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RUIN, v. To destroy. Specifically, to destroy a maid's belief in the virtue of maids.

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
Destroy
Virtue
Belief
Maid
Maids
Specifically
Ruin
Ruins

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An aged Burgundy runs with a beardless Port. I cherish the fancy that Port speaks sentences of wisdom, Burgundy sings the inspired Ode.
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X, n. In our alphabet being a needless letter has an added invincibility to the attacks of the spelling reformers, and like them, will doubtless last as long as the language.
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Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify.
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Hope is desire and expectation rolled into one.
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Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.
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Doubt is the father of invention.
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Brain: an apparatus with which we think that we think. Mind, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain.
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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.
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RECREATION, n. A particular kind of dejection to relieve a general fatigue.
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According to the most trustworthy statistics the number of adult Dullards in the United States is but little short of thirty millions, including the statisticians.
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OYSTER, n. A slimy, gobby shellfish which civilization gives men the hardihood to eat without removing its entrails! The shells are sometimes given to the poor.
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Spring beckons! All things to the call respond the trees are leaving and cashiers abscond.
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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.
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When among the graves of thy fellows, walk with circumspection thine own is open at thy feet.
Ambrose Bierce
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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
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PERIPATETIC, adj. Walking about. Relating to the philosophy of Aristotle, who, while expounding it, moved from place to place in order to avoid his pupil's objections. A needless precaution - they knew no more of the matter than he.
Ambrose Bierce
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TALK, v.t. To commit an indiscretion without temptation, from an impulse without purpose.
Ambrose Bierce
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That part of your friend which it is your privilege to contemplate in your adversity
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.
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Philanthropist, n.: A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his conscience is picking his pocket.
Ambrose Bierce