The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

inspiration for The Believers

Lately, in the United States, I have felt like a small child cowering on a playground overrun by bullies. Even though supposedly sane adults are witnessing this roguish behavior, no one has been able or willing to vanquish the bad guys. Lacking power or a voice or a viable route to resistance, I find myself oscillating between despair and derision, embracing the notion that the world may just be patently absurd. How else to explain the fact that the President of the United States famously once told a crowd at Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK? It’s, like, incredible.”

For that reason, I have been delighting in Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary, a book that saved me from despair during the first Trump administration and ultimately inspired my poem “The Believers.”

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (June 24, 1842– c. 1914) was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and Civil War veteran. His book The Devil's Dictionary was named one of "The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature" by the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration. His story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" has been described as "one of the most famous and frequently anthologized stories in American literature. (wiki)

I don’t claim to know everything, or even much, about Bierce’s life. I haven’t studied his biographies, I’m not overly curious about his death, although there’s no arguing it was an intriguing departure—he disappeared in Mexico in 1913, and was never heard from again. In one of his final letters, he wrote: "Good-bye. If you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags, please know that I think it is a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs." (wiki)

Bierce was biting in his critique of humanity. His two sons met tragic ends; he was the 10th of 14 children raised in Ohio, and from everything I’ve read, he remained estranged from them most of his life. He traveled extensively, fought and suffered a traumatic brain injury during the Civil War, lost more loved ones, and ended up in San Francisco, a journalist covering the antics of gold diggers, gun slingers, and run-of-the-mill prospectors. I admire the fact that he had a choice between despondency and humor, and chose the latter, at least in the years he was penning The Devil’s Dictionary.

First published in various newspapers in San Francisco, the entries in The Devil’s Dictionary were compiled in 1906 into a book initially titled The Cynic’s Word Book.

Here are a few examples:

Self-esteem, n. An erroneous appraisement.

Alone, adj. In bad company.

Once, adv. Enough.

Diplomacy, n. The patriotic art of lying for one’s country.

Peace, n. In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.

Bride, n. A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.

Positive, adj. Mistaken at the top of one’s voice.

Year, n. A period of 365 disappointments.

Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge of things without parallel

Oblivion, n. The state or condition in which the wicked cease from struggling and the dreary are at rest. Fame’s eternal dumping ground. Cold storage for high hopes. A place where ambitious authors meet their works without pride and their betters without envy. A dormitory without an alarm clock.

Wit, n. The salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.

Impunity, n. Wealth.

The Wall Street Journal wrote that The Devil's Dictionary is "probably the most brilliant work of satire written in America. And maybe one of the greatest in all of world literature." The New York Times said: "It is a tour de force of no mean proportions, because it is possible to read it from cover to cover without being bored, so amusing are his unexpected turns of caustic humor, so brilliant his flagitious wit and so diverting the verses and dicta of non-existent philosophers as 'Father Cassalasca Jape, S. J.', with which he illustrates them."

Bierce's long newspaper career was often controversial because of his penchant for biting social criticism and satire. He once famously retorted that patriotism wasn’t the last fortress of the scoundrel, it was the first.

It made me sad to learn that the epithets bestowed upon him during that period ran the gamut from negative to downright corrosive: Bitter Bierce, the Devil’s Lexicographer, the Wickedest Man in San Francisco, the Rascal with the Sorrel Hair.

And the vituperation wasn’t benign. Bierce purportedly carried a loaded .45-caliber revolver under his coat for protection. According to Roy Morris, Jr., in Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company, when a few of his readers objected to “the level of his personal invective, he brusquely advised them to ‘continue selling shoes, selling pancakes, or selling themselves. As for me, I sell abuse.”

But the man was complex, and his cynicism wasn’t merely churlish; it was the product of moral outrage. The renowned journalist H.L. Mencken seemed to ascertain this after a few meetings with Bierce: “The man who emerges is far more interesting and charming than the old fee-faw-fum. He was not, it appears, the appalling cynic that trembling young reporters used to admire. On the contrary, he was one of the most idealistic men that his generation produced in America—in fact, a great moral force…for he would not lie, and truth alone mattered to him. It came to mean more than beauty….it came to be the paramount value of his life. Bierce’s integrity, Mencken added, “was never betrayed by compromise. Right or wrong, Bierce always stuck to the truth as he saw it. He was magnificently decent. It cost him something, but he never wavered.”

Another biographer noted: Ambrose Bierce once told a friend that the younger, more optimistic version of himself had vanished after the war. “My future program, he announced early in his career will become disapproval of human institutions in general, including all forms of government, most laws and customs, and all contemporary literature, enthusiastic belief in the Darwinian theory, intolerance of intolerance, and war upon every man with a mission human suffering and human injustice in all their forms to be contemplated with the merely curious interest, as one looks into an Ant hill.”

I’m not suggesting Bierce ended his life on a high note or that his lifelong cynicism made for a cheery existence. Still, he was funny as hell—he called out the absurdity, he valued the truth above all, and his wit has proven a great balm—at least to me—these past few years.

I hope you will join me in celebrating Ambrose Bierce, who fended off the powerful and righteous with his wit. And I hope you find some solace here as well!

Cheers,

Kelly

For more on The Devil’s Dictionary, check out The Paris Revew.

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Below you’ll find a video of my poem “The Believers,” which was inspired by Bierce’s satire. The Believers marks a point in my poetry collection and the trajectory of my recovery from assault and religious trauma, where I had a choice whether to succumb or fight back. Humor gave me fuel for the fight.

Although my book doesn’t end with this level of sarcasm, I think I needed to spend some time contemplating how one who was victimized (me) might feel more shame than my assailants, and how those in power often remain so in no small part because of their outlandish righteousness.

It took me many decades to realize that my story—however painful—was merely the product of institutional dysfunction and not the least bit unique.

By the end of the book, I am happy to say I landed in a more peaceful place, specifically Montana.

Cheers,

Kelly

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KELLY FORDON's latest poetry collection, What Trammels the Heart, was published by SFAPress in 2025. Her short story collection, I Have the Answer (Wayne State University Press, 2020), was chosen as a Midwest Book Award Finalist and an Eric Hoffer Finalist. Her first full-length poetry collection, Goodbye Toothless House (Kattywompus Press, 2019), was an Eyelands International Prize Finalist and an Eric Hoffer Finalist. It was later adapted into a play by Robin Martin and published in The Kenyon Review Online. Her novel-in-stories, Garden for the Blind, was published by WSUP in 2015. She teaches at Springfed Arts in Detroit and online, where she also runs a fiction podcast called “Let's Deconstruct a Story.” http://www.letsdeconstructastory.substack.com.

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