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INTENTION, n. The mind's sense of the prevalence of one set of influences over another set an effect whose cause is the imminence, immediate or remote, of the performance of an involuntary act.

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
Cause
Influences
Influence
Immediate
Causes
Performance
Sense
Performances
Another
Intention
Mind
Effect
Prevalence
Whose
Involuntary
Effects
Remote

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Wine, madam, is God's next best gift to man.
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Funeral: a pageant whereby we attest our respect for the dead by enriching the undertaker, and strengthen our grief by an expenditure that deepens our groans and doubles our tears.
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Rome has seven sacraments, but the Protestant churches, being less prosperous, feel that they can afford only two, and these of inferior sanctity.
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Hope is an explorer who surveys the country ahead. That is why we know so much about the Hereafter and so little about the Heretofore.
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Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.
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Fashion, n. A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.
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BATH, n. A kind of mystic ceremony substituted for religious worship, with what spiritual efficacy has not been determined.
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An archbishop is an ecclesiastical dignitary one point holier than a bishop.
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A bad marriage is like an electrical thrilling machine: it makes you dance, but you can't let go.
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PHYSIOGNOMY, n. The art of determining the character of another by the resemblances and differences between his face and our own, which is the standard of excellence.
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LEXICOGRAPHER, n. A pestilent fellow who, under the pretense of recording some particular stage in the development of a language, does what he can to arrest its growth, stiffen its flexibility and mechanize its methods.
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DIGESTION, n. The conversion of victuals into virtues. When the process is imperfect, vices are evolved instead - a circumstance from which that wicked writer, Dr. Jeremiah Blenn, infers that the ladies are the greater sufferers from dyspepsia.
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adore, v.t. To venerate expectantly.
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FREEBOOTER, n. A conqueror in a small way of business, whose annexations lack of the sanctifying merit of magnitude.
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Nature's fortuitous manifestation of her purposeless objectionableness.
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A king's staff of office, the sign and symbol of his authority. It was originally a mace with which the sovereign admonished his jester and vetoed ministerial measures by breaking the bones of their proponents.
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PANTALOONS, n. A nether habiliment of the adult civilized male. The garment is tubular and unprovided with hinges at the points of flexion. Supposed to have been invented by a humorist. Called trousers by the enlightened and pants by the unworthy.
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CONSOLATION, n. The knowledge that a better man is more unfortunate than yourself.
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They say that hens do cackle loudest when there is nothing vital in the eggs they have laid.
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