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Ambrose Bierce (1842 – 1913)


American satirist, critic, short story writer, editor and journalist.
Ambrose Bierce
Amnesty, n. The state’s magnaminity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.
Bierce quotes
Dictionary, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.
Bierce
Abstainer, n. A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.




Bierce Ambrose quotes
Pray, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
Bierce Ambrose
Accord, n. Harmony.
Ambrose Bierce quotes
The most offensive egotist is he that fears to say "I" and "me." "It will probably rain "—that is dogmatic. "I think it will rain"—that is natural and modest. Montaigne is the most delightful of essayists because so great is his humility that he does not think it important that we see not Montaigne. He so forgets himself that he employs no artifice to make us forget him.
Ambrose Bierce
Prejudice, n. A vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
Bierce Ambrose quotes
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.
Bierce
Egotist, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
Bierce Ambrose
Freebooter, n. A conqueror in a small way of business, whose annexations lack of the sanctifying merit of magnitude.
Ambrose Bierce
Convictions are variable; to be always consistent is to be sometimes dishonest.




Ambrose Bierce quotes
Generous, adj. Originally this word meant noble by birth and was rightly applied to a great multitude of persons. It now means noble by nature and is taking a bit of a rest.
Ambrose Bierce
The palmist looks at the wrinkles made by closing the hand and says they signify character. The philosopher reads character by what the hand most loves to close upon.
Bierce quotes
Success, n. The one unpardonable sin against one's fellows.
Bierce Ambrose
Rational, adj. Devoid of all delusions save those of observation, experience and reflection.
Bierce Ambrose quotes
Boundary, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of the other.
Ambrose Bierce
To the eye of failure success is an accident.
Ambrose Bierce quotes
Bacchus, n. A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.
Ambrose Bierce
Logic, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.
Bierce Ambrose
Dawn, n. The time when men of reason go to bed. Certain old men prefer to rise at about that time, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach, and otherwise mortifying the flesh.


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