The wastefulness of indiscriminate plunder impoverishes a country, while it adds nothing to the support of the army; policy, as well as humanity to the inhabitants, dictates that all levies should be made according to established rules, and under the charge of discreet and competent officers.


Ambrose Burnside

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Impiety. Your irreverence toward my deity.
AMBROSE BIERCE
Deliberation. The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on.
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Take not God's name in vain; select a time when it will have effect.
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A prejudice is a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
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Bigot, one who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
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Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly un...
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Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration t...
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Admiration; is our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
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To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental result.
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A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
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All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.
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A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves a glorious success.
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Peace, in international affairs, is a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.
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Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.
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Optimism. The doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.
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An optimist is a proponent of the doctrine that black is white.
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They say that hens do cackle loudest when there is nothing vital in the eggs they have laid.
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Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
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Heaven lies about us in our infancy and the world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.
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As records of courts and justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolen...
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Before undergoing a surgical operation, arrange your temporal affairs. You may live.
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Politeness -- The most acceptable hypocrisy.
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A man is known by the company he organizes.
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Logic, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapaciti...
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Enthusiasm. A distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward ap...
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Egotist. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than me.
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An egotist is a person interested in himself than in me!
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Duty. That which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire.
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Opiate. An unlocked door in the prison of Identity. It leads into the jail yard.
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Insurance: An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comforta...
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Backbite. To speak of a man as you find him when he can't find you.
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Alien. An American sovereign in his probationary state.
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Miss: A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market. Miss, Mis...
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Witticism. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted and seldom noted; what the Philistine is please...
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Wit. The salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.
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A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man, who has no gills.
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Impartial. Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a cont...
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Dog. A kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the worl...
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