Book detail: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
This book is a compilation of satirical definitions, offering a humorous and critical take on a wide range of words and ideas, all presented from the viewpoint of a devil. The entries are known for their wit and sarcasm, challenging the reader's understanding of common terms and concepts.
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“CUNNING, n. The faculty that distinguishes a weak animal or person from a strong one. It brings its possessor much mental satisfaction and great material adversity. An Italian proverb says: "The furrier gets the skins of more foxes than asses."”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“TAIL, n. The part of an animal's spine that has transcended its natural limitations to set up an independent existence in a world of its own.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“PIG, n. An animal ("Porcus omnivorus") closely allied to the human race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior in scope, for it sticks at pig.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“MONKEY, n. An arboreal animal which makes itself at home in genealogical trees.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“HYDRA, n. A kind of animal that the ancients catalogued under many heads.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“A wedding is a ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one, one undertakes to become nothing, and nothing undertakes to become supportable.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“FINANCE, n. The art or science of managing revenues and resources for the best advantage of the manager. The pronunciation of this word with the i long and the accent on the first syllable is one of America's most precious discoveries and possessions.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“PASTIME, n. A device for promoting dejection. Gentle exercise for intellectual debility.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“DELUSION, n. The father of a most respectable family, comprising Enthusiasm, Affection, Self-denial, Faith, Hope, Charity and many other goodly sons and daughters.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“SATIRE, n. An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the vices and follies of the author's enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“MEDICINE, n. A stone flung down the Bowery to kill a dog in Broadway.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“HYENA, n. A beast held in reverence by some oriental nations from its habit of frequenting at night the burial-places of the dead. But the medical student does that”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“PLAGUE, n. In ancient times a general punishment of the innocent for admonition of their ruler, as in the familiar instance of Pharaoh the Immune. The plague today . . . is merely Nature's fortuitous manifestation of her purposeless objectionableness.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“FIDDLE, n. An instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse's tail on the entrails of a cat.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“CERBERUS, n. The watch-dog of Hades, whose duty it was to guard the entrance - against whom or what does not clearly appear; everybody, sooner or later, had to go there, and nobody wanted to carry off the entrance.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“OBLIVION, n. The state or condition in which the wicked cease from struggling and the dreary are at rest. Fame's eternal dumping ground.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“REASON, n. Propensitate of prejudice.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“PROVIDENTIAL, adj. Unexpectedly and conspicuously beneficial to the person so describing it.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“Suddenly to change one's opinions and go over to another party. The most notable flop on record was that of Saul of Tarsus, who has been severely criticised as a turn-coat by some of our partisan journals.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“IMAGINATION, n. A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“RICE-WATER, n. A mystic beverage secretly used by our most popular novelists and poets to regulate the imagination and narcotize the conscience.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“SPOOKER, n. A writer whose imagination concerns itself with supernatural phenomena, especially in the doings of spooks.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“UXORIOUSNESS, n. A perverted affection that has strayed to one's own wife.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“FICKLENESS, n. The iterated satiety of an enterprising affection.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“ARTLESSNESS, n. A certain engaging quality to which women attain by long study and severe practice upon the admiring male, who is pleased to fancy it resembles the candid simplicity of his young.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“PLATITUDE, n. The fundamental element and special glory of popular literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. All that is mortal of a departed truth. A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the sea of thought. A desiccated epigram.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“RIMER, n. A poet regarded with indifference or disesteem.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“INDIFFERENT, adj. Imperfectly sensible to distinctions among things.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“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.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“INDISCRETION, n. The guilt of woman.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“ACCUSE, v.t. To affirm another's guilt or unworth; most commonly as a justification of ourselves for having wronged him.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“POCKET, n. The cradle of motive and the grave of conscience. In woman this organ is lacking; so she acts without motive, and her conscience, denied burial, remains ever alive, confessing the sins of others.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“OATH, n. In law, a solemn appeal to the Deity, made binding upon the conscience by a penalty for perjury.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“EXHORT, v.t. In religious affairs, to put the conscience of another upon the spit and roast it to a nut-brown discomfort.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“PRICE, n. Value, plus a reasonable sum for the wear and tear of conscience in demanding it.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“J, n. A consonant in English, but some nations use it as a vowel . . . from a Latin verb, "jacere", "to throw," because when a stone is thrown at a dog the dog's tail assumes that shape.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“THEOSOPHY, n. An ancient faith having all the certitude of religion and all the mystery of science.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“TRUST, n. In American politics, a large corporation composed in greater part of thrifty working men, widows of small means, orphans in the care of guardians and the courts, with many similar malefactors and public enemies.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“IMMORAL, adj. Inexpedient. Whatever in the long run and with regard to the greater number of instances men find to be generally inexpedient comes to be considered wrong, wicked, immoral.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“CONGRESS, n. A body of men who meet to repeal laws.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“DEGRADATION, n. One of the stages of moral and social progress from private station to political preferment.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“SORCERY, n. The ancient prototype and forerunner of political influence. It was, however, deemed less respectable and sometimes was punished by torture and death.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“READING, n. The general body of what one reads. In our country it consists, as a rule, of Indiana novels, short stories in "dialect" and humor in slang.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“NOUMENON, n. That which exists, as distinguished from that which merely seems to exist, the latter being a phenomenon. The noumenon is a bit difficult to locate; it can be apprehended only by a process of reasoning - which is a phenomenon.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“INCOMPOSSIBLE, adj. Unable to exist if something else exists. Two things are incompossible when the world of being has scope enough for one of them, but not enough for both - as Walt Whitman's poetry and God's mercy to man.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“MONSIGNOR- A high ecclesiastical title, of which the Founder of our religion overlooked the advantages.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“POSITIVISM- A philosophy that denies our knowledge of the Real and affirms our ignorance of the Apparent. Its longest exponent is Comte, its broadest Mill and its thickest Spencer.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“PYRRHONISM- An ancient philosophy, named for its inventor. It consisted of an absolute disbelief in everything but Pyrrhonism. Its modern professors have added that.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“NEWTONIAN, Pertaining to a philosophy of the universe invented by Newton, who discovered that an apple will fall to the ground, but was unable to say why. His successors and disciples have advanced so far as to be able to say when.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World
“Condole - to show that bereavement is a smaller evil than sympathy.”
Source: The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World