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POSITIVISM- A philosophy that denies our knowledge of the Real and affirms our ignorance of the Apparent. Its longest exponent is Comte, its broadest Mill and its thickest Spencer.

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
Longest
Positivism
Apparent
Exponents
Deny
Spencer
Ignorance
Broadest
Philosophy
Affirms
Knowledge
Mill
Real
Denies
Exponent
Mills
Thickest

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The place whereon the priest formerly raveled out the small intestine of the sacrificial victim for purposes of divination and cooked its flesh for the gods. The word is now seldom used, except with reference to the sacrifice of their liberty and peace by a male and a female fool.
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Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.
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New York is too strenuous for me it gets on my nerves.
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PILGRIM, n. A traveler that is taken seriously. A Pilgrim Father was one who [was] not permitted to sing psalms through his nose [in Europe], followed it to Massachusetts, where he could personate God according to the dictates of his conscience.
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An old wine-bibber having been smashed in a railway collision, some wine was poured on his lips to revive him.
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Miss: A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market. Miss, Misses (Mrs.) and Mister (Mr.) are the three most distinctly disagreeable words in the language, in sound and sense.
Ambrose Bierce
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ADMINISTRATION, n. An ingenious abstraction in politics, designed to receive the kicks and cuffs due to the premier or president. A man of straw, proof against bad-egging and dead-catting.
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Optimist – A proponent of the doctrine that black is white.
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Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
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MISDEMEANOR, n. An infraction of the law having less dignity than a felony and constituting no claim to admittance into the best criminal society.
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The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.
Ambrose Bierce
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MONUMENT, n. A structure intended to commemorate something which either needs no commemoration or cannot be commemorated.
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Birth: The first and direst of all disasters.
Ambrose Bierce
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PAIN, n. An uncomfortable frame of mind that may have a physical basis in something that is being done to the body, or may be purely mental, caused by the good fortune of another.
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REPUBLIC, n. A nation in which, the thing governing and the thing governed being the same, there is only a permitted authority to enforce an optional obedience.
Ambrose Bierce
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Molecule, n.: The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. It is distinguished from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter, by a closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter ... The ion differs from the molecule, the corpuscle and the atom in that it is an ion.
Ambrose Bierce
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LINEN, n. A kind of cloth the making of which, when made of hemp, entails a great waste of hemp.
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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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Male, A member of the unconsidered or negligible gender. The male of the human race is commonly known to the female as Mere Man. The Genus has two varieties: good providers and bad providers.
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Least said is soon disavowed.
Ambrose Bierce