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MACE, n. A staff of office signifying authority. Its form, that of a heavy club, indicates its original purpose and use in dissuading from dissent.
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
Authority
Indicates
Office
Dissent
Purpose
Staff
Use
Club
Form
Clubs
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Original
Mace
Heavy
Signifying
More quotes by Ambrose Bierce
Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference
Ambrose Bierce
RICE-WATER, n. A mystic beverage secretly used by our most popular novelists and poets to regulate the imagination and narcotize the conscience.
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WOMAN, n. An animal usually living in the vicinity of Man, and having a rudimentary susceptibility to domestication.
Ambrose Bierce
MERCY, n. An attribute beloved of detected offenders.
Ambrose Bierce
STORY, n. A narrative, commonly untrue. The truth of the stories here following has, however, not been successfully impeached.
Ambrose Bierce
Amnesty, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.
Ambrose Bierce
LIMB, n. The branch of a tree or the leg of an American woman.
Ambrose Bierce
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
Infidel, n. In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion in Constantinople, one who does.
Ambrose Bierce
QUOTIENT, n. A number showing how many times a sum of money belonging to one person is contained in the pocket of another - usually about as many times as it can be got there.
Ambrose Bierce
HERMIT, n. A person whose vices and follies are not sociable.
Ambrose Bierce
OBSERVATORY, n. A place where astronomers conjecture away the guesses of their predecessors.
Ambrose Bierce
UBIQUITY, n. The gift or power of being in all places at one time, but not in all places at all times, which is omnipresence, an attribute of God and the luminiferous ether only.
Ambrose Bierce
A trite popular saying, or proverb. (Figurative and colloquial.) So called because it makes its way into a wooden head. Following are examples of old saws fitted with new teeth.
Ambrose Bierce
The fact that boys are allowed to exist at all is evidence of a remarkable Christian forebearance among men.
Ambrose Bierce
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
What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do it.
Ambrose Bierce
UXORIOUSNESS, n. A perverted affection that has strayed to one's own wife.
Ambrose Bierce
Least said is soon disavowed.
Ambrose Bierce
Education, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.
Ambrose Bierce