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

metal, she the stone,

Had cherished secretly alone.

 

Booley Fito

 

ALTAR, n. The place whereupon the priest formerly raveled out the

small intestine of the sacrificial victim for purposes of divination

and cooked its flesh for the gods. The word is now seldom used,

except with reference to the sacrifice of their liberty and peace by a

male and a female tool.

 

They stood before the altar and supplied

The fire themselves in which their fat was fried.

In vain the sacrifice! — no god will claim

An offering burnt with an unholy flame.

 

M.P. Nopput

 

AMBIDEXTROUS, adj. Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket

or a left.

 

AMBITION, n. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while

living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.

 

AMNESTY, n. The state’s magnanimity to those offenders whom it would

be too expensive to punish.

 

ANOINT, v.t. To grease a king or other great functionary already

sufficiently slippery.

 

As sovereigns are anointed by the priesthood,

So pigs to lead the populace are greased good.

 

Judibras

 

ANTIPATHY, n. The sentiment inspired by one’s friend’s friend.

 

APHORISM, n. Predigested wisdom.

 

The flabby wine-skin of his brain

Yields to some pathologic strain,

And voids from its unstored abysm

The driblet of an aphorism.

 

“The Mad Philosopher,” 1697

 

APOLOGIZE, v.i. To lay the foundation for a future offence.

 

APOSTATE, n. A leech who, having penetrated the shell of a turtle

only to find that the creature has long been dead, deems it expedient

to form a new attachment to a fresh turtle.

 

APOTHECARY, n. The physician’s accomplice, undertaker’s benefactor

and grave worm’s provider.

 

When Jove sent blessings to all men that are,

And Mercury conveyed them in a jar,

That friend of tricksters introduced by stealth

Disease for the apothecary’s health,

Whose gratitude impelled him to proclaim:

“My deadliest drug shall bear my patron’s name!”

 

G.J.

 

APPEAL, v.t. In law, to put the dice into the box for another throw.

 

APPETITE, n. An instinct thoughtfully implanted by Providence as a

solution to the labor question.

 

APPLAUSE, n. The echo of a platitude.

 

APRIL FOOL, n. The March fool with another month added to his folly.

 

ARCHBISHOP, n. An ecclesiastical dignitary one point holier than a

bishop.

 

If I were a jolly archbishop,

On Fridays I’d eat all the fish up —

Salmon and flounders and smelts;

On other days everything else.

 

Jodo Rem

 

ARCHITECT, n. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft

of your money.

 

ARDOR, n. The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.

 

ARENA, n. In politics, an imaginary rat-pit in which the statesman

wrestles with his record.

 

ARISTOCRACY, n. Government by the best men. (In this sense the word

is obsolete; so is that kind of government.) Fellows that wear downy

hats and clean shirts — guilty of education and suspected of bank

accounts.

 

ARMOR, n. The kind of clothing worn by a man whose tailor is a

blacksmith.

 

ARRAYED, pp. Drawn up and given an orderly disposition, as a rioter

hanged to a lamppost.

 

ARREST, v.t. Formally to detain one accused of unusualness.

 

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

 

The Unauthorized Version

 

ARSENIC, n. A kind of cosmetic greatly affected by the ladies, whom

it greatly affects in turn.

 

“Eat arsenic? Yes, all you get,”

Consenting, he did speak up;

“‘Tis better you should eat it, pet,

Than put it in my teacup.”

 

Joel Huck

 

ART, n. This word has no definition. Its origin is related as

follows by the ingenious Father Gassalasca Jape, S.J.

 

One day a wag — what would the wretch be at? —

Shifted a letter of the cipher RAT,

And said it was a god’s name! Straight arose

Fantastic priests and postulants (with shows,

And mysteries, and mummeries, and hymns,

And disputations dire that lamed their limbs)

To serve his temple and maintain the fires,

Expound the law, manipulate the wires.

Amazed, the populace that rites attend,

Believe whate’er they cannot comprehend,

And, inly edified to learn that two

Half-hairs joined so and so (as Art can do)

Have sweeter values and a grace more fit

Than Nature’s hairs that never have been split,

Bring cates and wines for sacrificial feasts,

And sell their garments to support the priests.

 

ARTLESSNESS, n. A certain engaging quality to which women attain by

long study and severe practice upon the admiring male, who is pleased

to fancy it resembles the candid simplicity of his young.

 

ASPERSE, v.t. Maliciously to ascribe to another vicious actions which

one has not had the temptation and opportunity to commit.

 

ASS, n. A public singer with a good voice but no ear. In Virginia

City, Nevada, he is called the Washoe Canary, in Dakota, the Senator,

and everywhere the Donkey. The animal is widely and variously

celebrated in the literature, art and religion of every age and

country; no other so engages and fires the human imagination as this

noble vertebrate. Indeed, it is doubted by some (Ramasilus, _lib.

II., De Clem._, and C. Stantatus, De Temperamente) if it is not a

god; and as such we know it was worshiped by the Etruscans, and, if we

may believe Macrobious, by the Cupasians also. Of the only two

animals admitted into the Mahometan Paradise along with the souls of

men, the ass that carried Balaam is one, the dog of the Seven Sleepers

the other. This is no small distinction. From what has been written

about this beast might be compiled a library of great splendor and

magnitude, rivalling that of the Shakespearean cult, and that which

clusters about the Bible. It may be said, generally, that all

literature is more or less Asinine.

