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J, n. A consonant in English, but some nations use it as a vowel . . . from a Latin verb, jacere, to throw, because when a stone is thrown at a dog the dog's tail assumes that shape.

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
Shapes
Assumption
Consonants
Dog
Stone
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Nations
Thrown
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Throw
Tail
English
Tails
Vowel
Stones
Latin
Consonant

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NOISE, n. A stench in the ear. Undomesticated music. The chief product and authenticating sign of civilization.
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TRUTHFUL, adj. Dumb and illiterate.
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The most affectionate creature in the world is a wet dog.
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DEGRADATION, n. One of the stages of moral and social progress from private station to political preferment.
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Suffrage, noun. Expression of opinion by means of a ballot. The right of suffrage (which is held to be both a privilege and a duty) means, as commonly interpreted, the right to vote for the man of another man's choice, and is highly prized.
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Duck-bill, n. Your account at your restaurant during the canvas-back season.
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An army's bravest men are its cowards. The death which they would not meet at the hands of the enemy they will meet at the hands of their officers, with never a flinching.
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The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.
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HOMŒOPATHIST, n. The humorist of the medical profession.
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LIMB, n. The branch of a tree or the leg of an American woman.
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Genealogy, n. An account of one's descent from a man who did not particularly care to trace his own.
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A man is known by the company he organizes.
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Indigestion: A disease which the patient and his friends frequently mistake for deep religious conviction and concern for the salvation of mankind. As the simple Red Man of the Western Wild put it, with, it must be confessed, a certain force: 'Plenty well, no pray big belly ache, heap God.'
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Convictions are variable to be always consistent is to be sometimes dishonest.
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UBIQUITY, n. The gift or power of being in all places at one time, but not in all places at all times, which is omnipresence, an attribute of God and the luminiferous ether only.
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Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum -- I think that I think, therefore I think that I am as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.
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Inexpedient: Not calculated to advance one's interests.
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REFUSAL, n. Denial of something desired Refusals are graded in a descending scale of finality thus: the refusal absolute, the refusal condition, the refusal tentative and the refusal feminine. The last is called by some casuists the refusal assentive.
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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.
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A short story padded. A species of composition bearing the same relation to literature that the panorama bears to art. As it is too long to be read at a sitting the impressions made by its successive parts are successively effaced, as in the pa
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