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When publicly censured our first instinct is to make everybody a codefendant.

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
Censured
Publicly
Instinct
Everybody
Firsts
First
Make

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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INTENTION, n. The mind's sense of the prevalence of one set of influences over another set an effect whose cause is the imminence, immediate or remote, of the performance of an involuntary act.
Ambrose Bierce
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Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
Ambrose Bierce
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TARIFF, n. A scale of taxes on imports, designed to protect the domestic producer against the greed of his consumer.
Ambrose Bierce
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A bad workman quarrels with the man who calls him that.
Ambrose Bierce
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DELEGATION, n. In American politics, an article of merchandise that comes in sets.
Ambrose Bierce
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Aristocrats: n. fellows that wear downy hats and clean shirts - guilty of education and suspected of bank accounts.
Ambrose Bierce
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Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.
Ambrose Bierce
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In theology, the state of a luckless mortal prenatally damned. The doctrine of reprobation was taught by Calvin, whose joy in it was somewhat marred by the sad sincerity of his conviction that although some are foredoomed to perdition, others are predestined to salvation.
Ambrose Bierce
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An aged Burgundy runs with a beardless Port. I cherish the fancy that Port speaks sentences of wisdom, Burgundy sings the inspired Ode.
Ambrose Bierce
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TRUTHFUL, adj. Dumb and illiterate.
Ambrose Bierce
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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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Uncommon extension of the fear of death.
Ambrose Bierce
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He laughs best who laughs least.
Ambrose Bierce
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Abscond - to move in a mysterious way, commonly with the property of another.
Ambrose Bierce
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PREDESTINATION, n. The doctrine that all things occur according to programme. . . . not be confused with that of foreordination. The difference is great enough to have deluged Christendom with ink, to say nothing of the gore.
Ambrose Bierce
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Distance, n. The only thing that the rich are willing for the poor to call theirs and keep.
Ambrose Bierce
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EUCHARIST, n. A sacred feast of the religious sect of Theophagi. A dispute once unhappily arose among the members of this sect as to what it was that they ate. In this controversy some five hundred thousand have already been slain, and the question is still unsettled.
Ambrose Bierce
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Doubt is the father of invention.
Ambrose Bierce
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INDIFFERENT, adj. Imperfectly sensible to distinctions among things.
Ambrose Bierce
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WOMAN, n. An animal usually living in the vicinity of Man, and having a rudimentary susceptibility to domestication.
Ambrose Bierce