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PANTOMIME, n. A play in which the story is told without violence to the language. The least disagreeable form of dramatic action.

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
Language
Action
Pantomime
Form
Disagreeable
Stories
Dramatic
Without
Told
Play
Violence
Least
Story

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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ULTIMATUM, n. In diplomacy, a last demand before resorting to concessions.
Ambrose Bierce
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REPORTER, n. A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words.
Ambrose Bierce
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PAST, n. That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance... The Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one - the knowledge and the dream.
Ambrose Bierce
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Loquacity, n. A disorder which renders the sufferer unable to curb his tongue when you wish to talk.
Ambrose Bierce
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NIHILIST, n. A Russian who denies the existence of anything but Tolstoi. The leader of the school is Tolstoi.
Ambrose Bierce
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PIANO, n. A parlor utensil for subduing the impenitent visitor. It is operated by depressing the keys of the machine and the spirits of the audience.
Ambrose Bierce
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VIRTUES, n.pl. Certain abstentions.
Ambrose Bierce
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The furrier gets the skins of more foxes than asses.
Ambrose Bierce
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No country is so wild and difficult but men will make it a theater of war.
Ambrose Bierce
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Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.
Ambrose Bierce
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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
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Snow pursued by the wind is not wholly unlike a retreating army. In the open field it ranges itself in ranks and battalions where it can get a foothold it makes a stand where it can take cover it does so. You may see whole platoons of snow cowering behind a bit of broken wall.
Ambrose Bierce
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DIGESTION, n. The conversion of victuals into virtues. When the process is imperfect, vices are evolved instead - a circumstance from which that wicked writer, Dr. Jeremiah Blenn, infers that the ladies are the greater sufferers from dyspepsia.
Ambrose Bierce
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GEOGRAPHER, n. A chap who can tell you offhand the difference between the outside of the world and the inside.
Ambrose Bierce
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Work: a dangerous disorder affecting high public functionaries who want to go fishing.
Ambrose Bierce
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True, man does not know woman. But neither does woman.
Ambrose Bierce
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Incompatibility. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination.
Ambrose Bierce
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me, pro. The objectionable case of I. The personal pronoun in English has three cases, the dominative, the objectionable and the oppressive. Each is all three.
Ambrose Bierce
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Erudition - dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.
Ambrose Bierce
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REPARTEE, n. Prudent insult in retort. Practiced by gentlemen with a constitutional aversion to violence, but a strong disposition to offend. In a war of words, the tactics of the North American Indian.
Ambrose Bierce