Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (1842–1914) was an American short-story writer, and journalist. A prominent journalist in California, London, and Washington, D.C., he is celebrated for his realistic and sardonic short stories on the themes of death and horror.
Born in Meigs County, Ohio, Bierce grew up in Indiana and fought for the Union in the Civil War 1861–65. In the United Kingdom 1872–75, he wrote copy for Fun and other magazines. He relocated to California in 1887 and joined the San Francisco Examiner, later editing for San Francisco Argonaut and San Francisco Illustrated Wasp.
Bierce wrote Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1892; later In the Midst of Life, 1892.) His most famous story, ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,’ which is a haunted, near-death fantasy of escape, was influenced by Edgar Allan Poe and consecutively influenced Stephen Crane and Ernest Hemingway.
In 1896, Bierce moved to Washington, D.C., where he continued writing for newspapers and magazines. He compiled the much-quoted volume of ironic and bitter definitions Cynic’s Word Book (1906; now called The Devil’s Dictionary.) In 1913, he went to Mexico to report on revolutionary Pancho Villa’s army and disappeared without explanation.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Ambrose Bierce
Acquaintance. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
—Ambrose Bierce
Moral: Conforming to a local and mutable standard of right; having the quality of general expediency.
—Ambrose Bierce
Topics: Morals
Mad, adj.: Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
—Ambrose Bierce
Topics: Intelligence
OATH, n. In law, a solemn appeal to the Deity, made binding upon the conscience by a penalty for perjury.
—Ambrose Bierce
Liberty: One of Imagination’s most precious possessions.
—Ambrose Bierce
Topics: Freedom
MINISTER, n. An agent of a higher power with a lower responsibility. In diplomacy, an officer sent into a foreign country as the visible embodiment of his sovereign’s hostility.
—Ambrose Bierce
Topics: Diplomacy
A bore is a person who talks when you wish him to listen.
—Ambrose Bierce
Topics: Boredom
Think twice before you speak to a friend in need.
—Ambrose Bierce
Topics: Thinking, Thoughts, Thought
Patience: A minor form of despair disguised as a virtue.
—Ambrose Bierce
Topics: Patience
The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.
—Ambrose Bierce
Topics: Honesty
The Senate is a body of old men charged with high duties and misdemeanors.
—Ambrose Bierce
Prophecy: The art and practice of selling one’s credibility for future delivery.
—Ambrose Bierce
IMMORAL, adj. Inexpedient. Whatever in the long run and with regard to the greater number of instances men find to be generally inexpedient comes to be considered wrong, wicked, immoral. If man’s notions of right and wrong have any other basis than this of expediency; if they originated, or could have originated, in any other way; if actions have in themselves a moral character apart from, and nowise dependent on, their consequences –then all philosophy is a lie and reason a disorder of the mind.
—Ambrose Bierce
Topics: Disorder
Forgetfulness. A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.
—Ambrose Bierce
Topics: Debt
Marriage: The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.
—Ambrose Bierce
Topics: Marriage
Applause is the echo of a platitude.
—Ambrose Bierce
Topics: Praise
Before undergoing a surgical operation, arrange your temporal affairs. You may live.
—Ambrose Bierce
Topics: Medicine
Laziness. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.
—Ambrose Bierce
Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one’s own opinion.
—Ambrose Bierce
Architect: One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.
—Ambrose Bierce
Topics: Architecture, Science
Ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity.
—Ambrose Bierce
Topics: Ability
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.
—Ambrose Bierce
Topics: Eating
Faith, and belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
—Ambrose Bierce
Topics: Faith, Atheism
Opiate. An unlocked door in the prison of Identity. It leads into the jail yard.
—Ambrose Bierce
Topics: Drugs
Let me tell you what a writer is. A writer takes comprehensive views, holds large convictions, makes wide generalizations. A writer’s not English, Mexican, or American. A writer’s not a woman nor a man. A writer’s not Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Muslim, nor snake worshipper. To local standards of right and wrong a writer’s civilly indifferent. In the virtues, a writer’s concerned only with general expediency. A writer doesn’t waste time focusing on fixed moral principles that aren’t yet before the court of conscience. Happiness discloses itself to a writer as the end and purpose of life, and art and love are the only means to a writer’s happiness. A writer is free of all doctrines, theories, etiquettes, and politics. To a writer, a continent doesn’t seem long, nor a century wide. And a writer has ever present consciousness that this is a world of…fools and rogues, blind with superstition, tormented with envy, consumed with vanity, selfish, false, cruel, cursed with illusions, and frothing mad.
—Ambrose Bierce
Topics: Authors & Writing
Acquaintance: a degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous.
—Ambrose Bierce
Consult. To seek another’s approval of a course already decided on.
—Ambrose Bierce
Topics: Advice
Achievement is the death of endeavor and the birth of disgust.
—Ambrose Bierce
Lawyer, n. One skilled in circumvention of the law.
—Ambrose Bierce
Topics: Lawyers
Enthusiasm. A distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience.
—Ambrose Bierce
Topics: Enthusiasm
A prejudice is a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
—Ambrose Bierce
Topics: Prejudice
Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
—Ambrose Bierce
Topics: Jealousy
Miss: A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market. Miss, Misses (Mrs.) and Mister (Mr.) are the three most distinctly disagreeable words in the language, in sound and sense. Two are corruptions of Mistress, the other of Master. If we must have them, let us be consistent and give one to the unmarried man. I venture to suggest Mush, abbreviated to MH.
—Ambrose Bierce
Topics: Names
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