"Enlightenment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Thornton bit his lip and looked steadfastly at the scarlet geranium on the window-sill, as though in search of enlightenment. ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... who could convey enlightenment to him through feeling. He sat betrayed with emotion when the teacher of literature read, in a moving fashion, Tennyson's "Ulysses", or Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind". His lips parted, his eyes filled with a strained, almost suffering light. And the teacher read on, fired by his ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... enlightenment came to Miles Morgan. For a moment the red flamed up in his cheek, and if Split could have seen his face she might have fancied that some imp had caught her likeness, when her temper had got beyond her control, and set it ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... possession of the law is a blessing, because its authoritative voice ends the weary quest after some reliable guide to conduct, and we need neither try to climb to heaven, nor to traverse the wide world and cross the ocean, to find certitude and enlightenment enough for our need. They err who think of God's commandments as grievous burdens; they are merciful guide-posts. They do not so much lay weights on our backs as ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... whose wisdom in these matters I have had such experience as induces me to place confidence in their assertions—that by enacting certain processes, which to us moderns have something of a barbaric complexion, a very remarkable enlightenment of the spiritual faculties in man may be attained: that, for example, by absorbing the personalities of a certain number of his fellow-creatures, an individual may gain a complete ascendancy over those orders of spiritual beings which control the elemental forces ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... all, instead of being a curse, was a book of seven seals for the people in those days. And even at this late hour this simple truth is entertained by a comparative few, though more than one decade of socialistic and anarchistic enlightenment ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... mission was despatched to bring a branch of the tree[32] under which the Buddha had sat when he obtained enlightenment. This narrative[33] is perhaps based on a more solid substratum of fact. The chronicles connect the event with the desire of the Princess Anula to become a nun. Women could receive ordination only from ordained nuns and as these were not to be found on the island it was decided ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... messages were intended to drive him out of his mind again," said Bertram in sudden enlightenment. "What ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... harm, so we will prepare a conspicuous placard, worded to that effect, and will place it where it is certain that it will be found," remarked Sir Reginald, cheerfully. "There is one point, however, upon which I should like a little enlightenment, Professor; and that is as to the course you propose to pursue in order to obtain possession of Vasilovich's person in this awe-inspiringly ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... for the feverish and unflagging zeal with which this particular form of amusement was pursued by all hands; for although sailors are fond of an occasional quiet game of cards, they are, as a rule, by no means devotees of the pasteboards. But at length I obtained enlightenment from the man Harry: they were gambling with the gems for stakes! This intelligence disquieted me greatly, for I foresaw possibilities of trouble in it; and by and by it came. Meanwhile, however, I neglected no opportunity to seek ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... are trifles compared to the mischief done by censorships in delaying the general march of enlightenment. This can be brought home to us by imagining what would have been the effect of applying to all literature the censorship we still apply to the stage. The works of Linnaeus and the evolutionists of 1790-1830, of Darwin, Wallace, Huxley, Helmholtz, ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... length, "that the world of the Middle Ages, which, by the way, were the ages of enlightenment, should have regarded Virgil as a magician and even ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... four groups of figures. The first shows two Spanish-American soldiers and their captain, following a priest, typical of the days of Spanish rule in California and of the Mission period. Second, there is a symbolic figure, "The Spirit of Enlightenment." The third and main group shows types of immigrants. The men here are: 1. the scientist; 2. the architect; 3. the writer; 4. the sculptor; 5. the painter; 6. the agriculturist; and 7. the miner (or other manual worker). A woman and several children ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... humorous, half pathetic spirit in which the great publisher endured the daily grind. Twenty years of it wore him out, but his dolphin-and-anchor trade-mark still after four centuries preaches patience and hope to all who undertake great burdens for the enlightenment ...
