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ROMANCE, n. Fiction that owes no allegiance to the God of Things as They Are. In the novel the writer's thought is tethered to probability, as a domestic horse to the hitching-post, but in romance it ranges at will over the entire region of the imagination -- free, lawless, immune to bit and rein.

— Ambrose Bierce The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

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Romance

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

When lost in a forest go always down hill. When lost in a philosophy or doctrine go upward.

An army's bravest men are its cowards. The death which they would not meet at the hands of the enemy they will meet at the hands of their officers, with never a flinching.

What I Saw At Shiloh (1881)

The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.

O proud philanthropist, your hope is vain
To get by giving what you lost by gain.

When prosperous the fool trembles for the evil that is to come; in adversity the philosopher smiles for the good that he has had.

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Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever;
One foot in sea, and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.

William Shakespeare Much Ado About Nothing (1598)

She's beautiful, and therefore to be woo'd;
She is a woman, therefore to be won.

William Shakespeare Henry VI, Part 1 (1592)

Romance requires trust—and the deeper the trust, the deeper the possibility for romance.

Jordan Peterson Beyond Order (2021)

The surest way to hit a woman’s heart is to take aim kneeling.

Douglas William Jerrold

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ambrose Bierce (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.