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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

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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
Poet
Regulate
Imagination
Secretly
Water
Mystic
Used
Rice
Novelists
Poets
Popular
Beverage
Conscience
Beverages

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Legitimate authority to be, to do or to have as the right to be a king, the right to do one's neighbor, the right to have measles, and the like.
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Nothing is more logical than persecution. Religious tolerance is a kind of infidelity.
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MATERIAL, adj. Having an actual existence, as distinguished from an imaginary one. Important.
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Present, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.
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PENITENT, adj. Undergoing or awaiting punishment.
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Acquaintance: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to. A degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous.
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Patriotism, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit it is the first.
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HUSBAND, n. One who, having dined, is charged with the care of the plate.
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WIDOW, n. A pathetic figure that the Christian world has agreed to take humorously, although Christ's tenderness towards widows was one of the most marked features of his character.
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There are four kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.
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The creator and arbiter of beauty is the heart to the male rattlesnake the female rattlesnake is the loveliest thing in nature.
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A violin is the revenge exacted by the intestines of a dead cat.
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Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
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Monsieur Franqulin, inventor of electricity. This illustrious savant, after having made several voyages around the world, died on the Sandwich Islands and was devoured by savages, of whom not a single fragment was ever recovered.
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Houseless: Having paid all taxes on household goods.
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R.I.P. A careless abbreviation of requiescat in pace, attesting to indolent goodwill to the dead. According to the learned Dr. Drigge, however, the letters originally meant nothing more than reductus in pulvis.
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DISOBEDIENCE, n. The silver lining to the cloud of servitude.
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A man is known by the company he organizes.
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PICKANINNY, n. The young of the Procyanthropos, or Americanus dominans. It is small, black and charged with political fatalities.
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Responsibility, n. A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one's neighbor. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star.
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