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TRUTHFUL, adj. Dumb and illiterate.

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
Illiterate
Truthful
Dumb

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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PHONOGRAPH, n. An irritating toy that restores life to dead noises.
Ambrose Bierce
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DISOBEDIENCE, n. The silver lining to the cloud of servitude.
Ambrose Bierce
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Architect. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.
Ambrose Bierce
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FINANCE, n. The art or science of managing revenues and resources for the best advantage of the manager. The pronunciation of this word with the i long and the accent on the first syllable is one of America's most precious discoveries and possessions.
Ambrose Bierce
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REPORTER, n. A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words.
Ambrose Bierce
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Clarinet n. An instrument of torture operated by a person with cotton in his ears. There are two instruments worse than a clarinet – two clarinets.
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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Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.
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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Genealogy, n. An account of one's descent from a man who did not particularly care to trace his own.
Ambrose Bierce
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LEXICOGRAPHER, n. A pestilent fellow who, under the pretense of recording some particular stage in the development of a language, does what he can to arrest its growth, stiffen its flexibility and mechanize its methods.
Ambrose Bierce
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Eloquence, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white.
Ambrose Bierce
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An appellate court which reverses the judgment of a popular author's contemporaries, the appellant being his obscure competitor.
Ambrose Bierce
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MAGNITUDE, n. Size [that is] purely relative. If everything in the universe were increased 1,000 diameters nothing would be any larger than it was before, but if one thing remain unchanged all the others would be larger than they had been.
Ambrose Bierce
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TEETOTALER, n. One who abstains from strong drink, sometimes totally, sometimes tolerably totally.
Ambrose Bierce
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SYCOPHANT- One who approaches Greatness on his belly so that he may not be commanded to turn and be kicked. He is sometimes an editor.
Ambrose Bierce
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Brain: an apparatus with which we think that we think. Mind, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain.
Ambrose Bierce
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Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
Ambrose Bierce
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AFFLICTION, n. An acclimatizing process preparing the soul for another and bitter world.
Ambrose Bierce
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Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum -- I think that I think, therefore I think that I am as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.
Ambrose Bierce