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~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 . . .
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-Ambrose Bierce
The Devil's Dictionary, 1906
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~BELLADONNA, n. In Italian
a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the
essential identity of the two tongues.
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-Ambrose Bierce
The Devil's Dictionary, 1906
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Bigamist: a guy who wants to keep two himself.
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-Unknown
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Capital punishment: them without the capital get
the punishment.
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-John Spenkelink, electrocuted May 25, 1979
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~CAT, n. A soft,
indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong
in the domestic circle.
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-Ambrose Bierce
The Devil's Dictionary, 1906
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~FAITH, n. Belief without
evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without
parallel.
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-Ambrose Bierce
The Devil's Dictionary, 1906
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*The most dangerous thing in
the world is a definition which is not specific, not objective, but open to
the arbitrary interpretation of anyone who wishes to use it.
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-Ayn Rand
Private correspondence Linda Lynneberg (a friend), April 17,1947
Letters of Ayn Rand, 1995
Chapter 6, "The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged Years (1945-1959)"
Michael S. Berliner, ed.
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Hangover: The wrath of grapes.
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-Unknown
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~IDIOT, n. A member of a
large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been
dominant and controlling.
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-Ambrose Bierce
The Devil's Dictionary, 1906
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Lawyer: Individual whose principal role is to
protect his clients from other members of his own profession.
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-Unknown
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Man--a creature made at the end of the week's
work when God was tired.
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-Mark Twain
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MilliHelen: The amount of beauty needed to
launch one ship.
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-Unknown
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Nation, n. A society united by its ancestry
and a common hatred of its neighbors.
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-W.R. Inge
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~PHILOSOPHY, n. A route of
many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
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-Ambrose Bierce
The Devil's Dictionary, 1906
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~POLITICIAN, n. An eel in
the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is
reared. When we 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.
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-Ambrose Bierce
The Devil's Dictionary, 1906
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~POSITIVE, adj. Mistaken
at the top of one's voice.
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-Ambrose Bierce
The Devil's Dictionary, 1906
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Psychiatrist--a person who pulls habits out
of rats.
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-Douglas Bush
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~QUOTATION, n. The act of
repeating erroneously the words of another. The words erroneously repeated.
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-Ambrose Bierce
The Devil's Dictionary, 1906
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~RELIGION, n. A daughter of
Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
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-Ambrose Bierce
The Devil's Dictionary, 1906
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~SCRIPTURES, n. The sacred
books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane
writings on which all other faiths are based.
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-Ambrose Bierce
The Devil's Dictionary, 1906
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~TRUTH, n. An ingenious
compound of desirability and appearance. Discovery of truth is the sole
purpose of philosophy, which is the most ancient occupation of the human mind
and has a fair prospect of existing with increasing activity to the end of
time.
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-Ambrose Bierce
The Devil's Dictionary, 1906
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Technology . . .the knack of arranging the
world so that we don't have to experience it.
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-Max Frisch
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A word is not a crystal, transparent and
unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought, and may vary greatly in color
and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used.
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-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Opinion, Towne v. Eisner, January 7, 1918
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Paradoxes result only from an ambiguity in
human language. Paradoxes are simply resolved by fine-tuning the definitions.
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-Eli Khamarov
The Limits of Language
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