Monday, August 16, 2010

Intermezzo


Από το σατιρικό λεξικό του Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary”.

Ολόκληρο, εδώ.
Για τον συγγραφέα, εδώ.



ACCOUNTABILITY  
The mother of caution.

ACHIEVEMENT
The death of endeavor and the birth of disgust.

ADMIRATION  
Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.

ADORE  
To venerate expectantly.

ALLIANCE  
In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.

APOLOGIZE  
To lay the foundation for a future offence.

APPETITE  
An instinct thoughtfully implanted by Providence as a solution to the labor question.


BACK  
That part of your friend which it is your privilege to contemplate in your adversity.

BARRACK
A house in which soldiers enjoy a portion of that of which it is their business to deprive others.

BEFRIEND  
To make an ingrate.

BRIDE  
A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.


CAT  
A soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.

CHILDHOOD  
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
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.

CIRCUS
A place where horses, ponies and elephants are permitted to see men, women and children acting the fool.

CONGRATULATION  
The civility of envy.

CRITIC  
A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him.

CYNIC
A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.


DAWN  
The time when men of reason go to bed. The reason we find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried it.

DEBT  
An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slave-driver.

DEFAME  
To lie about another. To tell the truth about another.

DEFENCELESS
Unable to attack.

DIAGNOSIS
A physician's forecast of the disease by the patient's pulse and purse.

DISCUSSION  
A method of confirming others in their errors.

DISOBEDIENCE  
The silver lining to the cloud of servitude.


ECCENTRICITY
A method of distinction so cheap that fools employ it to accentuate their incapacity.

EDIBLE  
Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.

EDUCATION
That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

EGOTIST  
A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.

ELOQUENCE  
The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white.

ENOUGH  
All there is in the world if you like it.


FASHION  
A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.

FRIENDLESS
Having no favors to bestow. Destitute of fortune. Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense.

FRIENDSHIP  
A ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but only one in foul.

FUTURE  
That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.


GENEROUS
Originally this word meant noble by birth and was rightly applied to a great multitude of persons. It now means noble by nature and is taking a bit of a rest.


HAND
A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.

HATRED
A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's superiority.

HERMIT
A person whose vices and follies are not sociable.

HUMANITY  
The human race, collectively, exclusive of the anthropoid poets.

HYPOCRITE  
One who, professing virtues that he does not respect, secures the advantage of seeming to be what he despises.


IDIOT  
A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.

IMAGINATION
A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership.

IMMODEST
Having a strong sense of one's own merit, coupled with a feeble conception of worth in others.

INVENTOR
A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.


JEALOUS  
Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth keeping.

JUSTICE
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.


LANGUAGE  
The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another's treasure.

LEARNING  
The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.

LIBERTY
One of Imagination's most precious possessions.

LOCK-AND-KEY  
The distinguishing device of civilization and enlightenment.


MAGIC  
An art of converting superstition into coin. There are other arts serving the same high purpose, but the discreet lexicographer does not name them.

MAN
An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth.

MISFORTUNE
The kind of fortune that never misses.

MONEY
A blessing that is of no advantage to us excepting when we part with it. An evidence of culture and a passport to polite society.

MORE  
The comparative degree of too much.

MYTHOLOGY
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.


NONSENSE  
The objections that are urged against this excellent dictionary.

NOVEMBER  
The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.


OPTIMISM  
The doctrine, or belief, that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, everything good, especially the bad, and everything right that is wrong. Being a blind faith, it is inaccessible to the light of disproof; an intellectual disorder, yielding to no treatment but death. It is hereditary, but fortunately not contagious.


PATIENCE
A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.

PEACE  
In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.

POLICE  
An armed force for protection and participation.

POLITENESS
The most acceptable hypocrisy.

POLITICS  
A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

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

PRESENT  
That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.


SELF-ESTEEM  
An erroneous appraisement.

SELFISH  
Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.



TRUTH  
An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance. Discovery of truth is the sole purpose of philosophy, which is the most ancient occupation of the human mind and has a fair prospect of existing with increasing activity to the end of time.

TRUTHFUL  
Dumb and illiterate.


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


VOTE  
The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.



Από το Space Avalanche του Eoin Ryan και το The Perry Bible Fellowship του Nicholas Gurewitch.






















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