#u

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. ↗

— Ambrose Bierce

#between #childhood #folly #human #human life

Duty - that which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire. ↗

— Ambrose Bierce

#desire #direction #duty #impels #line

The sea heaves up, hangs loaded o'er the land, Breaks there, and buries its tumultuous strength. ↗

— Robert Browning

#buries #hangs #land #loaded #sea

Genius - to know without having learned; to draw just conclusions from unknown premises; to discern the soul of things. ↗

— Ambrose Bierce

#discern #draw #genius #having #just

Immortality: A toy which people cry for, And on their knees apply for, Dispute, contend and lie for, And if allowed Would be right proud Eternally to die for. ↗

— Ambrose Bierce

#apply #contend #cry #die #dispute

Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization. ↗

— Ambrose Bierce

#arrangement #believes #civilization #ingenious #inventor

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

— Ambrose Bierce

#always #better #change #evident #feel

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt. ↗

— Ambrose Bierce

#believe #civilized #doubt #men #proportion

The mountains are great stone bells; they clang together like nuns. Who shushed the stars? There are a thousand million galaxies easily seen in the Palomar reflector; collisions between and among them do, of course, occur. But these collisions are very long and silent slides. Billions of stars sift amont each other untouched, too distant even to be moved, heedless as always, hushed. The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out. But God knows I have tried. ↗

— Annie Dillard

#god #life #listening #mountains #nature

The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff. ↗

— Ambrose Bierce

#fall #hardest #his #make #man