an excerpt from the devil's dictionary

Aborigines 

Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.

Abstainer 

A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.

Arrest

Formally to detain one accused of unusualness.

Barometer 

An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.

Bore 

A person who talks when you wish him to listen.

Cannon 

An instrument employed in the rectification of national boundaries.

Cat 

A soft indestructible automaton provided by Nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.

Christian 

One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ insofar as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.

Congratulation 

The civility of envy.

Corporation 

An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.

Cynic 

A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.

Dictionary 

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.

Education 

That which discloses to the wise, and disguises from the foolish, their lack of understanding.

Elector 

One who enjoys the sacred privilege of voting for the man of another man's choice.

Friendship 

A ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but only one in foul.

Future 

That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.

Helpmate 

A wife, or bitter half.

Hers 

His.

Idiot 

A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.

In'ards 

The stomach, heart, soul, and other bowels.

Insurrection 

An unsuccessful revolution.

Justice 

A commodity which in a more or less adulterated condition the State sells to the citizen as a reward for his allegiance, taxes and personal service.

Learning 

The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.

Logic

The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.

Love 

A temporary insanity curable by marriage.

Marriage 

The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.

Mayonnaise 

One of the sauces that serve the French in place of a state religion.

Miss 

The title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market. Miss, Missis (Mrs.) and Mister (Mr.) are the three most distinctly disagreeable words in the language, in sound and sense. Two are corruptions of Mistress, the other of Master. In the general abolition of social titles in this our country they miraculously escaped to plague us. If we must have them let us be consistent and give one to the unmarried man. I venture to suggest Mush, abbreviated to Mh.

Patience 

A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.

Philosophy 

A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

Pray 

To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

Rational 

Devoid of all delusions save those of observation, experience and reflection.

Religion

A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

Road 

A strip of land along which one may pass from where it is too tiresome to be to where it is futile to go.

Sabbath 

A weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.

Vote 

The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.

Witch 

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.

Youth  

The Period of Possibility, when Archimedes finds a fulcrum, Cassandra has a following and seven cities compete for the honor of endowing a living Homer.

Youth is the true Saturnian Reign, the Golden Age on earth again, when figs are grown on thistles, and pigs betailed with whistles and, wearing silken bristles, live ever in clover, and cows fly over, delivering milk at every door, and Justice is never heard to snore, and every assassin is made a ghost and, howling, is cast into Baltimost--Polydore Smith.

Zeal 

A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced.