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Ambrose Bierce - From the Ability category:
ability, n. The natural equipment to accomplish some small part of the meaner ambitions distinguishing able men from dead ones. In the last analysis ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Achievement category:
- The Cynic's Word Book, 1906 - renamed The Devil's Dictionary in 1911...
achievement, n. The death of endeavor and the birth of disgust. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Advice category:
- The Devil's Dictionary, 1911
advice, n. the smallest current coin. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Advice category:
consult, v.i. To seek another's disapproval of a course already decided on. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Aging category:
longevity, n. Uncommon extension of the fear of death. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Aging category:
age, n. That period of life in which we compound for the vices that we still cherish by reviling those that we no longer have the enterprise to commit. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Ambition category:
ambition, n. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Architecture category:
ramshackle, adj. Pertaining to a certain order of architecture, otherwise known as the Normal American. Most of the public buildings of the United States are of the Ramshackle order, though some of our earlier architects preferred the Ironic. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Art category:
picture, n. A representation in two dimensions of something wearisome in three. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Art category:
art, n. This word has no definition. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Audience category:
applause, n. The echo of a platitude. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Beauty category:
bait, n. A preparation that renders the hook more palatable. The best kind is beauty. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Belief category:
delusion, n. The father of a most respectable family, comprising Enthusiasm, Affection, Self-denial, Faith, Hope, Charity and many other goodly sons and daughters. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Books category:
-one-sentence book review...
The covers of this book are too far apart. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Books category:
novel, n. A short story padded. A species of composition bearing the same relation to literature that the panorama bears to art. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Boredom category:
bore, n. a person who talks when you wish him to listen. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Choices category:
decide, v.i. To succumb to the preponderance of one set of influences over another set. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Collaboration category:
hybrid, n. A pooled issue. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Colour category:
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)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Commerce category:
commerce, n. A kind of transaction in which A plunders from B the goods of C, and for compensation B picks the pocket of D of money belonging to E. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Commerce category:
auctioneer, n. The man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a pocket with his tongue. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Communication category:
conversation, n. A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath is called the listener. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Competition category:
notoriety, n. The fame of one's competitor for public honors. The kind of renown most accessible and acceptable to mediocrity. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Confession category:
acknowledge, v.t. To confess. Acknowledgment of one another's faults is the highest duty imposed by our love of truth. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Conviction category:
certainty, n. When one is mistaken at the top of one's voice. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Critics category:
- The Devil's Dictionary, 1911...
critic, n. A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Desire category:
reason, v.i. To weight probabilities in the scales of desire. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Desire category:
aim, n. The task we set our wishes to. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Destiny category:
destiny, n. A tyrant's authority for crime and fool's excuse for failure. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Determination category:
resolute, adj. Obstinate in a course that we approve. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Disappointment category:
year, n. A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Disappointment category:
predilection, n. The preparatory stage of disillusion. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Eccentricity category:
mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence; at odds with the majority; in short, unusual. It is noteworthy that persons are pronounced mad by officials destitute of evidence that they themselves are sane. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Eccentricity category:
eccentricity, n. A method of distinction so cheap that fools employ it to accentuate their incapacity. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Editing category:
sycophant, n. One who approaches Greatness on his belly so that he may not be commanded to turn and be kicked. He is sometimes an editor. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Editing category:
proof-reader, n. A malefactor who atones for making your writing nonsense by permitting the compositor to make it unintelligible. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Education category:
education, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Ego category:
- The Cynic's Word Book, 1906...
