The Devil’s Dictionary · E (2/2)

Exhort : In religious affairs, to put the conscience of another upon the spit and roast it to a nut-brown discomfort.

Exile : One who serves his country by residing abroad, yet is not an ambassador.

An English sea-captain being asked if he had read “The Exile of Erin,” replied: “No, sir, but I should like to anchor on it.” Years afterwards, when he had been hanged as a pirate after a career of unparalleled atrocities, the following memorandum was found in the ship’s log that he had kept at the time of his reply:

> Aug. 3rd, 1842. Made a joke on the ex-Isle of Erin. Coldly received. War with the whole world!

Existence : > A transient, horrible, fantastic dream, >
> Wherein is nothing yet all things do seem: >
> From which we’re wakened by a friendly nudge >
> Of our bedfellow Death, and cry: “O fudge!”

Experience : The wisdom that enables us to recognize as an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.

> To one who, journeying through night and fog,
>   
> Is mired neck-deep in an unwholesome bog,
>   
> Experience, like the rising of the dawn,
>   
> Reveals the path that he should not have gone.
>
> —⁠Joel Frad Bink

Expostulation : One of the many methods by which fools prefer to lose their friends.

Extinction : The raw material out of which theology created the future state.