Ambrose Bierce

Enthusiasm - a distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience.

Life - a spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.

The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge.

Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age.

Ambition. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.

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.

Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.

Belladonna, n.: In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.

Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.

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

A man is known by the company he organizes.

The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.