Ambrose Gwinett Bierce

United States
24 Jun 1842 // 1914
Editorialist/Journalist/Short-story writer/Satirist

Quotes

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Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt
Marriage is the state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two
Love is a temporary insanity curable by marriage
Logic is the art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding
Liberty is one of imagination's most precious possessions
Learning is the kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious
Lawsuit is a machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage
It is evident that skepticism, while it makes no actual change in man, always makes him feel better
Inventor is a person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it is civilization
I believe we shall come to care about people less and less. The more people one knows the easier it becomes to replace them. It's one of the curses of London
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On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
On Destiny: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."
Human, All Too Human
On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
Essays