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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
Phonograph
Restores
Noises
Irritating
Toys
Noise
Dead
Life

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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HAND, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.
Ambrose Bierce
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Dictionary: a malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic
Ambrose Bierce
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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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Censor, n. An officer of certain governments, employed to supress the works of genius. Among the Romans the censor was an inspector of public morals, but the public morals of modern nations will not bear inspection.
Ambrose Bierce
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Impiety. Your irreverence toward my deity.
Ambrose Bierce
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GUNPOWDER, n. An agency employed by civilized nations for the settlement of disputes which might become troublesome if left unadjusted.
Ambrose Bierce
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Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
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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MUSTANG, n. An indocile horse of the western plains. In English society, the American wife of an English nobleman.
Ambrose Bierce
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MAJESTY, n. The state and title of a king. Regarded with a just contempt by the Most Eminent Grand Masters, Grand Chancellors, Great Incohonees and Imperial Potentates of the ancient and honorable orders of republican America.
Ambrose Bierce
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DELEGATION, n. In American politics, an article of merchandise that comes in sets.
Ambrose Bierce
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PASTIME, n. A device for promoting dejection. Gentle exercise for intellectual debility.
Ambrose Bierce
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PERFECTION, n. An imaginary state of quality distinguished from the actual by an element known as excellence an attribute of the critic.
Ambrose Bierce
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Phoenix, n. The classical prototype of the modern 'small hot bird.'
Ambrose Bierce
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Patriotism is as fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave, blind as a stone, and irrational as a headless hen.
Ambrose Bierce
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ZENITH, n. The point in the heavens directly overhead to a man standing or a growing cabbage. A man in bed or a cabbage in the pot is not considered as having a zenith, though Horizontalists hold that the posture of the body was immaterial.
Ambrose Bierce
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Spring beckons! All things to the call respond the trees are leaving and cashiers abscond.
Ambrose Bierce
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ETHNOLOGY, n. The science that treats of the various tribes of Man, as robbers, thieves, swindlers, dunces, lunatics, idiots and ethnologists.
Ambrose Bierce
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Abnormal, adj. Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested.
Ambrose Bierce
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Experience - the wisdom that enables us to recognise in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.
Ambrose Bierce