Cynical People
Ambrose Bierce
cynic, n. A person who
is prematurely disappointed in the future.
Cynicism seems to march alongside writers and
soldiers, so it is no surprise that one of our most
cynical heroes was both. But when you and your 12
siblings are all given names beginning with the letter
'A', you tend to see the absurdity of all things .
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce (1842-1914?) was a veteran of
the American Civil War, serving for the Damn Yankees.
Yet the horrors of war dulled not his wit nor sense of
humor, though they may have amplified them. The bullet lodged within his skull behind
his left ear – a souvenir of a battle at Kenesaw
Mountain – didn't even slow him down. If anything war intensified his scrutiny
of all life's pleasures and travails, and he made one seem
like the other (or the other way around).
After the war, Bierce settled in San Francisco, a
city known to proof cynics alongside sourdough (which
explain part of your humble editor's disturbing disposition). From
there Bierce exploited the writing trades as a satirist,
short-story writer and journalist. From San Francisco,
he journeyed to London in 1872, finding even more
fertile fields for collecting cynical specimens.
During his career with the poison pen, Bierce (who
also wrote under the pseudonym of William Herman)
created a series of memorable alternate definitions for
words which he later gathered into a collection titled
The Devil's Dictionary, which was the kindling for
this web site. Some classic Bierce incendiaries from
The Devil's Dictionary include:
HAPPINESS, n. An agreeable sensation arising from
contemplating the misery of another.
HAND, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of the
human arm and commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.
POSITIVE, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
SAINT: A dead sinner revised and edited.
Aside from the dictionary, Bierce is most remembered
for his eerie tale of a civil war hanging titled An
Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Many of his short
stories were of a supernatural nature, though he often
ridiculed spiritualist and others involved in paranormal
parlor games.
Bierce disappeared in old age riding into to war. At
the age of 71, he headed south to Mexico to fight along
side of the bandit Pancho Villa. Bierce was never seen
or heard from again (he is presumed to have died in the
siege of Ojinega on January 11, 1914). A fictional
account of his last days was told in the novel The Old
Gringo (1985) by Carlos Fuentes, which was later adapted
for the screen and directed by Luis Punzo, starring
Gregory Peck (and unfortunately, Jane Fonda).
If irony is the step-brother to cynicism, then such
an ironic end to a fabled life is only fitting.
It is related of Voltaire that one night he and some traveling companion lodged at a wayside inn. The surroundings were suggestive, and after supper they agreed to tell robber stories in turn. "Once there was a [tax collector]." Saying nothing more, he was encouraged to continue. "That," he said, "is the story."
A famous community of troglodytes dwelt with David in the Cave of Adullam. The colony consisted of "every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented" - in brief, all the Socialists of Judah.
God made the world in six days, an arrested on the seventh.
Refusals are graded in a descending scale of finality thus: the refusal absolute, the refusal condition, the refusal tentative and the refusal feminine. The last is called by some casuists the refusal assentive.
Every time Europe looks across the Atlantic to see the American eagle, it observes only the rear end of an ostrich.
Most of the public buildings of the United States are of the Ramshackle order, though some of our earlier architects preferred the Ironic. Recent additions to the White House in Washington are Theo-Doric, the ecclesiastic order of the Dorians. They are exceedingly fine and cost one hundred dollars a brick.
[Palistry] consists in "reading character" in the wrinkles made by closing the hand. The pretence is not altogether false; character can really be read very accurately in this way, for the wrinkles in every hand submitted plainly spell the word "dupe."
The genus maiden has a wide geographical distribution, being found wherever sought and deplored wherever found. The maiden is not altogether unpleasing to the eye, nor (without her piano and her views) insupportable to the ear, though in respect to comeliness distinctly inferior to the rainbow, and, with regard to the part of her that is audible, bleating out of the field by the canary – which, also, is more portable.
There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he fell by one kind or another – the classification is for advantage of the lawyers.
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