The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 08: Negligible Tales, On With the Dance, EpigramsBierce, Ambrose
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The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 08: Negligible Tales, On With the Dance, Epigrams
Bierce, Ambrose
American literature
The most charming view in the world is obtained by introspection.
Love is unlike chess, in that the pieces are moved secretly and the
player sees most of the game. But the looker-on has one incomparable
advantage: he is not the stake.
It is not for nothing that tigers choose to hide in the jungle, for
commerce and trade are carried on, mostly, in the open.
We say that we love, not whom we will, but whom we must. Our judgment
need not, therefore, go to confession.
Of two kinds of temporary insanity, one ends in suicide, the other in
marriage.
If you give alms from compassion, why require the beneficiary to be "a
deserving object"? No other adversity is so sharp as destitution of
merit.
Bereavement is the name that selfishness gives to a particular
privation.
O proud philanthropist, your hope is vain
To get by giving what you lost by gain.
With every gift you do but swell the cloud
Of witnesses against you, swift and loud--
Accomplices who turn and swear you split
Your life: half robber and half hypocrite.
You're least unsafe when most intact you hold
Your curst allotment of dishonest gold.
The highest and rarest form of contentment is approval of the success of
another.
If Inclination challenge, stand and fight--
From Opportunity the wise take flight.
What a woman most admires in a man is distinction among men. What a man
most admires in a woman is devotion to himself.
Those who most loudly invite God's attention to themselves when in peril
of death are those who should most fervently wish to escape his
observation.
When you have made a catalogue of your friend's faults it is only fair
to supply him with a duplicate, so that he may know yours.
How fascinating is Antiquity!--in what a golden haze the ancients lived
their lives! We, too, are ancients. Of our enchanting time Posterity's
great poets will sing immortal songs, and its archæologists will
reverently uncover the foundations of our palaces and temples. Meantime
we swap jack-knives.
Observe, my son, with how austere a virtue the man without a cent puts
aside the temptation to manipulate the market or acquire a monopoly.
For study of the good and the bad in woman two women are a needless
expense.
"There's no free will," says the philosopher;
"To hang is most unjust."
"There is no free will," assents the officer;
"We hang because we must."
Hope is an explorer who surveys the country ahead. That is why we know
so much about the Hereafter and so little about the Heretofore.
Remembering that it was a woman who lost the world, we should accept the
act of cackling geese in saving Rome as partial reparation.
There are two classes of women who may do as they please; those who are
rich and those who are poor. The former can count on assent, the latter
on inattention.
When into the house of the heart Curiosity is admitted as the guest of
Love she turns her host out of doors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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