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

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

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

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

"Pardon; what I have to ask is that he be permitted to make them<br />

himself."<br />

It was so ordered.<br />

SATIETY, n. The feeling that one has for the plate after he has eaten<br />

its contents, madam.<br />

SATIRE, n. An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the<br />

vices and follies of the author's enemies were expounded with<br />

imperfect tenderness. In this country satire never had more than a<br />

sickly and uncertain existence, for the soul of it is wit, wherein we<br />

are dolefully deficient, the humor that we mistake for it, like all<br />

humor, being tolerant and sympathetic. Moreover, although Americans<br />

are "endowed by their Creator" with abundant vice and folly, it is not<br />

generally known that these are reprehensible qualities, wherefore the<br />

satirist is popularly regarded as a soul‐spirited knave, and his ever<br />

victim's outcry for codefendants evokes a national assent.<br />

Hail Satire! be thy praises ever sung<br />

In the dead language of a mummy's tongue,<br />

For thou thyself art dead, and damned as well‐‐<br />

Thy spirit (usefully employed) in Hell.<br />

Page | 313

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