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Enlightenment   /ɛnlˈaɪtənmənt/   Listen
Enlightenment

noun
1.
Education that results in understanding and the spread of knowledge.
2.
(Hinduism and Buddhism) the beatitude that transcends the cycle of reincarnation; characterized by the extinction of desire and suffering and individual consciousness.  Synonym: nirvana.
3.
A movement in Europe from about 1650 until 1800 that advocated the use of reason and individualism instead of tradition and established doctrine.  Synonym: Age of Reason.






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"Enlightenment" Quotes from Famous Books



... this with kisses, soft and wet; with fleeting touches; with coquettish glances and the sly display of her charms; with rambling, fantastic tales of her desirability in the regard of men—thus practicing all the familiar fascinations of her kind, according to the enlightenment of the world she knew. He must be persuaded, she thought, that his mother was beautiful, coveted; convinced of her wit and gaiety: else he would not love her. Life had taught her no other way.... And always at break of day, when he awoke in her arms, ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan

... overlaid and obscured by accretions foreign to it; denied the historical truth of the Gospels, and, like a true disciple of Hegel, ascribed the troubles of the 19th century to the overmastering influence of the "ENLIGHTENMENT" or the "AUFKLAeRUNG" (q. v.) that characterised the 18th. His last work was entitled "Disraeli's Romantic ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... intellectual stagnation thus generally produced, we must admit that we are indebted to the Church for the preservation of many valuable works. There were many men of learning in the monasteries, and some of sufficient enlightenment to be able to venerate the relics of Greek and Latin literature. We find that in the East the works of Aristophanes were so much admired by St. Chrysostom that he slept with them under his pillow. Perhaps the Saint enjoyed the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... shortly, woman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren't. It would be odd if she retained any of the narrowness of a specialist. Now if anyone says that this duty of general enlightenment (even when freed from modern rules and hours, and exercised more spontaneously by a more protected person) is in itself too exacting and oppressive, I can understand the view. I can only answer that ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... Sarah Trotter and Pocahontas Simmons, persons of color and Rev. S. E. Colburn, a white man. The number of pupils enrolled in the first year approached forty. To encourage Negroes in that city to avail themselves of their opportunity for their enlightenment, these teachers moved among the people from time to time, pointing out the necessity for more extensive preparation to discharge the functions of citizenship then devolving upon Negroes in their new State of freedom after ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... of our preconceptions—this process of finding "good" reasons to justify our routine beliefs—is known to modern psychologists as "rationalizing"—clearly only a new name for a very ancient thing. Our "good" reasons ordinarily have no value in promoting honest enlightenment, because, no matter how solemnly they may be marshaled, they are at bottom the result of personal preference or prejudice, and not of an honest desire to ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson

... and happiness of hard work, who have gladly listened to others, but always depended on themselves, were, after all, the men whom great nations delighted to follow as their royal leaders in the onward march towards greater enlightenment, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller

... stories of E.T.A. Hoffmann, Schiller's Robbers; but also Uhland's ballads, and the songs collected by Arnim and Brentano in The Boy's Magic Horn. That is to say: At the time when in school a critical and skeptical mind was being developed in him by descendants of the age of enlightenment, his private reading led him for the most part into the region of romanticism in its most exaggerated form. At the time, furthermore, when he took healthy romantic interest in the picturesque Dusseldorf life, his imagination ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... dis Misser Houten's camp," the man replied, "but he no got gol' dust here. I don' know what Misser Gordon send us here for, sar," he concluded, with a grin of enlightenment. ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... compassion against him' and use our possessions for the gratification of our own whims and fancies, 'how dwelleth the love of God in us?' There are few things in which Christian men of this day have more need for the vigorous exercise of conscience, and for enlightenment, than in their getting, and spending, and keeping money. In that region lies the main sphere of usefulness for many of us; and if we have not been 'faithful in that which is least,' our unfaithfulness ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... did not bring Jack Dudley much enlightenment, but he felt no special curiosity concerning the individual, and silently waited till he came up. The youth judged from the manner of the guide, however, that he was not overly pleased with the new arrival, whose countenance was not attractive. Nevertheless, ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis

... position. Then, as he tells us in the preface to Orthodoxy, when he had published the saltatory series of indictments entitled Heretics, a number of his critics said, in effect, "Please, Mr. Chesterton, what are we to believe?" Mr. G. S. Street, in particular, begged for enlightenment. G.K.C. joyously accepted the invitation, and wrote ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West

... him company for a day and when he dismounted before Stevenson's "Hotel" in Hoyt's Corners he summed up his feelings for the enlightenment of ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford

... clung with tenacity to his tunic and his water-bottle, for was there not a collection of trophies in those bulging pockets and sea-water in those battered bottles? Real salt sea-water, for the taste and enlightenment ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various

... largely formed upon the Scipionic tradition. Indeed to understand the mental and moral furniture of the Roman mind in the Ciceronian age, it is absolutely necessary to study that of the generation which made that mind what it was; but here space can only be found to point out how the enlightenment of the Scipionic circle opened out new ways in manners, in literature, in philosophical receptivity, and lastly in the study of the law, which was destined to be ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler

