The Cynic's Word Book

Ambrose Bierce

AUTHOR'S PREFACE _The Devil's Dictionary_ was begun in a weekly paper in 1881, and was continued in a desultory way at long intervals until 1906.

Ambrose Bierce

THE MILLENNIUM FULCRUM EDITION, 1988 A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below.

Ambrose Bierce

Reprinted by permission.

Ambrose Bierce

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF AMBROSE BIERCE VOLUME II IN THE MIDST OF LIFE TALES OF SOLDIERS AND CIVILIANS Originally Published 1909 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION Denied existence by the chief ...

Robert Louis Stevenson

STORY OF THE DOOR Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty,...

Henrik Ibsen

DRAMATIS PERSONAE Torvald Helmer.

Lewis Carroll

CHAPTER I. Down the Rabbit-Hole Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was r...

Charles Dickens

PREFACE I HAVE endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me.