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Kindness n: A brief preface to ten volumes of exaction.

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
Volume
Ten
Kindness
Preface
Volumes
Brief

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Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
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Hash, x. There is no definition for this word - nobody knows what hash is. Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable. Dictionary, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.
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SIREN, n. One of several musical prodigies famous for a vain attempt to dissuade Odysseus from a life on the ocean wave. Figuratively, any lady of splendid promise, dissembled purpose and disappointing performance.
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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.
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Abscond - to move in a mysterious way, commonly with the property of another.
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A short story padded. A species of composition bearing the same relation to literature that the panorama bears to art. As it is too long to be read at a sitting the impressions made by its successive parts are successively effaced, as in the pa
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Duty - that which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire.
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Cribbage, n. A substitute for conversation among those to whom nature has denied ideas.
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The circus a place where horses, ponies and elephants are permitted to see men, women and children acting the fool.
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Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.
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Perseverance - a lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.
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The best kind of onion soup is the simplest kind.
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Learning -the kind of ignorance affected by (and affecting) civilized races, as distinguished from ignorance, the sort of learning incurred by savages. See nonsense.
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Gout, a physician's name for the rheumatism of a rich patient
Ambrose Bierce
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APHORISM, n. Predigested wisdom.
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Money. A blessing that is of no advantage to us excepting when we part with it.
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PHYSIOGNOMY, n. The art of determining the character of another by the resemblances and differences between his face and our own, which is the standard of excellence.
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INTERPRETER, n. One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
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ADMINISTRATION, n. An ingenious abstraction in politics, designed to receive the kicks and cuffs due to the premier or president. A man of straw, proof against bad-egging and dead-catting.
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Ambidextrous, adj.: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.
Ambrose Bierce