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

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To fiddle-faddle in a minor key.

 

ELOQUENCE, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the

color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color

appear white.

 

ELYSIUM, n. An imaginary delightful country which the ancients

foolishly believed to be inhabited by the spirits of the good. This

ridiculous and mischievous fable was swept off the face of the earth

by the early Christians — may their souls be happy in Heaven!

 

EMANCIPATION, n. A bondman’s change from the tyranny of another to

the despotism of himself.

 

He was a slave: at word he went and came;

His iron collar cut him to the bone.

Then Liberty erased his owner’s name,

Tightened the rivets and inscribed his own.

 

G.J.

 

EMBALM, v.i. To cheat vegetation by locking up the gases upon which

it feeds. By embalming their dead and thereby deranging the natural

balance between animal and vegetable life, the Egyptians made their

once fertile and populous country barren and incapable of supporting

more than a meagre crew. The modern metallic burial casket is a step

in the same direction, and many a dead man who ought now to be

ornamenting his neighbor’s lawn as a tree, or enriching his table as a

bunch of radishes, is doomed to a long inutility. We shall get him

after awhile if we are spared, but in the meantime the violet and rose

are languishing for a nibble at his glutoeus maximus.

 

EMOTION, n. A prostrating disease caused by a determination of the

heart to the head. It is sometimes accompanied by a copious discharge

of hydrated chloride of sodium from the eyes.

 

ENCOMIAST, n. A special (but not particular) kind of liar.

 

END, n. The position farthest removed on either hand from the

Interlocutor.

 

The man was perishing apace

Who played the tambourine;

The seal of death was on his face —

‘Twas pallid, for ‘twas clean.

 

“This is the end,” the sick man said

In faint and failing tones.

A moment later he was dead,

And Tambourine was Bones.

 

Tinley Roquot

 

ENOUGH, pro. All there is in the world if you like it.

 

Enough is as good as a feast — for that matter

Enougher’s as good as a feast for the platter.

 

Arbely C. Strunk

 

ENTERTAINMENT, n. Any kind of amusement whose inroads stop short of

death by injection.

 

ENTHUSIASM, n. A distemper of youth, curable by small doses of

repentance in connection with outward applications of experience.

Byron, who recovered long enough to call it “entuzy-muzy,” had a

relapse, which carried him off — to Missolonghi.

 

ENVELOPE, n. The coffin of a document; the scabbard of a bill; the

husk of a remittance; the bed-gown of a love-letter.

 

ENVY, n. Emulation adapted to the meanest capacity.

 

EPAULET, n. An ornamented badge, serving to distinguish a military

officer from the enemy — that is to say, from the officer of lower

rank to whom his death would give promotion.

 

EPICURE, n. An opponent of Epicurus, an abstemious philosopher who,

holding that pleasure should be the chief aim of man, wasted no time

in gratification from the senses.

 

EPIGRAM, n. A short, sharp saying in prose or verse, frequently

characterize by acidity or acerbity and sometimes by wisdom.

Following are some of the more notable epigrams of the learned and

ingenious Dr. Jamrach Holobom:

 

We know better the needs of ourselves than of others. To

serve oneself is economy of administration.

 

In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a

nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal

activity.

 

There are three sexes; males, females and girls.

 

Beauty in women and distinction in men are alike in this:

they seem to be the unthinking a kind of credibility.

Women in love are less ashamed than men. They have less to be

ashamed of.

 

While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands

you are safe, for you can watch both his.

 

EPITAPH, n. An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired

by death have a retroactive effect. Following is a touching example:

 

Here lie the bones of Parson Platt,

Wise, pious, humble and all that,

Who showed us life as all should live it;

Let that be said — and God forgive it!

 

ERUDITION, n. Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.

 

So wide his erudition’s mighty span,

He knew Creation’s origin and plan

And only came by accident to grief —

He thought, poor man, ‘twas right to be a thief.

 

Romach Pute

 

ESOTERIC, adj. Very particularly abstruse and consummately occult.

The ancient philosophies were of two kinds, — exoteric, those that

the philosophers themselves could partly understand, and esoteric,

those that nobody could understand. It is the latter that have most

profoundly affected modern thought and found greatest acceptance in

our time.

 

ETHNOLOGY, n. The science that treats of the various tribes of Man,

as robbers, thieves, swindlers, dunces, lunatics, idiots and

ethnologists.

 

EUCHARIST, n. A sacred feast of the religious sect of Theophagi.

A dispute once unhappily arose among the members of this sect as

to what it was that they ate. In this controversy some five hundred

thousand have already been slain, and the question is still unsettled.

 

EULOGY, n. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth

and power, or the consideration to be dead.

 

EVANGELIST, n. A bearer of good tidings, particularly (in a religious

sense) such as assure us of our own salvation and the damnation of

our neighbors.

 

EVERLASTING, adj. Lasting forever. It is with no small diffidence

that I venture to offer this brief and elementary definition, for I am

not unaware of the existence of a bulky volume by a sometime Bishop of

Worcester, entitled, _A Partial Definition of the Word “Everlasting,”

as Used in the Authorized Version of the Holy Scriptures_. His book

was once esteemed of great authority in the Anglican Church, and is

still, I understand, studied with pleasure to the mind and profit of

the soul.

