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NOBLEMAN, n. Nature's provision for wealthy American minds ambitious to incur social distinction and suffer high life.

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
Life
Suffer
Minds
Nobleman
High
Noblemen
Suffering
Incur
American
Provision
Social
Ambitious
Nature
Wealthy
Mind
Distinction

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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MAMMON, n. The god of the world's leading religion. The chief temple is in the holy city of New York.
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Peace in international affairs: a period of cheating between periods of fighting
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Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.
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SAUCE, n. The one infallible sign of civilization and enlightenment. A people with no sauces has one thousand vices a people with one sauce has only nine hundred and ninety-nine. For every sauce invented and accepted a vice is renounced and forgiven.
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Work: a dangerous disorder affecting high public functionaries who want to go fishing.
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PITIFUL, adj. The state of an enemy or opponent after an imaginary encounter with oneself.
Ambrose Bierce
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POVERTY, n. A file provided for the teeth of the rats of reform. Its victims are distinguished by possession of all the virtues and by their faith in leaders seeking to conduct them into a prosperity where they believe these to be unknown.
Ambrose Bierce
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Before undergoing a surgical operation, arrange your temporal affairs. You may live.
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REPUBLIC, n. A nation in which, the thing governing and the thing governed being the same, there is only a permitted authority to enforce an optional obedience.
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Self-denial is indulgence of a propensity to forego.
Ambrose Bierce
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Hypocrisy: prejudice with a halo.
Ambrose Bierce
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A trite popular saying, or proverb. (Figurative and colloquial.) So called because it makes its way into a wooden head. Following are examples of old saws fitted with new teeth.
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KILT, n. A costume sometimes worn by Scotchmen in America and Americans in Scotland.
Ambrose Bierce
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A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet for the self-made man, along the path by which he advances to distinction.
Ambrose Bierce
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PRE-EXISTENCE, n. An unnoted factor in creation.
Ambrose Bierce
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MAN, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.
Ambrose Bierce
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Take not God's name in vain select a time when it will have effect.
Ambrose Bierce
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Democracy is defended in 3 stages. Ballot Box, Jury Box, Cartridge Box.
Ambrose Bierce
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Indigestion: A disease which the patient and his friends frequently mistake for deep religious conviction and concern for the salvation of mankind. As the simple Red Man of the Western Wild put it, with, it must be confessed, a certain force: 'Plenty well, no pray big belly ache, heap God.'
Ambrose Bierce
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DIAGNOSIS, n. A physician's forecast of disease by the patient's pulse and purse.
Ambrose Bierce