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PANTALOONS, n. A nether habiliment of the adult civilized male. The garment is tubular and unprovided with hinges at the points of flexion. Supposed to have been invented by a humorist. Called trousers by the enlightened and pants by the unworthy.

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
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Unworthy
Adults
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Pants
Humorist
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GNOSTICS, n. A sect of philosophers who tried to engineer a fusion between the early Christians and the Platonists. The former would not go into the caucus and the combination failed, greatly to the chagrin of the fusion managers.
Ambrose Bierce
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PAST, n. That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance... The Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one - the knowledge and the dream.
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picture, n. A representation in two dimensions of something wearisome in three.
Ambrose Bierce
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NOISE, n. A stench in the ear. Undomesticated music. The chief product and authenticating sign of civilization.
Ambrose Bierce
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Example is better than following it.
Ambrose Bierce
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Slang is a foul pool at which every dunce fills his bucket, and then sets up as a fountain.
Ambrose Bierce
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LEAD, n. A heavy blue-gray metal much used ... as a counterpoise to an argument of such weight that it turns the scale of debate the wrong way. An interesting fact in the chemistry of international controversy is that at the point of contact of two patriotisms lead is precipitated in great quantities.
Ambrose Bierce
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Curiosity, n. An objectionable quality of the female mind. The desire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is one of the most active and insatiable passions of the masculine soul.
Ambrose Bierce
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Deliberation, n.: The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on.
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To be positive is to be mistaken at the top of one's voice.
Ambrose Bierce
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NOMINATE, v. To designate for the heaviest political assessment. To put forward a suitable person to incur the mudgobbling and deadcatting of the opposition.
Ambrose Bierce
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That part of your friend which it is your privilege to contemplate in your adversity
Ambrose Bierce
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INTIMACY, n. A relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their mutual destruction.
Ambrose Bierce
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IMAGINATION, n. A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership.
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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R.I.P. A careless abbreviation of requiescat in pace, attesting to indolent goodwill to the dead. According to the learned Dr. Drigge, however, the letters originally meant nothing more than reductus in pulvis.
Ambrose Bierce
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Theology is a thing of unreason altogether, an edifice of assumptions and dreams, a superstructure without a substructure
Ambrose Bierce
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If you would be accounted great by your contemporaries, be not too much greater than they.
Ambrose Bierce
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A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
Ambrose Bierce
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PANTOMIME, n. A play in which the story is told without violence to the language. The least disagreeable form of dramatic action.
Ambrose Bierce