 

EXCEPTION, n. A thing which takes the liberty to differ from other

things of its class, as an honest man, a truthful woman, etc. “The

exception proves the rule” is an expression constantly upon the lips

of the ignorant, who parrot it from one another with never a thought

of its absurdity. In the Latin, “Exceptio probat regulam” means

that the exception tests the rule, puts it to the proof, not

confirms it. The malefactor who drew the meaning from this

excellent dictum and substituted a contrary one of his own exerted an

evil power which appears to be immortal.

 

EXCESS, n. In morals, an indulgence that enforces by appropriate

penalties the law of moderation.

 

Hail, high Excess — especially in wine,

To thee in worship do I bend the knee

Who preach abstemiousness unto me —

My skull thy pulpit, as my paunch thy shrine.

Precept on precept, aye, and line on line,

Could ne’er persuade so sweetly to agree

With reason as thy touch, exact and free,

Upon my forehead and along my spine.

At thy command eschewing pleasure’s cup,

With the hot grape I warm no more my wit;

When on thy stool of penitence I sit

I’m quite converted, for I can’t get up.

Ungrateful he who afterward would falter

To make new sacrifices at thine altar!

 

EXCOMMUNICATION, n.

 

This “excommunication” is a word

In speech ecclesiastical oft heard,

And means the damning, with bell, book and candle,

Some sinner whose opinions are a scandal —

A rite permitting Satan to enslave him

Forever, and forbidding Christ to save him.

 

Gat Huckle

 

EXECUTIVE, n. An officer of the Government, whose duty it is to

enforce the wishes of the legislative power until such time as the

judicial department shall be pleased to pronounce them invalid and of

no effect. Following is an extract from an old book entitled, _The

Lunarian Astonished_ — Pfeiffer & Co., Boston, 1803:

 

LUNARIAN: Then when your Congress has passed a law it goes

directly to the Supreme Court in order that it may at once be

known whether it is constitutional?

TERRESTRIAN: O no; it does not require the approval of the

Supreme Court until having perhaps been enforced for many

years somebody objects to its operation against himself — I

mean his client. The President, if he approves it, begins to

execute it at once.

LUNARIAN: Ah, the executive power is a part of the legislative.

Do your policemen also have to approve the local ordinances

that they enforce?

TERRESTRIAN: Not yet — at least not in their character of

constables. Generally speaking, though, all laws require the

approval of those whom they are intended to restrain.

LUNARIAN: I see. The death warrant is not valid until signed by

the murderer.

TERRESTRIAN: My friend, you put it too strongly; we are not so

consistent.

LUNARIAN: But this system of maintaining an expensive judicial

machinery to pass upon the validity of laws only after they

have long been executed, and then only when brought before the

court by some private person — does it not cause great

confusion?

TERRESTRIAN: It does.

LUNARIAN: Why then should not your laws, previously to being

executed, be validated, not by the signature of your

President, but by that of the Chief Justice of the Supreme

Court?

TERRESTRIAN: There is no precedent for any such course.

LUNARIAN: Precedent. What is that?

TERRESTRIAN: It has been defined by five hundred lawyers in three

volumes each. So how can any one know?

 

EXHORT, v.t. In religious affairs, to put the conscience of another

upon the spit and roast it to a nut-brown discomfort.

 

EXILE, n. One who serves his country by residing abroad, yet is not

an ambassador.

An English sea-captain being asked if he had read “The Exile of

Erin,” replied: “No, sir, but I should like to anchor on it.” Years

afterwards, when he had been hanged as a pirate after a career of

unparalleled atrocities, the following memorandum was found in the

ship’s log that he had kept at the time of his reply:

 

Aug. 3d, 1842. Made a joke on the ex-Isle of Erin. Coldly

received. War with the whole world!

 

EXISTENCE, n.

 

A transient, horrible, fantastic dream,

Wherein is nothing yet all things do seem:

From which we’re wakened by a friendly nudge

Of our bedfellow Death, and cry: “O fudge!”

 

EXPERIENCE, n. The wisdom that enables us to recognize as an

undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.

 

To one who, journeying through night and fog,

Is mired neck-deep in an unwholesome bog,

Experience, like the rising of the dawn,

Reveals the path that he should not have gone.

 

Joel Frad Bink

 

EXPOSTULATION, n. One of the many methods by which fools prefer to

lose their friends.

 

EXTINCTION, n. The raw material out of which theology created the

future state.

F

FAIRY, n. A creature, variously fashioned and endowed, that formerly

inhabited the meadows and forests. It was nocturnal in its habits,

and somewhat addicted to dancing and the theft of children. The

fairies are now believed by naturalist to be extinct, though a

clergyman of the Church of England saw three near Colchester as lately

as 1855, while passing through a park after dining with the lord of

the manor. The sight greatly staggered him, and he was so affected

that his account of it was incoherent. In the year 1807 a troop of

fairies visited a wood near Aix and carried off the daughter of a

peasant, who had been seen to enter it