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A man who piously shuts himself up to meditate upon the sin of wickedness and to keep it fresh in his mind joins a brotherhood of awful examples.

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
Keep
Wickedness
Mind
Meditate
Men
Brotherhood
Fresh
Awful
Piously
Sin
Joins
Example
Shuts
Upon
Examples

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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Rome has seven sacraments, but the Protestant churches, being less prosperous, feel that they can afford only two, and these of inferior sanctity.
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An absolute monarchy is one in which the sovereign does as he pleases so long as he pleases the assassins.
Ambrose Bierce
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MYTHOLOGY, n. The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later.
Ambrose Bierce
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COMFORT, n. A state of mind produced by contemplation of a neighbor's uneasiness.
Ambrose Bierce
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SATIRE, n. An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the vices and follies of the author's enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness.
Ambrose Bierce
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Happiness has not to all the same name: to Youth she is known as the Future Age knows her as the Dream.
Ambrose Bierce
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Friendship: A ship big enough for two in fair weather, but only one in foul.
Ambrose Bierce
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Doubt begins only at the last frontiers of what is possible.
Ambrose Bierce
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Appeal. In law, to put the dice into the box for another throw.
Ambrose Bierce
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NOVEL, n. A short story padded.
Ambrose Bierce
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RAREBIT n. A Welsh rabbit, in the speech of the humorless, who point out that it is not a rabbit. To whom it may be solemnly explained that the comestible known as toad-in-a-hole is really not a toad, and that riz-de-veau à la financière is not the smile of a calf prepared after the recipe of a she banker.
Ambrose Bierce
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prospect, n. An outlook, usually forbidding. An expectation, usually forbidden.
Ambrose Bierce
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Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.
Ambrose Bierce
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A cheap and easy cynicism rails at everything. The master of the art accomplishes the formidable task of discrimination.
Ambrose Bierce
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Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age.
Ambrose Bierce
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Religions are conclusions for which the facts of nature supply no major premises.
Ambrose Bierce
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SCARABAEUS, n. The sacred beetle of the ancient Egyptians, allied to our familiar tumble-bug. It was supposed to symbolize immortality, the fact that God knew why giving it its peculiar sanctity.
Ambrose Bierce
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FORMA PAUPERIS. [Latin] In the character of a poor person - a method by which a litigant without money for lawyers is considerately permitted to lose his case.
Ambrose Bierce
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Wine, madam, is God's next best gift to man.
Ambrose Bierce
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UXORIOUSNESS, n. A perverted affection that has strayed to one's own wife.
Ambrose Bierce