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PIRACY, n. Commerce without its folly-swaddles, just as God made it.

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
Piracy
Commerce
Folly
Justice
Without
Made

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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LECTURER, n. One with his hand in your pocket, his tongue in your ear and his faith in your patience.
Ambrose Bierce
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Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic.
Ambrose Bierce
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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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PALMISTRY, n. The 947th method . . . of obtaining money by false pretences [by] reading character in the wrinkles [of] the hand. The pretence is not altogether false. . . for the wrinkles in every hand submitted plainly spell the word dupe.
Ambrose Bierce
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Youth looks forward, for nothing is behind! Age backward, for nothing is before.
Ambrose Bierce
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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.
Ambrose Bierce
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APHORISM, n. Predigested wisdom. The flabby wine-skin of his brain Yields to some pathologic strain, And voids from its unstored abysm The driblet of an aphorism. The Mad Philosopher, 1697
Ambrose Bierce
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OPERA, n. A play representing life in another world, whose inhabitants have no speech but song, no motions but gestures and no postures but attitudes.
Ambrose Bierce
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Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
Ambrose Bierce
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EFFECT, n. The second of two phenomena which always occur together in the same order. The first, called a Cause, is said to generate the other-which is no more sensible than it would be for one who has never seen a dog except in pursuit of a rabbit to declare the rabbit the cause of the dog.
Ambrose Bierce
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RATIONAL, adj. Devoid of all delusions save those of observation, experience and reflection.
Ambrose Bierce
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TRICHINOSIS, n. The pig's reply to proponents of porcophagy.
Ambrose Bierce
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Abscond - to move in a mysterious way, commonly with the property of another.
Ambrose Bierce
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MUGWUMP, n. In politics one afflicted with self-respect and addicted to the vice of independence. A term of contempt.
Ambrose Bierce
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PUSH, n. One of the two things mainly conducive to success, especially in politics. The other is Pull.
Ambrose Bierce
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IMPALE, v.t. In popular usage, to pierce with any weapon which remains fixed in the wound . . . . properly, to put to death by thrusting an upright sharp stake into the body, the victim being left in a sitting position.
Ambrose Bierce
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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.
Ambrose Bierce
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An accident is an inevitable occurrence due to the actions of immutable natural laws.
Ambrose Bierce
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Evolutionary biology is genuinely scientific, but more than that it opens the door to a world more marvellous than any Christian fundamentalist has ever read into the pages of the Bible.
Ambrose Bierce
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Suddenly to change one's opinions and go over to another party. The most notable flop on record was that of Saul of Tarsus, who has been severely criticised as a turn-coat by some of our partisan journals.
Ambrose Bierce