OMG: Ambrose Bierce Quote on The Daily Show?

The guest on last night’s The Daily Show (no link needed, I suppose) quoted Ambrose Bierce! And it was one of his best quotes ever!:

War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.

Yes, indeedly-do. Though I also enjoy:

Religion: A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

Bierce disappeared in 1913 after going to Mexico to cover, and then to join, Pancho Villa’s revolutionary Mexican army. While some suppose he returned privately to commit suicide near the Grand Canyon, I prefer to imagine him as a revolutionary martyr, as he himself seems to have done in a pre-mortem letter to his niece:

“Good-bye — if you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs. To be a Gringo in Mexico—ah, that is euthanasia!” [via]