Ambrose Bierce

“Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.”

“Eloquence, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white.”

“Erudition - dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.”

“Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.”

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

“Irreligion - the principal one of the great faiths of the world.”

“Success is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.”

“Rum, n. Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers.”

“Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.”

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

“War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.”

“Historian - a broad-gauge gossip.”

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

“There are four kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.”

“Childhood: the period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth - two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age.”

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

“Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.”

“Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.”

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

“Battle, n., A method of untying with the teeth a political knot that would not yield to the tongue.”