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Ambition. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.

Ambrose Bierce

You don’t have to be stupid to be a Christian, but it probably helps.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Help Religion Stupidity
What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Believe Country Democracy Oneself Ruin
A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms agains himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Convincing Doubt Enemy Man Person
Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Device Profit Responsibility
PITY, n. A failing sense of exemption, inspired by contrast.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Contrast Fall Sense
Money. A blessing that is of no advantage to us excepting when we part with it.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Blessing Exception Leaving Money
Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Ambition Himself Name Patriot
Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Happiness Temptation Weakness
A wedding is a ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one, one undertakes to become nothing, and nothing undertakes to become supportable.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Marriage People Person Support
Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Coward Emergency Himself Legs Thinking
Education, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Disguise Education Understand Wisdom
Don’t steal; thou’lt never thus compete successfully in business. Cheat.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Business Cheating Complete Steal Success
Labor is one of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Labor Pregnant Property
Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Advantage Affair Interest Principle Private
MYTHOLOGY, n. The body of a primitive people’s beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Belief Body History Invention Original People True
LAWYER, n. One skilled in circumvention of the law.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Law Oneself Skills

Ambition. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.

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Ambition. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.

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Popular Authors

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