The Cynic's Dictionary

by Aubrey Dillon - Malone (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1998

  $6.61

• Used

  Paperback
  1999

  $4.20

  This is an acerbic collection of alternative definitions that aim to set the record straight; epigrammatic cynicism from some of the greatest wits - Oscar Wilde, H.L. Mencken, Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw and modern-day practitioners including P.J. O'Rourke, Madonna and Woody Allen. H.L. Mencken defined a cynic as someone who, when he smells flowers, looks for a coffin . But more truly, a cynic is a disillusioned idealist, and his scathing wit a way of coping with the great divide between how things ought to be and how they actually are. The quotations on show range from the sublimely subversive to the downright idiotic, and make ripostes with which to deflate pretentious windbags or infect the earnest and insulated with a jaundiced view of the world.