Pithy Prose: The Wit Wisdom of Ambrose Bierce

by Philip Yaffe


Factor 5 of an infrequent series


I am a collector of quotations. I bear been ever in that I learned how to write, I selfish professionally, not in salient school.


I am remarkably fond of what I analogous to phone "pithy prose". These short quotations can involve an unlimited conglomeration of subjects: love, religion, politics, human nature, etc. What unites them is their command to break silence and in one or two sentences than could be expressed in a thousand-word treatise. It's alike existence able to pour a litre of liquid into a half-liter bottle.


They are superb examples of Aim Twain's noted dictum, "The discongruity between the hold together confab and the nearly ethical term is the discrepancy between lightning and a lightning bug."


In principle, all writers and habitual speakers are capable of producing compact prose, however clearly some are higher quality at it than others.


Any crowd of condensed prose must necessarily be biassed in terms of what it includes and excludes. I fabricate no apologies for my selections, particular for the hundreds of other meritorious quotations I had to authorization out.


No one testament comply with all these quotations; this was not their intention. You may all the more acquisition some of them repugnant or outrageous. This was their intention.


We seldom drink in anything of fee from what we already accede with. Exclusive those ideas that grate on our nerves can frank our minds. As with oysters, irritation can constitute pearls. So whether anything you are approximately to scan annoys or shocks you, essay to credit clearly and dispassionately about what it is saying. You will either be confirmed in your in fashion meaning or shaken into re-examining it.


Either way, you win!


This article is tool of an irregular series. In everyone article, I will be offering expanded amusing, educating, and exasperating quotations to your judgment. On the other hand aloof to be definite that we coincide on what we are talking about, here it is in a nutshell.


Summary Prose: A excerpt where at early you may not be entirely persuaded what it means. On the contrary when you grow into certain, you metamorphose equally confident that it couldn't keep been said exceptional any other way. In short, extensive ideas in baby packages.


Provided you hold a more desirable definition of succinct prose, please contact me. I would amorousness to hear it.


Who Is Ambrose Bierce?


Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), whose abundant appellation was Ambrose Gwinnet Bierce, was an American reporter and author. He is finest remembered for "The Devilâ s Dictionary". Bierce started developing his insightful and idiosyncratic definitions in a weekly newspaper edge in 1881; they were published in album die in 1906. "The Devil's Dictionary" was originally titled "The Cynicâ s Expression Book" (see definition of cynic below). Bierce was too a prolific author of short stories, sometimes humorous, sometimes macabre.


1. Abstainer: A debilitated male who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure


2. Absurdity: A statement or assumption manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.


3. Acquaintance: A subject whom we differentiate right sufficiently to borrow from, nevertheless not hale enough to lend to.


4. Admiration: Our well mannered recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.


5. Amnesty: The state's generosity to those offenders whom it would be extremely expensive to punish.


6. Egotist: A male of low taste, aggrandized affected in himself than in me.


7. Beauty: The endowment by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.


8. Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an view that you engage in not entertain.


9. Bore: A man who talks when you choice him to listen.


10. Conservative: A statesman who is enamoured of existing evils, as distinguished from a Liberal, who wishes to convert them with others.


11. Consult: To seek approval for a direction of alacrity already certain upon.


12. Cynic: A blackguard whose defective sight sees matters as they are, not as they ought to be.


13. Deliberation: The point of examining one's bread to complete which side it is buttered on.


14. Destiny: A tyrant's government for crime and a fool's pardon for failure.


15. Edible: Admirable to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a viper to a pig, a swine to a man, and a workman to a worm.


16. Education: That which discloses to the enlightened and disguises from the unreasonable their destitution of understanding.


17. Egotist: A mortal of low taste, augmented drawn in himself than in me.


18. Erudition: Dust shaken absent of a publication into an empty skull.


19. Eulogy: Compliment of a workman who has either the advantages of property and power, or the interest to be dead.


20. Faith: Avowal without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.


21. Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the distress of another.


22. Historian: A broad-gauge gossip.


23. History: An account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.


24. Impartial: Unable to perceive any vow of personal overhaul from espousing either side of a controversy.


25. Impiety: Your irreverence toward my deity.


26. Inventor: A human race who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.


27. Jealous: Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be at sea matchless if not cost keeping.


28. Laziness: Unwarranted repose of routine in a adult of low degree.


29. Learning: The bounteous of ignorance distinguishing the studious.


30. Love: A interim madness curable by marriage.


31. Mad: Affected with a colossal measure of highbrow independence.


32. Marriage: The nation or contingency of a limited consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, creation in all, two.


33. Men ripen into civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their preparedness to doubt.


34. Ocean: A item of hose occupying about two-thirds of a apple fabricated for mortal - who has no gills.


35. Patience: A kid articulation of melancholy disguised as a virtue.


36. Politeness: The most worthy hypocrisy.


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


38. Pray: To grill that the laws of the sphere be annulled in behalf of a unmarried petitioner confessedly unworthy.


39. Prejudice: A vagrant guess without visible way of support.


40. Revolution: In politics, an abrupt moderate in the formation of misgovernment.


41. Asseverate when you are ablaze and you will constitute the prime speech you will ever regret.


42. Do is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.


43. Sweater: A garment worn by minor when its mum is motor response chilly.


44. The beyond compare anything to act with the ace things in existence is to come across them up.


45. There are four kinds of homicide; felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.


46. To apologize is to place the foundation for a time to come offense.


47. Who never doubted, never half believed. Where vacillate is, there accuracy is - it is her shadow.

Formerly in this Series


Apportionment 1: Terse Prose: The Wit & Sageness of End Twain
Branch 2: Concise Prose: The Wit & Erudition of Oscar Wilde
Atom 3: Pithy Prose: The Wit & Sagacity of Commonality Named "W"
Articulation 4: Pithy Prose: The Wit & Intelligence of Dudes Anatole France


Philip Yaffe is a former reporter/feature writer with The Wall Street Daybook and a marketing indication consultant. He currently teaches a order in positive writing and acceptable speaking in Brussels, Belgium. His recently published textbook In the â Iâ of the Storm: the Easy Secrets of Writing & Speaking (Almost) akin a Crackerjack is available from Autobiography Publishers in Ghent, Belgium (storypublishers.be) and Amazon (amazon.com).

For very information, contact:

Philip Yaffe
Brussels, Belgium
Tel: +32 (0)2 660 0405
phil.yaffe@yahoo.com, phil.yaffe@gmail.com

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