Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
Interpretation
Calamities can affect us negatively while simultaneously benefiting others, highlighting the dual nature of misfortune and fortune.
This quote by Ambrose Bierce reflects on the duality of calamities, suggesting that while we may experience misfortune in our own lives, those very circumstances can lead to beneficial outcomes for others. It highlights the interconnectedness of human experiences, emphasizing that our struggles might pave the way for someone else's good fortune, thus prompting a deeper contemplation of the nature of suffering and success.
In practice
In a speech discussing the importance of empathy, one might use this quote to illustrate how our struggles can lead to opportunities for others.
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.
It is an anxious, sometimes a dangerous thing to be a doll. Dolls cannot choose; they can only be chosen; they cannot 'do'; they can only be done by.
He despised his body for its boring hungers, reflex anger; its petty, obliterating rage. But now he'd become detached. He regarded his body with a tender regret. It was the thing his spirit had to haul.
Cowardice and courage are never without a measure of affectation. Nor is love. Feelings are never true. They play with their mirrors.
For this is the truth about our soul, he thought, who fish-like inhabits deep seas and plies among obscurities threading her way between the boles of giant weeds, over sun-flickered spaces and on and on into gloom, cold, deep, inscrutable; suddenly she shoots to the surface and sports on the wind-wrinkled waves; that is, has a positive need to brush, scrape, kindle herself, gossiping.
Humans aren't as good as we should be in our capacity to empathize with feelings and thoughts of others, be they humans or other animals on Earth.
Someone ought to do it, but why should I? Someone ought to do it, so why not I? Between these two sentences lie whole centuries of moral evolution.
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