egotist, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Ego category:
self-evident, adj. Evident to one's self and to nobody else. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Ego category:
self-esteem, n. An erroneous appraisal. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Ego category:
me, pro. The objectionable case of I. The personal pronoun in English has three cases, the dominative, the objectionable and the oppressive. Each is all three. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Emotion category:
emotion, n. A prostrating disease caused by a determination of the heart to the head. It is sometimes accompanied by a copious discharge of hydrated chloride of sodium from the eyes. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Enthusiasm category:
zeal, n. A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced. A passion that goeth before a sprawl. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Envy category:
pain, n. An uncomfortable frame of mind that may have a physical basis in something that is being done to the body, or may be purely mental, caused by the good fortune of another. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Envy category:
envy, n. Emulation adapted to the meanest capacity. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Expectation category:
prospect, n. An outlook, usually forbidding. An expectation, usually forbidden. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Expectation category:
adore, v.t. To venerate expectantly. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Experience category:
rational, adj. Devoid of all delusions save those of observation, experience and reflection. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Experience category:
experience, n. The wisdom that enables us to recognize as an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Fame category:
renown, n. A degree of distinction between notoriety and fame - a little more supportable than the one and a little more intolerable than the other. Sometimes it is conferred by an unfriendly and inconsiderate hand. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Fame category:
famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Fashion category:
fashion, n. A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Fashion category:
presentable, adj. Hideously appareled after the manner of the time and place. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Freedom category:
liberty, n. One of Imagination's most precious possessions. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Friendship category:
truce, n. Friendship. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Friendship category:
friendship, n. A ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but only one in foul. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Friendship category:
acquaintance, n. A degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Future category:
- The Cynic's Word Book, 1906...
future, n. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true, and our happiness is assured. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Future category:
prophecy, n. The art and practice of selling one's credibility for future delivery. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Generosity category:
- The Cynic's Word Book, 1906...
generous, adj. Originally this word meant noble by birth and was rightly applied to a great multitude of persons. It now means noble by nature, and is taking a bit of a rest. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Gratitude category:
- Wasp (San Francisco), 28 May 1885...
gratitude, n. A sentiment lying midway between a benefit received and a benefit expected. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Habit category:
- The Cynic's Word Book, 1906...
habit, n. A shackle for the free. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Habit category:
predicament, n. The wage of consistency. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Happiness category:
- The Devil's Dictionary...
Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Hope category:
-The Devil's Dictionary, 1911
hope, n. Desire and expectation rolled into one. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Humanity category:
man, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Humility category:
modesty, n. The gentle art of enhancing your charm by pretending not to be aware of it. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Imagination category:
imagination, n. A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Influence category:
intention, n. The mind's sense of the prevalence of one set of influences over another set; an effect whose cause is the imminence, immediate or remote, of the performance of an involuntary act. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Intellect category:
mind, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavor to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Journey category:
road, n. A strip of land along which one may pass from where it is too tiresome to be to where it is futile to go. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Leadership category:
adherent, n. A follower who has not yet obtained all that he expects to get. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Life category:
-The Devil's Dictionary, 1911
calamity, n. A more than commonly plain and unmistakable reminder that the affairs of this life are not of our own ordering. Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Memory category:
recollect, v. To recall with additions something not previously known. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Miracles category:
miracle, n. An act or event out of the order of nature and unaccountable, as beating a normal hand of four kings and an ace with four aces and a king. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Money category:
quotient, n. A number showing how many times a sum of money belonging to one person is contained in the pocket of another - usually about as many times as it can be got there. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Money category:
money, n. A blessing that is of no advantage to us excepting when we part with it. An evidence of culture and a passport to polite society. Supportable property. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Morality category:
moral, adj. Conforming to a local and mutable standard of right. Having the quality of general expediency. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Morality category:
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. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Music category:
piano, n. A parlor utensil for subduing the impenitent visitor. It is operated by pressing the keys of the machine and the spirits of the audience. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Music category:
violin, n. An instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse's tail on the entrails of a cat. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Opportunity category:
opportunity, n. A favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Optimism category:
pessimism, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Optimism category:
