Ambrose Bierce Quotes, Two Quotes, Ears Quotes

Clarinet n. An instrument of torture operated by a person with cotton in his ears. There are two instruments worse than a clarinet – two clarinets.

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A man is the sum of his ancestors; to reform him you must begin with a dead ape and work downward through a million graves.

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Optimist – A proponent of the doctrine that black is white.

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ZENITH, n. The point in the heavens directly overhead to a man standing or a growing cabbage. A man in bed or a cabbage in the pot is not considered as having a zenith, though Horizontalists hold that the posture of the body was immaterial.

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When among the graves of thy fellows, walk with circumspection; thine own is open at thy feet.

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Litigant. A person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones.

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Pantheism, n. The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.

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BLANK-VERSE, n. Unrhymed iambic pentameters - the most difficult kind of English verse to write acceptably; a kind, therefore, much affected by those who cannot acceptably write any kind.

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He who thinks with difficulty believes with alacrity.

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REPORTER, n. A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words.

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REPUBLIC, n. A nation in which, the thing governing and the thing governed being the same, there is only a permitted authority to enforce an optional obedience.

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PROVIDENTIAL, adj. Unexpectedly and conspicuously beneficial to the person so describing it.

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IMAGINATION, n. A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership.

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PHYSIOGNOMY, n. The art of determining the character of another by the resemblances and differences between his face and our own, which is the standard of excellence.

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PREHISTORIC, adj. Belonging to an early period and a museum. Antedating the art and practice of perpetuating falsehood.

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SYCOPHANT- One who approaches Greatness on his belly so that he may not be commanded to turn and be kicked. He is sometimes an editor.

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GRAVE, n. A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student.

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MAN, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.

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MAGNETISM, n. Something acting upon a magnet. The two definitions immediately foregoing are condensed from the works of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human knowledge.

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EXISTENCE, n. A transient, horrible, fantastic dream,/ Wherein is nothing yet all things do seem:/ From which we're wakened by a friendly nudge/ Of our bedfellow Death, and cry: "O fudge!"

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