Quote of the day by Ambrose Bierce: “Marriage: A household consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two."

Marriage is often described as a partnership built on love, trust and companionship. But American writer and satirist Ambrose Bierce had a much darker — and much funnier — way of looking at it.

In The Devil’s Dictionary, Bierce defined marriage as “the state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.” The line is vintage Bierce: short, cynical and constructed like a perfectly ordinary dictionary definition before delivering an unexpectedly sharp punchline.

What did Ambrose Bierce mean by the quote?

The joke depends on the contradiction at its centre.


Bierce describes a married couple as four roles — a master, a mistress and two slaves — but then immediately points out that there are still only two people involved.

The “master” and “mistress” suggest authority and control. The “two slaves” suggest that both people are, at the same time, bound by the responsibilities and expectations of the institution.

In other words, Bierce was mocking the idea that marriage necessarily gives people complete freedom or happiness. His definition turns a supposedly respectable social institution into a miniature system of power, obligation and mutual dependence.

It is important to read the line as satire rather than as a literal description of every marriage. Bierce's writing frequently attacked what he saw as hypocrisy, convention and the gap between the way society described itself and the way people actually behaved. The The Devil’s Dictionary was built around precisely this technique: take a familiar word and give it an irreverent alternative definition.

Who was Ambrose Bierce?

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was born on June 24, 1842, in Meigs County, Ohio. He was the tenth of 13 children in a farming family. He later attended the Kentucky Military Institute before the American Civil War changed the direction of his life.

Bierce joined the Union Army and fought in several major Civil War battles, including Shiloh and Chickamauga. His experiences during the war later influenced some of his best-known short stories, many of which dealt with death, violence and the strange psychology of people facing danger.

After the war, Bierce moved to San Francisco and established himself as a journalist, columnist, critic and satirist. His writing was often deliberately provocative, and his sharp attacks on public figures and social conventions earned him a reputation for having an exceptionally biting pen. He eventually became known as “the wickedest man in San Francisco.”

His friendship with writers including Mark Twain, Bret Harte and Joaquin Miller also placed him within the literary world of late-19th-century America.

The book that made Bierce famous for his definitions

Bierce's most famous work was The Devil’s Dictionary, a collection of satirical definitions that developed over several decades through his newspaper and magazine writing.

The work was first published in book form in 1906 under the title The Cynic's Word Book. A more complete edition appeared as The Devil’s Dictionary in 1911.

The book became famous for Bierce's ability to turn ordinary words into weapons of satire. He wrote about marriage, politics, religion, ambition, education, death and many other subjects, often exposing what he regarded as contradictions in conventional thinking.

A mysterious ending to a remarkable life

Bierce's own life ended with one of the great mysteries surrounding an American writer.

In 1913, when he was in his early 70s, Bierce travelled to Mexico during the Mexican Revolution. He intended to observe the conflict and reportedly planned to join Pancho Villa's forces as an observer. After travelling into Mexico, he disappeared. No definitive account of his death has ever been established.

More than a century later, Bierce remains remembered for his dark humour, war stories, journalism and especially The Devil’s Dictionary.

His definition of marriage is a perfect example of his method. It takes something familiar, strips away its polite description and replaces it with a deliberately uncomfortable question: how much freedom do people give up when they enter an institution built on obligations?

That is what makes the quote more than just a joke. Bierce was not trying to write a conventional definition of marriage. He was using humour to make readers look at an everyday institution from an angle they might not otherwise consider.