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Ambrose Bierce Inspirational Quotes (940)

Page 11 of 40
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MIND, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavour to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with.
Ambrose Bierce
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As a means of dispensing formulated ignorance our boasted public school system is not without merit it spreads out education sufficiently thin to give everyone enough to make him a more competent fool than he would have been without it.
Ambrose Bierce
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Democracy is four wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
Ambrose Bierce
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INDIFFERENT, adj. Imperfectly sensible to distinctions among things.
Ambrose Bierce
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Optimist – A proponent of the doctrine that black is white.
Ambrose Bierce
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NON-COMBATANT, n. A dead Quaker.
Ambrose Bierce
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OBSTINATE, adj. Inaccessible to the truth as it is manifest in the splendor and stress of our advocacy.
Ambrose Bierce
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Twice – Once too often.
Ambrose Bierce
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Riot – A popular entertainment given to the military by innocent bystanders.
Ambrose Bierce
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Conversation: A fair for the display of the minor mental commodities, each exhibitor being too intent upon the arrangement of his own wares to observe those of his neighbor.
Ambrose Bierce
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Appeal. In law, to put the dice into the box for another throw.
Ambrose Bierce
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Age - That period of life in which we compound for the vices that remain by reviling those we have no longer the vigor to commit.
Ambrose Bierce
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Hippogriff, n. An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin. The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and half eagle. The hippogriff was actually, therefore, only one-quarter eagle, which is two dollars and fifty cents in gold. The study of zoology is full of surprises.
Ambrose Bierce
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PLATITUDE, n. The fundamental element and special glory of popular literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. All that is mortal of a departed truth. A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the sea of thought. A desiccated epigram.
Ambrose Bierce
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Inhumanity, n. One of the signal and characteristic qualities of humanity.
Ambrose Bierce
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Doubt begins only at the last frontiers of what is possible.
Ambrose Bierce
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NOVEL, n. A short story padded.
Ambrose Bierce
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TEDIUM, n. Ennui, the state or condition of one that is bored. Many fanciful derivations of the word have been affirmed, but so high an authority as Father Jape says that it comes from a very obvious source --the first words of the ancient Latin hymn _Te Deum Laudamus_. In this apparently natural derivation there is something that saddens.
Ambrose Bierce
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ECCENTRICITY, n. A method of distinction so cheap that fools employ it to accentuate their incapacity.
Ambrose Bierce
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GENEROUS, adj. Originally this word meant noble by birth and was rightly applied to a great multitude of persons. It now means noble by nature and is taking a bit of a rest.
Ambrose Bierce
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Patriotism, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit it is the first.
Ambrose Bierce
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In the algebra of psychology, X stands for a woman's heart.
Ambrose Bierce
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Self-denial is indulgence of a propensity to forego.
Ambrose Bierce
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Opportunity: A favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment.
Ambrose Bierce
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