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

your have no standing here.”

 

Then Justice came. His Honor cried:

“Your status? — devil seize you!”

“Amica curiae,” she replied —

“Friend of the court, so please you.”

“Begone!” he shouted — “there’s the door —

I never saw your face before!”

 

G.J.

 

LAWFUL, adj. Compatible with the will of a judge having jurisdiction.

 

LAWYER, n. One skilled in circumvention of the law.

 

LAZINESS, n. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.

 

LEAD, n. A heavy blue-gray metal much used in giving stability to

light lovers — particularly to those who love not wisely but other

men’s wives. Lead is also of great service as a counterpoise to an

argument of such weight that it turns the scale of debate the wrong

way. An interesting fact in the chemistry of international

controversy is that at the point of contact of two patriotisms lead is

precipitated in great quantities.

 

Hail, holy Lead! — of human feuds the great

And universal arbiter; endowed

With penetration to pierce any cloud

Fogging the field of controversial hate,

And with a sift, inevitable, straight,

Searching precision find the unavowed

But vital point. Thy judgment, when allowed

By the chirurgeon, settles the debate.

O useful metal! — were it not for thee

We’d grapple one another’s ears alway:

But when we hear thee buzzing like a bee

We, like old Muhlenberg, “care not to stay.”

And when the quick have run away like pellets

Jack Satan smelts the dead to make new bullets.

 

LEARNING, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.

 

LECTURER, n. One with his hand in your pocket, his tongue in your ear

and his faith in your patience.

 

LEGACY, n. A gift from one who is legging it out of this vale of

tears.

 

LEONINE, adj. Unlike a menagerie lion. Leonine verses are those in

which a word in the middle of a line rhymes with a word at the end, as

in this famous passage from Bella Peeler Silcox:

 

The electric light invades the dunnest deep of Hades.

Cries Pluto, ‘twixt his snores: “O tempora! O mores!”

 

It should be explained that Mrs. Silcox does not undertake to

teach pronunciation of the Greek and Latin tongues. Leonine verses

are so called in honor of a poet named Leo, whom prosodists appear to

find a pleasure in believing to have been the first to discover that a

rhyming couplet could be run into a single line.

 

LETTUCE, n. An herb of the genus Lactuca, “Wherewith,” says that

pious gastronome, Hengist Pelly, “God has been pleased to reward the

good and punish the wicked. For by his inner light the righteous man

has discerned a manner of compounding for it a dressing to the

appetency whereof a multitude of gustible condiments conspire, being

reconciled and ameliorated with profusion of oil, the entire

comestible making glad the heart of the godly and causing his face to

shine. But the person of spiritual unworth is successfully tempted to

the Adversary to eat of lettuce with destitution of oil, mustard, egg,

salt and garlic, and with a rascal bath of vinegar polluted with

sugar. Wherefore the person of spiritual unworth suffers an

intestinal pang of strange complexity and raises the song.”

 

LEVIATHAN, n. An enormous aquatic animal mentioned by Job. Some

suppose it to have been the whale, but that distinguished

ichthyologer, Dr. Jordan, of Stanford University, maintains with

considerable heat that it was a species of gigantic Tadpole (_Thaddeus

Polandensis_) or Polliwig — Maria pseudo-hirsuta. For an

exhaustive description and history of the Tadpole consult the famous

monograph of Jane Potter, Thaddeus of Warsaw.

 

LEXICOGRAPHER, n. A pestilent fellow who, under the pretense of

recording some particular stage in the development of a language, does

what he can to arrest its growth, stiffen its flexibility and

mechanize its methods. For your lexicographer, having written his

dictionary, comes to be considered “as one having authority,” whereas

his function is only to make a record, not to give a law. The natural

servility of the human understanding having invested him with judicial

power, surrenders its right of reason and submits itself to a

chronicle as if it were a statue. Let the dictionary (for example)

mark a good word as “obsolete” or “obsolescent” and few men

thereafter venture to use it, whatever their need of it and however

desirable its restoration to favor — whereby the process of

impoverishment is accelerated and speech decays. On the contrary,

recognizing the truth that language must grow by innovation if it grow

at all, makes new words and uses the old in an unfamiliar sense, has

no following and is tartly reminded that “it isn’t in the dictionary”

— although down to the time of the first lexicographer (Heaven

forgive him!) no author ever had used a word that was in the

dictionary. In the golden prime and high noon of English speech; when

from the lips of the great Elizabethans fell words that made their own

meaning and carried it in their very sound; when a Shakespeare and a

Bacon were possible, and the language now rapidly perishing at one end

and slowly renewed at the other was in vigorous growth and hardy

preservation — sweeter than honey and stronger than a lion — the

lexicographer was a person unknown, the dictionary a creation which

his Creator had not created him to create.

 

God said: “Let Spirit perish into Form,”

And lexicographers arose, a swarm!

Thought fled and left her clothing, which they took,

And catalogued each garment in a book.

Now, from her leafy covert when she cries:

“Give me my clothes and I’ll return,” they rise

And scan the list, and say without compassion:

“Excuse us — they are mostly out of fashion.”