— Printing and the Renaissance - A paper read before the Fortnightly Club of Rochester, New York • John Rothwell Slater
... citizen of one of these supporters. The latter made no answer; he was a ragged retainer of Melpomene, and he awaited the coming forth of Sir Mortimer Ferne, a notable encourager of all who would scale Parnassus. But his neighbor, a boy in blue and silver, squatted upon a sunny bench, vouchsafed enlightenment. ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... system which she really abhorred. For the first twenty years of her reign mass was celebrated in private houses with impunity, though to celebrate it was against the law. No part of her policy is more odious to modern notions of tolerance and enlightenment than prohibition of the mass. Nothing shows more clearly the importance of understanding the mental atmosphere of a past age before we attempt to judge those who lived in it. Even Oliver Cromwell, fifty years after Elizabeth's death, declared that he would not ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... that Charles Perrault—who is better remembered for his collection of fairy-tales than for the leading role which he played in this controversy—published his poem on "The Age of Louis the Great." The enlightenment of the present age surpasses that of antiquity,—this ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... brain of Diana, armed by her later enlightenment as to the laws of life and nature, dashed in revolt at the laws of the world when she thought of the forces, natural and social, urging young women to marry and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... up the brazen serpent in the wilderness for the enlightenment of the people, even so have I lifted twenty shining plunks out of ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... sense liberals, and not one of them a republican. It was now that he made the acquaintance of Lacaita, afterwards so valued a friend of his, and so well known in many circles in England for his geniality, cultivation, and enlightenment. He was the legal adviser to the British embassy; he met Mr. Gladstone constantly; they talked politics and literature day and night, 'under the acacias and palms, between the fountains and statues of the Villa Reale, looking now to the sea, now ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... heard also that he visited her no more, I seemed to have gained some enlightenment as to the odd and contradictory actions of my famous idiot boy. He loved his sister, and was in some way imbued with a sense that she had been wronged. He was, therefore, jealous of any one who had, or seemed to have, gained the attention ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... was known of its life-history and habits until within the last few years. To this ignorance has been due quite largely peculiar (and in some instances useless) laws enacted by some States. The gradual enlightenment of the public on this subject has borne good fruit, however, and most of the present State laws are founded on substantial facts instead of theories. Prof. Francis H. Herrick has been one of the most prominent of the investigators, ...
— The Lobster Fishery of Maine - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, Vol. 19, Pages 241-265, 1899 • John N. Cobb
... or at least standing in an unfinished state, called the Cathedral, but, saving the size, putting forth externally small claim to notice; whilst the interior might serve as a model of ill-taste, both as to arrangement and colour, for the especial enlightenment of all future building committees. The convents appear well built; and many of the private dwellings are large, ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... features of the seventeenth century. There was nothing censurable in collecting all the most distinguished and illustrious people of France around him: they must have formed a superb society, from which the proud monarch could learn much to his enlightenment. But he made them all obsequious courtiers, exacted from all an idolatrous homage, and subjected them to wearisome ceremonials. He took away their intellectual independence; he banished Racine because the poet presumed ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... Manchester school in the time of Bright and Cobden. We all know the type, and have made up our minds as to its merits. When De Foe came to be a subject of biography in this century, he was of course praised for his enlightenment by men of congenial opinions. He was held up as a model politician, not only for his creed but for his independence. The revelations of his last biographer, Mr. Lee, showed unfortunately that considerable ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... fixed itself tenaciously in his intelligence. His imagination had seized upon the clear and simple notion of betrayal to account for the dazed feeling of enlightenment as to being done for, of having inadvertently gone out of his existence on an issue in which his personality had not been taken into account. A man betrayed is a man destroyed. Signora Teresa (may God have her ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... 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
... party ever had so much intercourse with those classes as Lord Brougham, who, at the same time, understood them so little. His lordship affected to "live and move and have his being" in an atmosphere of liberality and enlightenment too high for the earnestly religious men of the country to attain. From this elevation he looked down upon their conflicts with an affected compassion, which if meant to cover his disdain was very unsuccessful, and it brought out more prominently his lordship's thorough ignorance of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... together, the three of us. The doctor and Mariya Viktorovna drank red wine, champagne, and coffee with brandy in it; they clinked glasses and drank to friendship, to enlightenment, to progress, to liberty, and they did not get drunk but only flushed, and were continually, for no reason, laughing till they cried. So as not to be ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of the republic is based upon its advanced social principles and its successful prosecution of the arts of peace. As the old military despotisms cannot compete with it in wealth and enlightenment, so it attempts no competition with them in standing armies and the arts of war. National vanity is a failing of the Americans, and, if their military prowess had never been proved before, they might seek to display it on ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... problems of readjustment must follow. Samson's half-starved mind was reaching out squid-like tentacles in every direction. He was saying little, seeing much, not yet coordinating or tabulating, but grimly bolting every morsel of enlightenment. Later, he would digest; now, he only gorged. Before he could hope to benefit by the advanced instruction of the life -classes, he must toil and sweat over the primer stages of drawing. Several months were spent laboring with charcoal and paper over plaster casts in ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... the natural outcome of the Greek delight in material beauty, but finally consummated by the teachings of the Christian faith. Eastern thought was pure soul-consciousness, its teaching was to annihilate the flesh, to deny its reality, to look within, and so to gain enlightenment. Christianity, on the other hand, was centred in the doctrine of the Incarnation, in the mystery of God the Father revealing Himself in human form. Hence the human body, human love and relationships became ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... her long lashes in a steady stare at him. "Guess what I've been doing at the court-house," she said. "I've been engaged in an odd thing for this modern day of enlightenment. Maybe you think slavery is over—maybe you think the Yankees wiped it clean out forty years ago, but they didn't. I've turned the wheels of Time back. I laid down the cash and bought a real live slave to-day. I didn't have to dig up as much as two thousand, which, I understand, ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... before the world that by them the race is too frequently largely judged, and to its detriment. The day has come when the brain of the race must both direct its brawn and expose its brass. Ignorance and charlatanism will seek enlightenment or retreat only when intelligence and learning make ...
