ENLIGHTENMENT • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Enlightenment

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/ɛnlˈaɪtənmənt/ Listen

Enlightenment

noun

Education that results in understanding and the spread of knowledge.

(Hinduism and Buddhism) the beatitude that transcends the cycle of reincarnation; characterized by the extinction of desire and suffering and individual consciousness. Synonym: nirvana.

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

... and fatuous enterprise, a Quixotic scheme!" some will say. Not it, my friends; for as sure as the sun shines on both Christian and Infidel, civilised and Pagan, the day of enlightenment will come; and, though Livingstone, the Apostle of Africa, may not behold it himself, nor we younger men, not yet our children, the Hereafter will see it, and posterity will recognise the daring ...

— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... of Public Enlightenment and the door-keeper cannot write; you go to the Foreign Office and are shown about laboriously by a one-legged man. In fact, the one-legged man might be taken as the type and symbol of the new Serbia. In commerce ...

— Europe--Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... bearing the blissful promise that a carefully made plan of Maria's house of St. Joe (drawn by Maria herself upon a fly leaf excerpted from Maria's favorite volume, "The Life of Mary Lyon") would soon be forwarded for our enlightenment and delectation. Maria felt kindly toward us, and her sympathies had been awakened to their very depths by a tender souvenir Adah had sent her—a leaf plucked from one of the lilac bushes on the old Schmittheimer place. Both Adah ...

— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field

... first discovered that there were cracks in the box, and the day he learned that one could best see through those narrow openings by coming up resolutely to the hard necessary walls that hold one in. Then came the astounding enlightenment that only a shred of reality was within the cramped prison of the box—just a darkened, dusty bit—that all the beautiful rest of it lay outside. These are the ones who, pressing up against the rough walls of the box, see, through their chinks, the splendor of what lies outside—see ...

— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray

... evidences that so many are ceasing to be bucolic heathen, much observation has shown that the need of further enlightenment is large indeed. It is depressing to think of the number of homes about which fruits are conspicuous only by their absence— homes of every class, from the laborer's cottage and pioneer's cabin to the suburban palace. Living ...

— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

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