Related:

• DUEL, n. A formal ceremony preliminary to the reconciliation of two enemies.
  Great skill is necessary to its satisfactory observance...
• Coronation, n.: The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a dynamite bomb.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• SABBATH, n. A weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.
  Among the Jews observance of the day was enforced by a Commandment of which this is the Christian versio...
• RUMOR, n. A favorite weapon of the assassins of character.
  Sharp, irresistible by mail or shield, By guard unparried as by flight unstayed, O serviceable Rumor, let me wield Against my enemy no other blade....
• ACKNOWLEDGE, v.t. To confess. Acknowledgement of one another's faults is the highest duty imposed by our love of truth.
  -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary...
• VALOR, n. A soldierly compound of vanity, duty and the gambler's hope.
  "Why have you halted?" roared the commander of a division and Chickamauga, who had ordered a charge...
• EXCESS, n. In morals, an indulgence that enforces by appropriate penalties the law of moderation.
  Hail, high Excess -- especially in wine, To thee in worship do I bend the knee Who preach abstemiousness unto me -- My skull thy pulpit, as my paunch thy shrine....