— The Educated Negro and His Mission - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 8 • W. S. Scarborough
... 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 Gothic half-lights, ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... has had a hard struggle against prejudice. Columella adds two more interesting bits of advice, that for the comfort of the hens the roosts should be cut square, and for cleanliness their water trough should be enclosed leaving only openings large enough to receive a hen's head. With so much enlightenment and sanitation one would expect one or the other of these Romans to tell us of some "teeming hen" like Herrick's who laid ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... and Galileo. He might, indeed, as a man of letters, have consigned such a political dream to the volume of an Utopia, but from action or administration he would have been soon discarded as a dreamer. Liberty must come of the claim of the mass; of the general enlightenment, firmness, and probity. It is no great physical secret, which a single brain, finding, may announce and so establish: it is a moral truth, which, like a gem, hides its ray and its preciousness in obscurity, nor becomes ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various
... the wiser of his contemporaries saw, Erasmus was, at heart, neither Protestant nor Papist, but an "Independent Christian"; and, as the wiser of his modern biographers have discerned, he was the precursor, not of sixteenth century reform, but of eighteenth century "enlightenment"; a sort of broad-church Voltaire, who held by his "Independent Christianity" as stoutly ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... and giving it a definite and much more serious aim; and I can only hope, in conclusion, that any of my readers who have found themselves hard-pressed by the sordidness of civilization, and have not known where to turn to for encouragement, may receive the same enlightenment as I have, and that even the rough pieces in this book may help them to ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... be the one best suited for the opening chapters of a revelation vouchsafed for the accomplishment of moral, not scientific purposes, and at once destined to be contemporary with every stage of civilization, and to address itself to minds of every various calibre, and every different degree of enlightenment. ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... seem to the casual observer, requires, more than any other photo-mechanical process, skilled hands in its different manipulations to keep it up to the standard of perfection. The following short description will give the uninitiated sufficient enlightenment to think and speak ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... anything quite as absurd as this before. I don't quite see what he expected to get out of it. He might know that you would not stay. He wouldn't want you to stay. I can't understand—unless," her voice became crisp with sudden enlightenment, "unless you were foolish enough to pay in advance! Surely you ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... too much for the audience which stood agape. A dozen voices at once implored enlightenment. With a lordly air for a youth whose costume was mostly one leg of his breeches, Master Cockrell reproved them ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... which many have been content to regard as an unsolved enigma. But if we admit and really perceive and feel the full force of this trait, developed in him in a degree probably unequaled in the annals of men, then, besides the enlightenment which it brings, we have the great satisfaction of eliminating much of the disagreeableness attendant upon his youthful days. Even the commonness and painful coarseness of his foolish written expressions become actually an exponent of his ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... 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 modern ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... insurgents having fortified themselves in a way that they knew would have been utterly impervious by Spaniards. The military leaders of the Filipinos have the explanation to offer, if they have the enlightenment to comprehend their own predicament, as a discomfited mass of fugitives, that they never, before the American regulars and volunteers charged them, met soldiers who would not have retreated in dismay from the fiery ambuscades. The achievement of the Americans in confronting, rushing ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... to question was to ascertain; and the Pullman conductor, once more checking his diagrams in Section Eleven, offered the readiest means of enlightenment. A few minutes later Margery rejoined her father ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... unselfishness it also strikes at selfishness, and at present we cannot easily conceive a time when "there is no self"; we should be more disposed to regard it as a time when there is much humbug. Yet for the individual this conception of the constructive power of love retains much enlightenment and inspiration. ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... friend, to say nothing of lover, to render to Ethelberta at this juncture. It was to ask her by some means whether or not she had engaged with open eyes to marry Lord Mountclere; and if not, to give her a word or two of enlightenment. That done, she might be left to take care ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... stories which is "profoundly illuminating" in the same sense that I would certainly apply the phrase to some of the romances. Jolly and bright they undoubtedly are, but when they are moving, they provide food for wonder rather than for enlightenment.... ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... another, the heir of the consequences of all its virtues and all its vices, the exact result of preexistent causes, so each individual, in the long chain of life, inherits all, of good or evil, which all its predecessors have done or been, and takes up the struggle towards enlightenment precisely where they left it." Rhys Davids, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... motives, but one which they can appreciate. As they witness the beneficial effects of reform, their motives will gradually become more elevated, and their efforts at improvement more constant; but no important advance can be made without popular enlightenment. ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... be said that such a claim is outrageous and impossible; but we are persuaded that with our present enlightenment, with the means of knowledge which we now possess, we could, if we thought it worth while, lay our hands on the necessary information. Our firm conviction is that, if we did that, and set out the results ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen
