The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce (best english books to read TXT) 📖

his pills so efficacious

And pukes of disposition so vivacious

That souls afflicted with ten kinds of Adam

Were convalescent ere they knew they had ‘em.

But Slander’s tongue — itself all coated — uttered

Her bilious mind and scandalously muttered

That in the case of patients having money

The pills were sugar and the pukes were honey.

 

Biography of Bishop Potter

 

HONORABLE, adj. Afflicted with an impediment in one’s reach. In

legislative bodies it is customary to mention all members as

honorable; as, “the honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur.”

 

HOPE, n. Desire and expectation rolled into one.

 

Delicious Hope! when naught to man it left —

Of fortune destitute, of friends bereft;

When even his dog deserts him, and his goat

With tranquil disaffection chews his coat

While yet it hangs upon his back; then thou,

The star far-flaming on thine angel brow,

Descendest, radiant, from the skies to hint

The promise of a clerkship in the Mint.

 

Fogarty Weffing

 

HOSPITALITY, n. The virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain

persons who are not in need of food and lodging.

 

HOSTILITY, n. A peculiarly sharp and specially applied sense of the

earth’s overpopulation. Hostility is classified as active and

passive; as (respectively) the feeling of a woman for her female

friends, and that which she entertains for all the rest of her sex.

 

HOURI, n. A comely female inhabiting the Mohammedan Paradise to make

things cheery for the good Mussulman, whose belief in her existence

marks a noble discontent with his earthly spouse, whom he denies a

soul. By that good lady the Houris are said to be held in deficient

esteem.

 

HOUSE, n. A hollow edifice erected for the habitation of man, rat,

mouse, beetle, cockroach, fly, mosquito, flea, bacillus and microbe.

House of Correction, a place of reward for political and personal

service, and for the detention of offenders and appropriations.

House of God, a building with a steeple and a mortgage on it.

House-dog, a pestilent beast kept on domestic premises to insult

persons passing by and appal the hardy visitor. House-maid, a

youngerly person of the opposing sex employed to be variously

disagreeable and ingeniously unclean in the station in which it has

pleased God to place her.

 

HOUSELESS, adj. Having paid all taxes on household goods.

 

HOVEL, n. The fruit of a flower called the Palace.

 

Twaddle had a hovel,

Twiddle had a palace;

Twaddle said: “I’ll grovel

Or he’ll think I bear him malice” —

A sentiment as novel

As a castor on a chalice.

 

Down upon the middle

Of his legs fell Twaddle

And astonished Mr. Twiddle,

Who began to lift his noddle.

Feed upon the fiddle—

Faddle flummery, unswaddle

A new-born self-sufficiency and think himself a [mockery.]

 

G.J.

 

HUMANITY, n. The human race, collectively, exclusive of the

anthropoid poets.

 

HUMORIST, n. A plague that would have softened down the hoar

austerity of Pharaoh’s heart and persuaded him to dismiss Israel with

his best wishes, cat-quick.

 

Lo! the poor humorist, whose tortured mind

See jokes in crowds, though still to gloom inclined —

Whose simple appetite, untaught to stray,

His brains, renewed by night, consumes by day.

He thinks, admitted to an equal sty,

A graceful hog would bear his company.

 

Alexander Poke

 

HURRICANE, n. An atmospheric demonstration once very common but now

generally abandoned for the tornado and cyclone. The hurricane is

still in popular use in the West Indies and is preferred by certain

old-fashioned sea-captains. It is also used in the construction of

the upper decks of steamboats, but generally speaking, the hurricane’s

usefulness has outlasted it.

 

HURRY, n. The dispatch of bunglers.

 

HUSBAND, n. One who, having dined, is charged with the care of the

plate.

 

HYBRID, n. A pooled issue.

 

HYDRA, n. A kind of animal that the ancients catalogued under many

heads.

 

HYENA, n. A beast held in reverence by some oriental nations from its

habit of frequenting at night the burial-places of the dead. But the

medical student does that.

 

HYPOCHONDRIASIS, n. Depression of one’s own spirits.

 

Some heaps of trash upon a vacant lot

Where long the village rubbish had been shot

Displayed a sign among the stuff and stumps —

“Hypochondriasis.” It meant The Dumps.

 

Bogul S. Purvy

 

HYPOCRITE, n. One who, profession virtues that he does not respect

secures the advantage of seeming to be what he despises.

I

I is the first letter of the alphabet, the first word of the language,

the first thought of the mind, the first object of affection. In

grammar it is a pronoun of the first person and singular number. Its

plural is said to be We, but how there can be more than one myself

is doubtless clearer the grammarians than it is to the author of this

incomparable dictionary. Conception of two myselfs is difficult, but

fine. The frank yet graceful use of “I” distinguishes a good writer

from a bad; the latter carries it with the manner of a thief trying to

cloak his loot.

 

ICHOR, n. A fluid that serves the gods and goddesses in place of

blood.

 

Fair Venus, speared by Diomed,

Restrained the raging chief and said:

“Behold, rash mortal, whom you’ve bled —

Your soul’s stained white with ichorshed!”

 

Mary Doke

 

ICONOCLAST, n. A breaker of idols, the worshipers whereof are

imperfectly gratified by the performance, and most strenuously protest

that he unbuildeth but doth not reedify, that he pulleth down but

pileth not up. For the poor things would have other idols in place of

those he thwacketh upon the mazzard and dispelleth. But the

iconoclast saith: “Ye shall have none at all, for ye need them not;

and if the rebuilder fooleth round hereabout, behold I will depress

the head of him and sit thereon till he squawk it.”

