Enthusiasm – a distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience. – Ambrose Bierce
Experience – the wisdom that enables us to recognise in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced. – Ambrose Bierce
Education, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding. – Ambrose Bierce
Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious. – Ambrose Bierce
Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate. – Ambrose Bierce
It is evident that skepticism, while it makes no actual change in man, always makes him feel better. – Ambrose Bierce
Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment. – Ambrose Bierce
The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling. – Ambrose Bierce
The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up. – Ambrose Bierce
Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband. – Ambrose Bierce
Eloquence, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white. – Ambrose Bierce
Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic. – Ambrose Bierce
Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret. – 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
Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age. – Ambrose Bierce
No country is so wild and difficult but men will make it a theater of war. – Ambrose Bierce
Ocean: A body of water occupying two-thirds of a world made for man — who has no gills. – Ambrose Bierce
Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent. – 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
Mammalia, n.pl. A family of vertebrate animals whose females in a state of nature suckle their young, but when civilized and enlightened put them out to nurse, or use the bottle. – Ambrose Bierce