... thick with the blood of hundreds of miserable beings who had been freshly slaughtered there. Still later similar horrid scenes were reported from Dahomey. Sir Richard Burton, who was an old acquaintance of mine, spent two months with the King of Dahomey, and dilated to me on the benevolence and enlightenment of that excellent monarch. I asked why, if the King was so benevolent, he did not alter the customs. Burton looked at me with consternation. 'Alter the customs!' he said. 'Would you have the Archbishop of Canterbury alter the Liturgy?' Las Casas and ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... an upper room, saw the visitor, and timed him. She imagined he had dispatched an answer. Being a woman, she sought enlightenment a ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... 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 well ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... nation, prevented the signature of the Versailles Treaty and assisted the merchants to enforce the Japanese boycott, the students then directed their energies to the enlightenment of their less educated brothers and sisters. For instance, by issuing publications, by popular lectures showing them the real situation, internally as well as externally; but especially by establishing free schools and maintaining them out of their own funds. No praise can be ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... considerations. From this initial mistake of hers all the subsequent trouble, sorrow, and tragedy have come, and so I must make it clear to you if I can. You see, Jon, in those days and even to this day—indeed, I don't see, for all the talk of enlightenment, how it can well be otherwise—most girls are married ignorant of the sexual side of life. Even if they know what it means they have not experienced it. That's the crux. It is this actual lack of experience, whatever verbal knowledge they have, which makes all the difference and all ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... surprise, although he sensed the note of warning and dry enlightenment in Sucatash's words, felt no shock. He had had a sentimental desire to see if the girl of six had fulfilled the promise of her youth after nineteen years, had even dreamed, in his soberer moments, of coming back to her to play the ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... received a little enlightenment, for after breakfast the cook came forward nervously to break the news that meat and vegetables had only been served out for three. Consternation fell ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... ambassadors, admirals, field marshals. The speakers work the audience into a fervor of patriotic pride by their sonorous word-pictures of England's services to humanity in bearing the white man's burden, and of the spread of enlightenment and progress under the Union Jack. But the heartiest applause invariably greets the announcement that the North Borneo Company has declared a dividend. Whence the money to pay the dividend was derived is ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... some of his ways, but that's done fur. Now the folks out in this part of the country have come to expect it from a man like him. They don't mind so much. But them New York folks—well, I thought mebbe you'd like to take a clean bill of health when you settle in that centre of culture and enlightenment,—and remember ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... previously; with such a tensely strained bow one can now aim at the furthest goals. As a matter of fact, the European feels this tension as a state of distress, and twice attempts have been made in grand style to unbend the bow: once by means of Jesuitism, and the second time by means of democratic enlightenment—which, with the aid of liberty of the press and newspaper-reading, might, in fact, bring it about that the spirit would not so easily find itself in "distress"! (The Germans invented gunpowder—all credit to them! but they again made things square—they invented printing.) But we, who are ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... is not much superior to newspaper literature. Its forte is to cultivate sex excesses: it renders homage either to shallow enlightenment or to stale prejudices and superstitions. Its general purpose is to represent the capitalist order of society, all its shortcomings notwithstanding, which are conceded in trifles, as the best of ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... in the direction of the chart-room. Hozier found him there later, poring over a chart of Fernando Noronha. Iris, on hearing the steward's version of the affair, came to the bridge for further enlightenment, but Coke merely told her that the island was a Lloyd's signal station, so she could cable ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... guidance, our encouragement, our correction, our comfort, our inspiration—we find Him in the record of these ancient experiences of His Self-unveiling. When near his death, after years of agony on his bed, when he himself had become a changed man, Heinrich Heine wrote: "I attribute my enlightenment entirely and simply to the reading of a book. Of a book? Yes! and it is an old homely book, modest as nature—a book which has a look modest as the sun which warms us, as the bread which nourishes us—a book as full of love and blessing as ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... understanding of the whole situation of Asia and Europe, you who devoted all your life to the glory of the name of the Mongols, why did you not give to your own people, who preserve their old morality, honesty and peaceful customs, the enlightenment that would have saved them from such death? Your bones in the mausoleum at Karakorum being destroyed by the centuries that pass over them must cry out against the rapid disappearance of your formerly great people, who were feared by half the ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... series of pregnant hints than a consecutive account of political facts. Nor must we belittle the debt he owes to his predecessors. Much, certainly, he owed to Locke, and the full radiance of the Scottish enlightenment emerges into the day with his teaching. Francis Hutcheson gave him no small inspiration; and Hutcheson means that he was indebted to Shaftesbury. Indeed, there is much of the sturdy commonsense of the Scottish school about him, particularly perhaps in ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... upon our coasts we should 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 and set them