“The exhilaration of battle was agreeable to him, but the sight of the dead, with their clay faces, blank eyes, and stiff bodies, which, when not unnaturally shrunken, were unnaturally swollen, had always intolerably affected him. He felt toward them a kind of reasonless antipathy which was something more than the physical and spiritual repugnance common to us all. Doubtless this feeling was due to his unusually acute sensibilities - his keen sense of the beautiful, which these hideous things outraged. Whatever may have been the cause, he could not look upon a dead body without a loathing which had in it an element of reselltment. What others have respected as the dignity of death had to him no existence - was altogether unthinkable. Death was a thing to be hated. It was not picturesque, it had no tender and solemn side - a dismal thing, hideous in all its manifestations and suggestions. Lieutenant Byring was a braver man than anybody knew, for nobody knew his horror of that which he was ever ready to encounter. ("A Tough Tussle")”
“The exhilaration of battle was agreeable to him, but the sight of the dead, with their clay faces, blank eyes, and stiff bodies, which, when not unnaturally shrunken, were unnaturally swollen, had always intolerably affected him. He felt toward them a kind of reasonless antipathy which was something more than the physical and spiritual repugnance common to us all. Doubtless this feeling was due to his unusually acute sensibilities - his keen sense of the beautiful, which these hideous things outraged. Whatever may have been the cause, he could not look upon a dead body without a loathing which had in it an element of reselltment. What others have respected as the dignity of death had to him no existence - was altogether unthinkable. Death was a thing to be hated. It was not picturesque, it had no tender and solemn side - a dismal thing, hideous in all its manifestations and suggestions. Lieutenant Byring was a braver man than anybody knew, for nobody knew his horror of that which he was ever ready to encounter. ("A Tough Tussle")”
Ambrose Bierce
“All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.”
Ambrose Bierce, The Collected Writings Of Ambrose Bierce“You scoundrel, you have wronged me," hissed the philosopher, "May you live forever!”
Ambrose Bierce, A Cynic Looks at Life by Ambrose Bierce, Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Classics“Lawsuit: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.”
Ambrose Bierce“Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.”
Ambrose Bierce“Perseverance - a lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.”
Ambrose Bierce“Education, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.”
Ambrose Bierce“Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.”
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