Litigant. A person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the idea of sacrificing something significant for a potentially minimal gain.
Ambrose Bierce's quote uses the metaphor of a litigant, someone who is embroiled in legal battles, to express the often futile and self-destructive nature of fighting for something that may ultimately not be worth the cost. The imagery of giving up 'skin' for the hope of keeping 'bones' suggests that people may risk their well-being or integrity in pursuit of something that may not offer substantial rewards, reflecting a deeper commentary on human behavior in conflicts and negotiations.
In practice
This quote might be shared during a legal seminar to illustrate the risks involved in legal disputes.
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.
Take a look around, then, and see that none of the uninitiated are listening. Now by the uninitiated I mean the people who believe in nothing but what they can grasp in their hands, and who will not allow that action or generation or anything invisible can have real existence.
Temptations and occasions put nothing into a man, but only draw out what was in him before.
If facts, logic, and scientific procedures are all just arbitrarily "socially constructed" notions, then all that is left is consensus--more specifically peer consensus, the kind of consensus that matters to adolescents or to many among the intelligentsia.
The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedoms.
Cultivated leisure is the aim of man.
Racism is, among other things, the unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.
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