RACK, n. An argumentative implement formerly much used in persuading devotees of a false faith to embrace the living truth. As a call to the unconverted the rack never had any particular efficacy, and is now held in light popular esteem. - Ambrose Bierce
Home computers are being called upon to perform many new functions, including the consumption of homework formerly eaten by the dog. - Doug Larson
This view, as a rounded whole and in all its essential elements, has very recently disappeared from science. It died a royal death with Agassiz.[It had formerly been held that there were no genetic connections among species.] - Asa Gray
Once machines performed all the servile functions formerly performed by the lower classes, the population immediately achieved equality, ending over ten thousand years of class systems. - Charles Edward Stoll
Even in climes/without snow/one cannot go/foward sometimes./Things test you./You are part of/the Donners or/part of the rescue:/a muleteer in/earflaps; a/formerly hearty/Midwestern farmer/perhaps. Both/parties trapped/within sight/of the pass. - Kay Ryan
Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages. - H. L. Mencken
OWE, v. To have (and to hold) a debt. The word formerly signified not indebtedness, but possession; it meant "own," and in the minds of debtors there is still a good deal of confusion between assets and liabilities. - Ambrose Bierce
Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults. - Thomas Szasz
But that which fanaticism formerly promised to the elect, science now accomplishes for all men. - Gustave Flaubert
As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly. - Samuel Johnson
What a time experiences as evil, is usually an untimely echo of what was formerly experienced as good--the atavism of a more ancient ideal. - Friedrich Nietzsche
Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic. - Thomas Szasz
LAUREL, n. The _laurus_, a vegetable dedicated to Apollo, and formerly defoliated to wreathe the brows of victors and such poets as had influence at court. (_Vide supra._) - Ambrose Bierce
MINSTREL, adj. Formerly a poet, singer or musician; now a nigger with a color less than skin deep and a humor more than flesh and blood can bear. - Ambrose Bierce
PAINTING, n. The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic. Formerly, painting and sculpture were combined in the same work: the ancients painted their statues. The only present alliance between the two arts is that the modern painter chisels his patrons. - Ambrose Bierce