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A Daily Dose of Medicine From Ambrose Bierce's "The Devil's Dictionary" – It's Just What the Doctor Ordered

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Message GLloyd Rowsey
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Your dose for January 2, 2009, is a double.  There is neither “Israel” nor “Palestine”  in the Dictionary (after all, the good Mr. Ambrose disappeared in 1913), but I did find the following two entries under the “I” pages and the “P” pages: 

Injustice: n. A burden which of all those we load upon others and carry ourselves is lightest in the hands and heaviest upon the back. 

And

Past: n. That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance.  A moving line called the Present parts if from an imaginary period known as the Future.  These two grand divisions of Eternity, of which the one is continually effacing the other, are entirely unlike.  The one is dark with sorrow and disappointment, the other bright with prosperity and joy.  The Past is the region of sobs, the Future is the realm of song.  In one crouches Memory, clad in sackcloth and ashes, mumbling penitential prayer; in the sunshine of the other Hope flies with a free wing, beckoning to temples of success and bowers of ease.  Yet the Past is the Future of Yesterday, the Future is the Past of Tomorrow.  They are one – the knowledge and the dream.

-

(Read a few biographical words about Ambrose Bierce, from the 1958 Dover paperback edition of The Devil’s Dictionary, here.)
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I have a law degree (Stanford, 66') but have never practiced. Instead, from 1967 through 1977, I tried to contribute to the revolution in America. As unsuccessful as everyone else over that decade, in 1978 I went to work for the U.S. Forest (more...)
 
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