The Devil's Dictionary

1. Project Gutenberg: The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce


Some personal favorites:

• ART, n. This word has no definition. [...]


• 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.


• 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.


• LIFE, n. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay. We live in daily apprehension of its loss; yet when lost it is not missed. The question, "Is life worth living?" has been much discussed; particularly by those who think it is not, many of whom have written at great length in support of their view and by careful observance of the laws of health enjoyed for long terms of years the honors of successful controversy. [...]


• LOGIC, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. The basic of logic is the syllogism, consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion -- thus:

  Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man.
  Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds; therefore --
  Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.

  This may be called the syllogism arithmetical, in which, by combining logic and mathematics, we obtain a double certainty and are twice blessed.


• MYTHOLOGY, n. The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later.


• NIHILIST, n. A Russian who denies the existence of anything but Tolstoi. The leader of the school is Tolstoi.


• PAINTING, n. The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic. [...]


• PHILOSOPHY, n. A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.


• POSITIVISM, n. A philosophy that denies our knowledge of the Real and affirms our ignorance of the Apparent. Its longest exponent is Comte, its broadest Mill and its thickest Spencer.


• PREHISTORIC, adj. Belonging to an early period and a museum. Antedating the art and practice of perpetuating falsehood. [...]


• PYRRHONISM, n. An ancient philosophy, named for its inventor. It consisted of an absolute disbelief in everything but Pyrrhonism. Its modern professors have added that.


• REALISM, n. The art of depicting nature as it is seen by toads. The charm suffusing a landscape painted by a mole, or a story written by a measuring-worm.


• REALITY, n. The dream of a mad philosopher. That which would remain in the cupel if one should assay a phantom. The nucleus of a vacuum.


• RELIGION, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable. [...]


• SELFISH, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.


• SENATE, n. A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and misdemeanors.


• UGLINESS, n. A gift of the gods to certain women, entailing virtue without humility.


• UNDERSTANDING, n. A cerebral secretion that enables one having it to know a house from a horse by the roof on the house. Its nature and laws have been exhaustively expounded by Locke, who rode a house, and Kant, who lived in a horse. [...]