marching disorderly ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... delight in difficulty conquered, which is a part of the primitive play-impulse potent in us all, but tending to die out as we grow older, as we lessen in energy, and as we feel more deeply the tragi-comedy of existence. But inexpensive as it may seem to those of us who look to literature for enlightenment, for solace in the hour of need, for stimulus to stiffen the will in the never-ending struggle of life, the detective tale, as Poe contrived it, has merits of its own as distinct and as undeniable, as those of the historical novel, for example, ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... of the inferior and thus give the remainder strength to fill her higher—or, let us say, her more amusing—though still unconscious and accidental intentions. And, actuated by the highest gifts of the enlightenment, we were seeking to circumvent her. In this republic I saw the black beginning to mingle with the white—in Europe there was taking place an economic catastrophe to save three or four diseased and wretchedly governed races from the one mastery that might ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... threescore and ten years in abstract speculations, while the tangible, visible, and hideous soul-destroying trinity of Vice, Ignorance, and Poverty, above mentioned, are desolating the world in their very sight. There are possessors of personal virtue, enlightenment, and wealth, who dare stand neutral with regard to these dire exigencies among their fellows. And yet they are the logical helpers, as holders of the special antidote to each of those banes! Infinitely more deserving of execration are such folk than the callous owner of some specific, ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... of sophomore year there were a half-dozen very positive young Positivists in our class. The pride of intellect which we felt in our new enlightenment was intoxicating. To be able to look down from a serene height, with compassion frequently tempered by contempt, upon the rest of the world still groping in the mists of childish superstition, was prodigiously to the taste of youths of eighteen ...
— A Positive Romance - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... written about 1623, during that period of literary activity which followed Bacon's political fall. None of Bacon's writings gives in short apace so vivid a picture of his tastes and aspirations as this fragment of the plan of an ideal commonwealth. The generosity and enlightenment, the dignity and splendor, the piety and public spirit, of the inhabitants of Bensalem represent the ideal qualities which Bacon the statesman desired rather than hoped to see characteristic of his ...
— The New Atlantis • Francis Bacon
... I understood in what light my terrible misfortune was regarded by the public. A few days later I received further enlightenment, this time from the lips of an inspector of police, who called upon me with a warrant of arrest on the charge of having done manslaughter on the body ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... case of ten thousand average persons throughout Christendom, it would not be found that a majority of these persons entertain more utterly mistaken metaphysical ideas regarding natural phenomena than they do truly scientific conceptions. We pride ourselves on the enlightenment of our age, but our pride is largely based on an illusion. Mankind at large is still in the dark age. The historian of the remote future will see no radical distinction between the superstitions of the thirteenth century and the superstitions of the nineteenth century. But he will probably ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... which I have been honored. There I trust it will remain for generations, to attest the generous munificence of the American people in recognizing the efforts, however inadequate, of one of the humblest of their fellow-countrymen to promote the enlightenment and prosperity of his ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... anything about fancy work, but to be treated as an authority was quite soothing, and she fully believed that the mere glimpses she had had of Mrs. Sefton's work and the shop windows, enabled her to give great enlightenment to this poor country mouse; so she gladly went to the bedroom, with a muslin-worked toilet- cover, embroidered curtains, plates fastened against the wall, and table all over knick-knacks, which Miss Constance called her little den, where she could study beauty after ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... another of his novels, in Resurrection, though Resurrection is more like a fragment of an epic than a novel. It cannot be said that in that tremendous book Tolstoy pictured the rending of a man's soul by sudden enlightenment, striking in upon him unexpectedly, against his will, and destroying his established life—and that is apparently the subject in the author's mind. It is the woman, the accidental woman through whom the stroke is delivered, who is actually in the middle of the book; it is her epic ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... 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, ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... waiting for that enlightenment, Monsieur l'Eveque de Vannes will have escaped. I ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... there is credible testimony in the parochial balance sheets of the period, wherein appear frequent entries, at first of 4d. and then of 5d. each, for new besoms, as the value of that commodity advanced with the greater enlightenment and more ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... revolutionize the people unless their demands were fully complied with. In Wurtemberg, the duke, Charles, had been succeeded, A.D. 1793, by his brother, Louis Eugene, who banished license from his court, but, a foe to enlightenment, closed the Charles college, placed monks around his person, was extremely bigoted, and a zealous but impotent friend to France. He expired, A.D. 1795, and was succeeded by the third brother, Frederick Eugene, who ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... little hoys who, in playing, erected here and there heaps of sand, with the intention of dedicating them as Stupas to the Ginas,- they have all of them reached enlightenment.'