The Devil’s Dictionary - Ambrose Bierce (mystery books to read .TXT) 📗
- Author: Ambrose Bierce
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In bad company.
In contact, lo! the flint and steel,
By spark and flame, the thought reveal
That he the metal, she the stone,
Had cherished secretly alone.
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 fool.
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.
Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.
AmbitionAn overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.
AmnestyThe state’s magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.
AnointTo 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.
The sentiment inspired by one’s friend’s friend.
AphorismPredigested wisdom.
The flabby wineskin of his brain
Yields to some pathologic strain,
And voids from its unstored abysm
The driblet of an aphorism.
To lay the foundation for a future offence.
ApostateA 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.
ApothecaryThe 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!”
In law, to put the dice into the box for another throw.
AppetiteAn instinct thoughtfully implanted by Providence as a solution to the labor question.
ApplauseThe echo of a platitude.
April FoolThe March fool with another month added to his folly.
ArchbishopAn 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.
One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.
ArdorThe quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.
ArenaIn politics, an imaginary rat-pit in which the statesman wrestles with his record.
AristocracyGovernment 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.
ArmorThe kind of clothing worn by a man whose tailor is a blacksmith.
ArrayedDrawn up and given an orderly disposition, as a rioter hanged to a lamppost.
ArrestFormally to detain one accused of unusualness.
God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.
—The Unauthorized Version ArsenicA 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.”
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.
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.
AsperseMaliciously to ascribe to another vicious actions which one has not had the temptation and opportunity to commit.
AssA 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 Muslim 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!”
The man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a pocket with his tongue.
AustraliaA 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.
AvernusThe 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
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