AMBROSE BIERCE


He chose to die by riding off into Mexico. "A Gringo in Mexico," he wrote, "that's euthanasia." Today he might simply bicycle over to East L.A. Or, perhaps, ride a New York City subway train without carrying along a Spanish-to-English dictionary.

Some definitions from the classic "Devil's Dictionary" of Mr. Bierce...


Acquaintance
A person whom we know well enough to borrow from but not well enough to lend to. A degree of friendship called slight when the object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous.

Battle
A method of untying with the teeth a political knot that will not yield to the tongue.

Bore
A person who talks when you wish him to listen.

Conservative
A statesman who is enamoured of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.

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

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

Labor
One of the processes whereby A acquires for B.

Male
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.

Marriage
The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.

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

Phonograph
An irritating toy that restores life to dead noises.

Pray
To ask the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

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

Wedding
A ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one, one undertakes to become nothing and nothing undertakes to become supportable.