—Saddharma Pundarika, c. II. v. 81 (Kern's translation), 'Sacred Books of ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... been previously bidden in through Gurney, or whether this chance word constituted his invitation, he did not know. Seeking enlightenment upon the point, he discovered that the critic had disappeared, to furnish his half-column for the morning issue. La Tarantina, hearing his inquiry, gave him the news in her broken English. The dancer, lithe, powerful, with the hideous feet and knotty legs typical of her profession, turned her somber, ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... work. I don't think that I dwell morbidly on this, but it is an awful thought. And then I feel just the same as of old, and don't reach out more, or aim more earnestly at amendment of life and strive after fresh degrees of enlightenment and holiness. But probably I have to learn the lesson, which it may be only sickness will teach me, of patient waiting, that God will accomplish His own work in His ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... them like a mania. Had they followed up their discoveries by progressive social enlightenment, by encouragement to commerce, by the concentration of their efforts in the development of the territory and the new resources already under their sway, half the money and energy squandered on fruitless and inglorious expeditions would have sufficed ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... or woman appear beyond words of admiration, to the scoffer and frivolous (but for this latter class we are not writing) foolish and impossible. The missions too, with their honest wealth and industry were California's first centers of enlightenment and refinement. The Spanish missionaries were scholars as well as religious, and their institutions were California's cradles of literature, music and learning hand in hand with religion. To these early fathers we owe the ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field
... the mainland have proved that perfectly representative institutions do not agree with our character, habits, and present state of enlightenment.... So long as our fellow citizens do not acquire the talents and the political virtues which distinguish our brothers of the North, who have a system of government altogether popular in character, I am very much afraid these institutions might lead ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... the Methodist Church, did the same work of necessity. Lumpkin, who for many years has kept a slave-trader's jail, also had a work of necessity on hand,—fifty men, women, and children, who must be saved to the missionary institution for the future enlightenment of Africa. Although it was the Lord's day, (perhaps he was comforted by the thought, that, the better the day, the better the deed,) the coffle-gang was made up in the jail-yard, within pistol-shot of Davis's parlor-window, within a stone's throw of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... agree to be present at the Maplehill picnic "Black Duncan" could not quite understand, but had he compared notes with McGee, the champion of the London police force and of various towns and cities of the western peninsula, he would doubtless have received some enlightenment. To the skill of the same master hand was due the appearance upon the racing list of the Dominion Day picnic of such distinguished names as Cahill of London, Fullerton of Woodstock, and especially of Eugene La Belle of nowhere in particular, who held the provincial championship for skating ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... between Crown and Parliament, the new industrial and agricultural methods, the workers' demands for higher pay, the new rural and urban poor, the growth of the Empire, the deteriorating relations with the American colonies, the increasing influence of the ideas of the Enlightenment, the popularity of democratic ideas, the Wilkes controversy, the growth of Methodism, the growth of the novel, the interest in the gothic and the picturesque and in chinoiserie, sentimentality, enthusiasm—all ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... that he did not realize he was in another dust-storm until Stingaree, at the end of the rope, was swallowed like a tug in a fog. And even then Vanheimert's peculiar terror of a dust-storm did not link itself to the fear of sudden death which had at last been put into him. But the moment of mental enlightenment was at hand. ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... a disposition to inquire seriously into such subjects. He hears those Christians talk about religion, but can find nothing in their conversation but strange and, to him, unintelligible expressions. The speakers give proof enough of excited feelings, but show no sign of mental enlightenment. If he asks them for information on the great principles and bearings of Christianity, they tell him they have nothing to do ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... door, and when our mid-day meal was done I ordered the man to give him a glass of slivovitsa, as plum brandy is called. He then came forward, trembling, as if about to receive sentence of death, and taking off his greasy fez, said, "I drink to our prince Kara Georgovich, and to the progress and enlightenment of the nation." I looked with astonishment at the torn, wretched habiliments of this idiot swineherd. He was too stupid to entertain these sentiments himself; but this trifling circumstance was the feather which indicated how the wind blew. ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... the extravagance of possessing a private telephone, but down in the basement there is a species of ice cupboard, where, in surroundings of abject dreariness, we deposit our pence and shout messages, to the entertainment and enlightenment of the maids at "Well" windows. Mr Thorold was bound for this haunt, and the nice Mr Hallett and I sat down to entertain one another during ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of practice and its continual reward. All reflection would then be applicable in action and all action fruitful in happiness. Though this be an ideal, yet everyone gives it from time to time a partial embodiment when he practises useful arts, when his passions happily lead him to enlightenment, or when his fancy breeds visions pertinent to his ultimate good. Everyone leads the Life of Reason in so far as he finds a steady light behind the world's glitter and a clear residuum of joy beneath pleasure or success. No experience not to be repented of falls without its sphere. Every ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... except the intolerant, though he would not promote to high offices those who disbelieved in the immortality of the soul. Plato has not advanced quite so far as this in the path of toleration. But in judging of his enlightenment, we must remember that the evils of necromancy and divination were far greater than those of intolerance in the ancient world. Human nature is always having recourse to the first; but only when organized into some form of priesthood falls into ...
