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PHONOGRAPH, n. An irritating toy that restores life to dead noises.

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
Toys
Noise
Dead
Life
Phonograph
Restores
Noises
Irritating

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Age is provident because the less future we have the more we fear it.
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Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.
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HERMIT, n. A person whose vices and follies are not sociable.
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If you want to read a perfect book there is only one way: write it.
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Damning, with bell, book and candle / Some sinner whose opinions are a scandal. / A rite permitting Satan to enslave him / Forever, and forbidding Christ to save him.
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God alone knows the future, but only an historian can alter the past.
Ambrose Bierce
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RIDICULE, n. Words designed to show that the person of whom they are uttered is devoid of the dignity of character distinguishing him who utters them.
Ambrose Bierce
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A bad marriage is like an electrical thrilling machine: it makes you dance, but you can't let go.
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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Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum -- I think that I think, therefore I think that I am as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.
Ambrose Bierce
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ORPHAN, n. A living person whom death has deprived of the power of filial ingratitude . . .
Ambrose Bierce
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When lost in a forest go always down hill. When lost in a philosophy or doctrine go upward.
Ambrose Bierce
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MUGWUMP, n. In politics one afflicted with self-respect and addicted to the vice of independence. A term of contempt.
Ambrose Bierce
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An appellate court which reverses the judgment of a popular author's contemporaries, the appellant being his obscure competitor.
Ambrose Bierce
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OUTCOME, n. A particular type of disappointment . . . . judged by the outcome, the result. This is immortal nonsense the wisdom of an act is to be juded by the light that the doer had when he performed it.
Ambrose Bierce
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The poor man's price of admittance to the favor of the rich is his self-respect.
Ambrose Bierce
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Nonsense, n. The objections that are urged against this excellent dictionary.
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
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Cynicism is that blackguard defect of vision which compels us to see the world as it is, instead of as it should be.
Ambrose Bierce
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Friendship: A ship big enough for two in fair weather, but only one in foul.
Ambrose Bierce