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SACERDOTALIST, n. One who holds the belief that a clergyman is a priest. Denial of this momentous doctrine is the hardest challenge that is now flung into the teeth of the Episcopalian church by the Neo-Dictionarians.

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
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Episcopalian
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POLICE, n. An armed force for protection and participation.
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Magpie, n.: A bird whose theivish disposition suggested to someone that it might be taught to talk.
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Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
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RUSSIAN, n. A person with a Caucasian body and a Mongolian soul. A Tartar Emetic.
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The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
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Custard: A detestable substance produced by a malevolent conspiracy of the hen, the cow, and the cook.
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Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
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To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental result.
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QUEEN, n. A woman by whom the realm is ruled when there is a king, and through whom it is ruled when there is not.
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Feast, n. A festival. A religious celebration usually signalized by gluttony and drunkenness, frequently in honor of some holy person distinguished for abstemiousness.
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ACCOMPLICE, n. One associated with another in a crime, having guilty knowledge and complicity, as an attorney who defends a criminal, knowing him guilty. This view of the attorney's position in the matter has not hitherto commanded the assent of attorneys, no one having offered them a fee for assenting.
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Backbite: To ''speak of a man as you find him'' when he can't find you.
Ambrose Bierce
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OBSOLETE, adj. No longer used by the timid. Said chiefly of words. A word which some lexicographer has marked obsolete is ever thereafter an object of dread and loathing to the fool writer . . .
Ambrose Bierce
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STORY, n. A narrative, commonly untrue.
Ambrose Bierce
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PROJECTILE, n. The final arbiter in international disputes. With the growth of prudence in military affairs the projectile came more and more into favor, and is now held in high esteem by the most courageous.
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Responsibility, n. A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one's neighbor. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star.
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INADMISSIBLE- Not competent to be considered. Hearsay evidence is inadmissible ... but there is no religion in the world that has any other basis than hearsay evidence.
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A nutritious substance supplied by a bountiful Providence for the fattening of the poor.
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NEWTONIAN, Pertaining to a philosophy of the universe invented by Newton, who discovered that an apple will fall to the ground, but was unable to say why. His successors and disciples have advanced so far as to be able to say when.
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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.
Ambrose Bierce