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Epoch   Listen
noun
Epoch  n.  
1.
A fixed point of time, established in history by the occurrence of some grand or remarkable event; a point of time marked by an event of great subsequent influence; as, the epoch of the creation; the birth of Christ was the epoch which gave rise to the Christian era. "In divers ages,... divers epochs of time were used." "Great epochs and crises in the kingdom of God." "The acquittal of the bishops was not the only event which makes the 30th of June, 1688, a great epoch in history." Note: Epochs mark the beginning of new historical periods, and dates are often numbered from them.
2.
A period of time, longer or shorter, remarkable for events of great subsequent influence; a memorable period; as, the epoch of maritime discovery, or of the Reformation. "So vast an epoch of time." "The influence of Chaucer continued to live even during the dreary interval which separates from one another two important epochs of our literary history."
3.
(Geol.) A division of time characterized by the prevalence of similar conditions of the earth; commonly a minor division or part of a period. "The long geological epoch which stored up the vast coal measures."
4.
(Astron.)
(a)
The date at which a planet or comet has a longitude or position.
(b)
An arbitrary fixed date, for which the elements used in computing the place of a planet, or other heavenly body, at any other date, are given; as, the epoch of Mars; lunar elements for the epoch March 1st, 1860.
Synonyms: Era; time; date; period; age. Epoch, Era. We speak of the era of the Reformation, when we think of it as a period, during which a new order of things prevailed; so also, the era of good feeling, etc. Had we been thinking of the time as marked by certain great events, or as a period in which great results were effected, we should have called the times when these events happened epochs, and the whole period an epoch. "The capture of Constantinople is an epoch in the history of Mahometanism; but the flight of Mahomet is its era."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Epoch" Quotes from Famous Books



... sense and reason are the same in all ages. What is the result of this generalization? Heroes can be transported from epoch to epoch, from country to country, without causing surprise. Their Achilles is no more a Greek than is Porus an Indian; Andromache feels and talks like a seventeenth-century princess: Phaedra experiences the remorse of a ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... army from Cuzco, and by the celebrated battle of Hatuntaqui, in which Cacha was killed, Quito was added to the realm of the Incas. Huayna-Capac made Quito his residence, and reigned there thirty-eight years—the most brilliant epoch in the annals of the city. At his death his kingdom was divided, one son, Atahuallpa,[18] reigning in Quito, and Huascar at Cuzco. Civil war ensued, in which the latter was defeated, and Atahuallpa was chosen ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... Origin of Species was published, and this date marks the beginning of an epoch in every branch of biology. Before it, Biology had been almost entirely a descriptive science, but within a few years after the publication of the Origin its effects began to colour all aspects of ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various

