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

were as stubborn as a mule

Who, God unwilling, could maintain an hour

His uninvited session on the throne, or air

His pride securely in the Presidential chair.

 

Whatever is is so by Right Divine;

Whate’er occurs, God wills it so. Good land!

It were a wondrous thing if His design

A fool could baffle or a rogue withstand!

If so, then God, I say (intending no offence)

Is guilty of contributory negligence.

 

RIGHTEOUSNESS, n. A sturdy virtue that was once found among the

Pantidoodles inhabiting the lower part of the peninsula of Oque. Some

feeble attempts were made by returned missionaries to introduce it

into several European countries, but it appears to have been

imperfectly expounded. An example of this faulty exposition is found

in the only extant sermon of the pious Bishop Rowley, a characteristic

passage from which is here given:

 

“Now righteousness consisteth not merely in a holy state of

mind, nor yet in performance of religious rites and obedience to

the letter of the law. It is not enough that one be pious and

just: one must see to it that others also are in the same state;

and to this end compulsion is a proper means. Forasmuch as my

injustice may work ill to another, so by his injustice may evil be

wrought upon still another, the which it is as manifestly my duty

to estop as to forestall mine own tort. Wherefore if I would be

righteous I am bound to restrain my neighbor, by force if needful,

in all those injurious enterprises from which, through a better

disposition and by the help of Heaven, I do myself restrain.”

 

RIME, n. Agreeing sounds in the terminals of verse, mostly bad. The

verses themselves, as distinguished from prose, mostly dull. Usually

(and wickedly) spelled “rhyme.”

 

RIMER, n. A poet regarded with indifference or disesteem.

 

The rimer quenches his unheeded fires,

The sound surceases and the sense expires.

Then the domestic dog, to east and west,

Expounds the passions burning in his breast.

The rising moon o’er that enchanted land

Pauses to hear and yearns to understand.

 

Mowbray Myles

 

RIOT, n. A popular entertainment given to the military by innocent

bystanders.

 

R.I.P. A careless abbreviation of requiescat in pace, attesting to

indolent goodwill to the dead. According to the learned Dr. Drigge,

however, the letters originally meant nothing more than _reductus in

pulvis_.

 

RITE, n. A religious or semi-religious ceremony fixed by law, precept

or custom, with the essential oil of sincerity carefully squeezed out

of it.

 

RITUALISM, n. A Dutch Garden of God where He may walk in rectilinear

freedom, keeping off the grass.

 

ROAD, n. A strip of land along which one may pass from where it is

too tiresome to be to where it is futile to go.

 

All roads, howsoe’er they diverge, lead to Rome,

Whence, thank the good Lord, at least one leads back home.

 

Borey the Bald

 

ROBBER, n. A candid man of affairs.

It is related of Voltaire that one night he and some traveling

companion lodged at a wayside inn. The surroundings were suggestive,

and after supper they agreed to tell robber stories in turn. “Once

there was a Farmer-General of the Revenues.” Saying nothing more, he

was encouraged to continue. “That,” he said, “is the story.”

 

ROMANCE, n. Fiction that owes no allegiance to the God of Things as

They Are. In the novel the writer’s thought is tethered to

probability, as a domestic horse to the hitching-post, but in romance

it ranges at will over the entire region of the imagination — free,

lawless, immune to bit and rein. Your novelist is a poor creature, as

Carlyle might say — a mere reporter. He may invent his characters

and plot, but he must not imagine anything taking place that might not

occur, albeit his entire narrative is candidly a lie. Why he imposes

this hard condition on himself, and “drags at each remove a

lengthening chain” of his own forging he can explain in ten thick

volumes without illuminating by so much as a candle’s ray the black

profound of his own ignorance of the matter. There are great novels,

for great writers have “laid waste their powers” to write them, but it

remains true that far and away the most fascinating fiction that we

have is “The Thousand and One Nights.”

 

ROPE, n. An obsolescent appliance for reminding assassins that they

too are mortal. It is put about the neck and remains in place one’s

whole life long. It has been largely superseded by a more complex

electrical device worn upon another part of the person; and this is

rapidly giving place to an apparatus known as the preachment.

 

ROSTRUM, n. In Latin, the beak of a bird or the prow of a ship. In

America, a place from which a candidate for office energetically

expounds the wisdom, virtue and power of the rabble.

 

ROUNDHEAD, n. A member of the Parliamentarian party in the English

civil war — so called from his habit of wearing his hair short,

whereas his enemy, the Cavalier, wore his long. There were other

points of difference between them, but the fashion in hair was the

fundamental cause of quarrel. The Cavaliers were royalists because

the king, an indolent fellow, found it more convenient to let his hair

grow than to wash his neck. This the Roundheads, who were mostly

barbers and soap-boilers, deemed an injury to trade, and the royal

neck was therefore the object of their particular indignation.

Descendants of the belligerents now wear their hair all alike, but the

fires of animosity enkindled in that ancient strife smoulder to this

day beneath the snows of British civility.

 

RUBBISH, n. Worthless matter, such as the religions, philosophies,

literatures, arts and sciences of the tribes infesting the regions

lying due south from Boreaplas.

 

RUIN, v. To destroy. Specifically, to destroy a maid’s belief in the

virtue of maids.

