The Devil's Dictionary — Ambrose Bierce

The Devil's Dictionary

Ambrose Bierce · Licence: Public domain · Source

• INDIFFERENT, adj. Imperfectly sensible to distinctions among things. ¶767
• "You tiresome man!" cried Indolentio's wife, "You've grown indifferent to all in life." "Indifferent?" he drawled with a slow smile; "I would be, dear, but it is not worth while." ¶768
• INDIGESTION, n. A disease which the patient and his friends frequently mistake for deep religious conviction and concern for the salvation of mankind. As the simple Red Man of the western wild put it, with, it must be confessed, a certain force: "Plenty well, no pray; big bellyache, heap God." ¶770
• INDISCRETION, n. The guilt of woman. ¶771
• INEXPEDIENT, adj. Not calculated to advance one's interests. ¶772
• INFANCY, n. The period of our lives when, according to Wordsworth, "Heaven lies about us." The world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward. ¶773
• INFLUENCE, n. In politics, a visionary _quo_ given in exchange for a substantial _quid_. ¶776
• INGRATE, n. One who receives a benefit from another, or is otherwise an object of charity. ¶780
• "All men are ingrates," sneered the cynic. "Nay," The good philanthropist replied; "I did great service to a man one day Who never since has cursed me to repay, Nor vilified." ¶781
• "Ho!" cried the cynic, "lead me to him straight-- With veneration I am overcome, And fain would have his blessing." "Sad your fate-- He cannot bless you, for I grieve to state This man is dumb." ¶782
• INJURY, n. An offense next in degree of enormity to a slight. ¶784
• INJUSTICE, n. A burden which of all those that we load upon others and carry ourselves is lightest in the hands and heaviest upon the back. ¶785
• "In the sky my soul is found, And my body in the ground. By and by my body'll rise To my spirit in the skies, Soaring up to Heaven's gate. 1878." ¶790
• "Sacred to the memory of Jeremiah Tree. Cut down May 9th, 1862, aged 27 yrs. 4 mos. and 12 ds. Indigenous." ¶791
• "Affliction sore long time she boar, Phisicians was in vain, Till Deth released the dear deceased And left her a remain. Gone to join Ananias in the regions of bliss." ¶792
• "The clay that rests beneath this stone As Silas Wood was widely known. Now, lying here, I ask what good It was to let me be S. Wood. O Man, let not ambition trouble you, Is the advice of Silas W." ¶793
• "Richard Haymon, of Heaven. Fell to Earth Jan. 20, 1807, and had the dust brushed off him Oct. 3, 1874." ¶794
• "See," cries the chorus of admiring preachers, "How Providence provides for all His creatures!" "His care," the gnat said, "even the insects follows: For us He has provided wrens and swallows." ¶796
• INSURANCE, n. An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table. ¶798
• INSURRECTION, n. An unsuccessful revolution. Disaffection's failure to substitute misrule for bad government. ¶800
• INTENTION, n. The mind's sense of the prevalence of one set of influences over another set; an effect whose cause is the imminence, immediate or remote, of the performance of an involuntary act. ¶801
• INTERPRETER, n. One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said. ¶802
• INTERREGNUM, n. The period during which a monarchical country is governed by a warm spot on the cushion of the throne. The experiment of letting the spot grow cold has commonly been attended by most unhappy results from the zeal of many worthy persons to make it warm again. ¶803
• INTIMACY, n. A relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their mutual destruction. ¶804
• INVENTOR, n. A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization. ¶808
• IRRELIGION, n. The principal one of the great faiths of the world. ¶809
• ITCH, n. The patriotism of a Scotchman. ¶810
• JEALOUS, adj. Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth keeping. ¶813
• The widow-queen of Portugal Had an audacious jester Who entered the confessional Disguised, and there confessed her. ¶815
• "Father," she said, "thine ear bend down-- My sins are more than scarlet: I love my fool--blaspheming clown, And common, base-born varlet." ¶816
• "Daughter," the mimic priest replied, "That sin, indeed, is awful: The church's pardon is denied To love that is unlawful. "But since thy stubborn heart will be For him forever pleading, Thou'dst better make him, by decree, A man of birth and breeding." ¶817
• She made the fool a duke, in hope With Heaven's taboo to palter; Then told a priest, who told the Pope, Who damned her from the altar! ¶818
• JEWS-HARP, n. An unmusical instrument, played by holding it fast with the teeth and trying to brush it away with the finger. ¶820
• JOSS-STICKS, n. Small sticks burned by the Chinese in their pagan tomfoolery, in imitation of certain sacred rites of our holy religion. ¶821
• JUSTICE, n. A commodity which is a more or less adulterated condition the State sells to the citizen as a reward for his allegiance, taxes and personal service. ¶822
• He willed away his whole estate, And then in death he fell asleep, Murmuring: "Well, at any rate, My name unblemished I shall keep." But when upon the tomb 'twas wrought Whose was it?--for the dead keep naught. ¶826
• KILL, v.t. To create a vacancy without nominating a successor. ¶828
• KILT, n. A costume sometimes worn by Scotchmen in America and Americans in Scotland. ¶829
• KINDNESS, n. A brief preface to ten volumes of exaction. ¶830
• KING, n. A male person commonly known in America as a "crowned head," although he never wears a crown and has usually no head to speak of. ¶831

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