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Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

Ambrose Bierce

Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Drive Slave Substitute
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
Belladonna, n.: In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Beautiful Death Essential Example Poison
MIND, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavour to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Brain Fact Himself Mindset Mysterious Nature
Prescription: A physician’s guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Harm Patient Prescription Situation
Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman’s power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Country Fools Freedom Instrument Power
Mausoleum, n: the final and funniest folly of the rich.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Final Funny Rich
Perseverance – a lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Average Perseverance Success Virtue
True, man does not know woman. But neither does woman.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Man Philosophy True Woman
Forgetfulness – a gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Conscience Destitution Forget Gift God
Money. A blessing that is of no advantage to us excepting when we part with it.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Blessing Exception Leaving Money
Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Coward Emergency Himself Legs Thinking
Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Confession Law Prayer Universe Worth
Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Art Human Limitation Reason Thinking Understand
Distance, n. The only thing that the rich are willing for the poor to call theirs and keep.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Call Distance Poor Rich Willing
Edible, adj.: Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Animal Digest Eat Goodness Man Science

Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

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Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

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