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predicament, n. The wage of consistency.

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
Wage
Consistency
Habit
Predicament
Predicaments

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Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
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PRESIDE, v. To guide the action of a deliberative body to a desirable result. In Journalese, to perform upon a musical instrument as, He presided at the piccolo.
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Patriotism: The first resort of a scoundrel.
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You cannot adopt politics as a profession and remain honest.
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MYTHOLOGY, n. The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later.
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TZETZE (or TSETSE) FLY, n. An African insect (Glossina morsitans) whose bite is commonly regarded as nature's most efficacious remedy for insomnia, though some patients prefer that of the American novelist (Mendax interminabilis).
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PASTIME, n. A device for promoting dejection. Gentle exercise for intellectual debility.
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HYDRA, n. A kind of animal that the ancients catalogued under many heads.
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RADICALISM, n. The conservatism of to-morrow injected into the affairs of to-day.
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MUSTANG, n. An indocile horse of the western plains. In English society, the American wife of an English nobleman.
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ROMANCE, n. Fiction that owes no allegiance to the God of Things as They Are. In the novel the writer's thought is tethered to probability, but in romance it ranges at will over the entire region of the imagination . . .
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EPIGRAM, n. A short, sharp saying in prose or verse, frequently characterize by acidity or acerbity and sometimes by wisdom.
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COMMERCE, n. A kind of transaction in which A plunders from B the goods of C, and for compensation B picks the pocket of D of money belonging to E.
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Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.
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Appetite, n. An instinct thoughtfully implanted by Providence as a solution to the labor question.
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LAST, n. A shoemaker's implement, named by a frowning Providence as opportunity to the maker of puns.
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LUMINARY, One who throws light upon a subject as an editor by not writing about it.
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REFUSAL, n. Denial of something desired Refusals are graded in a descending scale of finality thus: the refusal absolute, the refusal condition, the refusal tentative and the refusal feminine. The last is called by some casuists the refusal assentive.
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repose, v.i. To cease from troubling.
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applause, n. The echo of a platitude.
Ambrose Bierce