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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
Growth
Language
Making
Cramping
Hard
Malevolent
Device
Dictionary
Literary
Devices

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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Fidelity - a virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.
Ambrose Bierce
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Impiety. Your irreverence toward my deity.
Ambrose Bierce
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WITCH, n. (1) Any ugly and repulsive old woman, in a wicked league with the devil. (2) A beautiful and attractive young woman, in wickedness a league beyond the devil.
Ambrose Bierce
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Condole - to show that bereavement is a smaller evil than sympathy.
Ambrose Bierce
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If you want to read a perfect book there is only one way: write it.
Ambrose Bierce
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WRATH, n. Anger of a superior quality and degree, appropriate to exalted characters and momentous occasions as, the wrath of God, the day of wrath, etc. . . .
Ambrose Bierce
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PORTUGUESE, n.pl. A species of geese indigenous to Portugal. They are mostly without feathers and imperfectly edible, even when stuffed with garlic.
Ambrose Bierce
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HOMŒOPATHIST, n. The humorist of the medical profession.
Ambrose Bierce
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Admiral. That part of a warship which does the talking while the figurehead does the thinking.
Ambrose Bierce
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The palmist looks at the wrinkles made by closing the hand and says they signify character. The philosopher reads character by what the hand most loves to close upon.
Ambrose Bierce
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Suffrage, noun. Expression of opinion by means of a ballot. The right of suffrage (which is held to be both a privilege and a duty) means, as commonly interpreted, the right to vote for the man of another man's choice, and is highly prized.
Ambrose Bierce
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predicament, n. The wage of consistency.
Ambrose Bierce
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Compromise, n. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction of thinking he has got what he ought not to have, and is deprived of nothing except what was justly his due.
Ambrose Bierce
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Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.
Ambrose Bierce
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LOSS, n. Privation of that which we had, or had not. Thus, in the latter sense, it is said of a defeated candidate that he lost his election.
Ambrose Bierce
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Incompatibility. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination.
Ambrose Bierce
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Every heart is the lair of a ferocious animal. The greatest wrong that you can put upon a man is to provoke him to let out his beast.
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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Pantheism, n. The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.
Ambrose Bierce
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HURRICANE, n. An atmospheric demonstration once very common but now generally abandoned for the tornado and cyclone. The hurricane is still in popular use in the West Indies and is preferred by certain old- fashioned sea-captains.
Ambrose Bierce