 

IDIOT, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in

human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. The Idiot’s

activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action,

but “pervades and regulates the whole.” He has the last word in

everything; his decision is unappealable. He sets the fashions and

opinion of taste, dictates the limitations of speech and circumscribes

conduct with a dead-line.

 

IDLENESS, n. A model farm where the devil experiments with seeds of

new sins and promotes the growth of staple vices.

 

IGNORAMUS, n. A person unacquainted with certain kinds of knowledge

familiar to yourself, and having certain other kinds that you know

nothing about.

 

Dumble was an ignoramus,

Mumble was for learning famous.

Mumble said one day to Dumble:

“Ignorance should be more humble.

Not a spark have you of knowledge

That was got in any college.”

Dumble said to Mumble: “Truly

You’re self-satisfied unduly.

Of things in college I’m denied

A knowledge — you of all beside.”

 

Borelli

 

ILLUMINATI, n. A sect of Spanish heretics of the latter part of the

sixteenth century; so called because they were light weights —

cunctationes illuminati.

 

ILLUSTRIOUS, adj. Suitably placed for the shafts of malice, envy and

detraction.

 

IMAGINATION, n. A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint

ownership.

 

IMBECILITY, n. A kind of divine inspiration, or sacred fire affecting

censorious critics of this dictionary.

 

IMMIGRANT, n. An unenlightened person who thinks one country better

than another.

 

IMMODEST, adj. Having a strong sense of one’s own merit, coupled with

a feeble conception of worth in others.

 

There was once a man in Ispahan

Ever and ever so long ago,

And he had a head, the phrenologists said,

That fitted him for a show.

 

For his modesty’s bump was so large a lump

(Nature, they said, had taken a freak)

That its summit stood far above the wood

Of his hair, like a mountain peak.

 

So modest a man in all Ispahan,

Over and over again they swore —

So humble and meek, you would vainly seek;

None ever was found before.

 

Meantime the hump of that awful bump

Into the heavens contrived to get

To so great a height that they called the wight

The man with the minaret.

 

There wasn’t a man in all Ispahan

Prouder, or louder in praise of his chump:

With a tireless tongue and a brazen lung

He bragged of that beautiful bump

 

Till the Shah in a rage sent a trusty page

Bearing a sack and a bow-string too,

And that gentle child explained as he smiled:

“A little present for you.”

 

The saddest man in all Ispahan,

Sniffed at the gift, yet accepted the same.

“If I’d lived,” said he, “my humility

Had given me deathless fame!”

 

Sukker Uffro

 

IMMORAL, adj. Inexpedient. Whatever in the long run and with regard

to the greater number of instances men find to be generally

inexpedient comes to be considered wrong, wicked, immoral. If man’s

notions of right and wrong have any other basis than this of

expediency; if they originated, or could have originated, in any other

way; if actions have in themselves a moral character apart from, and

nowise dependent on, their consequences — then all philosophy is a

lie and reason a disorder of the mind.

 

IMMORTALITY, n.

 

A toy which people cry for,

And on their knees apply for,

Dispute, contend and lie for,

And if allowed

Would be right proud

Eternally to die for.

 

G.J.

 

IMPALE, v.t. In popular usage to pierce with any weapon which remains

fixed in the wound. This, however, is inaccurate; to impale is,

properly, to put to death by thrusting an upright sharp stake into the

body, the victim being left in a sitting position. This was a common

mode of punishment among many of the nations of antiquity, and is

still in high favor in China and other parts of Asia. Down to the

beginning of the fifteenth century it was widely employed in

“churching” heretics and schismatics. Wolecraft calls it the “stoole

of repentynge,” and among the common people it was jocularly known as

“riding the one legged horse.” Ludwig Salzmann informs us that in

Thibet impalement is considered the most appropriate punishment for

crimes against religion; and although in China it is sometimes awarded

for secular offences, it is most frequently adjudged in cases of

sacrilege. To the person in actual experience of impalement it must

be a matter of minor importance by what kind of civil or religious

dissent he was made acquainted with its discomforts; but doubtless he

would feel a certain satisfaction if able to contemplate himself in

the character of a weather-cock on the spire of the True Church.

 

IMPARTIAL, adj. Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage

from espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two

conflicting opinions.

 

IMPENITENCE, n. A state of mind intermediate in point of time between

sin and punishment.

 

IMPIETY, n. Your irreverence toward my deity.

 

IMPOSITION, n. The act of blessing or consecrating by the laying on

of hands — a ceremony common to many ecclesiastical systems, but

performed with the frankest sincerity by the sect known as Thieves.

 

“Lo! by the laying on of hands,”

Say parson, priest and dervise,

“We consecrate your cash and lands

To ecclesiastical service.

No doubt you’ll swear till all is blue

At such an imposition. Do.”

 

Pollo Doncas

 

IMPOSTOR n. A rival aspirant to public honors.

 

IMPROBABILITY, n.

 

His tale he told with a solemn face

And a tender, melancholy grace.

Improbable ‘twas, no doubt,

When you came to think it out,

But the fascinated crowd

Their deep surprise avowed

And all with a single voice averred

‘Twas the most amazing thing they’d