1842-1914, American Author, Editor, Journalist, ''The Devil's Dictionary''
A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man, who has no gills.
Ambrose Bierce – [Oceans]
A coward is one who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
Ambrose Bierce – [Coward and Cowardice]
A cynic is a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, and not as they ought to be.
Ambrose Bierce – [Cynics and Cynicism]
A funeral is a pageant whereby we attest our respect for the dead by enriching the undertaker.
Ambrose Bierce – [Funerals]
A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves a glorious success.
Ambrose Bierce – [Perseverance]
A man is known by the company he organizes.
Ambrose Bierce – [Management]
A prejudice is a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
Ambrose Bierce – [Prejudice]
A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
Ambrose Bierce – [Philosophers and Philosophy]
A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
Ambrose Bierce – [Love]
Abscond. To ''move'' in a mysterious way, commonly with the property of another.
Ambrose Bierce – [Crime and Criminals]
Abstainer. A weak man who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
Ambrose Bierce – [Abstinence]
Absurdity. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Ambrose Bierce – [Absurdity]
Acquaintance. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
Ambrose Bierce – [Acquaintance]
Acquaintance: a degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous.
Ambrose Bierce – [Acquaintance]
Admiral. That part of a warship which does the talking while the figurehead does the thinking.
Ambrose Bierce – [Army and Navy]
Admiration; is our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
Ambrose Bierce – [Praise]
Age. That period of life in which we compound for the vices that remain by reviling those we have no longer the vigor to commit.
Ambrose Bierce – [Age and Aging]
Alien. An American sovereign in his probationary state.
Ambrose Bierce – [Immigration]
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.
Ambrose Bierce – [Philosophers and Philosophy]
Alliance. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.
Ambrose Bierce – [Alliances]