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plagiarism, n. A literary coincidence compounded of a discreditable priority and an honorable subsequence.

Ambrose Bierce

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Ambrose Bierce
Born: 1842
Born: June 24
Aphorist
Journalist
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Meigs County
Ohio
Dod Grile
William Herman
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce
Ambrose Bierce
Literary
Priorities
Discreditable
Compounded
Plagiarism
Priority
Coincidence
Honorable

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

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PLEBEIAN, n. An ancient Roman who in the blood of his country stained nothing but his hands. Distinguished from the Patrician, who was a saturated solution.
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One engaged in a commercial pursuit. A commercial pursuit is one in which the thing pursued is a dollar.
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SYLLOGISM, n. A logical formula consisting of a major and a minor assumption and an inconsequent.
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GOOSE, n. A bird that supplies quills for writing. These [quills] when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person called an author, there results a very fair and accurate transcript of the fowl's thought and feeling.
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I think love is the most unbelievable, and critical, thing in civilization. Everything else is very mechanical and predictable, but love, you can't catch it.
Ambrose Bierce
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DIARY, n. A daily record of that part of one's life, which he can relate to himself without blushing.
Ambrose Bierce
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Youth looks forward, for nothing is behind! Age backward, for nothing is before.
Ambrose Bierce
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PANDEMONIUM, n. Literally, the Place of All the Demons. Most of them have escaped into politics and finance, and the place is now used as a lecture hall by the Audible Reformer.
Ambrose Bierce
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SATIRE, n. An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the vices and follies of the author's enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness.
Ambrose Bierce
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INTIMACY, n. A relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their mutual destruction.
Ambrose Bierce
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EUCHARIST, n. A sacred feast of the religious sect of Theophagi. A dispute once unhappily arose among the members of this sect as to what it was that they ate. In this controversy some five hundred thousand have already been slain, and the question is still unsettled.
Ambrose Bierce
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APOTHECARY, n. The physician's accomplice, undertaker's benefactor and grave worm's provider
Ambrose Bierce
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MANNA, n. A food miraculously given to the Israelites in the wilderness. When it was no longer supplied to them they settled down and tilled the soil, fertilizing it, as a rule, with the bodies of the original occupants.
Ambrose Bierce
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An accident is an inevitable occurrence due to the actions of immutable natural laws.
Ambrose Bierce
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DELUSION, n. The father of a most respectable family, comprising Enthusiasm, Affection, Self-denial, Faith, Hope, Charity and many other goodly sons and daughters.
Ambrose Bierce
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Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic.
Ambrose Bierce
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To seek a justification for a decision already made.
Ambrose Bierce
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The money-getter who pleads his love of work has a lame defense, for love of work at money-getting is a lower taste than love of money.
Ambrose Bierce
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A large stone presented by the archangel Gabriel to the patriarch Abraham, and preserved at Mecca. The patriarch had perhaps asked the archangel for bread.
Ambrose Bierce
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RAREBIT n. A Welsh rabbit, in the speech of the humorless, who point out that it is not a rabbit. To whom it may be solemnly explained that the comestible known as toad-in-a-hole is really not a toad, and that riz-de-veau à la financière is not the smile of a calf prepared after the recipe of a she banker.
Ambrose Bierce