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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
Many
Meritorious
Unduly
Desirous
Obtain
Keeping
Close
Wish
Persons
Fisted
More quotes by Ambrose Bierce
PRESIDENCY, n. The greased pig in the field game of American politics.
Ambrose Bierce
pleasure, n. The least hateful form of dejection.
Ambrose Bierce
REPLICA, n. A reproduction of a work of art, by the artist that made the original. It is so called to distinguish it from a copy, which is made by another artist. When the two are mae with equal skill the replica is the more valuable, for it is suppose
Ambrose Bierce
We must stop chasing dollars, stop lying, stop cheating, stop ignoring art, literature, and all the refining agencies and instrumentalities of civilization.
Ambrose Bierce
Clairvoyant, n.: A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron - namely, that he is a blockhead.
Ambrose Bierce
A rabbit's foot may bring good luck to you, but it brought none to the rabbit.
Ambrose Bierce
God alone knows the future, but only an historian can alter the past.
Ambrose Bierce
Appetite, n. An instinct thoughtfully implanted by Providence as a solution to the labor question.
Ambrose Bierce
A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced.
Ambrose Bierce
RABBLE, n. In a republic, those who exercise a supreme authority tempered by fraudulent elections. The rabble is like the sacred Simurgh, of Arabian fable - omnipotent on condition that it do nothing.
Ambrose Bierce
OBSOLETE, adj. No longer used by the timid. Said chiefly of words. A word which some lexicographer has marked obsolete is ever thereafter an object of dread and loathing to the fool writer . . .
Ambrose Bierce
The fact that boys are allowed to exist at all is evidence of a remarkable Christian forebearance among men.
Ambrose Bierce
OPERA, n. A play representing life in another world, whose inhabitants have no speech but song, no motions but gestures and no postures but attitudes.
Ambrose Bierce
Bore, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
Ambrose Bierce
Religions are conclusions for which the facts of nature supply no major premises.
Ambrose Bierce
RACK, n. An argumentative implement formerly much used in persuading devotees of a false faith to embrace the living truth. As a call to the unconverted the rack never had any particular efficacy, and is now held in light popular esteem.
Ambrose Bierce
MONOSYLLABIC, adj. Composed of words of one syllable . . . Commonly Saxon - that is to say, words of a barbarous people destitute of ideas and incapable of any but the most elementary sentiments and emotions.
Ambrose Bierce
Something that is supposed to typify or stand for something else. Many symbols are mere survivals - as funereal urns carved on memorial monuments. We cannot stop making them, but we can give them a name that conceals our helplessness.
Ambrose Bierce
DISCUSSION, n. A method of confirming others in their errors.
Ambrose Bierce
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