... well, I'm a Socialist too: that is, I have sense enough to believe that Socialism is practical and inevitable and right; it will come when the majority of the people are sufficiently enlightened to demand it, but that enlightenment will never be brought about by reasoning or arguing with them, for these people are simply not intellectually capable of abstract reasoning—they can't grasp theories. You know what the late Lord Salisbury ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... game in the face of odds; and most of all to the suffering German people. But to the German war machine, we reflected, was due a terrible punishment—the lesson it must learn not only for Germany's enlightenment, but for the sake ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green

... acquaintance so firmly believed. In the month of April I was invited to attend a seance at Professor de Morgan's, and was much astonished and affected by communications purporting to come to me from my dear son Claude. With constant prayer for enlightenment and guidance, we experimented at home. The teachings that seemed given us from the spirit-world were often akin to those of the gospel; at other times they were more obviously emanations of evil. I felt thankful for the assurance thus gained of an invisible world, but resolved ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... chronicle. Even men like Diderot and Voltaire, whose lives were for years made bitter by Jesuit machinations, gave many signs that they recognised the aid which had been rendered by their old masters to the cultivation and enlightenment of Europe. It was from the Jesuit fathers that the men of letters whom they trained, acquired that practical and social habit of mind which made the world and its daily interests so real to them. It was perhaps also ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... Angel still stood beside the Vicar-General; but the troubled soul of the priest could find no enlightenment in his eyes. All the while witnesses kept arriving and the multitude of them filled ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley

... only a fraction of the natives of India have ever heard of us. Much of the money devoted to the cause of revolution and anarchy in India is contributed by worthy people who innocently believe that their subscriptions are destined to promote the cause of native enlightenment. I prefer to believe that there is some such explanation in her case. At any rate, I think that we had better make a call ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve

... Secretary for Enlightenment of the People, Wladimir Petrowitch Satonski, was taken ill on the way, and did not ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin

... Farraday smiled enlightenment. "I see. Well, I shall hope you will change your mind about the illustrations when you have read the poems—that is, if your style would adapt itself. Now may I see the sketches?" and he held ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... Women, when they emerged from the seclusion of their homes and began to mingle in the world procession, when they were thrown on their own financial responsibility, found themselves willy nilly in the ranks of the producers, the wage earners; when the enlightenment of education was no longer denied them, when their responsibilities ceased to be entirely domestic and became somewhat social, when, in a word, women began to think, they naturally thought in human terms. They couldn't have thought otherwise ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr

... regret Flower's insistence upon the reforming side of me,—but for the reason that he was essentially ethical rather than esthetic, some part of the literary significance of my work escaped him. It was from the praise of Howells, Matthews and Stedman, that I received my enlightenment. I began to perceive that in order to make my work carry its message, I must be careful to keep a certain balance between Significance and Beauty. The artist began to ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... know of. It would be unusual!' Harold waited a long time before he spoke again. When he did so it was in a different voice; a constrained voice. The Doctor, accustomed to take enlightenment ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... remark, somewhat naively, that he had always understood that Socialists had a cut-and-dried program for the future of civilization; whereas here were two active members of the party, who, from what he could make out, were agreed about nothing at all. Would the two, for his enlightenment, try to ascertain just what they had in common, and why they belonged to the same party? This resulted, after much debating, in the formulating of two carefully worded propositions: First, that ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... to arguments, which I am yet in doubt whether to look upon as fairly reasoned, or as paradoxical, I will at least seek enlightenment from the masters ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat

... social republic. Thus the general purpose of modern revolutions was indicated, a purpose, however, that stood in most singular contradiction to every thing that, with the material at hand, with the stage of enlightenment that the masses had reached, and under existing circumstances and conditions, could be immediately used. On the other hand, the claims of all the other elements, that had cooperated in the revolution of February, were recognized ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx

... might find some happier lot for the poor thing? No: that unfortunate little incident of the cerretano and the marriage, and his allowing Tessa to part from him in delusion, must never be known to Romola, and since no enlightenment could expel it from Tessa's mind, there would always be a risk of betrayal; besides even little Tessa might have some gall in her when she found herself disappointed in her love—yes, she must ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... assuming the leadership of the insurgent rabble he thinks to restrain their ferocity and thus earn the thanks of the supreme authority.—It remained for Schiller to convert this rude self-helper in the age of expiring feudalism into a savage anarchist in the boastful age of enlightenment. ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... flattened against the wall; and he wished he had gone blind before he saw what they were. A glance was all he gave, at first—the involuntary glance which one gives to a bit of writing picked up in an odd place—but that was enough to chill his blood with the shock of damning enlightenment. A page of writing, it was, fine, symmetrical, hard to decipher—a page of Holly Sommers' manuscript; you know ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... the first is that usually called experiment, but it can give no complete knowledge even of corporeal things, much less of spiritual. On the other hand, in inner experience the mind is illuminated by the divine truth, and of this supernatural enlightenment there ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... the amateur. Well, if there really was anything in it, if strangeness rose out of the orthodox bosom of St. Joseph's, if he—Malling—found himself walking in thick darkness, he meant to bring Stepton into the matter, whether at Stepton's desire or against it. Meanwhile he would see if there was enlightenment in Hornton Street. ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens

