Heaven lies about us in our infancy and the world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.
Ambrose Bierce

Historian - a broad-gauge gossip.
Ambrose Bierce

History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.
Ambrose Bierce

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.
Ambrose Bierce

I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers. What I said was that all saloonkeepers are Democrats.
Ambrose Bierce

Immortality: A toy which people cry for, And on their knees apply for, Dispute, contend and lie for, And if allowed Would be right proud Eternally to die for.
Ambrose Bierce

Impartial - unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.
Ambrose Bierce

Impiety. Your irreverence toward my deity.
Ambrose Bierce

In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
Ambrose Bierce

Incompatibility. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination.
Ambrose Bierce

Insurance - an ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table.
Ambrose Bierce

Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.
Ambrose Bierce

Irreligion - the principal one of the great faiths of the world.
Ambrose Bierce

It is evident that skepticism, while it makes no actual change in man, always makes him feel better.
Ambrose Bierce

Jealous, adj. Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth keeping.
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

Lawsuit: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
Ambrose Bierce

Laziness. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.
Ambrose Bierce

Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
Ambrose Bierce

Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious possessions.
Ambrose Bierce