Ambrose Bierce Quotes, Expression Quotes, Land Quotes

POETRY, n. A form of expression peculiar to the Land beyond the Magazines.

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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

REPARTEE, n. Prudent insult in retort. Practiced by gentlemen with a constitutional aversion to violence, but a strong disposition to offend. In a war of words, the tactics of the North American Indian.

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If you want to read a perfect book there is only one way: write it.

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IMPENITENCE, n. A state of mind intermediate in point of time between sin and punishment.

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To be comic is merely to be playful, but wit is a serious matter. To laugh at it is to confess that you do not understand.

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At war with savages and idiots. To be a Frenchman abroad is to be miserable; to be an American abroad is to make others miserable.

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IMPALE, v.t. In popular usage, to pierce with any weapon which remains fixed in the wound . . . . properly, to put to death by thrusting an upright sharp stake into the body, the victim being left in a sitting position.

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NEPOTISM, n. Appointing your grandmother to office for the good of the party.

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LAOCOON, n. A famous piece of antique scripture representing a priest of that name and his two sons in the folds of two enormous serpents. The skill and diligence with which the old man and lads support the serpents and keep them up to their work have been justly regarded as one of the noblest artistic illustrations of the mastery of human intelligence over brute inertia.

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Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.

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A hollow edifice erected for the habitation of man, rat, mouse, beetle, cockroach, fly, mosquito, flea, bacillus, and microbe.

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PLATITUDE, n. The fundamental element and special glory of popular literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. All that is mortal of a departed truth. A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the sea of thought. A desiccated epigram.

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Contempt; the feeling of a prudent man for an enemy who is too formidable safely to be opposed.

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Age is provident because the less future we have the more we fear it.

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A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced.

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NOTORIETY, n. The fame of one's competitor for public honors. The kind of renown most accessible and acceptable to mediocrity. A Jacob's-ladder leading to the vaudeville stage, with angels ascending and descending.

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hybrid, n. A pooled issue.

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PRESENTABLE, adj. Hideously appareled after the manner of the time and place.

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TECHNICALITY, n. In an English court a man named Home was tried for slander in having accused his neighbor of murder. His exact words were: "Sir Thomas Holt hath taken a cleaver and stricken his cook upon the head, so that one side of the head fell upon one shoulder and the other side upon the other shoulder." The defendant was acquitted by instruction of the court, the learned judges holding that the words did not charge murder, for they did not affirm the death of the cook, that being only an inference.

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Tags : Ambrose Bierce Quotes , Taken Quotes , Home Quotes