The following are selected definitions from Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary.
ABSURDITY, n. A statement or belief, manifestly inconsistent with one’s own opinion.
IMAGINATION, n. A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership.
INTERPRETER, n. One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating what it would have been to the interpreter’s advantage for the other to have said.
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.
LAWYER, n. One skilled in circumvention of the law.
OPTIMIST, n. A proponent of the doctrine that black is white.
RATIONAL, adj. Devoid of all illusions save observation, experience and reflection.
RELIGION, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
SELF-ESTEEM, n. An erroneous appraisement.
CYNIC, n. A person whose opinions are persuasive, but unworkable.
That last one was mine, demonstrating my utility ballplayer credentials as compared to Bierce’s Hall of Fame spectacularness.
2 comments:
That show was just on ME TV about a week or so ago. Since I came in about 10 minutes after it had started I watched a few minutes than flipped off to something else.[If I can't see a show from the beginning, I usually won't watch it] Now I'll have to wait and see it when it comes back around again. I was an avid MTM fan when the show was first on and rarely missed an episode but this is one I don't remember.
Dear Mr. Pomerantz; you've told us how you revise, and revise, and rewrite your works, imagine how much work Bierce must have done to get his both right and pithy?
-z
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