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Aphorist Inspirational Quotes (5904)

Page 5 of 246
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A lottery is a tax on stupidity.
Ambrose Bierce
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Platitude: All that is mortal of a departed truth.
Ambrose Bierce
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EJECTION, n. An approved remedy for the disease of garrulity. It is also much used in cases of extreme poverty.
Ambrose Bierce
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PROBOSCIS, n. The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him in place of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him. For purposes of humor it is popularly called a trunk.
Ambrose Bierce
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MACE, n. A staff of office signifying authority. Its form, that of a heavy club, indicates its original purpose and use in dissuading from dissent.
Ambrose Bierce
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RATIONAL, adj. Devoid of all delusions save those of observation, experience and reflection.
Ambrose Bierce
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I think I think, therefore I think I am.
Ambrose Bierce
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One engaged in a commercial pursuit. A commercial pursuit is one in which the thing pursued is a dollar.
Ambrose Bierce
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PERORATION, n. The explosion of an oratorical rocket. It dazzles, but to an observer having the wrong kind of nose its most conspicuous peculiarity is the smell of the several kinds of powder used in preparing it.
Ambrose Bierce
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There was never a genius who was not thought a fool until he disclosed himself whereas he is a fool then only.
Ambrose Bierce
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SARCOPHAGUS, n. Among the Greeks a coffin which being made of a certain kind of carnivorous stone, had the peculiar property of devouring the body placed in it.
Ambrose Bierce
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LINEN, n. A kind of cloth the making of which, when made of hemp, entails a great waste of hemp.
Ambrose Bierce
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BLANK-VERSE, n. Unrhymed iambic pentameters - the most difficult kind of English verse to write acceptably a kind, therefore, much affected by those who cannot acceptably write any kind.
Ambrose Bierce
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If every hypocrite in the United States were to break his leg to-day the country could be successfully invaded to-morrow by the warlike hypocrites of Canada.
Ambrose Bierce
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MONUMENT, n. A structure intended to commemorate something which either needs no commemoration or cannot be commemorated.
Ambrose Bierce
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Children who have proven themselves to be incorrigible by the age of twelve should be quickly and quietly beheaded, lest they grow to maturity, marry, and perpetuate the likeness of their being.
Ambrose Bierce
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Age is provident because the less future we have the more we fear it.
Ambrose Bierce
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A violin is the revenge exacted by the intestines of a dead cat.
Ambrose Bierce
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Least said is soon disavowed.
Ambrose Bierce
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WITCH, n. (1) Any ugly and repulsive old woman, in a wicked league with the devil. (2) A beautiful and attractive young woman, in wickedness a league beyond the devil.
Ambrose Bierce
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Self-restraint is indulgence of the propensity to forgo.
Ambrose Bierce
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Women of genius commonly have masculine faces, figures and manners. In transplanting brains to an alien soil God leaves a little of the original earth clinging to the roots.
Ambrose Bierce
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PLENIPOTENTIARY, adj. Having full power. A Minister Plenipotentiary is a diplomatist possessing absolute authority on condition that he never exert it.
Ambrose Bierce
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RESPITE, n. A suspension of hostilities against a sentenced assassin, to enable the Executive to determine whether the murder may not have been done by the prosecuting attorney. Any break in the continuity of a disagreeable expectation.
Ambrose Bierce
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