... fail him. He surveyed closely the mouth which had uttered this off-hand sentence and saw that it was set in a line there was no mistaking. Little enlightenment was to be got from this man. Yet he ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green

... before them stood a man completely ignorant of the customs of the country, and very poorly informed on Claude de Buxieres's affairs. They made no scruple of mystifying this "city gentleman," by means of ambiguous statements and cunning reticence. The young man could get no enlightenment from them; all he clearly understood was, that they were making fun of him, and that he was not able to cope with these country bumpkins, whose shrewdness would have done honor to ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet

... thought, while I listened and wondered, of more than one whom this might be: the leech, Simon Fleix, Madame Bruhl, Fresnoy even. But as the tap came, and I felt my mother tremble in my arms, enlightenment came with it, and I pondered no more, I knew as well as if she hail spoken and told me. There could be only one man whose presence had such power to terrify her, only one whose mere step, sounding through the veil, could drag her back to consciousness and ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman

... then, they may be left to progress uninterruptedly to safety and not very prompt enlightenment; the flight of the self-confessed murderer calls for more immediate attention. Probably, after the first moment of suspense, and when he was sure that escape was still not utterly impracticable, he intended ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... knew what impossible thing. Sudden terror leaped out upon her, striking like a knife into her heart. Fear, banished all this time, surprised her and clutched at her throat and paralysed her muscles. Blind panic gripped her. Then came the piercing scream again, and with it enlightenment, and Gloria sank back, seeming to melt into the snow about her. Yonder, just upon the next ridge where the moonlight carved in fine details the outline of a big bare boulder, stood the thing that had screamed; in this light its great body was weirdly magnified, so that ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory

... Massachusetts that she has among her sons two men so eminently trained for the task of our enlightenment, a senior Senator of the Commonwealth and the President of a university established in her Constitution. Wherever statesmen gather, wherever men love letters, this day's discussion will be read and pondered. Of these ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge

... looks, and nervous manner had troubled her ever since she came. Then one day, very suddenly, had come enlightenment: William was ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter

... and reached, at its foot, a long gallery such as Rainer had described. The gallery was empty, the doors down its length were closed; but Rainer had said: "The second to the left," and Faxon, after pausing for some chance enlightenment which did not come, laid his hand on the ...
— The Triumph Of Night - 1916 • Edith Wharton

... spiritual faculty of the soul and its power to receive and appropriate them. Conscious unity of man in spirit and purpose with the Father, born out of his supreme desire and trust, opens his soul through this inner sense to immediate aspiration and enlightenment from the divine omniscience, and the co-operative energy of the divine omnipotence, under which he becomes a seer and a master. On this higher plane of realised spiritual life in the flesh the mind acts with unfettered freedom and unbiassed vision, grasping truth at first ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge

... his army to annihilate the invaders. Seeing this, the commodore landed his marines, whose steady fire on the braves sent them to the right about, and made them march back again in double-quick time. The five junks were then taken in tow, and, very much to the enlightenment of the minds of the citizens, were carried away in triumph down the river. Altogether, upwards of eighty war-junks were destroyed or captured, though for each junk thus disposed of the British lost a man killed ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston

... answer. For some seconds he gazed into the fire, then looked at John as if about to seek some further enlightenment, but changing his mind faced Kitty. "Is ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith

... friend living a few miles further up the river. On this the plan of England was nicely marked out, and by the help of one or two maps which he cut up for the occasion, the Captain divided off the seven kingdoms greatly to Daisy's satisfaction and enlightenment. Then, how they went on with the history! introduced Christianity, enthroned Egbert, and defeated the Danes under Alfred. They read from, the book, and fought it all out on the clay plan, as they went along. At Alfred ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner

... sending him to a meeting of the Enlightenment Board. The Enlightenment Board consists of seventy-four members, of whom sixty-seven are necessary to form a quorum. One becomes a member under the regulations laid down in old Judge Dudley's will. I became one by being ordained pastor of a church in Naguadavick. You see you cannot help yourself, ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale

... they are, and generally wise and lofty, yet do not indicate any progress of the science; He merely repeats earlier doctrines. These were not without their utility, since they had great influence on the Latin fathers. They were esteemed for their general enlightenment. He softened down the extreme views of the great thinkers before his day, and clearly unfolded what had become obscured. He is a critic of philosophy; an expositor whom ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... curious friendships with which it was the younger man's delight to adorn his experience. The inspector would talk more freely to him than to any one, under the rose, and they would discuss details and possibilities of every case, to their mutual enlightenment. There were necessarily rules and limits. It was understood between them that Trent made no journalistic use of any point that could only have come to him from an official source. Each of them, moreover, ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... College. Long before Frederick Douglass had left Maryland by the Under Ground Railroad, but for the opposition of the white people of Connecticut, and within the echo of Yale College, would have stood the first institution dedicated to our enlightenment and social regeneration. ...
— The Early Negro Convention Movement - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 9 • John W. Cromwell

