The Devil's Dictionary - Ambrose Bierce (ebook reader for pc and android txt) 📗
- Author: Ambrose Bierce
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kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.
This is a dog,
This is a cat.
This is a frog,
This is a rat.
Run, dog, mew, cat.
Jump, frog, gnaw, rat.
Elevenson
CAVILER, n. A critic of our own work.
CEMETERY, n. An isolated suburban spot where mourners match lies,
poets write at a target and stone-cutters spell for a wager. The
inscriptions following will serve to illustrate the success attained
in these Olympian games:
His virtues were so conspicuous that his enemies, unable to
overlook them, denied them, and his friends, to whose loose lives
they were a rebuke, represented them as vices. They are here
commemorated by his family, who shared them.
In the earth we here prepare a
Place to lay our little Clara.
Thomas M. and Mary Frazer
P.S. — Gabriel will raise her.
CENTAUR, n. One of a race of persons who lived before the division of
labor had been carried to such a pitch of differentiation, and who
followed the primitive economic maxim, “Every man his own horse.” The
best of the lot was Chiron, who to the wisdom and virtues of the horse
added the fleetness of man. The scripture story of the head of John
the Baptist on a charger shows that pagan myths have somewhat
sophisticated sacred history.
CERBERUS, n. The watch-dog of Hades, whose duty it was to guard the
entrance — against whom or what does not clearly appear; everybody,
sooner or later, had to go there, and nobody wanted to carry off the
entrance. Cerberus is known to have had three heads, and some of the
poets have credited him with as many as a hundred. Professor
Graybill, whose clerky erudition and profound knowledge of Greek give
his opinion great weight, has averaged all the estimates, and makes
the number twenty-seven — a judgment that would be entirely
conclusive is Professor Graybill had known (a) something about dogs,
and (b) something about arithmetic.
CHILDHOOD, n. The period of human life intermediate between the
idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth — two removes from the sin
of manhood and three from the remorse of age.
CHRISTIAN, n. One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely
inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.
One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not
inconsistent with a life of sin.
I dreamed I stood upon a hill, and, lo!
The godly multitudes walked to and fro
Beneath, in Sabbath garments fitly clad,
With pious mien, appropriately sad,
While all the church bells made a solemn din —
A fire-alarm to those who lived in sin.
Then saw I gazing thoughtfully below,
With tranquil face, upon that holy show
A tall, spare figure in a robe of white,
Whose eyes diffused a melancholy light.
“God keep you, strange,” I exclaimed. “You are
No doubt (your habit shows it) from afar;
And yet I entertain the hope that you,
Like these good people, are a Christian too.”
He raised his eyes and with a look so stern
It made me with a thousand blushes burn
Replied — his manner with disdain was spiced:
“What! I a Christian? No, indeed! I’m Christ.”
G.J.
CIRCUS, n. A place where horses, ponies and elephants are permitted
to see men, women and children acting the fool.
CLAIRVOYANT, n. A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of
seeing that which is invisible to her patron, namely, that he is a
blockhead.
CLARIONET, n. An instrument of torture operated by a person with
cotton in his ears. There are two instruments that are worse than a
clarionet — two clarionets.
CLERGYMAN, n. A man who undertakes the management of our spiritual
affairs as a method of better his temporal ones.
CLIO, n. One of the nine Muses. Clio’s function was to preside over
history — which she did with great dignity, many of the prominent
citizens of Athens occupying seats on the platform, the meetings being
addressed by Messrs. Xenophon, Herodotus and other popular speakers.
CLOCK, n. A machine of great moral value to man, allaying his concern
for the future by reminding him what a lot of time remains to him.
A busy man complained one day:
“I get no time!” “What’s that you say?”
Cried out his friend, a lazy quiz;
“You have, sir, all the time there is.
There’s plenty, too, and don’t you doubt it —
We’re never for an hour without it.”
Purzil Crofe
CLOSE-FISTED, adj. Unduly desirous of keeping that which many
meritorious persons wish to obtain.
“Close-fisted Scotchman!” Johnson cried
To thrifty J. Macpherson;
“See me — I’m ready to divide
With any worthy person.”
Sad Jamie: “That is very true —
The boast requires no backing;
And all are worthy, sir, to you,
Who have what you are lacking.”
Anita M. Bobe
COENOBITE, n. A man who piously shuts himself up to meditate upon the
sin of wickedness; and to keep it fresh in his mind joins a
brotherhood of awful examples.
O Coenobite, O coenobite,
Monastical gregarian,
You differ from the anchorite,
That solitudinarian:
With vollied prayers you wound Old Nick;
With dropping shots he makes him sick.
Quincy Giles
COMFORT, n. A state of mind produced by contemplation of a neighbor’s
uneasiness.
COMMENDATION, n. The tribute that we pay to achievements that
resembles, but do not equal, our own.
COMMERCE, n. A kind of transaction in which A plunders from B the
goods of C, and for compensation B picks the pocket of D of money
belonging to E.
COMMONWEALTH, n. An administrative entity operated by an incalculable
multitude of political parasites, logically active but fortuitously
efficient.