 

Sigismund Smith

 

LIAR, n. A lawyer with a roving commission.

 

LIBERTY, n. One of Imagination’s most precious possessions.

 

The rising People, hot and out of breath,

Roared around the palace: “Liberty or death!”

“If death will do,” the King said, “let me reign;

You’ll have, I’m sure, no reason to complain.”

 

Martha Braymance

 

LICKSPITTLE, n. A useful functionary, not infrequently found editing

a newspaper. In his character of editor he is closely allied to the

blackmailer by the tie of occasional identity; for in truth the

lickspittle is only the blackmailer under another aspect, although the

latter is frequently found as an independent species. Lickspittling

is more detestable than blackmailing, precisely as the business of a

confidence man is more detestable than that of a highway robber; and

the parallel maintains itself throughout, for whereas few robbers will

cheat, every sneak will plunder if he dare.

 

LIFE, n. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay. We live

in daily apprehension of its loss; yet when lost it is not missed.

The question, “Is life worth living?” has been much discussed;

particularly by those who think it is not, many of whom have written

at great length in support of their view and by careful observance of

the laws of health enjoyed for long terms of years the honors of

successful controversy.

 

“Life’s not worth living, and that’s the truth,”

Carelessly caroled the golden youth.

In manhood still he maintained that view

And held it more strongly the older he grew.

When kicked by a jackass at eighty-three,

“Go fetch me a surgeon at once!” cried he.

 

Han Soper

 

LIGHTHOUSE, n. A tall building on the seashore in which the

government maintains a lamp and the friend of a politician.

 

LIMB, n. The branch of a tree or the leg of an American woman.

 

‘Twas a pair of boots that the lady bought,

And the salesman laced them tight

To a very remarkable height —

Higher, indeed, than I think he ought —

Higher than can be right.

For the Bible declares — but never mind:

It is hardly fit

To censure freely and fault to find

With others for sins that I’m not inclined

Myself to commit.

Each has his weakness, and though my own

Is freedom from every sin,

It still were unfair to pitch in,

Discharging the first censorious stone.

Besides, the truth compels me to say,

The boots in question were made that way.

As he drew the lace she made a grimace,

And blushingly said to him:

“This boot, I’m sure, is too high to endure,

It hurts my — hurts my — limb.”

The salesman smiled in a manner mild,

Like an artless, undesigning child;

Then, checking himself, to his face he gave

A look as sorrowful as the grave,

Though he didn’t care two figs

For her paints and throes,

As he stroked her toes,

Remarking with speech and manner just

Befitting his calling: “Madam, I trust

That it doesn’t hurt your twigs.”

 

B. Percival Dike

 

LINEN, n. “A kind of cloth the making of which, when made of hemp,

entails a great waste of hemp.” — Calcraft the Hangman.

 

LITIGANT, n. A person about to give up his skin for the hope of

retaining his bones.

 

LITIGATION, n. A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of

as a sausage.

 

LIVER, n. A large red organ thoughtfully provided by nature to be

bilious with. The sentiments and emotions which every literary

anatomist now knows to haunt the heart were anciently believed to

infest the liver; and even Gascoygne, speaking of the emotional side

of human nature, calls it “our hepaticall parte.” It was at one time

considered the seat of life; hence its name — liver, the thing we

live with. The liver is heaven’s best gift to the goose; without it

that bird would be unable to supply us with the Strasbourg pate.

 

LL.D. Letters indicating the degree Legumptionorum Doctor, one

learned in laws, gifted with legal gumption. Some suspicion is cast

upon this derivation by the fact that the title was formerly LL.d.,

and conferred only upon gentlemen distinguished for their wealth. At

the date of this writing Columbia University is considering the

expediency of making another degree for clergymen, in place of the old

D.D. — Damnator Diaboli. The new honor will be known as _Sanctorum

Custus_, and written $$c. The name of the Rev. John Satan has been

suggested as a suitable recipient by a lover of consistency, who

points out that Professor Harry Thurston Peck has long enjoyed the

advantage of a degree.

 

LOCK-AND-KEY, n. The distinguishing device of civilization and

enlightenment.

 

LODGER, n. A less popular name for the Second Person of that

delectable newspaper Trinity, the Roomer, the Bedder, and the Mealer.

 

LOGIC, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with

the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. The

basic of logic is the syllogism, consisting of a major and a minor

premise and a conclusion — thus:

Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as

quickly as one man.

Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds;

therefore —

Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.

This may be called the syllogism arithmetical, in which, by

combining logic and mathematics, we obtain a double certainty and are

twice blessed.

 

LOGOMACHY, n. A war in which the weapons are words and the wounds

punctures in the swim-bladder of self-esteem — a kind of contest in

which, the vanquished being unconscious of defeat, the victor is

denied the reward of success.

 

‘Tis said by divers of the scholar-men

That poor Salmasius died of Milton’s pen.

Alas! we cannot know if this is true,

For reading Milton’s wit we perish too.

 

LONGANIMITY, n. The disposition to endure injury with meek forbearance