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

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“The Mad Philosopher”

 

DICTATOR, n. The chief of a nation that prefers the pestilence of

despotism to the plague of anarchy.

 

DICTIONARY, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth

of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary,

however, is a most useful work.

 

DIE, n. The singular of “dice.” We seldom hear the word, because

there is a prohibitory proverb, “Never say die.” At long intervals,

however, some one says: “The die is cast,” which is not true, for it

is cut. The word is found in an immortal couplet by that eminent poet

and domestic economist, Senator Depew:

 

A cube of cheese no larger than a die

May bait the trap to catch a nibbling mie.

 

DIGESTION, n. The conversion of victuals into virtues. When the

process is imperfect, vices are evolved instead — a circumstance from

which that wicked writer, Dr. Jeremiah Blenn, infers that the ladies

are the greater sufferers from dyspepsia.

 

DIPLOMACY, n. The patriotic art of lying for one’s country.

 

DISABUSE, v.t. The present your neighbor with another and better

error than the one which he has deemed it advantageous to embrace.

 

DISCRIMINATE, v.i. To note the particulars in which one person or

thing is, if possible, more objectionable than another.

 

DISCUSSION, n. A method of confirming others in their errors.

 

DISOBEDIENCE, n. The silver lining to the cloud of servitude.

 

DISOBEY, v.t. To celebrate with an appropriate ceremony the maturity

of a command.

 

His right to govern me is clear as day,

My duty manifest to disobey;

And if that fit observance e’er I shut

May I and duty be alike undone.

 

Israfel Brown

 

DISSEMBLE, v.i. To put a clean shirt upon the character.

Let us dissemble.

 

Adam

 

DISTANCE, n. The only thing that the rich are willing for the poor to

call theirs, and keep.

 

DISTRESS, n. A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a

friend.

 

DIVINATION, n. The art of nosing out the occult. Divination is of as

many kinds as there are fruit-bearing varieties of the flowering dunce

and the early fool.

 

DOG, n. A kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch

the overflow and surplus of the world’s worship. This Divine Being in

some of his smaller and silkier incarnations takes, in the affection

of Woman, the place to which there is no human male aspirant. The Dog

is a survival — an anachronism. He toils not, neither does he spin,

yet Solomon in all his glory never lay upon a door-mat all day long,

sun-soaked and fly-fed and fat, while his master worked for the means

wherewith to purchase the idle wag of the Solomonic tail, seasoned

with a look of tolerant recognition.

 

DRAGOON, n. A soldier who combines dash and steadiness in so equal

measure that he makes his advances on foot and his retreats on

horseback.

 

DRAMATIST, n. One who adapts plays from the French.

 

DRUIDS, n. Priests and ministers of an ancient Celtic religion which

did not disdain to employ the humble allurement of human sacrifice.

Very little is now known about the Druids and their faith. Pliny says

their religion, originating in Britain, spread eastward as far as

Persia. Caesar says those who desired to study its mysteries went to

Britain. Caesar himself went to Britain, but does not appear to have

obtained any high preferment in the Druidical Church, although his

talent for human sacrifice was considerable.

Druids performed their religious rites in groves, and knew nothing

of church mortgages and the season-ticket system of pew rents. They

were, in short, heathens and — as they were once complacently

catalogued by a distinguished prelate of the Church of England —

Dissenters.

 

DUCK-BILL, n. Your account at your restaurant during the canvas-back

season.

 

DUEL, n. A formal ceremony preliminary to the reconciliation of two

enemies. Great skill is necessary to its satisfactory observance; if

awkwardly performed the most unexpected and deplorable consequences

sometimes ensue. A long time ago a man lost his life in a duel.

 

That dueling’s a gentlemanly vice

I hold; and wish that it had been my lot

To live my life out in some favored spot —

Some country where it is considered nice

To split a rival like a fish, or slice

A husband like a spud, or with a shot

Bring down a debtor doubled in a knot

And ready to be put upon the ice.

Some miscreants there are, whom I do long

To shoot, to stab, or some such way reclaim

The scurvy rogues to better lives and manners,

I seem to see them now — a mighty throng.

It looks as if to challenge me they came,

Jauntily marching with brass bands and banners!

 

Xamba Q. Dar

 

DULLARD, n. A member of the reigning dynasty in letters and life.

The Dullards came in with Adam, and being both numerous and sturdy

have overrun the habitable world. The secret of their power is their

insensibility to blows; tickle them with a bludgeon and they laugh

with a platitude. The Dullards came originally from Boeotia, whence

they were driven by stress of starvation, their dullness having

blighted the crops. For some centuries they infested Philistia, and

many of them are called Philistines to this day. In the turbulent

times of the Crusades they withdrew thence and gradually overspread

all Europe, occupying most of the high places in politics, art,

literature, science and theology. Since a detachment of Dullards came

over with the Pilgrims in the Mayflower and made a favorable report

of the country, their increase by birth, immigration, and conversion

has been rapid and steady. According to the most trustworthy

statistics the number of adult Dullards in the United States is but

little short of thirty millions, including the statisticians. The

intellectual centre of the race is somewhere about Peoria, Illinois,

but the New England Dullard is the most shockingly moral.

