Ambrose Bierce Quotes

I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.

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ABNORMAL, adj. Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested. Wherefore the lexicographer adviseth a striving toward the straiter [sic] resemblance of the Average Man than he hath to himself. Whoso attaineth thereto shall have peace, the prospect of death and the hope of Hell.

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ADDER, n. A species of snake. So called from its habit of adding funeral outlays to the other expenses of living.

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QUORUM, n. A sufficient number of members of a deliberative body to have their own way and their own way of having it. In the U.S. Senate a quorum consists of the chairman of the Committee on Finance and a messenger from the White House.

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PERORATION, n. The explosion of an oratorical rocket. It dazzles, but to an observer having the wrong kind of nose its most conspicuous peculiarity is the smell of the several kinds of powder used in preparing it.

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Houseless: Having paid all taxes on household goods.

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Hurry n: The dispatch of bunglers.

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San Francisco is the place where most people were last seen

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

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REVIEW, v.t. To set your wisdom (holding not a doubt of it./ Although in truth there's neither bone nor skin to it)/ At work upon a book, and so read out of it/ The qualities that you have first read into it.

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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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That part of your friend which it is your privilege to contemplate in your adversity

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A modern school where football is taught.

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International arbitration may be defined as the substitution of many burning questions for a smoldering one

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PLUNDER, v. To take the property of another without observing the decent and customary reticences of theft. To wrest the wealth of A from B and leave C lamenting a vanishing opportunity.

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The bold and discerning writer who, recognizing the truth that language must grow by innovation if it grow at all, makes new words and uses the old in an unfamiliar sense has no following and is tartly reminded that 'it isn't in the dictionary' - although down to the time of the first lexicographer no author ever had used a word that was in the dictionary.

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OYSTER, n. A slimy, gobby shellfish which civilization gives men the hardihood to eat without removing its entrails! The shells are sometimes given to the poor.

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The clarinet is a musical instrument the only thing worse than which is two.

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Rhubarb: essence of stomach ache.

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Prejudice - a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.

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