... atmosphere of comparative enlightenment and freedom into that hotbed of mediaevalism and superstition went Galileo with his eyes open. Keen was the regret of his Paduan and Venetian friends; bitter were their remonstrances and exhortations. But he was determined to go, and, not ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... with sudden enlightenment. "Your job?" He turned to Sally. "I got it that time," he said. "The trouble is, he says, that if we yell and rouse the house, we'll get out all right, but he will lose his job, because this is the second time this sort of thing has happened, and ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse

... shall rise, the clouds shall scatter, and in the perfect enlightenment of the other life the soul shall see its Lord, and be thankful for every darkest step that we took towards ...
— Heart's-ease • Phillips Brooks

... is not enough; we desire to live intelligently. But to live we must know, and to know we must study; and here is a vast field open before us, if we will only enter upon it and gather thence the fruits of enlightenment. Let us, then, waste no more time in the dark dungeons of ignorance, but come forth boldly into the glorious sunshine of that divine wisdom which in these ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant

... and objections which he perceived that they did not at all understand. His experience on this occasion suggested to him the most just reflection, how even without breadth of intelligence, the profound knowledge of any one thing is preferable in forming a judgment about it, to all possible enlightenment conferred by the cultivation of the sciences, without study of the special matter in question. It astonished him that all these learned men, who knew so many things, could yet be so ignorant that a man should only pretend to be a ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... Dr. Lavendar at last trudging up to bed, "the boy comes by his obstinacy honestly." The next morning he went early to see Mr. Benjamin Wright. But as far as any straightening out of the trouble went or any enlightenment as to its cause, he might as ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland

... phenomenon. It was given without circumlocution; and we learned, in most direct phrase, that Captain —— of ——, who traded to Truxillo, was responsible for this early effort towards what H. called "the enlightenment of the country." So far from feeling ashamed of her escapade with the Captain, the mother gloried in it, and rather affected a social superiority over her less fortunate neighbors, in consequence. It is, however, but right to say, that the freedom with which matters of this ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... She raged against the world's law, the injustice by which a husband's cruelty was not sufficient ground for divorce. 'But we finer souls must take the law into our own hands,' she wrote. 'We must teach society that the ethics of a barbarous age are unfitted for our century of enlightenment.' But somehow the actual time and place of the elopement could never get itself fixed. In September her husband dragged her to Scotland, in October after the pheasants. When the dramatic day was actually fixed, Winifred wrote by the next post deferring it for ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various

... last and the highest thing in this world is Genius. I say that Religion and Art and Progress and Enlightenment—that all these things are made out of Genius; and that Genius is first and last, highest, and best, and fundamental. And I say that when you recognize that fact—when you believe in Genius—when you prepare the ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair

... understood from Miss McDonald that both your parents were dead and that you are absolutely alone in the world. Who, then, has authority over you? Unless," she added, a sudden look of enlightenment coming to her face, "you are engaged to be married. Is ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler

... dragons are extinct. The story of Beowulf and Grendel is not wildly fantastic or improbable; it agrees with the conditions of real life, as they have been commonly understood at all times except those of peculiar enlightenment and rationalism. It is not to be compared with the Phaeacian stories of the adventures of Odysseus. Those stories in the Odyssey are plainly and intentionally in a different order of imagination from the story of the killing of the suitors. They are pure romance, and if ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... various species of animals prey upon other species, and there are species the members of which prey upon each other? Men, O Brahmana, while walking about hither and thither, kill numberless creatures lurking in the ground by trampling on them, and even men of wisdom and enlightenment destroy animal life in various ways, even while sleeping or reposing themselves. What hast thou to say to this?—The earth and the air all swarm with living organisms, which are unconsciously destroyed by ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... in her decrepitude she is ugly, spiteful, perhaps insane, and realises in her personal appearance the description preserved by tradition of the witches of yore. Even in the neighbourhood of great towns the taint remains of this once widely-spread contagion. If no victims fall beneath it, the enlightenment of the law is all that prevents a recurrence of scenes as horrid as those of the seventeenth century. Hundreds upon hundreds of witnesses could be found to swear to absurdities as great as those asserted ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... land the sunshine fell with fruitful power. The air was sweet with the songs of birds. Contentment, peace, prosperity, reigned. Great possibilities were shadowed forth within its boundaries, and a young nation, growing rapidly towards a splendid era of enlightenment, was foreseen as a product of the near future. It took a man with deep faith in the ultimate rule of right and in humanity, to occupy that position; a man with large heart, with unselfish aims, with prophetic instincts, with clear and equalized brain. George ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... may not have been more immoral than that which would otherwise have been followed. But too often the decision must have been made at the cost of honour and conscience. It is profoundly instructive to observe how powerless culture and enlightenment were against this delusion; since the latter had its support in the ardent imagination of the people, in the passionate wish to penetrate and determine the future. Antiquity, too, was on the ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... The influence of locality, however, must always be a factor in this consideration; for, as a rule, it will be found that the poorest examples come from essentially secluded places, while localities of earlier enlightenment furnish really admirable work of much prior date. Take, for instance, that most frequent emblem, the skull. I have not sought for the model by which the village sculptor worked, but I have in my note-book this sketch ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent

