Ambrose Bierce - Person Quotes

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PILLORY, n. A mechanical device for inflicting personal distinction - prototype of the modern newspaper conducted by persons of austere virtues and blameless lives.

Ambrose Bierce
Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.

Ambrose Bierce
CENTAUR, n. One of a race of persons who lived before the division of labor had been carried to such a pitch of differentiation, and who followed the primitive economic maxim, "Every man his own horse."

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Clairvoyant, n.: A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron - namely, that he is a blockhead.

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Acquaintance, n. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to. A degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous

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Meaning of an acquaintance:
A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.

Ambrose Bierce
RUSSIAN, n. A person with a Caucasian body and a Mongolian soul. A Tartar Emetic.

Ambrose Bierce
Egotist, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.

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Jury, n. A number of persons appointed by a judge to assist the attorneys in preventing law from degenerating into justice.

Ambrose Bierce
HOSPITALITY, n. The virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain persons who are not in need of food and lodging.

Ambrose Bierce
GOOSE, n. A bird that supplies quills for writing. These [quills] when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person called an "author," there results a very fair and accurate transcript of the fowl's thought and feeling.

Ambrose Bierce