 

RUM, n. Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total

abstainers.

 

RUMOR, n. A favorite weapon of the assassins of character.

 

Sharp, irresistible by mail or shield,

By guard unparried as by flight unstayed,

O serviceable Rumor, let me wield

Against my enemy no other blade.

His be the terror of a foe unseen,

His the inutile hand upon the hilt,

And mine the deadly tongue, long, slender, keen,

Hinting a rumor of some ancient guilt.

So shall I slay the wretch without a blow,

Spare me to celebrate his overthrow,

And nurse my valor for another foe.

 

Joel Buxter

 

RUSSIAN, n. A person with a Caucasian body and a Mongolian soul. A

Tartar Emetic.

S

SABBATH, n. A weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God

made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh. Among the

Jews observance of the day was enforced by a Commandment of which this

is the Christian version: “Remember the seventh day to make thy

neighbor keep it wholly.” To the Creator it seemed fit and expedient

that the Sabbath should be the last day of the week, but the Early

Fathers of the Church held other views. So great is the sanctity of

the day that even where the Lord holds a doubtful and precarious

jurisdiction over those who go down to (and down into) the sea it is

reverently recognized, as is manifest in the following deep-water

version of the Fourth Commandment:

 

Six days shalt thou labor and do all thou art able,

And on the seventh holystone the deck and scrape the cable.

 

Decks are no longer holystoned, but the cable still supplies the

captain with opportunity to attest a pious respect for the divine

ordinance.

 

SACERDOTALIST, n. One who holds the belief that a clergyman is a

priest. Denial of this momentous doctrine is the hardest challenge

that is now flung into the teeth of the Episcopalian church by the

Neo-Dictionarians.

 

SACRAMENT, n. A solemn religious ceremony to which several degrees of

authority and significance are attached. Rome has seven sacraments,

but the Protestant churches, being less prosperous, feel that they can

afford only two, and these of inferior sanctity. Some of the smaller

sects have no sacraments at all — for which mean economy they will

indubitable be damned.

 

SACRED, adj. Dedicated to some religious purpose; having a divine

character; inspiring solemn thoughts or emotions; as, the Dalai Lama

of Thibet; the Moogum of M’bwango; the temple of Apes in Ceylon; the

Cow in India; the Crocodile, the Cat and the Onion of ancient Egypt;

the Mufti of Moosh; the hair of the dog that bit Noah, etc.

 

All things are either sacred or profane.

The former to ecclesiasts bring gain;

The latter to the devil appertain.

 

Dumbo Omohundro

 

SANDLOTTER, n. A vertebrate mammal holding the political views of

Denis Kearney, a notorious demagogue of San Francisco, whose audiences

gathered in the open spaces (sandlots) of the town. True to the

traditions of his species, this leader of the proletariat was finally

bought off by his law-and-order enemies, living prosperously silent

and dying impenitently rich. But before his treason he imposed upon

California a constitution that was a confection of sin in a diction of

solecisms. The similarity between the words “sandlotter” and

“sansculotte” is problematically significant, but indubitably

suggestive.

 

SAFETY-CLUTCH, n. A mechanical device acting automatically to prevent

the fall of an elevator, or cage, in case of an accident to the

hoisting apparatus.

 

Once I seen a human ruin

In an elevator-well,

And his members was bestrewin’

All the place where he had fell.

 

And I says, apostrophisin’

That uncommon woful wreck:

“Your position’s so surprisin’

That I tremble for your neck!”

 

Then that ruin, smilin’ sadly

And impressive, up and spoke:

“Well, I wouldn’t tremble badly,

For it’s been a fortnight broke.”

 

Then, for further comprehension

Of his attitude, he begs

I will focus my attention

On his various arms and legs —

 

How they all are contumacious;

Where they each, respective, lie;

How one trotter proves ungracious,

T’other one an alibi.

 

These particulars is mentioned

For to show his dismal state,

Which I wasn’t first intentioned

To specifical relate.

 

None is worser to be dreaded

That I ever have heard tell

Than the gent’s who there was spreaded

In that elevator-well.

 

Now this tale is allegoric —

It is figurative all,

For the well is metaphoric

And the feller didn’t fall.

 

I opine it isn’t moral

For a writer-man to cheat,

And despise to wear a laurel

As was gotten by deceit.

 

For ‘tis Politics intended

By the elevator, mind,

It will boost a person splendid

If his talent is the kind.

 

Col. Bryan had the talent

(For the busted man is him)

And it shot him up right gallant

Till his head begun to swim.

 

Then the rope it broke above him

And he painful come to earth

Where there’s nobody to love him

For his detrimented worth.

 

Though he’s livin’ none would know him,

Or at leastwise not as such.

Moral of this woful poem:

Frequent oil your safety-clutch.

 

Porfer Poog

 

SAINT, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.

The Duchess of Orleans relates that the irreverent old

calumniator, Marshal Villeroi, who in his youth had known St. Francis

de Sales, said, on hearing him called saint: “I am delighted to hear

that Monsieur de Sales is a saint. He was fond of saying indelicate

things, and used to cheat at cards. In other respects he was a

perfect gentleman, though a fool.”

 

SALACITY, n. A certain literary quality frequently observed in

popular novels, especially in those written by women and young girls,

who give it another name and think that in introducing