... the village-community principle, was required to give to these growing centres of liberty and enlightenment the unity of thought and action, and the powers of initiative, which made their force in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. With the growing diversity of occupations, crafts and arts, and with ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin

... de Boun'ry." 'Poleon slapped his thigh in sudden enlightenment. "By golly! Dat's why I don' see 'em no place. You stay here. I ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... governing bodies have all contributed to the gradual creation of the bureaucratic control of education in Great Britain. But this form of control is not entirely evil, and in certain cases it may be a necessary stage in the development of a democracy passing from unenlightenment to enlightenment. The remedies for this imperfection, this disease of representative government in the matter of educational control, are (1) the spread of a more enlightened self-interest as to the value of education as a means of securing the social efficiency of ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch

... the gully and a slight movement in the thick growth, and fired twice, but the distance was too great for a revolver. The enemy, whoever he was, was armed with a gun. The half-caste listened for a moment, and his black eyes searched the gully. Then he heard the beat of a horse's hoofs. A look of enlightenment came to his face. There was one horseman only; he was riding at a pace which, in such country, threatened death at ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... The intellectual enlightenment that surrounds this activity has imparted unnumbered blessings to the human race. In Russia it has emancipated a vast serf-population; in America it has given freedom to four million negro slaves. In place of ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... white, spreading canvas dots every sea where commerce may be known, or where the interests of God's creatures may best be served. It is through this desire, coupled with unremitting toil, that we owe everything of permanent enjoyment, of enlightenment and of prosperity. The millions of dollars of paper money which is handled every day as the natural fruit of toil and saving through the many and diversified transactions in the vast, illimitable and ever rapidly developing ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... me to tell you the truth about the life that your brother is leading in Paris; you are anxious for enlightenment as to his prospects; and to encourage a frank answer on my part, you repeat certain things that M. de Rastignac has told you, asking me if they are true. With regard to the purely personal matter, madame, M. de Rastignac's confidences must be corrected ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac

... but I could never learn from the victims what the precise feeling was as the piece of lead struck. For long years I had cherished an inordinate curiosity to know that sensation, if possible, without experiencing it. I was curious and eager for enlightenment just as I am still anxious to know how it is that some people willingly drink buttermilk when it ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... but, in truth, its merits are far beyond its technical excellencies, and I rejoice peculiarly on its appearance at a moment when public attention is concentrated on the affairs of the Italian peninsula, and when the public, too, has so much need of enlightenment. A man who writes as the author of that article has done confers an incalculable benefit on his countrymen; and, as one not altogether incompetent to form a judgement on the subject, I beg to offer ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... at the garden-gate. Within, we find what must surely be the farthest north printing-press. Here two devoted women have spent years of their lives printing in Cree on a hand-press syllabic hymns and portions of the Gospel for the enlightenment of the Indians. We wander into the school where a young teacher is explaining to his uneasy disciples the intricacies of Present Worth and Compound Interest. Idly we wonder to what use these bare-footed half-Cree urchins will put their ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... tiles without to the St. Gauden lions who guard the great marble staircase within. Sargent's "Religions of the World" is a noble decoration, and Abbey's frieze of the Holy Grail is beautiful, but the panel paintings of Puvis de Chavannes—"The Muses Greeting the Genius of Enlightenment"—are worth while coming from London or ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)

... my present business is to show that it is one, and that the end of a liberal education is not mere knowledge, or knowledge considered in its matter; and I shall best attain my object, by actually setting down some cases, which will be generally granted to be instances of the process of enlightenment or enlargement of mind, and others which are not, and thus, by the comparison, you will be able to judge for yourselves, gentlemen, whether knowledge, that is, acquirement, is after all the real principle of the ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... recognition of the rights of the individual, and of the total dependence of the governing upon the governed. And yet they could not withhold their admiration of the indomitable energy and perseverance of the American race, and their wonder at our miraculous growth in enlightenment and power. Taught wisdom by the past, they dared not combine to crush us by brute force, and so they have waited and hoped for the downfall which they sincerely believed would, sooner or later, overtake us. England and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... new quality of thought. He told every one of the insomnia and no one of his doubts; these he betrayed only by an increasing tendency towards vagueness, symbolism, poetry and toleration. Eleanor seemed satisfied with his exposition; she did not press for further enlightenment. She continued all her outward conformities except that after a time she ceased to communicate; and in September she went away to Newnham. Her doubts had not visibly affected Clementina or her other sisters, and the bishop made no further attempts to explore the spiritual ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... would care much about saving the feelings of people who are too narrow to admit of any other point of view than their own." She stopped, finding herself in the impossible position of attempting to explain Hamilton to his wife; a task which, if once begun, would necessitate an entire course of enlightenment which she doubted Flavia's ability to receive, and which she could offer only with very ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather

