Related:

• Ambition, n. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.
  -- Ambrose Bierce "The Devil's Dictionary...
• HOPE, n. Desire and expectation rolled into one. Delicious Hope!
  when naught to man it left -- Of fortune destitute, of friends beref...
• PRIMATE, n. The head of a church, especially a State church supported by involuntary contributions.
  The Primate of England is the Archbishop of Canterbury, an amiable old gentleman, who occupies Lambeth Palace when living and Westminster Abbey when dead....
• Noncombatant, n.: A dead Quaker. -- Ambrose Bierce
• NON-COMBATANT, n. A dead Quaker. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary
• LINEN, n. "A kind of cloth the making of which, when made of hemp, entails a great waste of hemp.
  Calcraft the Hangman. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• YOUTH, n. The Period of Possibility, when Archimedes finds a fulcrum, Cassandra has a following and seven cities compete for the honor of endowing a living Homer.
  Youth is the true Saturnian Reign, the Golden Age on earth again, when figs are grown on thistles, and pigs betailed with whistles and, wearing silken bristles, live ever in clover, and clows fly over, delivering milk at every door, and Justice never is heard to snore, and every assassin is made a ghost and, howling, is cast into Baltimost!...
• Noncombatant: A dead Quaker. -- Ambrose Bierce