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HYDRA, n. A kind of animal that the ancients catalogued under many heads.

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
Hydra
Ancients
Heads
Kindness
Animal
Many
Kind

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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MONSIGNOR- A high ecclesiastical title, of which the Founder of our religion overlooked the advantages.
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KILT, n. A costume sometimes worn by Scotchmen in America and Americans in Scotland.
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Impartial - unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.
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At war with savages and idiots. To be a Frenchman abroad is to be miserable to be an American abroad is to make others miserable.
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The fact that boys are allowed to exist at all is evidence of remarkable Christian forbearance among men - were it not for a mawkish humanitarianism, coupled with imperfect digestive powers, we should devour our young, as Nature intended.
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Slang is a foul pool at which every dunce fills his bucket, and then sets up as a fountain.
Ambrose Bierce
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What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do it.
Ambrose Bierce
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Magpie, n.: A bird whose theivish disposition suggested to someone that it might be taught to talk.
Ambrose Bierce
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Hash, x. There is no definition for this word - nobody knows what hash is. Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable. Dictionary, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.
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Woman absent is woman dead.
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History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.
Ambrose Bierce
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PASTIME, n. A device for promoting dejection. Gentle exercise for intellectual debility.
Ambrose Bierce
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Enthusiasm - a distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience.
Ambrose Bierce
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Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.
Ambrose Bierce
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Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.
Ambrose Bierce
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FIDDLE, n. An instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse's tail on the entrails of a cat.
Ambrose Bierce
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TAKE, v.t. To acquire, frequently by force but preferably by stealth.
Ambrose Bierce
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Botany, n. The science of vegetables - those that are not good to eat, as well as those that are. It deals largely with their flowers, which are commonly badly designed, inartistic in color, and ill-smelling.
Ambrose Bierce
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Abnormal, adj. Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested.
Ambrose Bierce
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Irreligion - the principal one of the great faiths of the world.
Ambrose Bierce