"Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure"
About this Quote
Bierce turns moral virtue into a punchline, and the sting lands because he flips the usual hierarchy: abstinence isn’t strength, it’s surrender. In his definition, the “weak person” isn’t the one who can’t resist pleasure; it’s the one who can’t resist the self-image of resisting. The real “temptation” is purity - the addictive little glow of being above it all. Bierce’s best satire works like this: he doesn’t defend vice so much as expose how easily virtue becomes vanity.
The subtext is aimed at America’s late-19th-century reform machinery - temperance crusades, genteel moralism, and the burgeoning idea that character is proven by denial. Bierce, a journalist with a talent for strategic cruelty, watches public life fill with people performing righteousness as social currency. His joke suggests abstainers aren’t battling desire; they’re indulging another desire, one that’s safer and more respectable: control, superiority, the thrill of self-punishment as a badge.
It also needles a distinctly modern type: the person who frames every personal restriction as bravery. Bierce’s line reads like an early takedown of lifestyle ideology, where what you don’t consume becomes your personality. The definition is compact because it’s meant to be: a dictionary entry that smuggles in an indictment. You laugh, then notice the uncomfortable implication that renunciation can be just another kind of appetite.
The subtext is aimed at America’s late-19th-century reform machinery - temperance crusades, genteel moralism, and the burgeoning idea that character is proven by denial. Bierce, a journalist with a talent for strategic cruelty, watches public life fill with people performing righteousness as social currency. His joke suggests abstainers aren’t battling desire; they’re indulging another desire, one that’s safer and more respectable: control, superiority, the thrill of self-punishment as a badge.
It also needles a distinctly modern type: the person who frames every personal restriction as bravery. Bierce’s line reads like an early takedown of lifestyle ideology, where what you don’t consume becomes your personality. The definition is compact because it’s meant to be: a dictionary entry that smuggles in an indictment. You laugh, then notice the uncomfortable implication that renunciation can be just another kind of appetite.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
|---|---|
| Source | Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary — entry "Abstainer" (source of the aphorism commonly cited in Bierce collections). |
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