 

“Hail, holy Ass!” the quiring angels sing;

“Priest of Unreason, and of Discords King!”

Great co-Creator, let Thy glory shine:

God made all else, the Mule, the Mule is thine!”

 

G.J.

 

AUCTIONEER, n. The man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked

a pocket with his tongue.

 

AUSTRALIA, n. A country lying in the South Sea, whose industrial and

commercial development has been unspeakably retarded by an unfortunate

dispute among geographers as to whether it is a continent or an

island.

 

AVERNUS, n. The lake by which the ancients entered the infernal

regions. The fact that access to the infernal regions was obtained by

a lake is believed by the learned Marcus Ansello Scrutator to have

suggested the Christian rite of baptism by immersion. This, however,

has been shown by Lactantius to be an error.

 

Facilis descensus Averni,

The poet remarks; and the sense

Of it is that when down-hill I turn I

Will get more of punches than pence.

 

Jehal Dai Lupe

B

BAAL, n. An old deity formerly much worshiped under various names.

As Baal he was popular with the Phoenicians; as Belus or Bel he had

the honor to be served by the priest Berosus, who wrote the famous

account of the Deluge; as Babel he had a tower partly erected to his

glory on the Plain of Shinar. From Babel comes our English word

“babble.” Under whatever name worshiped, Baal is the Sun-god. As

Beelzebub he is the god of flies, which are begotten of the sun’s rays

on the stagnant water. In Physicia Baal is still worshiped as Bolus,

and as Belly he is adored and served with abundant sacrifice by the

priests of Guttledom.

 

BABE or BABY, n. A misshapen creature of no particular age, sex, or

condition, chiefly remarkable for the violence of the sympathies and

antipathies it excites in others, itself without sentiment or emotion.

There have been famous babes; for example, little Moses, from whose

adventure in the bulrushes the Egyptian hierophants of seven centuries

before doubtless derived their idle tale of the child Osiris being

preserved on a floating lotus leaf.

 

Ere babes were invented

The girls were contended.

Now man is tormented

Until to buy babes he has squandered

His money. And so I have pondered

This thing, and thought may be

‘T were better that Baby

The First had been eagled or condored.

 

Ro Amil

 

BACCHUS, n. A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse

for getting drunk.

 

Is public worship, then, a sin,

That for devotions paid to Bacchus

The lictors dare to run us in,

And resolutely thump and whack us?

 

Jorace

 

BACK, n. That part of your friend which it is your privilege to

contemplate in your adversity.

 

BACKBITE, v.t. To speak of a man as you find him when he can’t find

you.

 

BAIT, n. A preparation that renders the hook more palatable. The

best kind is beauty.

 

BAPTISM, n. A sacred rite of such efficacy that he who finds himself

in heaven without having undergone it will be unhappy forever. It is

performed with water in two ways — by immersion, or plunging, and by

aspersion, or sprinkling.

 

But whether the plan of immersion

Is better than simple aspersion

Let those immersed

And those aspersed

Decide by the Authorized Version,

And by matching their agues tertian.

 

G.J.

 

BAROMETER, n. An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of

weather we are having.

 

BARRACK, n. A house in which soldiers enjoy a portion of that of

which it is their business to deprive others.

 

BASILISK, n. The cockatrice. A sort of serpent hatched form the egg

of a cock. The basilisk had a bad eye, and its glance was fatal.

Many infidels deny this creature’s existence, but Semprello Aurator

saw and handled one that had been blinded by lightning as a punishment

for having fatally gazed on a lady of rank whom Jupiter loved. Juno

afterward restored the reptile’s sight and hid it in a cave. Nothing

is so well attested by the ancients as the existence of the basilisk,

but the cocks have stopped laying.

 

BASTINADO, n. The act of walking on wood without exertion.

 

BATH, n. A kind of mystic ceremony substituted for religious worship,

with what spiritual efficacy has not been determined.

 

The man who taketh a steam bath

He loseth all the skin he hath,

And, for he’s boiled a brilliant red,

Thinketh to cleanliness he’s wed,

Forgetting that his lungs he’s soiling

With dirty vapors of the boiling.

 

Richard Gwow

 

BATTLE, n. A method of untying with the teeth of a political knot

that would not yield to the tongue.

 

BEARD, n. The hair that is commonly cut off by those who justly

execrate the absurd Chinese custom of shaving the head.

 

BEAUTY, n. The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a

husband.

 

BEFRIEND, v.t. To make an ingrate.

 

BEG, v. To ask for something with an earnestness proportioned to the

belief that it will not be given.

 

Who is that, father?

A mendicant, child,

Haggard, morose, and unaffable — wild!

See how he glares through the bars of his cell!

With Citizen Mendicant all is not well.

 

Why did they put him there, father?

 

Because

Obeying his belly he struck at the laws.

 

His belly?

 

Oh, well, he was starving, my boy —

A state in which, doubtless, there’s little of joy.

No bite had he eaten for days, and his cry

Was “Bread!” ever “Bread!”

 

What’s the matter with pie?

 

With little to wear, he had nothing to sell;

To beg was unlawful — improper as well.

 

Why didn’t he work?

 

He would even have done that,

But men said: “Get out!” and the State remarked: “Scat!”

I mention these incidents