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Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.

Ambrose Bierce

Laughter, n. An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarticulate noises. It is infectious and, though intermittent, incurable.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Company Interior Laughter Noise
REALISM, n. The art of depicting nature as it is seem by toads. The charm suffusing a landscape painted by a mole, or a story written by a measuring-worm.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Art Charm Measurement Nature Worm
Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Drive Slave Substitute
Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Machine Technology Transformation
I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Myself Reputation Thinking
PAIN, n. An uncomfortable frame of mind that may have a physical basis in something that is being done to the body, or may be purely mental, caused by the good fortune of another.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Body Fortune Goodness Purity Uncomfortable
Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Device Profit Responsibility
MIND, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavour to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Brain Fact Himself Mindset Mysterious Nature
Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Death Money Person Praise Wealth
Forgetfulness – a gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Conscience Destitution Forget Gift God
Riot – A popular entertainment given to the military by innocent bystanders.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Entertainment Innocent Military Popular
Women of genius commonly have masculine faces, figures and manners. In transplanting brains to an alien soil God leaves a little of the original earth clinging to the roots.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Appearance Earth Face Genius God Leaving Nature Original Root Woman
Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Happiness Temptation Weakness
Labor is one of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Labor Pregnant Property
Responsibility, n. A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one’s neighbor. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Astrology Custom Easy Fate God Responsibility
LAWYER, n. One skilled in circumvention of the law.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Law Oneself Skills

Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.

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Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.

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