Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel. – Ambrose Bierce
The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling. – Ambrose Bierce
There are four kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy. – Ambrose Bierce
Battle, n., A method of untying with the teeth a political knot that would not yield to the tongue. – Ambrose Bierce
The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge. – Ambrose Bierce
Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable. – Ambrose Bierce
Acquaintance. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to. – Ambrose Bierce
Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. – Ambrose Bierce
Fork: An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth. – Ambrose Bierce
Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance. – Ambrose Bierce
Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead. – Ambrose Bierce
Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman’s power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country. – Ambrose Bierce
Childhood: the period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth – two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age. – Ambrose Bierce
Admiral. That part of a warship which does the talking while the figurehead does the thinking. – Ambrose Bierce
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. – Ambrose Bierce
Creditor. One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial Straits and dreaded for their desolating incursions. – Ambrose Bierce