The
fortune file, on a
Unix system, is the
standard repository of
witticisms,
quotes,
lame puns, and
lore. The
fortune(1) program, when invoked, displays one extract (a "
fortune cookie") from the fortune file.
The fortune file may, on modern systems, actually be several files, with fortunes divided up by topic. In Debian GNU/Linux, for instance, the fortune databases are kept in /usr/share/games/fortunes.