— Laws • Plato
... of that sunlit chamber, the voice from the bed broke upon them with startling suddenness; and in it was the cry of one lost in an abyss of darkness, but appealing to them with a frantic demand for instant enlightenment. ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... much stronger than it is now, and when the aristocracy could still be called a ruling class. But as the British Government grew more democratic, the patronage system, as a relic of feudalism, had to yield to the forces of liberalism and enlightenment until it completely disappeared. When it invaded our national Government, forty years after its constitutional beginning, we merely took what England was casting off as an abuse inconsistent with popular government, and unworthy of a free and civilized nation. If not ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... conclusion; 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 ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... Confederate Government did not misapprehend the attitude of the intellectual opposition. Its foreign organ, The Index, published in London, characterized the leading Southern papers for the enlightenment of the British public. While the Enquirer and the Courier were singled out as the great champions of the Confederate Government, the Examiner and the Mercury were portrayed as its arch enemies. The Examiner was called the "Ishmael of the Southern press." The Mercury was described as "almost ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... the fashion in Norway since the nation regained its independence to interest one's self in a lofty, condescending way in the life of the peasantry. A few well-meaning persons, like the poet Wergeland, had labored zealously for their enlightenment and the improvement of their economic condition; but, except in the case of such single individuals, no real and vital sympathy and fellow-feeling had ever existed between the upper and the lower strata of Norwegian ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... by 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 ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... After these were well understood between us, I ventured to say: "Do you object—would it be asking too much—if I requested some enlightenment as to what facts you have discovered about Mr. Grey which go to substantiate my theory? I might work ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... written '!'; one would not say "Congratulations bang" (except possibly for humorous purposes), but if one wanted to specify the exact characters 'foo!' one would speak "Eff oh oh bang". See {shriek}, {{ASCII}}. 2. interj. An exclamation signifying roughly "I have achieved enlightenment!", or "The dynamite has cleared out my brain!" Often used to acknowledge that one has perpetrated a {thinko} immediately after one has ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... to judge correctly of the men of any age, without taking into consideration the circumstances in which they were placed, and the opinions that prevailed in their time. To apply the standard of this year of grace, 1856, to the religious enlightenment of more than two hundred years ago, would be like measuring one of Gulliver's Lilliputians by Gulliver himself. I trust that the world has since improved, and that of whatever passing follies we may be guilty, we shall never retrograde to the old narrow views of ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... Tompkinson, found his way into Carondelet—or Vuide Poche, the French settlement on the Mississippi since absorbed by St. Louis—and cast about for something to do. He had been in hard luck on his trip from New England to the great river. His schemes for self-aggrandizement and the incidental enlightenment and prosperity of mankind had not thriven, and it was largely in pity that M. Dunois gave shelter to the ragged, half-starved, but still jaunty and resourceful adventurer. Dunois was the one man in the place ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... this woman working for? For progress? For the salvation of humanity? No, she was working against progress, against freedom and enlightenment. Hadn't she recently brought forward a motion to limit religious liberty? Wasn't she the author of a pamphlet on the intractability of servants? Wasn't she advocating greater severity in the administration ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... his contemporaries. To a very large class, therefore, the persecution of the players and the suppression of the stage must have been grave misfortune and real privation. To many the theatre still supplied not merely recreation but education and enlightenment as well. That there was any rising of the public on behalf of the players does not appear. Puritanism was too strong for opposition; and besides, the playgoer, by the nature of his favourite pursuit, almost avows himself a man of peace and obedient to the law. The public had to submit, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... account, just as do other races. I have no thought of glorifying the noble red man, nor of claiming for him a freedom from human imperfection—even where his natural quality and training count the most—greater than enlightenment has ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... at her intently, as though some thought had suddenly brought him enlightenment. Both he and the Comtesse seemed quite to have forgotten Elsie, listening on her stool in bewilderment and compassion. She saw them now exchange guarded glances, as though measuring ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... to furnish a background for recent achievements in this field, he discovered that he would write a much more interesting book should he confine himself to the ante-bellum period. In fact, the accounts of the successful strivings of Negroes for enlightenment under most adverse circumstances read like beautiful romances of a people in ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... seek to be loved by any one; but tell me if it is permitted to desire the return of agreeable persons; if one may long for news of them, and if to be interested in them and to let them know it is to lack virtue, good sense, and proper behavior. I am awaiting enlightenment. I cannot doubt your sincerity; you have given me too many proofs of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... him look round sharply, though they were really himself sneezing. 