... to, and the decision of cases in certain fields of law. This gave the church a new influence, in addition to that which it held from its spiritual duties, from its position as landlord over such extensive tracts, and from the superior enlightenment and mental ability of its prominent officials, but it also gave greater occasion for conflict with the civil government and ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney

... of philosophical speculation—not actually adverse to the truths of religion, but seeking to establish these rather on the basis of human reason than on revelation. Lastly, the Commedia shows us the soul, convinced that salvation and enlightenment are not to be found on this road, returning again to child-like submission. There is no doubt an attractive symmetry about this arrangement, but it is open to some objections, one of them being, as a French critic said, that part at least of the Convito must almost certainly have been written ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler

... force of vulgar ignorance. They still publish Wing's sheet almanack, though Wing was an impostor and fortune-teller, who died eight years after the Restoration. All this is very unworthy of a privileged company, with an invested capital of L40,000, and does not much help forward the enlightenment of the poorer classes. This Company is entitled, for the supposed security of the copyright, to two copies of every work, however costly, published in the United Kingdom, a mischievous tax, which restrains the publication of many valuable ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... believe in moral suasion entirely, Eleanor," Gertrude tried to follow Eleanor's leads, until she had in some way satisfied the child's need for enlightenment on the subject under discussion. It was not always simple to discover just what Eleanor wanted to know, but Gertrude had come to believe that there was always some excellent reason for her wanting to know it. "I ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley

... open, messengers came and went continually, consultations of the leading men of the city were held almost without a break. Every man belonging to it had his appointed task. The landed proprietors stirred up the cultivators of the soil, the manufacturers were charged with the enlightenment of their hands as to the dangers of the situation, the soldiers were busy among the troops; but theirs was a comparatively easy task, for these naturally sympathized with their comrades in Spain, and the name of the great Hamilcar was an ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty

... doing so, Jim pushed the chair toward Eve, into which she almost fell. Then he glanced at Elia, speculating. As Peter returned to the group he dropped back and seated himself on the rough bed, waiting for enlightenment. Peter leaned himself against the table, his ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... stand bound together more stoutly than we have shown ourselves since 1776. But as we are now, seldom has a great commonwealth been seen less united in its stages of progress, more uneven in its degrees of enlightenment. Never, indeed, it would seem, have such various centuries been jostled together as they are to-day upon this continent, and within the boundaries of our nation. We have taken the ages out of their processional arrangement ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... and prayer were the usual preliminaries of any enterprise in those superstitious days; and in these days of enlightenment the fashion yet lingers among the most superstitious class — ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... pedestal for idols of selfishness, caprice and conceit. The trouble is in interpreting these moral instincts, for even the authorities lack the requisite self-knowledge in which all wisdom culminates. The moral interregnum which the Aufklaerung [Enlightenment] has brought will not end till these instincts are rightly interpreted by in intelligence. The richest streams of thought must flow about them, the best methods must peep and pry till their secrets are found and put into the idea-pictures ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... 2: The material sun sheds its light outside us; but the intelligible Sun, Who is God, shines within us. Hence the natural light bestowed upon the soul is God's enlightenment, whereby we are enlightened to see what pertains to natural knowledge; and for this there is required no further knowledge, but only for such things ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... make that point clear to you," replied the detective, "though I am afraid the enlightenment will come too late to prove of much service to you. In using the mails for the purpose of swindling, you have violated the laws of the country, and must ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne

... around the room at the pictures and photographs hanging upon the wall, and discovered in some corner an old family album, which she examined with the keenest interest, appealing to Madame Lebrun for enlightenment concerning the many figures and faces which ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin

... As though with sudden enlightenment, Marie laughed. It was as if now in the suspicion of the officer she saw a certain reasonableness. "Briand was so long in the Foreign Legion in Algiers," she explained, "where my husband found him, that we have come to think of him as French. As much French as ourselves, ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis

... as the pioneer of progress and enlightenment. The system of universal education is in our age the most prominent and salutary feature of the spirit of enlightenment, and it is peculiarly appropriate that the schools be made by the people the center of the day's demonstration. ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... again. "The Colonel says he hopes that you are not so foolish as to wear the belt at any time. Your schoolfellow forbids you to speak about it to any one. Well, there, I do not wish to ask impertinent questions. That will do, gentlemen. I merely sent to you for enlightenment. ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn

