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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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"Words are the fallen ruins of silent majesty."
"He had been thinking of how landscape moulds a language. It was impossible to imagine these hills giving forth anything but the soft syllables of Irish, just as only certain forms of German could be spoken on the high crags of Europe; or Dutch in the muddy, guttural, phlegmish lowlands."
"And why does he talk so funny? Doesn't he mean squashed tomatoes?I don't think that they had tomatoes when he comes from, said Bod. And that's just how they talk then."
"What's the point of using words nobody knows or can say comfortably?"
"Most of the people who have verbally asserted that 'there is no master of pronounciation' have intentionally made a claim and unintentionally made their claim believable. (It is 'pro-nun-ciation' not 'pro-noun-ciation'.)"
"It is very useful, when one is young, to learn the difference between "literally" and "figuratively." If something happens literally, it actually happens; if something happens figuratively, it feels like it is happening. If you are literally jumping for joy, for instance, it means you are leaping in the air because you are very happy. If you are figuratively jumping for joy, it means you are so happy that you could jump for joy, but are saving your energy for other matters."
Explore more quotes by Ambrose Bierce
"Compromise, n. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction of thinking he has got what he ought not to have, and is deprived of nothing except what was justly his due."
"Admiral. That part of a warship which does the talking while the figurehead does the thinking."
"NIHILIST, n. A Russian who denies the existence of anything but Tolstoi. The leader of the school is Tolstoi."
"I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers. What I said was that all saloonkeepers are Democrats."
"Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain."
"Insurance - an ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table."
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