ANTIPATHY, n. The sentiment inspired by one's friend's friend.
Interpretation
Antipathy refers to the dislike or hostility one feels towards a friend's acquaintance.
In this quote, Ambrose Bierce cleverly captures the irony of human relationships, where individuals can harbor negative feelings towards someone purely based on their association with a close friend. This highlights the complexities of social dynamics and how friendship can influence our perceptions and emotions towards others, often without direct personal experiences to justify such feelings.
In practice
In a discussion about social groups, this quote can illustrate the complexities of human emotions.
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.
No one knows you like a person with whom you've shared a childhood. No one will ever understand you in quite the same way.
I thought it very touching to see these two women, coarse and shabby and beaten, so united; to see what they could be to one another; to see how they felt for one another, how the heart of each to each was softened by the hard trials of their lives. I think the best side of such people is almost hidden from us. What the poor are to the poor is little known, excepting to themselves and God.
Golf camaraderie, like that of astronauts and Antarctic explorers, is based on a common experience of transcendence; fat or thin, scratch or duffer, we have been somerwhere together where non-golfers never go.
Geese are friends to no one, they bad mouth everybody and everything. But they are companionable once you get used to their ingratitude and false accusations.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to min?
There is a fellowship more quiet even than solitude, and which, rightly understood, is solitude made perfect.
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