... for the victualling of Tangier, he tells us with honest complacency, will save the king a thousand and gain Pepys three hundred pounds a year,—a statement which exactly fixes the degree of the age's enlightenment. But for his industry and capacity no praise can be too high. It was an unending struggle for the man to stick to his business in such a garden of Armida as he found this life; and the story of his oaths, so often broken, so ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... creators of it. True; but that fact alone is suggestive. If great literature can come from meditation alone, are we not compelled to ask: "Where shall wisdom be found and where is the place of understanding?" Is enlightenment to be found only in the printed wisdom of the past? We know it is not, but we also know it is useless to set one source of truth over against another, as if they were enemies. The soul has its place and so has the book; but need ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... than a good-sized riot. But as Admiral Perry had opened the eyes of the Hermit Kingdom of Japan, so Admiral whatever-his-name-was who consented to be sunk by Dewey, the unremembered hero of this great enlightenment, had opened the eyes of this Hermit Republic of the West to the world across ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... stared without reply, then turned and left the stable, but came back almost immediately, looking horribly scared. Lady was nowhere to be seen or heard. Richard rushed hither and thither, storming. Not a man about the place could give him a word of enlightenment. All knew she was in that box the night before; none knew when she left it or ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald

... animals of a country so as greatly to enhance their individual and aggregate value, and to render the rearing of them more profitable to all concerned, is surely one of the achievements of advanced civilization and enlightenment, and is as much a triumph of science and skill as the construction of a railroad, a steamship, an electric telegraph, or any work of architecture. If any doubt this, let them ponder the history of those ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale

... hired a motorcar and made a tour of some of the more picturesque parts of the country. He so arranged his journeys that he was able to stop each night at a place where there was a fairly good hotel. He made careful inquiries everywhere, and noted facts for the enlightenment of the Treasury, for whose benefit his report was to be drawn up. He also made notes, in a private book, of some of the more amusing and unexpected ways in which the scheme worked. He found himself, in the course of his tour, close to Castle ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham

... expression, unequalled in intensity by any other of which it was capable. Whether Mr Dombey, wrapped in his own greatness, was at all aware of this, or no, there had not been wanting opportunities already for his complete enlightenment; and at that moment it might have been effected by the one glance of the dark eye that lighted on him, after it had rapidly and scornfully surveyed the theme of his self-glorification. He might have read in that one glance that nothing that his wealth could do, though it were increased ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... his opponent. The authorities had a good deal of trouble to keep order. Augustin, who was an intrepid logician, must have longed to take his share in these rows. But one cannot exactly improvise a faith between to-day and to-morrow. While he awaited the enlightenment of the truth, he studied ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... about the ducking-stool in the present age of reason and enlightenment, more especially as it was designed to punish the weaker sex and usually those advanced in years. Before the ugly machine and between it and the road which ran past the pond to the village was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pigweed, plantain and such unsightly vegetation, which ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick

... "Bruce—ah!" Enlightenment seemed to come to the young man. "You have called to complain of the row he made last night. We ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge

... book is intelligible without the aid of notes; but, for the reader who seeks for further enlightenment, I have added some foot-notes, and have not neglected to mention such works as afford more detailed information on the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... counsels of her confessor. It was currently said at court that the Mexican expedition "came ready-made from her boudoir." She hated the United States, as a true daughter of Spain could not fail to detest the coveters of Cuba and the friends of progress and of enlightenment. Consequently, she did not fail to further a project whose real aim was to deal the great republic, then struggling in the throes of civil war, a decisive stab in the back. She approved of the war with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... devoted to the same objects as those of the Elu of Nine; and also to the cause of Toleration and Liberality against Fanaticism and Persecution, political and religious; and to that of Education, Instruction, and Enlightenment against Error, Barbarism, and Ignorance. To these objects you have irrevocably and forever devoted your hand, your heart, and your intellect; and whenever in your presence a Chapter of this Degree is opened, you will be most solemnly ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... Virginia." As specimens of "incendiary newspapers and other publications, put forth in the non-slave-holding States," the South Carolina official sent along with his message, copies of the Liberator and of Mr. Garrison's address to the "Free People of Color," for the enlightenment of the members of the Legislature. But it remained for Georgia to cap the climax of madness ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... kind, teach us that it is only by the adoption of simple methods of production that we can hope to have Shakespeare represented in our theatres constantly and in all his variety. Until Shakespeare is represented thus, the spiritual and intellectual enlightenment, which his achievement offers English-speaking people, will remain wholly inaccessible to the majority who do not read him, and will be only in part at the command of the few who do. Nay, more: until Shakespeare is represented on the stage constantly and in his variety, ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... from this point of view. The Platonic was found to have an ideal formally quite similar to that stated, but which was compromised in its working out by making a class rather than an individual the social unit. The so-called individualism of the eighteenth-century enlightenment was found to involve the notion of a society as broad as humanity, of whose progress the individual was to be the organ. But it lacked any agency for securing the development of its ideal as was evidenced in its falling back upon Nature. The institutional idealistic philosophies of the nineteenth ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... traveler, and Alexey Alexandrovitch, by means of the pamphlet he had only just finished reading and his previous acquaintance with the subject, impressed the traveler by the depth of his knowledge of the subject and the breadth and enlightenment of ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... There was something he wanted very much, but, though he knew he wanted it, he could not think what it was. What he wanted so much was his mother to blow his nose, but that never struck him, so he decided to appeal to the fairies for enlightenment. They are reputed to ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie

