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Dictionary: a malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic

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
Making
Cramping
Hard
Malevolent
Device
Dictionary
Literary
Devices
Growth
Language

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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LIFE, n. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay. We live in daily apprehension of its loss yet when lost it is not missed.
Ambrose Bierce
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PENITENT, adj. Undergoing or awaiting punishment.
Ambrose Bierce
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INCOMPOSSIBLE, adj. Unable to exist if something else exists. Two things are incompossible when the world of being has scope enough for one of them, but not enough for both - as Walt Whitman's poetry and God's mercy to man.
Ambrose Bierce
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INGRATE, n. One who receives a benefit from another, or is otherwise an object of charity.
Ambrose Bierce
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JOSS-STICKS- Small sticks burned by the Chinese in their pagan tomfoolery, in imitation of certain sacred rites of our holy religion.
Ambrose Bierce
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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
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AFFLICTION, n. An acclimatizing process preparing the soul for another and bitter world.
Ambrose Bierce
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A less popular name for the Second Person of that delectable newspaper Trinity, the Roomer, the Bedder, and the Mealer.
Ambrose Bierce
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LEGACY, n. A gift from one who is legging it out of this vale of tears.
Ambrose Bierce
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God alone knows the future, but only an historian can alter the past.
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 creator and arbiter of beauty is the heart to the male rattlesnake the female rattlesnake is the loveliest thing in nature.
Ambrose Bierce
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There was never a genius who was not thought a fool until he disclosed himself whereas he is a fool then only.
Ambrose Bierce
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FORMA PAUPERIS. [Latin] In the character of a poor person - a method by which a litigant without money for lawyers is considerately permitted to lose his case.
Ambrose Bierce
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Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
Ambrose Bierce
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Present, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.
Ambrose Bierce
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REALITY, n. The dream of a mad philosopher. That which would remain in the cupel if one should assay a phantom. The nucleus of a vacuum.
Ambrose Bierce
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The place whereon the priest formerly raveled out the small intestine of the sacrificial victim for purposes of divination and cooked its flesh for the gods. The word is now seldom used, except with reference to the sacrifice of their liberty and peace by a male and a female fool.
Ambrose Bierce
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Mad adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence not conforming to standards of thought, speech, and action derived by the conformants from study of themselves at odds with the majority in short, unusual. It is noteworthy that persons are pronounced mad by officials destitute of evidence that they themselves are sane.
Ambrose Bierce
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The liberality of one who has much, in permitting one who has nothing to get all that he can.
Ambrose Bierce