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GENEROUS, adj. Originally this word meant noble by birth and was rightly applied to a great multitude of persons. It now means noble by nature and is taking a bit of a rest.
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
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More quotes by Ambrose Bierce
Cabbage: a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.
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INGRATE, n. One who receives a benefit from another, or is otherwise an object of charity.
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Platitude: All that is mortal of a departed truth.
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ELEGY, n. A composition in verse, in which, without employing any of the methods of humor, the writer aims to produce in the reader's mind the dampest kind of dejection.
Ambrose Bierce
GOOD, adj. Sensible, madam, to the worth of this present writer. Alive, sir, to the advantages of letting him alone.
Ambrose Bierce
To be comic is merely to be playful, but wit is a serious matter. To laugh at it is to confess that you do not understand.
Ambrose Bierce
TAIL, n. The part of an animal's spine that has transcended its natural limitations to set up an independent existence in a world of its own.
Ambrose Bierce
RETRIBUTION, n. A rain of fire-and-brimstone that falls alike upon the just and such of the unjust as have not procured shelter by evicting them.
Ambrose Bierce
A less popular name for the Second Person of that delectable newspaper Trinity, the Roomer, the Bedder, and the Mealer.
Ambrose Bierce
The palmist looks at the wrinkles made by closing the hand and says they signify character. The philosopher reads character by what the hand most loves to close upon.
Ambrose Bierce
HATRED, n. A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's superiority.
Ambrose Bierce
To the eye of failure success is an accident.
Ambrose Bierce
Truth is more deceptive than falsehood, for it is more frequently presented by those from whom we do not expect it, and so has against it a numerical presumption.
Ambrose Bierce
TRICHINOSIS, n. The pig's reply to proponents of porcophagy.
Ambrose Bierce
MALTHUSIAN, adj. Pertaining to Malthus and his doctrines, who believed in artificially limiting population, but found that it could not be done by talking. Herod of Judea, all the famous soldiers have been practical exponents of the Malthusian idea.
Ambrose Bierce
A popular vote to ascertain the will of the sovereign.
Ambrose Bierce
Alien - an American sovereign in his probationary state.
Ambrose Bierce
RATTLESNAKE, n. Our prostrate brother, Homo ventrambulans.
Ambrose Bierce
INTERPRETER, n. One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
Ambrose Bierce
War: A by-product of the arts of peace.
Ambrose Bierce