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Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum -- "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am." In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of the scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first. "The Devil's Dictionary" : Absent, adj: Exposed to the attacks of friends and acquaintances; defamed; slandered. Absentee, n: A person with an income who has had the forethought to remove himself from the sphere of exaction. Abstainer, n: A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. Absurdity, n: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. Acquaintance, n: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to. Admiration, n: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves. Adore, v: To venerate expectantly. After his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from Heaven. As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought, and turned to God and said, "A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon to be created." "This is true," He replied. "He will need laws," said the Demon slyly. "What! You, his appointed Enemy for all Time! You ask for the right to make his laws?" "Oh, no!" Satan replied, "I ask only that he be allowed to make his own." It was so granted. Age, n: That period of life in which we compound for the vices that we still cherish by reviling those that we no longer have the enterprise to commit. Ambidextrous, adj: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left. Anoint, v: To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery. Bacchus, n: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk. Barometer, n: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having. Birth, n: The first and direst of all disasters. Bore, n: A person who talks when you wish him to listen. Brain, n: The apparatus with which we think that we think. Brain, v. [as in "to brain"]: To rebuke bluntly, but not pointedly; to dispel a source of error in an opponent. Bride, n: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her. But as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value. Cabbage, n: A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head. Hatred, n: A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's superiority. Mad, adj: Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence. Magnet, n: Something acted upon by magnetism Magnetism, n: Something acting upon a magnet. The two definition immediately foregoing are condensed from the works of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human knowledge. Magpie, n: A bird whose thievish disposition suggested to someone that it might be taught to talk. Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man. Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds. onclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second. Man, n: 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 and Canada. Misfortune, n: The kind of fortune that never misses. Miss, n: A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market. Mythology, n: 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. November, n: The eleventh twelfth of a weariness. Occident, n: The part of the world lying west (or east) of the Orient. It is largely inhabited by Christians, powerful sub-tribe of the Hypocrites, whose principal industries are murder and cheating, which they are pleased to call "war" and "commerce." These, also, are the principal industries of the Orient. Painting, n: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic. Peace, n: In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting. Pig, n: An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior in scope, for it balks at pig. Reporter, n: A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words. Telephone, n: An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance. There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy... Truthful, adj: Dumb and illiterate. While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands you are safe, for you can watch both of his. Year, n: A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.