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CLOSE-FISTED, adj. Unduly desirous of keeping that which many meritorious persons wish to obtain.

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
Close
Wish
Persons
Fisted
Many
Meritorious
Unduly
Desirous
Obtain
Keeping

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Miss, n. A title which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market.
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MUMMY, n. - an ancient Egyptian handy, too, in museums in gratifying the vulgar curiosity that serves to distinguish man from the lower animals.
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Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
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There's no free will, says the philosopher To hang is most unjust. There is no free will, assents the officer We hang because we must.
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Advice, the smallest current coin.
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NEWTONIAN, Pertaining to a philosophy of the universe invented by Newton, who discovered that an apple will fall to the ground, but was unable to say why. His successors and disciples have advanced so far as to be able to say when.
Ambrose Bierce
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MAN, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be.
Ambrose Bierce
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Custard: A detestable substance produced by a malevolent conspiracy of the hen, the cow, and the cook.
Ambrose Bierce
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DIARY, n. A daily record of that part of one's life, which he can relate to himself without blushing.
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I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers. What I said was that all saloonkeepers are Democrats.
Ambrose Bierce
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REASON, v.i. To weight probabilities in the scales of desire.
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A large stone presented by the archangel Gabriel to the patriarch Abraham, and preserved at Mecca. The patriarch had perhaps asked the archangel for bread.
Ambrose Bierce
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IMBECILITY, n. A kind of divine inspiration, or sacred fire affecting censorious critics of this dictionary.
Ambrose Bierce
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RETRIBUTION, n. A rain of fire-and-brimstone that falls alike upon the just and such of the unjust as have not procured shelter by evicting them.
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Happiness is lost by criticizing it sorrow by accepting it.
Ambrose Bierce
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Childhood: the period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth - two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age.
Ambrose Bierce
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Salamander: Originally a reptile inhabiting fire later, an anthropomorphous immortal, but still a pyrophile. Salamanders are now believed to be extinct, the last one of which we have an account having been seen in Carcassonne by the Abbe Belloc, who exorcised it with a bucket of holy water.
Ambrose Bierce
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Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.
Ambrose Bierce
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LOGANIMITY, n. The disposition to endure injury with meek forbearance while maturing a plan of revenge.
Ambrose Bierce
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MONKEY, n. An arboreal animal which makes itself at home in genealogical trees.
Ambrose Bierce