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ARTLESSNESS, n. A certain engaging quality to which women attain by long study and severe practice upon the admiring male, who is pleased to fancy it resembles the candid simplicity of his young.

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
Upon
Admiration
Certain
Fancy
Candid
Young
Male
Resembles
Women
Males
Admiring
Long
Simplicity
Pleased
Study
Engaging
Quality
Attain
Practice
Severe

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ZOOLOGY, n. The science and history of the animal kingdom, including its king, the House Fly (Musca maledicta). The father of Zoology was Aristotle, as is universally conceded, but the name of its mother has not come down to us.
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Brain: an apparatus with which we think that we think. Mind, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain.
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PLATONIC, adj. Pertaining to the philosophy of Socrates. Platonic Love is a fool's name for the affection between a disability and a frost.
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DEPENDENT, adj. Reliant upon another's generosity for the support which you are not in a position to exact from his fears.
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Condole - to show that bereavement is a smaller evil than sympathy.
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A man who piously shuts himself up to meditate upon the sin of wickedness and to keep it fresh in his mind joins a brotherhood of awful examples.
Ambrose Bierce
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Scribbler, n. A professional writer whose views are antagonistic to one's own.
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Epitaph: An inscription on a tomb showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.
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Liar: A lawyer with a roving commission.
Ambrose Bierce
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PLAGUE, n. In ancient times a general punishment of the innocent for admonition of their ruler, as in the familiar instance of Pharaoh the Immune. The plague today . . . is merely Nature's fortuitous manifestation of her purposeless objectionableness.
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Dictionary: a malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic
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STORY, n. A narrative, commonly untrue.
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QUOTIENT, n. A number showing how many times a sum of money belonging to one person is contained in the pocket of another - usually about as many times as it can be got there.
Ambrose Bierce
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SATIETY, n. The feeling that one has for the plate after he has eaten its contents, madam.
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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.
Ambrose Bierce
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plagiarism, n. A literary coincidence compounded of a discreditable priority and an honorable subsequence.
Ambrose Bierce
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LOSS, n. Privation of that which we had, or had not. Thus, in the latter sense, it is said of a defeated candidate that he lost his election.
Ambrose Bierce
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Kindness n: A brief preface to ten volumes of exaction.
Ambrose Bierce
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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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AUSTRALIA, n. A country lying in the South Sea, whose industrial and commercial development has been unspeakably retarded by an unfortunate dispute among geographers as to whether it is a continent or an island.
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