fossil patriot of the early agricultural period, found in the old red soapstone underlying Kansas characterized by an uncommon spread of ear, which some naturalists contend gave him the power of flight, though Professors Morse and Whitney, pursuing independent lines of thought, have ingeniously pointed out that had he possessed it he would have gone elsewhere. In the picturesque speech of his period, some fragments of which have come down to us, he was known as The Matter with Kansas.

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REALISM, n. The art of depicting nature as it is seem by toads. The charm suffusing a landscape painted by a mole, or a story written by a measuring-worm.

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PROOF-READER, n. A malefactor who atones for making your writing nonsense by permitting the compositor to make it unintelligible.

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HEBREW, n. A male Jew, as distinguished from the Shebrew, an altogether superior creation.

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WRATH, n. Anger of a superior quality and degree, appropriate to exalted characters and momentous occasions as, 'the wrath of God,' 'the day of wrath,' etc....

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RED-SKIN, n. A North American Indian, whose skin is not red at least not on the outside.

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THEOSOPHY, n. An ancient faith having all the certitude of religion and all the mystery of science. The modern Theosophist holds, with the Buddhists, that we live an incalculable number of times on this earth, in as many several bodies, because one life is not long enough for our complete spiritual development that is, a single lifetime does not suffice for us to become as wise and good as we choose to wish to become. To be absolutely wise and good --that is perfection and the Theosophist is so keen-sighted as to have observed that everything desirous of improvement eventually attains perfection. Less competent observers are disposed to except cats, which seem neither wiser nor better than they were last year. The greatest and fattest of recent Theosophists was the late Madame Blavatsky, who had no cat.

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READING, n. The general body of what one reads. In our country it consists, as a rule, of Indiana novels, short stories in 'dialect' and humor in slang.

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AUCTIONEER, n. The man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a pocket with his tongue.

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OUT-OF-DOORS, n. That part of one's environment upon which no government has been able to collect taxes. Chiefly useful to inspire poets.

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DELUSION, n. The father of a most respectable family, comprising Enthusiasm, Affection, Self-denial, Faith, Hope, Charity and many other goodly sons and daughters.

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BABE or BABY, n. A misshapen creature of no particular age, sex, or condition, chiefly remarkable for the violence of the sympathies and antipathies it excites in others, itself without sentiment or emotion.

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Architect. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.

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