Insurance - an ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table.
Interpretation
The quote humorously critiques insurance as a gamble where the insured feels like they are winning against the insurer.
Ambrose Bierce's quote on insurance strips away the illusion of security that insurance provides, portraying it as a modern gamble. It highlights the paradox of individuals feeling victorious when they purchase insurance, unaware that they are playing a game where the odds are often stacked against them, and the true 'house' rarely loses.
In practice
In a debate about financial security, one might quote Bierce to emphasize the illusion behind insurance.
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.
At this point, realism is perhaps the least adequate means of understanding or portraying the incredible realities of our existence.
Perhaps my whisper was already born before my lips.
You know the theory of cell irritability? If you take an amoeba cell and poke it a thousand times, it will change and then re-form into its original shape. And then, the thousandth time you poke this amoeba, the cell will completely collapse and become nothing. That's kind of what it's like being famous. People say hi, how are you doing, and after the thousandth time, you just get angry; you really pop.
Nobody ever fails in Yoga....It is slow in the beginning and rapid in the end. _x000D_ When one is fully matured, realization is explosive.
How you climb a mountain is more important than reaching the top
Well I think it is often the case that the biggest bullies take what they know to be their own defects, as they see it, and they put them right on someone else and then they try and destroy the other and that's what Voldemort does.
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