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Quotations by Ambrose Bierce

749 sayings with source references.

LAP: One of the most important organs of the female system—an admirable provision of nature for the repose of infancy, but chiefly useful in rural festivities to support plates of cold chicken and heads of adult males. The male of our species has a rudimentary lap, imperfectly developed and in no way contributing to the animal's substantial welfare.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · LAP

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PORTUGUESE: A species of geese indigenous to Portugal. They are mostly without feathers and imperfectly edible, even when stuffed with garlic.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · PORTUGUESE

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MONAD: The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. (See Molecule.) According to Leibnitz, as nearly as he seems willing to be understood, the monad has body without bulk, and mind without manifestation—Leibnitz knows him by the innate power of considering. He has founded upon him a theory of the universe, which the creature bears without resentment, for the monad is a gentleman. Small as he is, the monad contains all the powers and possibilities needful to his evolution into a German philosopher of the first class —altogether a very capable little fellow. He is not to be confounded with the microbe, or bacillus; by its inability to discern him, a good microscope shows him to be of an entirely distinct species.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · MONAD

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BELLADONNA: In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · BELLADONNA

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FOOL: A person who pervades the domain of intellectual speculation and diffuses himself through the channels of moral activity. He is omnific, omniform, omnipercipient, omniscient, omnipotent. He it was who invented letters, printing, the railroad, the steamboat, the telegraph, the platitude and the circle of the sciences. He created patriotism and taught the nations war—founded theology, philosophy, law, medicine and Chicago. He established monarchical and republican government. He is from everlasting to everlasting—such as creation's dawn beheld he fooleth now. In the morning of time he sang upon primitive hills, and in the noonday of existence headed the procession of being. His grandmotherly hand was warmly tucked-in the set sun of civilization, and in the twilight he prepares Man's evening meal of milk-and-morality and turns down the covers of the universal grave. And after the rest of us shall have retired for the night of eternal oblivion he will sit up to write a history of human civilization.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · FOOL

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POSTERITY: An appellate court which reverses the judgment of a popular author's contemporaries, the appellant being his obscure competitor.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · POSTERITY

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FREEMASONS: An order with secret rites, grotesque ceremonies and fantastic costumes, which, originating in the reign of Charles II, among working artisans of London, has been joined successively by the dead of past centuries in unbroken retrogression until now it embraces all the generations of man on the hither side of Adam and is drumming up distinguished recruits among the pre-Creational inhabitants of Chaos and Formless Void. The order was founded at different times by Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Cyrus, Solomon, Zoroaster, Confucious, Thothmes, and Buddha. Its emblems and symbols have been found in the Catacombs of Paris and Rome, on the stones of the Parthenon and the Chinese Great Wall, among the temples of Karnak and Palmyra and in the Egyptian Pyramids—always by a Freemason.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · FREEMASONS

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QUILL: An implement of torture yielded by a goose and commonly wielded by an ass. This use of the quill is now obsolete, but its modern equivalent, the steel pen, is wielded by the same everlasting Presence.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · QUILL

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POLITICIAN: An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When he wriggles he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · POLITICIAN

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ARTLESSNESS: A certain engaging quality to which women attain by long study and severe practice upon the admiring male, who is pleased to fancy it resembles the candid simplicity of his young.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · ARTLESSNESS

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PANTALOONS: A nether habiliment of the adult civilized male. The garment is tubular and unprovided with hinges at the points of flexion. Supposed to have been invented by a humorist. Called "trousers" by the enlightened and "pants" by the unworthy.

Ambrose Bierce · Il dizionario del diavolo · The Devil’s Dictionary · PANTALOONS

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