“A man with outward courage dares to die; a man with inner courage dares to live.”
― Lao Tzu
(also: Lao Tzu)

n. A sacred rite of such efficacy that he who finds himself in heaven without having undergone it will be unhappy forever. It is performed with water in two ways—by immersion, or plunging, and by aspersion, or sprinkling.

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But whether the plan of immersion
Is better than simple aspersion
Let those immersed
And those aspersed
Decide by the Authorized Version,
And by matching their agues tertian.
—G.J.

(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

A proponent of a new misrule who has failed to establish it.
(also: humans)
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(adj.) of language; meant to persuade, imply and suggest, for all those times when plainspokenness would be too pussy

To have (and to hold) a debt. The word formerly signified not indebtedness, but possession; it meant "own," and in the minds of debtors there is still a good deal of confusion between assets and liabilities.

To assist with obstructions and objections.

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How lonely he who thinks to vex
With badinage the Solemn Sex!
Of levity, Mere Man, beware;
None but the Grave deserve the Unfair.
—Percy P. Orminder

(n.) heir to a centuries-long tradition of warlord-employed assassins and spies hailing from japan. very easily identified by distinctive black full-body pajamas (one would think this might interfere with the spying and assassinating but evidently not)

(n.) one who tracks down and apprehends people for money, usually criminals who have jumped bail.

somewhat similar to a private detective but less likely to wear a monochrome trench coat or monologue to oneself in the rain

(n.) a filthy, poorly-dressed, drugged up young person who spends his time reading incomprehensible stream-of-consciousness poetry in some dingy coffee shop basement.

they were a major source of parental alarm in the 50s and 60s until they were replaced by hippies

A super hero whose super power is essentialy trow straws

(also: long pork)

(also: gambling)

A receptacle for such sacred objects as pieces of the true cross, short-ribs of the saints, the ears of Balaam's ass, the lung of the cock that called Peter to repentance and so forth. Reliquaries are commonly of metal, and provided with a lock to prevent the contents from coming out and performing miracles at unseasonable times. A feather from the wing of the Angel of the Annunciation once escaped during a sermon in Saint Peter's and so tickled the noses of the congregation that they woke and sneezed with great vehemence three times each. It is related in the Gesta Sanctorum that a sacristan in the Canterbury cathedral surprised the head of Saint Dennis in the library. Reprimanded by its stern custodian, it explained that it was seeking a body of doctrine. This unseemly levity so enraged the diocesan that the offender was publicly anathematized, thrown into the Stour and replaced by another head of Saint Dennis, brought from Rome.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

Size. Magnitude being purely relative, nothing is large and nothing small. If everything in the universe were increased in bulk one thousand diameters nothing would be any larger than it was before, but if one thing remained unchanged all the others would be larger than they had been. To an understanding familiar with the relativity of magnitude and distance the spaces and masses of the astronomer would be no more impressive than those of the microscopist. For anything we know to the contrary, the visible universe may be a small part of an atom, with its component ions, floating in the life-fluid (luminiferous ether) of some animal. Possibly the wee creatures peopling the corpuscles of our own blood are overcome with the proper emotion when contemplating the unthinkable distance from one of these to another.

Belonging to an early period and a museum. Antedating the art and practice of perpetuating falsehood.
He lived in a period prehistoric,

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When all was absurd and phantasmagoric.
Born later, when Clio, celestial recorder,
Set down great events in succession and order,
He surely had seen nothing droll or fortuitous
In anything here but the lies that she threw at us.
—Orpheus Bowen
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(n.) someone who knows much, much less than they think they do

(also: wise guy)

(n.) if you gotta push some papers around, ok, sure; but if something awful happens on your watch, don't pass it off with the excuse of "I was just doing my job". you are still instilled with the gift and the responsibility to stay aware of your surroundings, your actions and consequences, and to stay connected with your soul.
https://medium.com/the-retrospective/hannah-arendt-on-the-banality-of-evil-4e75fd840c68

(also: bullshit jobs)
the harms of (also: balkanization)
the harms of (also: decontextualization)

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”
― Helen Keller
(also: happiness)

A traveler that is taken seriously. A Pilgrim Father was one who, leaving Europe in 1620 because not permitted to sing psalms through his nose, followed it to Massachusetts, where he could personate God according to the dictates of his conscience.
(also: The Devil's Dictionary)

(n.) often found in white-collar companies. a type of bullshit job. and the more they shout they're vital and important and irreplaceable, the more you can be assured that they're standing on a very precarious cliff.

(also: paper-pusher)
(also: bullshit jobs)