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ART, n. This word has no definition. Its origin is related by the ingenious Father Gassalasca Jape as One day a wag - what would the wretch be at? Shifted a letter of the cipher RAT, And said it was a god's name! . . .
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
Letters
Shifted
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Ingenious
Names
Rats
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Origin
Father
Letter
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Art
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Would
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Wags
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Wretch
More quotes by Ambrose Bierce
Heaven: A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you expound on yours.
Ambrose Bierce
RITUALISM, n. A Dutch Garden of God where He may walk in rectilinear freedom, keeping off the grass.
Ambrose Bierce
INJUSTICE, n. A burden which of all those that we load upon others and carry ourselves is lightest in the hands and heaviest upon the back.
Ambrose Bierce
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.
Ambrose Bierce
aim, n. The task we set our wishes to.
Ambrose Bierce
APHORISM, n. Predigested wisdom.
Ambrose Bierce
SERIAL, n. A literary work, usually a story that is not true, creeping through several issues of a newspaper or magazine.
Ambrose Bierce
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
BABE or BABY, n. A misshapen creature of no particular age, sex, or condition, chiefly remarkable for the violence of the sympathies and antipathies it excites in others, itself without sentiment or emotion.
Ambrose Bierce
RICE-WATER, n. A mystic beverage secretly used by our most popular novelists and poets to regulate the imagination and narcotize the conscience.
Ambrose Bierce
INCOMPATIBILITY, n. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination. Incompatibility may, however, consist of a meek-eyed matron living just around the corner. It has even been known to wear a moustache.
Ambrose Bierce
Children who have proven themselves to be incorrigible by the age of twelve should be quickly and quietly beheaded, lest they grow to maturity, marry, and perpetuate the likeness of their being.
Ambrose Bierce
KISS, n. A word invented by the poets as a rhyme for bliss. It is supposed to signify, in a general way, some kind of rite or ceremony appertaining to a good understanding but the manner of its performance is unknown to this lexicographer.
Ambrose Bierce
Kindness n: A brief preface to ten volumes of exaction.
Ambrose Bierce
Homo Creator's testimony to the sound construction and fine finish of Deus Creatus. A popular form of abjection, having an element of pride.
Ambrose Bierce
SCRAP-BOOK, n. A book that is commonly edited by a fool. Many persons of some small distinction compile scrap-books containing whatever they happen to read about themselves or employ others to collect.
Ambrose Bierce
EFFECT, n. The second of two phenomena which always occur together in the same order. The first, called a Cause, is said to generate the other-which is no more sensible than it would be for one who has never seen a dog except in pursuit of a rabbit to declare the rabbit the cause of the dog.
Ambrose Bierce
MONARCHICAL GOVERNMENT, n. Government.
Ambrose Bierce
Ambition. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.
Ambrose Bierce
MANNA, n. A food miraculously given to the Israelites in the wilderness. When it was no longer supplied to them they settled down and tilled the soil, fertilizing it, as a rule, with the bodies of the original occupants.
Ambrose Bierce
