At twenty a man is a peacock, at thirty a lion, at forty a camel, at fifty a serpent, at sixty a dog, at seventy an ape, at eighty a nothing at all.
Man, as we know him, is a poor creature; he is halfway between an ape and a god and he is travelling in the right direction.
Bierce radiates brilliancy, and perhaps no other man of letters ever had a more ready command of condensed expression. For him, each word has its unique place in the peerage of words, and he would not use a word out of place any sooner than he would thrust an ape into a captain's saddle.
A man becomes as attractive as an attractive woman when he becomes successful and is publicly noted. Power's an aphrodisiac.
I ordered each man to be presented with something, as strings of ten or a dozen glass beads apiece, and thongs of leather, all which they estimated highly; those which came on board I directed should be fed with molasses.
Every human being has within him an ideal man, just as every piece of marble contains in a rough state a statue as beautiful as the one that Praxiteles the Greek made of the god Apollo.
Men explain things to me, still. And no man has ever apologized for explaining, wrongly, things that I know and they don't. Not yet, but according to the actuarial tables, I may have another fortysomething years to live, more or less, so it could happen. Though I'm not holding my breath.
A businessman is the only man who is forever apologizing for his occupation.
What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.
To the man who reads 'Scouting for Boys' superficially, there is a disappointing lack of religion in the book. But to him who tries it in practice, the basic religion underlying it soon becomes apparent.
A man's own judgment should be the final appeal in all that relates to himself.
The appeal to the white man's pocket has ever been more effectual than all the appeals ever made to his conscience.
If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.
Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.
Clothes and manners do not make the man; but when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance.
A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to man when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue.
It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.
All the punishment in the world will not reform a man, unless he knows that he who inflicts it upon him does it for the sake of reformation, and really and truly loves him, and has his good at heart. Punishment inflicted for gratifying the appetite makes man afraid but debases him.
To be a human being is to be in a state of tension between your appetites and your dreams, and the social realities around you and your obligations to your fellow man.
I look upon indolence as a sort of suicide; for the man is effectually destroyed, though the appetites of the brute may survive.