optimist, n. A proponent of the doctrine that black is white. A pessimist applied to God for relief. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Optimism category:
optimism, n. The doctrine, or belief, that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, everything good, especially the bad, and everything right that is wrong. It is hereditary, but fortunately not contagious. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Painting category:
-The Devil's Dictionary, 1911
painting, n. the art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Patience category:
-The Devil's Dictionary, 1911
patience, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Perfection category:
perfection, n. An imaginary state of quality distinguished from the actual by an element known as excellence; an attribute of the critic. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Perseverance category:
perseverance, n. A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Philosophy category:
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Photography category:
photograph, n. A picture painted by the sun without instruction in art. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Plagiarism category:
plagiarize, v. To take the thought or style of another writer whom one has never, never read. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Plagiarism category:
plagiarism, n. A literary coincidence compounded of a discreditable priority and an honorable subsequence. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Planning category:
-The Devil's Dictionary, 1911
plan, v.t. To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental result. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Pleasure category:
pleasure, n. The least hateful form of dejection. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Plein-Air category:
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. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Poetry category:
poetry, n. A form of expression peculiar to the Land beyond the Magazines. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Poetry category:
blank-verse, n. Unrhymed iambic pentameters - the most difficult kind of English verse to write acceptably; a kind, therefore, much affected by those who cannot acceptably write any kind. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Politics category:
politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Possessions category:
mine, adj. Belonging to me if I can hold or seize it. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Possessions category:
property, n. Any material thing, having no particular value, that may be held by A against the cupidity of B. Whatever gratifies the passion for possession in one and disappoints it in all others. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Possibilities category:
actually, adv. Perhaps; possibly. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Power category:
compulsion, n. The eloquence of power. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Prayer category:
-The Devil's Dictionary, 1911
pray, v. To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Quotations category:
-The Devil's Dictionary, 1911
quotation, n. The act of repeating erroneously the words of another. The words erroneously repeated. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Realism category:
realism, n. The art of depicting nature as it is seen by toads. The charm suffusing a landscape painted by a mole, or a story written by a measuring-worm. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Recognition category:
admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Religion category:
-The Devil's Dictionary, 1911
religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Repose category:
repose, v.i. To cease from troubling. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Responsibility category:
responsibility, n. A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one's neighbor. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Responsibility category:
duty, n. That which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Rewards category:
commendation, n. The tribute that we pay to achievements that resemble, but do not equal, our own. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Sacrifice category:
self-denial, n. Indulgence of a propensity to forego. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Senses category:
noise, n. A stench in the ear. Undomesticated music. The chief product and authenticating sign of civilization. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Solitude category:
alone, adj. In bad company. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Success category:
success, n. The one unpardonable sin against one's fellows. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Thinking category:
-The Devil's Dictionary, 1911
brain, n. An apparatus with which we think we think. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Time category:
-The Devil's Dictionary, 1911
present, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Time category:
hurry, n. The dispatch of bunglers. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Timeliness category:
clock, n. A machine of great moral value to man, allaying his concern for the future by reminding him what a lot of time remains to him. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Truth category:
story, n. A narrative, commonly untrue. The truth of the stories here following has, however, not been successfully impeached. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Tyranny category:
oratory, n. A conspiracy between speech and action to cheat the understanding. A tyranny tempered by stenography. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Understanding category:
logic, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Wisdom category:
folly, n. That 'gift and faculty divine' whose creative and controlling energy inspires Man's mind, guides his actions and adorns his life. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Wisdom category:
adage, n. Boned wisdom for weak teeth. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Words category:
-The Cynic's Word Book, 1906
The bold and discerning writer who, recognizing the truth that language must grow by innovation if it grow at all, makes new words and uses the old in an unfamiliar sense has no following and is tartly reminded that 'it isn't in the dictionary' - although down to the time of the first lexicographer (Heaven forgive him!) no author ever had used a word that was in the dictionary. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Words category:
grammar, n. A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet for the self-made man, along the path by which he advances to distinction. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Worth category:
price, n. Value, plus a reasonable sum for the wear and tear of conscience in demanding it. (Ambrose Bierce)
Ambrose Bierce - From the Writing category:
reporter, n. A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words. (Ambrose Bierce)
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