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Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic.

Ambrose Bierce

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Ambrose Bierce
Born: 1842
Born: June 24
Aphorist
Journalist
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Meigs County
Ohio
Dod Grile
William Herman
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce
Ambrose Bierce
Flats
Weather
Critics
Surface
Surfaces
Painting
Exposing
Art
Protecting
Critic
Flat

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FIB, n. A lie that has not cut its teeth. An habitual liar's nearest approach to truth: the perigee of his eccentric orbit.
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A less popular name for the Second Person of that delectable newspaper Trinity, the Roomer, the Bedder, and the Mealer.
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Theology is a thing of unreason altogether, an edifice of assumptions and dreams, a superstructure without a substructure
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A trite popular saying, or proverb. (Figurative and colloquial.) So called because it makes its way into a wooden head. Following are examples of old saws fitted with new teeth.
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REPORTER, n. A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words.
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PATRIOT, n. One to whom the interests of a part seem superior to those of the whole. The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors.
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I think love is the most unbelievable, and critical, thing in civilization. Everything else is very mechanical and predictable, but love, you can't catch it.
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Respectability, n. The offspring of a liaison between a bald head and a bank account.
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A nutritious substance supplied by a bountiful Providence for the fattening of the poor.
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The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
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I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers. What I said was that all saloonkeepers are Democrats.
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Coronation: The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a dynamite bomb.
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PROPERTY, n. Any material thing, having no particular value, that may be held by A against the cupidity of B. Whatever gratifies the passion for possession in one and disappoints it in all others. The object of man's brief rapacity and long indifference.
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ILLUSTRIOUS, adj. Suitably placed for the shafts of malice, envy and detraction.
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CANNON, n. An instrument employed in the rectification of national boundaries.
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International arbitration may be defined as the substitution of many burning questions for a smoldering one
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Legitimate authority to be, to do or to have as the right to be a king, the right to do one's neighbor, the right to have measles, and the like.
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Nominee. A modest gentleman shrinking from the distinction of private life and diligently seeking the honorable obscurity of public office.
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MAGNETISM, n. Something acting upon a magnet. The two definitions immediately foregoing are condensed from the works of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human knowledge.
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Disobey n:To celebrate with an appropriate ceremony the maturity of a command
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