Quote Atlassourced quotes & context
3 quotations

Ambrose Bierce Quotes: Sources, Meanings & Themes

Browse quotations by Ambrose Bierce with named works, context notes, meanings and recurring themes.

Sources

All 3 works represented in this collection

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge1890 · 1 quotation
The Damned Thing1893 · 1 quotation
The Devil's Dictionary1911 · 1 quotation
Leading recurring themes
Courage 1Inspirational 1Life 1Wisdom 1Deep 3Curiosity 1Education 1Short 1Thought Provoking 3Death 1Fear 1Funny 1
Source identified1
Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him.
Image design Charcoal
Read & copy

“Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him.”

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge · 1890
Meaning & context

Bierce’s narrator describes the rigid military ceremony around an execution, using formal language to make the scene feel colder and more unsettling.

Source details

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” represented by Project Gutenberg #375. The sentence is narrator commentary immediately before Peyton Farquhar’s execution; it belongs to Civil War fiction and does not endorse the killing.

Source identified2
There are colors that we cannot see.
Image design Linen
Read & copy

“There are colors that we cannot see.”

The Damned Thing · 1893
Meaning & context

The fictional journal proposes an unseen color as an explanation for the story’s impossible creature, extending ordinary limits of perception into supernatural horror.

Source details

‘The Damned Thing,’ section IV, ‘An Explanation from the Tomb,’ in Can Such Things Be?, Project Gutenberg #4366. ‘There are colors that we cannot see’ appears in Hugh Morgan's fictional October 7 diary entry as he speculates that the invisible creature occupies a color outside ordinary human vision. It is late-nineteenth-century speculative-horror explanation using period scientific language, not a current scientific claim establishing the story's creature or a new human-visible color.

Source identified3
Education, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.
Image design Midnight
Read & copy

“Education, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.”

The Devil's Dictionary · 1911
Meaning & context

Bierce’s satirical definition suggests that learning may deepen understanding in reflective people while giving the unreflective additional ways to conceal ignorance.

Source details

The Devil’s Dictionary, entry “Education,” Project Gutenberg #972. This is a deliberately cynical comic dictionary definition and should be read as satire rather than as a literal educational theory.