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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
Hard
Malevolent
Device
Dictionary
Literary
Devices
Growth
Language
Making
Cramping

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Here's to woman! Would that we could fold into her arms without falling into her hands.
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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.
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Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.
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Cribbage, n. A substitute for conversation among those to whom nature has denied ideas.
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Wine, madam, is God's next best gift to man.
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Bigamy, n. A mistake in taste for which the wisdom of the future will adjudge a punishment called trigamy.
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Laziness. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.
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Impiety. Your irreverence toward my deity.
Ambrose Bierce
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GRAPESHOT, n. An argument which the future is preparing in answer to the demands of American Socialism.
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IMAGINATION, n. A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership.
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Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
Ambrose Bierce
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HOMOEOPATHY, n. A school of medicine midway between Allopathy and Christian Science. To the last both the others are distinctly inferior, for Christian Science will cure imaginary diseases, and they can not.
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Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
Ambrose Bierce
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SATIRE, n. An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the vices and follies of the author's enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness.
Ambrose Bierce
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Erudition - dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.
Ambrose Bierce
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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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Electricity is the power that causes all natural phenomena not known to be caused by something else
Ambrose Bierce
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DIAGNOSIS, n. A physician's forecast of disease by the patient's pulse and purse.
Ambrose Bierce
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Eloquence, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white.
Ambrose Bierce
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Economy, n. Purchasing the barrel of whiskey that you do not need for the price of the cow that you cannot afford.
Ambrose Bierce