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Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.

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
Form
Disguised
Minor
Minors
Sarcastic
Patience
Virtue

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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DELUSION, n. The father of a most respectable family, comprising Enthusiasm, Affection, Self-denial, Faith, Hope, Charity and many other goodly sons and daughters.
Ambrose Bierce
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Empty wine bottles have a bad opinion of women.
Ambrose Bierce
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An immaterial but visible being that inhabited the air when the air was an element and before it was fatally polluted with factory smoke, sewer gas and similar products of civilization.
Ambrose Bierce
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GOOD, adj. Sensible, madam, to the worth of this present writer. Alive, sir, to the advantages of letting him alone.
Ambrose Bierce
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Cynicism is that blackguard defect of vision which compels us to see the world as it is, instead of as it should be.
Ambrose Bierce
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VIRTUES, n.pl. Certain abstentions.
Ambrose Bierce
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Convictions are variable to be always consistent is to be sometimes dishonest.
Ambrose Bierce
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Experience - the wisdom that enables us to recognise in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.
Ambrose Bierce
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A nutritious substance supplied by a bountiful Providence for the fattening of the poor.
Ambrose Bierce
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If you want to read a perfect book there is only one way: write it.
Ambrose Bierce
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UNDERSTANDING, n. A cerebral secretion that enables one having it to know a house from a horse by the roof on the house. Its nature and laws have been exhaustively expounded by Locke, who rode a house, and Kant, who lived in a horse.
Ambrose Bierce
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Historian - a broad-gauge gossip.
Ambrose Bierce
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COMFORT, n. A state of mind produced by contemplation of a neighbor's uneasiness.
Ambrose Bierce
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PHRENOLOGY, n. The science of picking the pocket through the scalp. It consists in locating and exploiting the organ that one is a dupe with.
Ambrose Bierce
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An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance. Discovery of truth is the sole purpose of philosophy, which is the most ancient occupation of the human mind and has a fair prospect of existing with increasing activity to the end of time.
Ambrose Bierce
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Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify.
Ambrose Bierce
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The speech of one who utters with his tongue what he thinks with his ear, and feels the pride of a creator in accomplishing the feat of a parrot. A means (under Providence) of setting up as a wit without a capital of sense.
Ambrose Bierce
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Hope is desire and expectation rolled into one.
Ambrose Bierce
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Snow pursued by the wind is not wholly unlike a retreating army. In the open field it ranges itself in ranks and battalions where it can get a foothold it makes a stand where it can take cover it does so. You may see whole platoons of snow cowering behind a bit of broken wall.
Ambrose Bierce
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HYENA, n. A beast held in reverence by some oriental nations from its habit of frequenting at night the burial-places of the dead. But the medical student does that
Ambrose Bierce