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 ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... remembered that at that period the Dutch East India Company was in constant communication with the Far East. Others declare that Muscovy was the original home of the breed, a supposition for which there is no discernible foundation. The study of canine history receives frequent enlightenment from the study of the growth of commercial intercourse between nations, and the trend of events would lead one to the belief that the Pug had its origin in China, particularly in view of the fact that it is with that country that most of the blunt-nosed toy dogs, with tails curled ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... representative in the gentle character, refined intelligence and liberal humanity of William Ellery Channing (1780- 1842), who has remained its chief apostle. It was the expression of a moral maturing and intellectual enlightenment that took place with as little disturbance as ever marked religious evolution in any community. The people at large remained evangelical, but they also felt in a less degree the softening and liberalizing tendency; nevertheless it was mainly in the field of Unitarianism ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Simonides replied, adding, after a pause during which he thoughtfully watched the haughty pontiff, "And now am I convinced. With such assurance as proceeds from clear enlightenment of the spirit—with absolute assurance—now know I that he who first goes yonder with the inscription about his neck is what the inscription proclaims him—KING OF THE JEWS. A common man, an impostor, a felon, was never thus waited ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... through a religious man, though not in the confessional sense. Reared in the Catholic faith he early attained to an independent opinion on religious things. It must be borne in mind that his youth fell in the period of enlightenment and rationalism. When at a later date he composed the grand Mass in honor of his esteemed pupil Archduke Rudolph,—he hoped to obtain from him a chapelmastership when the Archduke became Archbishop of Olmutz, but in vain,—he gave it forms and dimensions ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... have been lost to all but antiquarian experts of omnivorous appetite. Assuredly, the average educated Englishman will not go in quest of them, but it may be thought he will esteem the opportunity, here offered, of gaining enlightenment, if not in the full and perfect sense which might have been possible, had life been less brief and art not quite so long. The same observation applies to books, with this difference that, whereas in articles information is usually compacted, in ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... the Buddhist writings very deeply, and his name had been conveyed to this Burmese lady as that of one eager to throw off all ties of kinship, and retire—like the great Buddha himself—from the world, and find repose and enlightenment in a Burmese monastery. The only thing lacking in carrying out ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... will say: clothes and good dinners, wine and women, without which you think I shall be inconsolable. Are you now to learn that freedom from hunger and thirst is better than meat and drink, and insensibility to cold better than plenty of clothes? Come, I see you need enlightenment; I will show you how lamentation ought to be done. Make a fresh start, thus: Alas, my son! Hunger and thirst and cold are his no longer! He is gone, gone beyond the reach of sickness; he fears not fever ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... flood of ideas, from which he chose the best. Infatuated by the richness of the stream, he created such a powerful sequence of facts that the British began to loom up as a reactionary tribe fighting a rearguard action throughout the ages against the advancing hosts of enlightenment. The Island of Britain, the 'Old Country,' as its people called it, began to shape in his eyes like a hundred-taloned monster sprawling over the whole earth. This was the nation which had forced opium on China, ruled India by tyranny, ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... doctor of law, ... fellow of Trinity Hall, and is admitted at the Commons, and lives there in some practice, but very good repute." Autobiography of Sir John Bramston, p. 29. To whom the report was nominally addressed is not clear, but it was intended indirectly for the enlightenment of Prince George of Denmark, consort of Queen Anne, whose wifely partiality had in May of this year raised him to the office of Lord High Admiral. As such, he nominally presided over the High Court of Admiralty; finding the need of having its activities supplemented by additional ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... the usual preliminaries of any enterprise in those superstitious days; and in these days of enlightenment the fashion yet lingers among the most ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... temperate than that of her southern neighbor. The name of Calvert is a better symbol of wisdom than the name of Berkeley. Cecil Calvert, second Lord Baltimore, dying in 1675, has a fair niche in the temple of human enlightenment. His son Charles succeeded, third Lord Baltimore and Lord Proprietary of Maryland. Well-intentioned, this Calvert lacked something of the ability of either his father or his grandfather. Though he lived in Maryland while his father had lived in ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... a communication with his magic mustache, "that we go dye and night 'til we get the water out? It won't be long. Then we 'll 'ave to work together. You 'll need my vast store of learning and enlightenment!" ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... own clubs," Miss Johnson pointed out for the enlightenment of the presiding officer. She was very happy over her dear Cicily's discomfiture. "How can they help in any really great work? Let them work among the creatures of their own class. We," she concluded ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... cook's more natural taste calls muck. We are only just beginning to realise the indescribable filthiness of carious teeth, than which anything more unclean, a few diseases excepted, can scarcely be found in slums. Even in this great age of pseudo-scientific enlightenment, we do not have a carious tooth extracted until it aches, though we have a front tooth cleaned and stopped on the first appearance of decay. What the eye doth not see.... Yet we presume to judge men by their deviation from our ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds |
