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Danh ngôn của Ambrose Bierce (Sứ mệnh: 7)

The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.
Prescription: A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.
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.
Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.
Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.
Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.
Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious possessions.
Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.
Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
Marriage, n: the state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.
Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.
Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.
Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.
Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
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.
Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.
Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.
We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.
History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.
Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.
When you doubt, abstain.
Doubt is the father of invention.
The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.
The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge.
Success is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.
Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age.
Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.
Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic.
To be positive is to be mistaken at the top of one's voice.
Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
Education, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.
Famous, adj.: Conspicuously miserable.
Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
Spring beckons! All things to the call respond; the trees are leaving and cashiers abscond.
Perseverance - a lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.
What this country needs what every country needs occasionally is a good hard bloody war to revive the vice of patriotism on which its existence as a nation depends.
Lawsuit: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.
Ardor, n. The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.
Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.
War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.
Present, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.
Jealous, adj. Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth keeping.
Future. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.
Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.
Women in love are less ashamed than men. They have less to be ashamed of.
Litigant. A person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones.
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.
Experience - the wisdom that enables us to recognise in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.
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.
Wit - the salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.