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VIRTUES, n.pl. Certain abstentions.

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
Virtues
Certainty
Virtue
Certain
Abstention

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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That part of your friend which it is your privilege to contemplate in your adversity
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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Achievement the death of endeavor and the birth of disgust.
Ambrose Bierce
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ACCUSE, v.t. To affirm another's guilt or unworth most commonly as a justification of ourselves for having wronged him.
Ambrose Bierce
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What this country needs what every country needs occasionally is a good hard bloody war to revive the vice of patriotism on which its existence as a nation depends.
Ambrose Bierce
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pleasure, n. The least hateful form of dejection.
Ambrose Bierce
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Riot – A popular entertainment given to the military by innocent bystanders.
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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Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
Ambrose Bierce
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MOUTH, n. In man, the gateway to the soul in woman, the outlet of the heart.
Ambrose Bierce
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I think love is the most unbelievable, and critical, thing in civilization. Everything else is very mechanical and predictable, but love, you can't catch it.
Ambrose Bierce
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Book - Learning : The dunce's derisive term for all knowledge that transcends his own impertinent ignorance.
Ambrose Bierce
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Dog - a kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship.
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 can effect a change of robbers every four years. Inestimable privilege - to pull off the glutted leech and attach the lean one! And you can not even choose among the lean leeches, but must accept those designated by the programmers and showmen who have the reptiles on tap!
Ambrose Bierce
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Consul - in American politics, a person who having failed to secure an office from the people is given one by the Administration on condition that he leave the country.
Ambrose Bierce
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PITY, n. A failing sense of exemption, inspired by contrast.
Ambrose Bierce
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Alliance - in international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.
Ambrose Bierce
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The fact that boys are allowed to exist at all is evidence of a remarkable Christian forebearance among men.
Ambrose Bierce
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aim, n. The task we set our wishes to.
Ambrose Bierce