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.
To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it!
There's a thin line between to laugh with and to laugh at.
I don't want to die now!" he yelled. "I've still got a headache! I don't want to go to heaven with a headache, I'd be all cross and wouldn't enjoy it!
Our most noted satirists are true columnists, and their opinions can be worth more than any well-documented expose.
Musical people always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be perfectly deaf.
Gossip is the art of saying nothing in a way that leaves practically nothing unsaid.
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