This commonwealth’s capitol’s corridors view,
So thronged with a hungry and indolent crew
Of clerks, pages, porters and all attaches
Whom rascals appoint and the populace pays
That a cat cannot slip through the thicket of shins
Nor hear its own shriek for the noise of their chins.
On clerks and on pages, and porters, and all,
Misfortune attend and disaster befall!
May life be to them a succession of hurts;
May fleas by the bushel inhabit their shirts;
May aches and diseases encamp in their bones,
Their lungs full of tubercles, bladders of stones;
May microbes, bacilli, their tissues infest,
And tapeworms securely their bowels digest;
May corn-cobs be snared without hope in their hair,
And frequent impalement their pleasure impair.
Disturbed be their dreams by the awful discourse
Of audible sofas sepulchrally hoarse,
By chairs acrobatic and wavering floors —
The mattress that kicks and the pillow that snores!
Sons of cupidity, cradled in sin!
Your criminal ranks may the death angel thin,
Avenging the friend whom I couldn’t work in.
K.Q.
COMPROMISE, n. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives
each adversary the satisfaction of thinking he has got what he ought
not to have, and is deprived of nothing except what was justly his
due.
COMPULSION, n. The eloquence of power.
CONDOLE, v.i. To show that bereavement is a smaller evil than
sympathy.
CONFIDANT, CONFIDANTE, n. One entrusted by A with the secrets of B,
confided by him to C.
CONGRATULATION, n. The civility of envy.
CONGRESS, n. A body of men who meet to repeal laws.
CONNOISSEUR, n. A specialist who knows everything about something and
nothing about anything else.
An old wine-bibber having been smashed in a railway collision,
some wine was pouted on his lips to revive him. “Pauillac, 1873,” he
murmured and died.
CONSERVATIVE, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as
distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with
others.
CONSOLATION, n. The knowledge that a better man is more unfortunate
than yourself.
CONSUL, n. In American politics, a person who having failed to secure
an office from the people is given one by the Administration on
condition that he leave the country.
CONSULT, v.i. To seek another’s disapproval of a course already
decided on.
CONTEMPT, n. The feeling of a prudent man for an enemy who is too
formidable safely to be opposed.
CONTROVERSY, n. A battle in which spittle or ink replaces the
injurious cannon-ball and the inconsiderate bayonet.
In controversy with the facile tongue —
That bloodless warfare of the old and young —
So seek your adversary to engage
That on himself he shall exhaust his rage,
And, like a snake that’s fastened to the ground,
With his own fangs inflict the fatal wound.
You ask me how this miracle is done?
Adopt his own opinions, one by one,
And taunt him to refute them; in his wrath
He’ll sweep them pitilessly from his path.
Advance then gently all you wish to prove,
Each proposition prefaced with, “As you’ve
So well remarked,” or, “As you wisely say,
And I cannot dispute,” or, “By the way,
This view of it which, better far expressed,
Runs through your argument.” Then leave the rest
To him, secure that he’ll perform his trust
And prove your views intelligent and just.
Conmore Apel Brune
CONVENT, n. A place of retirement for woman who wish for leisure to
meditate upon the vice of idleness.
CONVERSATION, n. A fair to the display of the minor mental
commodities, each exhibitor being too intent upon the arrangement of
his own wares to observe those of his neighbor.
CORONATION, n. The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward
and visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a
dynamite bomb.
CORPORAL, n. A man who occupies the lowest rung of the military
ladder.
Fiercely the battle raged and, sad to tell,
Our corporal heroically fell!
Fame from her height looked down upon the brawl
And said: “He hadn’t very far to fall.”
Giacomo Smith
CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit
without individual responsibility.
CORSAIR, n. A politician of the seas.
COURT FOOL, n. The plaintiff.
COWARD, n. One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
CRAYFISH, n. A small crustacean very much resembling the lobster, but
less indigestible.
In this small fish I take it that human wisdom is admirably
figured and symbolized; for whereas the crayfish doth move only
backward, and can have only retrospection, seeing naught but the
perils already passed, so the wisdom of man doth not enable him to
avoid the follies that beset his course, but only to apprehend
their nature afterward.
Sir James Merivale
CREDITOR, n. One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial
Straits and dreaded for their desolating incursions.
CREMONA, n. A high-priced violin made in Connecticut.
CRITIC, n. A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody
tries to please him.
There is a land of pure delight,
Beyond the Jordan’s flood,
Where saints, apparelled all in white,
Fling back the critic’s mud.
And as he legs it through the skies,
His pelt a sable hue,
He sorrows sore to recognize
The missiles that he threw.
Orrin Goof
CROSS, n. An ancient religious symbol erroneously supposed to owe its
significance to the most solemn event in the history of Christianity,
but really antedating it by thousands of years. By many it has been
believed to be identical with the crux ansata of the ancient phallic
worship, but it has been traced even beyond all that we know of that,
to the rites of primitive peoples. We have to-day the White Cross as
a symbol of chastity, and the Red Cross as a badge of benevolent
neutrality in war. Having in mind the former, the reverend
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