Monday, October 13, 2025
Bierce's Program?
Bierce, quoted in Roy Morris. Jr., Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company (1996; rpt. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 150, with note on p. 282:
Thanks very much to Dave Lull for sending me an image of the relevant page from Fatout's book, which gives the source of the quotation from Bierce (click once or twice to enlarge):
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My future program will be calm disapproval of human institutions in general, including all forms of government, most laws and customs, and all contemporary literature; enthusiastic belief in the Darwinian theory, intolerance of intolerance, and war upon every man with a mission ... human suffering and human injustice in all their forms to be contemplated with a merely curious interest, as one looks into an anthill.38I can't find the quotation where Morris cites it, in "Working for an Empress," and I don't have access to Paul Fatout's book. Morris also quotes the passage on p. 3, without a note.
38. "Working for an Empress," Works, l350-351. Fatout, Devil's Lexicographer, 109.
Thanks very much to Dave Lull for sending me an image of the relevant page from Fatout's book, which gives the source of the quotation from Bierce (click once or twice to enlarge):
