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THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY Ambrose Bierce - Sunny Hills High School

THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY Ambrose Bierce - Sunny Hills High School

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have only to find it.<br />

<strong>Ambrose</strong> <strong>Bierce</strong> The Devil’s Dictionary<br />

OLYMPIAN, adj. Relating to a mountain in Thessaly, once inhabited by<br />

gods, now a repository of yellowing newspapers, beer bottles and<br />

mutilated sardine cans, attesting the presence of the tourist and his<br />

appetite.<br />

His name the smirking tourist scrawls<br />

Upon Minerva's temple walls,<br />

Where thundered once Olympian Zeus,<br />

And marks his appetite's abuse.<br />

Averil Joop<br />

OMEN, n. A sign that something will happen if nothing happens.<br />

ONCE, adv. Enough.<br />

OPERA, n. A play representing life in another world, whose<br />

inhabitants have no speech but song, no motions but gestures and no<br />

postures but attitudes. All acting is simulation, and the word<br />

_simulation_ is from _simia_, an ape; but in opera the actor takes for<br />

his model _Simia audibilis_ (or _Pithecanthropos stentor_)‐‐the ape<br />

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