“Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.”
“Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.”
“All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.”
“Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.”
“Optimism: The doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.”
“Patience: A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.”
“Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.”
“Conservative: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.”
“Cynic: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.”
“The covers of this book are too far apart.”
“The hardest tumble a man can take is to fall over his own bluff.”
“History: An account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.”
“Egotist: A person of low taste, more interested in themselves than in me.”
“Religion: A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.”
“Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.”
“Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.”
“We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down.”
“Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.”
“Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.”
“Selfish: Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.”
“The unluckiest insolvent in the world is the man whose expenditure is the result of his means.”
“Impartial: Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.”
“Duty: That which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire.”
“War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.”
“Learning: The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.”
“Twice in my life I have been asked: ‘Pray, Mr. Bierce, what is your object in writing?’ And twice have I responded with my pen.”
“Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers, and springs, and believes it civilization.”
“Marriage: The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all two.”
“Future: That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true, and our happiness is assured.”
“Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.”
“Lawsuit: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.”
“Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.”
“You don’t have to speak loudly to carry a big stick.”
“There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.”
“Eulogy: Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.”
“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.”
“Experience: The wisdom that enables us to recognize in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.”
“Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man – who has no gills.”
“Year: A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.”
“Idiot: A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.”
“Pray: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy.”
“Patriotism: Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.”
“Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.”
“Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.”
“Compromise: Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction of thinking he has gotten what he ought not to have.”
“Liberty: One of Imagination’s most precious possessions.”
“Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.”
“Neighbor: One whom we are commanded to love as ourselves, and who does all he knows how to make us disobedient.”
“Politics is the strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.”
“Success is the one unpardonable sin against one’s fellows.”