{"author":"Ambrose Bierce","author_id":"Ambrose+Bierce","total_quotes":161,"quotes":[{"text":"Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.","author":"Ambrose Bierce","tags":["change","revolution","form "],"id":1882,"author_id":"Ambrose+Bierce"},{"text":"Prejudice is a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.","author":"Ambrose Bierce","tags":["opinion","prejudice"],"id":10487,"author_id":"Ambrose+Bierce"},{"text":"From the vast, invisible ocean of moonlight overhead fell, here and here, a slender, broken stream that seemed to plash against the intercepting branches and trickle to earth, forming small white pools among the clumps of laurel. But these leaks were few and served only to accentuate the blackness of his environment, which his imagination found it easy to people with all manner of unfamiliar shapes, menacing, uncanny, or merely grotesque.He to whom the portentous conspiracy of night and solitude and silence in the heart of a great forest is not an unknown experience needs not to be told what another world it all is - how even the most commonplace and familiar objects take on another character. The trees group themselves differently; they draw closer together, as if in fear. The very silence has another quality than the silence of the day. And it is full of half-heard whispers, whispers that startle - ghosts of sounds long dead. There are living sounds, too, such as are never heard under other conditions: notes of strange night birds, the cries of small animals in sudden encounters with stealthy foes, or in their dreams, a rustling in the dead leaves - it may be the leap of a wood rat, it may be the footstep of a panther. What caused the breaking of that twig? What the low, alarmed twittering in that bushful of birds? There are sounds without a name, forms without substance, translations in space of objects which have not been seen to move, movements wherein nothing is observed to change its place. Ah, children of the sunlight and the gaslight, how little you know of the world in which you live! ('A Tough Tussle').","author":"Ambrose Bierce","tags":["atmosphere","dark","darkness","forest","moon","moonlight","night","silence"],"id":12029,"author_id":"Ambrose+Bierce"},{"text":"Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.","author":"Ambrose Bierce","tags":["admiration"],"id":14862,"author_id":"Ambrose+Bierce"},{"text":"Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.","author":"Ambrose Bierce","tags":["revenge","planning","uncommon "],"id":15026,"author_id":"Ambrose+Bierce"},{"text":"TELEPHONE n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.","author":"Ambrose Bierce","tags":["humor","technology","telephone"],"id":17857,"author_id":"Ambrose+Bierce"},{"text":"Piracy  n: commerce without its folly-swaddles - just as God made it.","author":"Ambrose Bierce","tags":["buying","selling"],"id":20254,"author_id":"Ambrose+Bierce"},{"text":"Selfish, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.","author":"Ambrose Bierce","tags":["definition","humor"],"id":24555,"author_id":"Ambrose+Bierce"},{"text":"Acquaintance  n: a person whom we know well enough to borrow from  but not well enough to lend to.","author":"Ambrose Bierce","tags":["human","relations"],"id":24623,"author_id":"Ambrose+Bierce"},{"text":"Marriage, n: the state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.","author":"Ambrose Bierce","tags":["community","master","mistress "],"id":25875,"author_id":"Ambrose+Bierce"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":161,"pages":17,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}