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A malefactor who atones for making your writing nonsense by permitting the compositor to make it unintelligible.

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
Make
Unintelligible
Permitting
Nonsense
Making
Writing

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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EXHORT, v.t. In religious affairs, to put the conscience of another upon the spit and roast it to a nut-brown discomfort.
Ambrose Bierce
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NEIGHBOR, n. One whom we are commanded to love as ourselves, and who does all he knows how to make us disobedient.
Ambrose Bierce
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DISCRIMINATE, v.i. To note the particulars in which one person or thing is, if possible, more objectionable than another.
Ambrose Bierce
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Patriotism is as fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave, blind as a stone, and irrational as a headless hen.
Ambrose Bierce
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GOOSE, n. A bird that supplies quills for writing. These [quills] when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person called an author, there results a very fair and accurate transcript of the fowl's thought and feeling.
Ambrose Bierce
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MOUSE, n. An animal which strews its path with fainting women.
Ambrose Bierce
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FROG, n. A reptile with edible legs
Ambrose Bierce
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RITE, n. A religious or semi-religious ceremony fixed by law, precept or custom, with the essential oil of sincerity carefully squeezed out of it.
Ambrose Bierce
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ORATORY, n. A conspiracy between speech and action to cheat the understanding. A tyranny tempered by stenography.
Ambrose Bierce
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To the eye of failure success is an accident.
Ambrose Bierce
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Botany, n. The science of vegetables - those that are not good to eat, as well as those that are. It deals largely with their flowers, which are commonly badly designed, inartistic in color, and ill-smelling.
Ambrose Bierce
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FOLLY, n. That gift and faculty divine whose creative and controlling energy inspires Man's mind, guides his actions and adorns his life.
Ambrose Bierce
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POLITICIAN, n. An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When he wriggles, he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice.
Ambrose Bierce
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Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
Ambrose Bierce
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True, more than a half of the green graves in the Grafton cemetery are marked Unknown, and sometimes it occurs that one thinks of the contradiction involved in honoring the memory of him of whom no memory remains to honor but the attempt seems to do no great harm to the living, even to the logical.
Ambrose Bierce
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Congratulations is the civility of envy.
Ambrose Bierce
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The only distinction that democracies reward is a high degree of conformity.
Ambrose Bierce
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APHORISM, n. Predigested wisdom.
Ambrose Bierce
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Youth is Gilead, in which is balm for every wound.
Ambrose Bierce
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PANDEMONIUM, n. Literally, the Place of All the Demons. Most of them have escaped into politics and finance, and the place is now used as a lecture hall by the Audible Reformer.
Ambrose Bierce