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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
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Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Meigs County
Ohio
Dod Grile
William Herman
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce
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More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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UNITARIAN, n. One who denies the divinity of a Trinitarian.
Ambrose Bierce
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PILGRIM, n. A traveler that is taken seriously. A Pilgrim Father was one who [was] not permitted to sing psalms through his nose [in Europe], followed it to Massachusetts, where he could personate God according to the dictates of his conscience.
Ambrose Bierce
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Patriotism, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit it is the first.
Ambrose Bierce
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Incompatibility. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination.
Ambrose Bierce
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An archbishop is an ecclesiastical dignitary one point holier than a bishop.
Ambrose Bierce
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When publicly censured our first instinct is to make everybody a codefendant.
Ambrose Bierce
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When prosperous the fool trembles for the evil that is to come in adversity the philosopher smiles for the good that he has had.
Ambrose Bierce
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PESSIMISM- philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile.
Ambrose Bierce
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Nonsense, n. The objections that are urged against this excellent dictionary.
Ambrose Bierce
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RETRIBUTION, n. A rain of fire-and-brimstone that falls alike upon the just and such of the unjust as have not procured shelter by evicting them.
Ambrose Bierce
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PROPERTY, n. Any material thing, having no particular value, that may be held by A against the cupidity of B. Whatever gratifies the passion for possession in one and disappoints it in all others. The object of man's brief rapacity and long indifference.
Ambrose Bierce
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OSTRICH, n. A large bird to which (for its sins, doubtless) nature has denied that hinder toe . . . . The absence of a good working pair of wings is no defect, for, as has been ingeniously pointed out, the ostrich does not fly.
Ambrose Bierce
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COMPULSION, n. The eloquence of power.
Ambrose Bierce
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Miss, n. A title which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market.
Ambrose Bierce
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Amnesty, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.
Ambrose Bierce
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Impartial - unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.
Ambrose Bierce
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adore, v.t. To venerate expectantly.
Ambrose Bierce
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REVIEW, v.t. To set your wisdom (holding not a doubt of it./ Although in truth there's neither bone nor skin to it)/ At work upon a book, and so read out of it/ The qualities that you have first read into it.
Ambrose Bierce
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OBLIVION, n. Cold storage for high hopes. A place where ambitious authors meet their works without pride and their betters without envy. A dormitory without an alarm clock.
Ambrose Bierce
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IMPALE, v.t. In popular usage, to pierce with any weapon which remains fixed in the wound . . . . properly, to put to death by thrusting an upright sharp stake into the body, the victim being left in a sitting position.
Ambrose Bierce