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OPERA, n. A play representing life in another world, whose inhabitants have no speech but song, no motions but gestures and no postures but attitudes.

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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Attitude
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Another
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Opera
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DAY, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent. This period is divided into two parts, the day proper and the night, or day improper - the former devoted to sins of business, the latter consecrated to the other sort.
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Money. A blessing that is of no advantage to us excepting when we part with it.
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resolute, adj. Obstinate in a course that we approve.
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TAIL, n. The part of an animal's spine that has transcended its natural limitations to set up an independent existence in a world of its own.
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Intolerance is natural and logical, for in every dissenting opinion lies an assumption of superior wisdom.
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Something that is supposed to typify or stand for something else. Many symbols are mere survivals - as funereal urns carved on memorial monuments. We cannot stop making them, but we can give them a name that conceals our helplessness.
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PRICE, n. Value, plus a reasonable sum for the wear and tear of conscience in demanding it.
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Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.
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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.
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HARMONISTS, n. A sect of Protestants, now extinct, who came from Europe in the beginning of the last century and were distinguished for the bitterness of their internal controversies and dissensions.
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While you have a future do not live too much in contemplation of your past: unless you are content to walk backward the mirror is a poor guide.
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Woman absent is woman dead.
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The covers of this book are too far apart.
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EXCEPTION, n. A thing which takes the liberty to differ from other things of its class, as an honest man, a truthful woman, etc.
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Year: A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
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INDISCRETION, n. The guilt of woman.
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San Francisco is the place where most people were last seen
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LAP, n. One of the most important organs of the female system - an admirable provision of nature for the repose of infancy, but chiefly useful in rural festivities to support plates of cold chicken and heads of adult males.
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SCARABAEUS, n. The sacred beetle of the ancient Egyptians, allied to our familiar tumble-bug. It was supposed to symbolize immortality, the fact that God knew why giving it its peculiar sanctity.
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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.
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