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REPARTEE, n. Prudent insult in retort. Practiced by gentlemen with a constitutional aversion to violence, but a strong disposition to offend. In a war of words, the tactics of the North American Indian.

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
North
Prudent
Indian
Gentlemen
Violence
Practiced
American
Tactics
Retort
Words
Constitutional
Retorts
War
Disposition
Repartee
Strong
Insult
Offend
Gentleman
Aversion

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Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
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UXORIOUSNESS, n. A perverted affection that has strayed to one's own wife.
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Cabbage: a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.
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HEART, n. Figuratively, this useful organ is said to be the seat of emotions and sentiments . . . . It is now known that sentiments and emotions reside in the stomach, being evolved from food by chemical action of the gastric fluid.
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Introduction - a social ceremony invented by the devil for the gratification of his servants and the plaguing of his enemies.
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RECOUNT, n. In American politics, another throw of the dice, accorded to the player against whom they are loaded.
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aim, n. The task we set our wishes to.
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Nature's fortuitous manifestation of her purposeless objectionableness.
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Male, A member of the unconsidered or negligible gender. The male of the human race is commonly known to the female as Mere Man. The Genus has two varieties: good providers and bad providers.
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When you doubt, abstain.
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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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ORATORY, n. A conspiracy between speech and action to cheat the understanding. A tyranny tempered by stenography.
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Compromise, n. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction of thinking he has got what he ought not to have, and is deprived of nothing except what was justly his due.
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I believe we shall come to care about people less and less. The more people one knows the easier it becomes to replace them. It's one of the curses of London.
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Wit - the salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.
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Self-restraint is indulgence of the propensity to forgo.
Ambrose Bierce
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GRAVE, n. A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student.
Ambrose Bierce
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INFALAPSARIAN, n. One who ventures to believe that Adam need not have sinned unless he had a mind to - in opposition to the Supralapsarians, who hold that that luckless person's fall was decreed from the beginning.
Ambrose Bierce
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In the algebra of psychology, X stands for a woman's heart.
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COMPULSION, n. The eloquence of power.
Ambrose Bierce