171 quotes
Clarionet, n. An instrument of torture operated by a person with cotton in his ears. There are two instruments that are worse than a clarionet -- two clarionets.
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Dictionary, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Witch, n. (1) An ugly and repulsive old woman, in a wicked league with the devil. (2) A beautiful and attractive young woman, in wickedness a league beyond the devil.
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Flesh, n. The Second Person of the secular Trinity.
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Opposition, n. In politics the party that prevents the Government from running amok by hamstringing it.
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Conservative, n. A statesman enamored of existing evils, as opposed to a Liberal, who wants to replace them with others.
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Edible, adj.: 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.
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Genealogy, n. An account of one's descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his own.
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Insurrection, n. An unsuccessful revolution. Disaffection's failure to substitute misrule for bad government.
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Advice, n. The smallest current coin.
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Helpmate, n. A wife, or bitter half.
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
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.
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Feast, n. A festival. A religious celebration usually signalized by gluttony and drunkenness, frequently in honor of some holy person distinguished for abstemiousness.
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
TELESCOPE, n. A device having a relation to the eye similar to that of the telephone to the ear, enabling distant objects to plague us with a multitude of needless details. Luckily it is unprovided with a bell summoning us to the sacrifice.
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
RAILROAD, n. The chief of many mechanical devices enabling us to get away from where we are to where we are no better off. For this purpose the railroad is held in highest favor by the optimist, for it permits him to make the transit with great expedition.
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Kilt, n. A costume sometimes worn by Scotchmen in America and Americans in Scotland.
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
PANTALOONS, n. A nether habiliment of the adult civilized male. The garment is tubular and unprovided with hinges at the points of flexion. Supposed to have been invented by a humorist. Called "trousers" by the enlightened and "pants" by the unworthy.
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
PROPERTY, n. Any material thing, having no particular value, that may be held by A against the cupidity of B. Whatever gratifies the passion for possession in one and disappoints it in all others. The object of man's brief rapacity and long indifference.
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Zeus, n. The chief of Grecian gods, adored by the Romans as Jupiter and by the modern Americans as God, Gold, Mob and Dog. Some explorers who have touched upon the shores of America, and one who professes to have penetrated a considerable distance to the interior, have thought that these four names stand for as many distinct deities, but in his monumental work on Surviving Faiths, Frumpp insists that the natives are monotheists, each having no other god than himself, whom he worships under many sacred names.
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)