To be positive is to be mistaken at the top of one's voice.

- Ambrose Bierce

Perseverance - a lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.

- Ambrose Bierce

Famous, adj.: Conspicuously miserable.

- Ambrose Bierce

Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.

- Ambrose Bierce

Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.

- Ambrose Bierce

Alien - an American sovereign in his probationary state.

- Ambrose Bierce

Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.

- Ambrose Bierce

Historian - a broad-gauge gossip.

- Ambrose Bierce

Suffrage, noun. Expression of opinion by means of a ballot. The right of suffrage (which is held to be both a privilege and a duty) means, as commonly interpreted, the right to vote for the man of another man's choice, and is highly prized.

- Ambrose Bierce

Edible - good to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.

- Ambrose Bierce

Wit - the salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.

- Ambrose Bierce

Ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity.

- Ambrose Bierce

Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.

- Ambrose Bierce

Fork: An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth.

- Ambrose Bierce

Doubt begins only at the last frontiers of what is possible.

- Ambrose Bierce

Forgetfulness - a gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.

- Ambrose Bierce

We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.

- Ambrose Bierce

Anoint, v.: To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery.

- Ambrose Bierce

Land: A part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the superstructure.

- Ambrose Bierce

Amnesty, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.

- Ambrose Bierce