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Amnesty, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.

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
Offenders
Amnesty
Punish
Expensive
Punishment
State
States
Would
Magnanimity

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WOMAN, n. An animal usually living in the vicinity of Man, and having a rudimentary susceptibility to domestication.
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COMMERCE, n. A kind of transaction in which A plunders from B the goods of C, and for compensation B picks the pocket of D of money belonging to E.
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Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.
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OYSTER, n. A slimy, gobby shellfish which civilization gives men the hardihood to eat without removing its entrails! The shells are sometimes given to the poor.
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War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.
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PITIFUL, adj. The state of an enemy or opponent after an imaginary encounter with oneself.
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A penny saved is a penny to squander.
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Indigestion: A disease which the patient and his friends frequently mistake for deep religious conviction and concern for the salvation of mankind. As the simple Red Man of the Western Wild put it, with, it must be confessed, a certain force: 'Plenty well, no pray big belly ache, heap God.'
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MONUMENT, n. A structure intended to commemorate something which either needs no commemoration or cannot be commemorated.
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Conversation, n.: A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath is called the listener.
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Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
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Disobey n:To celebrate with an appropriate ceremony the maturity of a command
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Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
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Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
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IGNORAMUS, n. A person unacquainted with certain kinds of knowledge familiar to yourself, and having certain other kinds that you know nothing about.
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Suffrage, noun. Expression of opinion by means of a ballot. The right of suffrage (which is held to be both a privilege and a duty) means, as commonly interpreted, the right to vote for the man of another man's choice, and is highly prized.
Ambrose Bierce
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PRE-ADAMITE, n. One of an experimental and apparently unsatisfactory race of antedated Creation. . . . Little its known of them beyond the fact that they supplied Cain with a wife and theologians with a controversy.
Ambrose Bierce
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PAST, n. That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance... The Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one - the knowledge and the dream.
Ambrose Bierce
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Slang is a foul pool at which every dunce fills his bucket, and then sets up as a fountain.
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REALITY, n. The dream of a mad philosopher. That which would remain in the cupel if one should assay a phantom. The nucleus of a vacuum.
Ambrose Bierce