Adolescence: The stage between puberty and adultery.
Interpretation
This quote humorously comments on the confusion and challenges of adolescence.
Ambrose Bierce's quote cleverly plays on the word 'adultery' to highlight the tumultuous phase of adolescence, suggesting it is a transitional period filled with complexities. The phrase is a light-hearted jab that encapsulates the journey from puberty, a time of physical and emotional change, to adulthood, which often includes moral decisions and relationships.
In practice
During a school assembly discussing the challenges of growing up.
PALM, n. A species of tree . . . of which the familiar "itching palm" ("Palma hominis") is most widely distributed . . . . This noble vegetable exudes a kind of invisible gum, which may be detected by applying to the bark a piece of gold or silver.
Human nature is pretty well balanced; for every lacking virtue there is a rough substitute that will serve at a pinch--as cunning is the wisdom of the unwise, and ferocity the courage of the coward.
Indigestion: A disease which the patient and his friends frequently mistake for deep religious conviction and concern for the salvation of mankind. As the simple Red Man of the Western Wild put it, with, it must be confessed, a certain force: 'Plenty well, no pray; big belly ache, heap God.'
Disobey n:To celebrate with an appropriate ceremony the maturity of a command
NOUMENON, n. That which exists, as distinguished from that which merely seems to exist, the latter being a phenomenon. The noumenon is a bit difficult to locate; it can be apprehended only by a process of reasoning - which is a phenomenon.
PARDON, v. To remit a penalty and restore to the life of crime. To add to the lure of crime the temptation of ingratitude.
God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny.
And stop pointing that beard at me, it might go off!
He who laughs best today, will also laughs last.
I don't believe in an afterlife, but I'm taking an extra pair of underwear just in case.
He's the kind of man a woman would have to marry to get rid of.
It is a curious fact, but nobody ever is sea-sick - on land. At sea, you come across plenty of people very bad indeed, whole boat-loads of them; but I never met a man yet, on land, who had ever known at all what it was to be sea-sick. Where the thousands upon thousands of bad sailors that swarm in every ship hide themselves when they are on land is a mystery.
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