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PROPHECY, n. The art and practice of selling one's credibility for future delivery.

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
Prophecy
Credibility
Selling
Practice
Future
Art
Delivery

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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Historian - a broad-gauge gossip.
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.
Ambrose Bierce
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Alien - an American sovereign in his probationary state.
Ambrose Bierce
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A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring.
Ambrose Bierce
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DUEL, n. A formal ceremony preliminary to reconciliation of two enemies. Great skill is necessary to its satisfactory observance if awkwardly performed . . . deplorable consequences sometimes ensue. A long time ago a man lost his life.
Ambrose Bierce
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Legitimate authority to be, to do or to have as the right to be a king, the right to do one's neighbor, the right to have measles, and the like.
Ambrose Bierce
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Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
Ambrose Bierce
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Adolescence: The stage between puberty and adultery.
Ambrose Bierce
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He who thinks with difficulty believes with alacrity. A fool is a natural proselyte, but he must be caught young, for his convictions, unlike those of the wise, harden with age.
Ambrose Bierce
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OPIATE, n. An unlocked door in the prison of Identity. It leads into the jail yard.
Ambrose Bierce
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RESPITE, n. A suspension of hostilities against a sentenced assassin, to enable the Executive to determine whether the murder may not have been done by the prosecuting attorney. Any break in the continuity of a disagreeable expectation.
Ambrose Bierce
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JOSS-STICKS- Small sticks burned by the Chinese in their pagan tomfoolery, in imitation of certain sacred rites of our holy religion.
Ambrose Bierce
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ACCOMPLICE, n. One associated with another in a crime, having guilty knowledge and complicity, as an attorney who defends a criminal, knowing him guilty. This view of the attorney's position in the matter has not hitherto commanded the assent of attorneys, no one having offered them a fee for assenting.
Ambrose Bierce
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Impiety. Your irreverence toward my deity.
Ambrose Bierce
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NIHILIST, n. A Russian who denies the existence of anything but Tolstoi. The leader of the school is Tolstoi.
Ambrose Bierce
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NOUMENON, n. That which exists, as distinguished from that which merely seems to exist, the latter being a phenomenon. The noumenon is a bit difficult to locate it can be apprehended only by a process of reasoning - which is a phenomenon.
Ambrose Bierce
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MAGNITUDE, n. Size [that is] purely relative. If everything in the universe were increased 1,000 diameters nothing would be any larger than it was before, but if one thing remain unchanged all the others would be larger than they had been.
Ambrose Bierce
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NOVEL, n. A short story padded.
Ambrose Bierce
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REASON, n. Propensitate of prejudice.
Ambrose Bierce
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War: A by-product of the arts of peace.
Ambrose Bierce