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A popular character in old Italian plays, who imitated with ludicrous incompetence the buffone, or clown, and was therefore the ape of an ape for the clown himself imitated the serious characters of the play.

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
Popular
Imitated
Characters
Ludicrous
Therefore
Incompetence
Serious
Apes
Character
Clown
Play
Popularity
Italian
Plays

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Magpie, n.: A bird whose theivish disposition suggested to someone that it might be taught to talk.
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Theology is a thing of unreason altogether, an edifice of assumptions and dreams, a superstructure without a substructure
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RECONCILIATION, n. A suspension of hostilities. An armed truce for the purpose of digging up the dead.
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FOLLY, n. That gift and faculty divine whose creative and controlling energy inspires Man's mind, guides his actions and adorns his life.
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Before undergoing a surgical operation, arrange your temporal affairs. You may live.
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Loquacity, n. A disorder which renders the sufferer unable to curb his tongue when you wish to talk.
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Divorce: a resumption of diplomatic relations and rectification of boundaries.
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Genius - to know without having learned to draw just conclusions from unknown premises to discern the soul of things.
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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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HUMORIST, n. A plague that would have softened down the hoar austerity of Pharaoh's heart and persuaded him to dismiss Israel with his best wishes, cat-quick.
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One of the greatest of poets, Coleridge was one of the wisest of men, and it was not for nothing that he read us this parable. Let us have a little less of hands across the sea, and a little more of that elemental distrust that is the security of nations. War loves to come like a thief in the night professions of eternal amity provide the nigh
Ambrose Bierce
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SERIAL, n. A literary work, usually a story that is not true, creeping through several issues of a newspaper or magazine.
Ambrose Bierce
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The ghost is the outward and visible signs of an inward fear.
Ambrose Bierce
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LOVE, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder.
Ambrose Bierce
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CONGRESS, n. A body of men who meet to repeal laws.
Ambrose Bierce
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ACKNOWLEDGE, v.t. To confess. Acknowledgment of one another's faults is the highest duty imposed by our love of truth.
Ambrose Bierce
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You don't have to be stupid to be a Christian, ... but it probably helps.
Ambrose Bierce
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ENVY, n. Emulation adapted to the meanest capacity.
Ambrose Bierce
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critic, n. A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him.
Ambrose Bierce
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RECOUNT, n. In American politics, another throw of the dice, accorded to the player against whom they are loaded.
Ambrose Bierce