 

DUTY, n. That which sternly impels us in the direction of profit,

along the line of desire.

 

Sir Lavender Portwine, in favor at court,

Was wroth at his master, who’d kissed Lady Port.

His anger provoked him to take the king’s head,

But duty prevailed, and he took the king’s bread,

Instead.

 

G.J.

E

EAT, v.i. To perform successively (and successfully) the functions of

mastication, humectation, and deglutition.

“I was in the drawing-room, enjoying my dinner,” said Brillat-Savarin, beginning an anecdote. “What!” interrupted Rochebriant;

“eating dinner in a drawing-room?” “I must beg you to observe,

monsieur,” explained the great gastronome, “that I did not say I was

eating my dinner, but enjoying it. I had dined an hour before.”

 

EAVESDROP, v.i. Secretly to overhear a catalogue of the crimes and

vices of another or yourself.

 

A lady with one of her ears applied

To an open keyhole heard, inside,

Two female gossips in converse free —

The subject engaging them was she.

“I think,” said one, “and my husband thinks

That she’s a prying, inquisitive minx!”

As soon as no more of it she could hear

The lady, indignant, removed her ear.

“I will not stay,” she said, with a pout,

“To hear my character lied about!”

 

Gopete Sherany

 

ECCENTRICITY, n. A method of distinction so cheap that fools employ

it to accentuate their incapacity.

 

ECONOMY, n. Purchasing the barrel of whiskey that you do not need for

the price of the cow that you cannot afford.

 

EDIBLE, adj. Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a

toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man

to a worm.

 

EDITOR, n. A person who combines the judicial functions of Minos,

Rhadamanthus and Aeacus, but is placable with an obolus; a severely

virtuous censor, but so charitable withal that he tolerates the

virtues of others and the vices of himself; who flings about him the

splintering lightning and sturdy thunders of admonition till he

resembles a bunch of firecrackers petulantly uttering his mind at the

tail of a dog; then straightway murmurs a mild, melodious lay, soft as

the cooing of a donkey intoning its prayer to the evening star.

Master of mysteries and lord of law, high-pinnacled upon the throne of

thought, his face suffused with the dim splendors of the

Transfiguration, his legs intertwisted and his tongue a-cheek, the

editor spills his will along the paper and cuts it off in lengths to

suit. And at intervals from behind the veil of the temple is heard

the voice of the foreman demanding three inches of wit and six lines

of religious meditation, or bidding him turn off the wisdom and whack

up some pathos.

 

O, the Lord of Law on the Throne of Thought,

A gilded impostor is he.

Of shreds and patches his robes are wrought,

His crown is brass,

Himself an ass,

And his power is fiddle-dee-dee.

Prankily, crankily prating of naught,

Silly old quilly old Monarch of Thought.

Public opinion’s camp-follower he,

Thundering, blundering, plundering free.

Affected,

Ungracious,

Suspected,

Mendacious,

Respected contemporaree!

J.H. Bumbleshook

 

EDUCATION, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the

foolish their lack of understanding.

 

EFFECT, n. The second of two phenomena which always occur together in

the same order. The first, called a Cause, is said to generate the

other — which is no more sensible than it would be for one who has

never seen a dog except in the pursuit of a rabbit to declare the

rabbit the cause of a dog.

 

EGOTIST, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.

 

Megaceph, chosen to serve the State

In the halls of legislative debate,

One day with all his credentials came

To the capitol’s door and announced his name.

The doorkeeper looked, with a comical twist

Of the face, at the eminent egotist,

And said: “Go away, for we settle here

All manner of questions, knotty and queer,

And we cannot have, when the speaker demands

To be told how every member stands,

A man who to all things under the sky

Assents by eternally voting ‘I’.”

 

EJECTION, n. An approved remedy for the disease of garrulity. It is

also much used in cases of extreme poverty.

 

ELECTOR, n. One who enjoys the sacred privilege of voting for the man

of another man’s choice.

 

ELECTRICITY, n. The power that causes all natural phenomena not known

to be caused by something else. It is the same thing as lightning,

and its famous attempt to strike Dr. Franklin is one of the most

picturesque incidents in that great and good man’s career. The memory

of Dr. Franklin is justly held in great reverence, particularly in

France, where a waxen effigy of him was recently on exhibition,

bearing the following touching account of his life and services to

science:

 

“Monsieur Franqulin, inventor of electricity. This

illustrious savant, after having made several voyages around the

world, died on the Sandwich Islands and was devoured by savages,

of whom not a single fragment was ever recovered.”

 

Electricity seems destined to play a most important part in the

arts and industries. The question of its economical application to

some purposes is still unsettled, but experiment has already proved

that it will propel a street car better than a gas jet and give more

light than a horse.

 

ELEGY, n. A composition in verse, in which, without employing any of

the methods of humor, the writer aims to produce in the reader’s mind

the dampest kind of dejection. The most famous English example begins

somewhat like this:

 

The cur foretells the knell of parting day;

The loafing herd winds slowly o’er the lea;

The wise man homeward plods; I only