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

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) American writer and journalist

“Ambition,” The Cynic’s Word Book (1906)
    (Source)

Included in The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

Originally published in the "Devil's Dictionary" column in the San Francisco Wasp, where the entry read:

An overmastering desire to be abused by the newspapers during life, and have an epitaph by Hector A. Stuart after death.

Bierce frequently mocked the verse of Stuart, a San Francisco poet.