Ambrose Bierce - The Devil's Dictionary (1906)

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Architect, n. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.

Ambrose Bierce
Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease is prevalent only among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages. It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient.

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Fidelity, n. A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.

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Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

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Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.

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Debauchee n. One who has so earnestly pursued pleasure that he has had the misfortune to overtake it.

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Electricity, n. The cause of 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.

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Pray, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

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Male n. A member of the unconsidered, or negligible sex. The male of the human race is commonly known (to the female) as Mere Man. The genus has two varieties: good providers and bad providers.

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Grammar, n. A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet of the self-made man, along the path by which he advances to distinction.

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Kilt, n. A costume sometimes worn by Scotchmen [sic] in America and Americans in Scotland.

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Patience, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.

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To men a man is but a mind. Who cares
What face he carries or what form he wears?
But woman's body is the woman. O,
Stay thou, my sweetheart, and do never go,
But heed the warning words the sage hath said:
A woman absent is a woman dead.

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Appetite, n. An instinct thoughtfully implanted by Providence as a solution to the labor question.

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Mammon, n. The god of the world's leading religion. His chief temple is in the holy city of New York.

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Oratory, n. A conspiracy between speech and action to cheat the understanding.

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Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.

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Conservative, n. A statesman enamored of existing evils, as opposed to a Liberal, who wants to replace them with others.

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Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.

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Diplomacy, n. The patriotic art of lying for one's country.

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Insurrection, n. An unsuccessful revolution. Disaffection's failure to substitute misrule for bad government.

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Freebooter, n. A conqueror in a small way of business, whose annexations lack of the sanctifying merit of magnitude.

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Life, n. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.

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English, n. A language so haughty and reserved that few writers succeed in getting on terms of familiarity with it.

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Absurdity, n. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.

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Happiness, n. An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.

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

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Absent, adj. Peculiarly exposed to the tooth of detraction; vilifed; hopelessly in the wrong; superseded in the consideration and affection of another.

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On physicians:
One on whom we set our hopes when ill, and our dogs when well.

Ambrose Bierce
R.I.P. A careless abbreviation of "requiescat in pace", attesting to indolent goodwill to the dead. According to the learned Dr. Drigge, however, the letters originally meant nothing more than "reductus in pulvis".

Ambrose Bierce