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Prescription: A physician’s guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.

Ambrose Bierce

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
Marriage, n: the state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.
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Community Marriage Master Mistress Slave
Aborigines, n.: Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.
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Country Discover Fertilization Person
Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman’s power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
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Country Fools Freedom Instrument Power
Education, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.
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Disguise Education Understand Wisdom
Forgetfulness – a gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.
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Conscience Destitution Forget Gift God
Optimism – the doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.
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Beautiful Belief Optimism Ugly
Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.
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Death End Estate Himself
The partisan strife in which the people of the country are permitted to periodically engage does not tend to the development of ugly traits of character, but merely discloses those that preexist.
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Country Development Engagement Existence People Strife
Eloquence, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white.
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Appearance Art Color Fools White
Electricity is the power that causes all natural phenomena not known to be caused by something else
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Electricity Natural Reason
Wine, madam, is God’s next best gift to man.
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Best Gift God Man
An election is nothing more than the advanced auction of stolen goods.
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Advantage Election Good Stolen
There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don’t know.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Adventure Knowledge Old Sun Wisdom
Consul – in American politics, a person who having failed to secure an office from the people is given one by the Administration on condition that he leave the country.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Administration Condition Country Failure Himself Leaving Person Politics Security
The most affectionate creature in the world is a wet dog.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Affection Creature Dog World

Prescription: A physician’s guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.

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Prescription: A physician’s guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.

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