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REALITY, n. The dream of a mad philosopher. That which would remain in the cupel if one should assay a phantom. The nucleus of a vacuum.

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
Mad
Philosopher
Remain
Philosophy
Nucleus
Reality
Phantom
Dream
Phantoms
Would
Vacuums
Vacuum

More quotes by 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 . . .
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Income is the natural and rational gauge and measure of respectability.
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Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
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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.
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Life - a spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.
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Admiral. That part of a warship which does the talking while the figurehead does the thinking.
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ARSENIC, n. A kind of cosmetic greatly affected by the ladies, whom it greatly affects in turn.
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Liar: A lawyer with a roving commission.
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repose, v.i. To cease from troubling.
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Wisdom is known only by contrasting it with folly by shadow only we perceive that all visible objects are not flat. Yet Philanthropos would abolish evil!
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OWE, v. To have (and to hold) a debt. The word formerly signified not indebtedness, but possession it meant own, and in the minds of debtors there is still a good deal of confusion between assets and liabilities.
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Forgetfulness - a gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.
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Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.
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Immigrant: An unenlightened person who thinks one country better than another.
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REFUSAL, n. Denial of something desired Refusals are graded in a descending scale of finality thus: the refusal absolute, the refusal condition, the refusal tentative and the refusal feminine. The last is called by some casuists the refusal assentive.
Ambrose Bierce
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Historian - a broad-gauge gossip.
Ambrose Bierce
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RITUALISM, n. A Dutch Garden of God where He may walk in rectilinear freedom, keeping off the grass.
Ambrose Bierce
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APOTHECARY, n. The physician's accomplice, undertaker's benefactor and grave worm's provider
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RATTLESNAKE, n. Our prostrate brother, Homo ventrambulans.
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An absolute monarchy is one in which the sovereign does as he pleases so long as he pleases the assassins.
Ambrose Bierce