Ambrose Bierce Quotes, Character Quotes, Italian Quotes

A popular character in old Italian plays, who imitated with ludicrous incompetence the "buffone", or clown, and was therefore the ape of an ape; for the clown himself imitated the serious characters of the play.

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Tags : Ambrose Bierce Quotes , Character Quotes , Italian Quotes

EXPOSTULATION, n. One of the many methods by which fools prefer to lose their friends.

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Tags : Ambrose Bierce Quotes , Friendship Quotes , Fool Quotes

PIANO, n. A parlor utensil for subduing the impenitent visitor. It is operated by depressing the keys of the machine and the spirits of the audience.

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Tags : Ambrose Bierce Quotes , Funny Quotes , Music Quotes

To those who view the voyage of life from the port of departure the bark that has accomplished any considerable distance appears already in close approach to the farther shore.

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Turkey: A large bird whose flesh, when eaten on certain religious anniversaries has the peculiar property of attesting piety and gratitude.

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actually, adv. Perhaps; possibly.

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SCARABAEUS, n. The sacred beetle of the ancient Egyptians, allied to our familiar "tumble-bug." It was supposed to symbolize immortality, the fact that God knew why giving it its peculiar sanctity. Its habit of incubating its eggs in a ball of ordure may also have commended it to the favor of the priesthood, and may some day assure it an equal reverence among ourselves. True, the American beetle is an inferior beetle, but the American priest is an inferior priest.

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Tags : Ambrose Bierce Quotes , Eggs Quotes , Giving Quotes

LINEN, n. "A kind of cloth the making of which, when made of hemp, entails a great waste of hemp."

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Tags : Ambrose Bierce Quotes , Kindness Quotes , Waste Quotes

PROBOSCIS, n. The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him in place of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him. For purposes of humor it is popularly called a trunk.

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Tags : Ambrose Bierce Quotes , Science Quotes , Knives Quotes

REPENTANCE, n. The faithful attendant and follower of Punishment. It is usually manifest in a degree of reformation that is not inconsistent with continuity of sin.

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Tags : Ambrose Bierce Quotes , Faith Quotes , Punishment Quotes

Homicide, /n./ The slaying of one human by another. There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he died by one kind or another - the classification is for the advantage of the lawyers.

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Tags : Ambrose Bierce Quotes , Death Quotes , Suicide Quotes

Think twice before you speak to a friend in need

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Tags : Ambrose Bierce Quotes , Friendship Quotes , Thinking Quotes

An immaterial but visible being that inhabited the air when the air was an element and before it was fatally polluted with factory smoke, sewer gas and similar products of civilization.

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ORTHOGRAPHY, n. The science of spelling by the eye instead of the ear.

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Income is the natural and rational gauge and measure of respectability.

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A short story padded. A species of composition bearing the same relation to literature that the panorama bears to art. As it is too long to be read at a sitting the impressions made by its successive parts are successively effaced, as in the pa

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Tags : Ambrose Bierce Quotes , Success Quotes , Art Quotes

An absolute monarchy is one in which the sovereign does as he pleases so long as he pleases the assassins.

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Tags : Ambrose Bierce Quotes , Long Quotes , Doe Quotes

TRUCE, n. Friendship.

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GOOSE, n. A bird that supplies quills for writing. These, by some occult process of nature, are penetrated and suffused with various degrees of the bird's intellectual energies and emotional character, so that when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person called an "author," there results a very fair and accurate transcript of the fowl's thought and feeling. The difference in geese, as discovered by this ingenious method, is considerable: many are found to have only trivial and insignificant powers, but some are seen to be very great geese indeed.

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Tags : Ambrose Bierce Quotes , Writing Quotes , Character Quotes

OWE, v. To have (and to hold) a debt. The word formerly signified not indebtedness, but possession; it meant "own," and in the minds of debtors there is still a good deal of confusion between assets and liabilities.

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Tags : Ambrose Bierce Quotes , Confusion Quotes , Confusing Quotes