... beginning with the introduction of printing, spread slowly through the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, and much more rapidly during the nineteenth, when, in the more favored countries, it began, to be something like general. Previous to the beginning of this process of enlightenment the condition of the mass of mankind as to intelligence, from the most ancient times, had been practically stationary at a point little above the level of the brutes. With no more thought or will of their own than clay in ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... wandering officers want to see His Excellency," said the servant superciliously, "that I have instructions to require further enlightenment before I admit ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... cultured and progressive Bishop of Meaux, while trying to throw off the shackles of superstition, delivered and published two great sermons in which demoniacal possession is defended. To show how the idea has clung, notwithstanding the advancement and enlightenment of late years, we may notice a trial which took place at Wemding, in southern Germany, in 1892, of which White ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... in a prettily pedantic manner, learned from her mother, whose father had been a Rabbi. Aaron lent her books in these three languages, which straightway carried her into strange and glorious worlds. Occasionally the twins stole and sold the books, but their enlightenment remained. To supplement the reading he took her to lectures and to night schools, and thus one evening they listened to an illustrated "talk" on "Contagion and Its Causes." There had been an epidemic of smallpox ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly

... cried the empress, "for it will give new life to Austria. It will bring down revenge upon our enemies, and revenge upon that wicked infidel who took my beautiful Silesia from me, and who, boasting of his impiety, calls it enlightenment." ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... these pages knows all about the proofs of grammar of a late date in the Odyssey and the four contaminated Books of the Iliad. But it may be well to give a few specimens, for the enlightenment of less learned readers ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... Then came sudden enlightenment. Auersperg was medieval. In his heart he arrogated to himself the right of justice, the upper, the middle and the low, and all other kinds, but he had ability and mingled with it an extreme order of cunning. Julie of the Red Cross, a healer of wounds and disease, ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler

... called Sreevatsa, possess great wealth, and are inspired with great might. By their acts they may be said to belong to the Kshatriya order, but they are all without any compassion, subsisting as they do on snakes. They never attain to spiritual enlightenment in consequence of their preying on their kinsmen. I will now enumerate the chiefs by their names, listen to me, O Matali. This race is much regarded in consequence of the favour that is shown to it by Vishnu. They all worship Vishnu, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... letter to head office. What a grand thing it is to be discreet! Why was mention of this attribute, discretion, omitted from the Apostle's list? What anxiety and sorrow possession of this virtue would save us—and what enlightenment! .... Had Evan written an impulsive letter to head office he would have been ousted from the bank; he would very likely have been metaphorically kicked out. The kick would have hurt for a while, but not like ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... who prizes striving above enjoyment, honours comradeship above patriotism, and follows an idea that no frontier can arrest. Paine was indeed of no century, and no formula of classification can confine him. His writing is of the age of enlightenment; his actions belong to romance. His clear, manly style, his sturdy commonsense, the rapier play of his epigrams, the formal, logical architecture of his thoughts, his complacent limitations, his horror of mystery and ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... necessary," said she very gravely. He misunderstood her, of course, knowing nothing of the enlightenment that ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini

... as he gazed at him sleepily, began to wonder where he had seen him before. Even when the stranger stopped and stood smiling down at him his memory proved unequal to the occasion, and he sat staring at the handsome, shaven face, with its little fringe of grey whisker, waiting for enlightenment. ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... in Amboise?" he said uncomprehendingly. "The King's arm? What does that mean?" Then, by the very repetition of the phrase, enlightenment dawned in part and he shrank back, his fingers closing in upon his palms. "Not that! For God's sake, Monsieur de Commines, say it is not that! Not that the father—— Oh! it cannot be, it ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... another "Junto" of senior Whig statesmen, like that which had been so powerful in the reign of William the Third. He acted with that shrewd, hard common-sense which was an attribute of his family, and which often served instead of genius or enlightenment or intelligence, or even experience. A man of infinitely higher capacity than George might have found himself puzzled as to his proper policy under conditions entirely new and unfamiliar; but George acted as if the conditions were familiar to him, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... and the gentlest influences, as Helen had always been, she has, from the earliest stage of her intellectual enlightenment, willingly done right. She knows with unerring instinct what is right, and does it joyously. She does not think of one wrong act as harmless, of another as of no consequence, and of another as not intended. To her pure soul all ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... hither?" asked the newcomer, turning in Pierre's direction at a slight rustle made by the latter. "Why have you, who do not believe in the truth of the light and who have not seen the light, come here? What do you seek from us? Wisdom, virtue, enlightenment?" ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy



Words linked to "Enlightenment" :   Buddhism, reform movement, blessedness, historic period, education, beatitude, Age of Reason, Hindooism, sophistication, unenlightenment, age, enlighten, satori, nirvana, Hinduism, beatification, edification



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