... tiger has come back and with him the cave jackal. There is a terrible beauty about the tiger. The jackal is a mean and hideous brute. But both are out of date. Did not Monsieur Capus say the other day that Europe "cannot allow a return of the cave epoch?" ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... in Athens. It was only with the Medici that we began to hear of such distinguished ladies as Bianca Cappello; and in the long, commonplace annals of the Swiss commonwealth we should be able to recall no female name that lent lustre to any epoch. We should contrast this poverty with the riches of the French monarchy, adorned with the memories of Agnes Sorel, of Diane de Poitiers, of Madame de Montespan, of Madame de Pompadour, following one another in brilliant succession, and sharing not only the glory but the ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... the dawn of France. After all, what are the rivalries of Marius and Sylla to us? The victory of Aetius over the Huns in the plains of Chalons concerns us a good deal more. Further, it is unfair to the Lower-Empire to view it only as a time of feebleness and cowardice and corruption. It was also an epoch of immense activity, prolific of daring and high-flying adventurers, some of them heroic. Even the most degenerate of the last Emperors never lost the conviction of Roman majesty and grandeur. Unto the very end, they employed all the ruses of their diplomacy ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... fingers in his ears, these are each culminating moments in the legend, and each has been printed on the mind's eye forever. Other things we may forget; we may forget the words, although they are beautiful; we may forget the author's comment, although perhaps it was ingenious and true; but these epoch-making scenes, which put the last mark of truth upon a story and fill up, at one blow, our capacity for sympathetic pleasure, we so adopt into the very bosom of our mind that neither time nor tide can efface or weaken the ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... specially, I suspect, that last one, ought to lead the young student up to the great and complex question—How were these islands re-peopled with plants and animals, after the long and wholesale catastrophe of the glacial epoch? ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... away, drank my tea at a gulp, and settled down to read in luxurious enjoyment. It was a longer letter than I had yet received, and I had a premonition that it would clear the way. But I did not realise how epoch-making it ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... the choir in the Abbey of Waltham, was long shown the tomb of the Last Saxon King, inscribed with the touching words—"Harold Infelix." But not under that stone, according to the chronicler who should best know the truth [277], mouldered the dust of him in whose grave was buried an epoch in human annals. ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... hear, by the way, Sir Felix pronounce that favourite phrase of his 'in my time'; he does it with a dignified humility, as who should say, 'Observe, I am of the past indeed, but I have lent my name to an epoch.' ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... appendage to the scene. There hung, head downwards, from a branch, a Kafir boy, who was, in fact, the brother of the stately Ucatella, only went further into antiquity for his models of deportment; for, as she imitated the antique marbles, he reproduced the habits of that epoch when man roosted, and was arboreal. Wheel somersaults, and, above all, swinging head downwards from a branch, were the sweeteners of ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... III's reign every daily paper had its column of book-notices; while 1817 marks an epoch in the weekly press; when William Jerdan started The Observator (parent of our Athenaeum) in order to furnish (for one shilling weekly) "a clear and instructive picture of the moral and literary improvement of the time, and a complete and authentic ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... scandal and exposed to all eyes. {186} What is its purpose, and what idea, through sympathy, is the statue to convey to spectators? An idea which, to us, is almost without meaning because it belongs to another age and another epoch of the human mind. The head is without significance; unlike ours it is not a world of graduated conceptions, excited passions, and a medley of sentiments; the face is not sunken, sharp, and disturbed; it has not many characteristics, scarcely any ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... United States, may be a ridiculously long period for which to grant a monopoly to the inventor of some ephemeral toy, although absolutely inadequate to secure the just reward for one who labours for many years to perfect an epoch-making invention, and then to introduce it to the public in the face of all the opposition from vested interests which such ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... be interesting, if it were feasible, to point out the epoch at which the text mode of arguing in polemic controversy became predominant; I mean by single texts without any modification by the context. I suspect that it commenced, or rather that it first became the fashion, under the Dort or ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... the fourth time in my life, to see if it be possible to get any credible face-to-face acquaintance with our English Puritan period; or whether it must be left forever a mere hearsay and echo to one. Books equal in dulness were at no epoch of the world penned by unassisted man. Nevertheless, courage! I have got, within the last twelve months, actually, as it were, to see that this Cromwell was one of the greatest souls ever born of the English kin; a great amorphous semi-articulate Baresark; very ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... of a regiment, and the management of that regiment, the welfare of the men and the necessity of receiving and giving orders, engrossed him. The burning of Smolensk and its abandonment made an epoch in his life. A novel feeling of anger against the foe made him forget his own sorrow. He was entirely devoted to the affairs of his regiment and was considerate and kind to his men and officers. In the regiment they called ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... epoch when Constantine abandoned Rome never to return, every inhabitant of that city, down to the populace, was addicted ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... something apart from his relationship to the judge—something inherent in himself. Perhaps it was the misery he betrayed. Perhaps it was the memory of Reuther's faith in him and how that faith must suffer when she saw him next. Instantaneous reflections; but epoch-making in a mind like his. Alanson Black had never hesitated before in the face of any duty, and it robbed him of confidence. But he gave no proof of this in voice or manner, as pacing the floor in alternate approach and retreat, he finally addressed the motionless figure ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green

... Shawl and the Men who Produced It. A Record of an Interesting Epoch in the History of the Town. With 10 facsimile Reproductions in Colours of Paisley Shawls, and numerous other Illustrations, including portraits of the leading Manufacturers and Public Men of the time. By Matthew Blair, Chairman of the Incorporated Weaving, Dyeing, and Printing College of ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford

... extravagance and speculation following, which led to great purchases abroad, and which was closed only by the panic of 1873. Since then more exports than imports were needed to pay for the great purchases of the former period; and the epoch of great exports, from 1875 to 1883, balanced the opposite conditions in the period preceding. It would seem, therefore, that we had reached a normal period about the year 1882.(271) A fuller statement as to the fluctuations of exports ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... even passed the stage where the distinction between myth and tradition has been recognized. Nearly all historians continue to write about some of the American hero-gods as if they had been chiefs of tribes at some undetermined epoch, and the effort to trace the migrations and affiliations of nations by similarities in such stories is of almost daily occurrence. How baseless and misleading all such arguments must be, it is one of ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... word "murderer," the Marquise cried out; as for Helene, it seemed to mark an epoch in her life, there was not a trace of surprise in her face. She looked as if she had been waiting for this—for him. Those so vast thoughts of hers had found a meaning. The punishment reserved by Heaven for her sins flamed out before her. In her own eyes she was as great a ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... this mysterious talk with the soldier still stirred in Bert Smallways' imagination that the most astounding incident in the whole of that dramatic chapter of human history, the coming of flying, occurred. People talk glibly enough of epoch-making events; this was an epoch-making event. It was the unanticipated and entirely successful flight of Mr. Alfred Butteridge from the Crystal Palace to Glasgow and back in a small businesslike-looking machine heavier than ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... to have originated the startling idea of writing songs "in English word" and English rhyme; he merely accepted the suggestion and acted upon it. The suggestion came, under divine guidance, from Mr. J. D. Ward, the Chittagong magistrate. Here are the lines, setting forth that epoch-making moment, in an ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas

... exchange it for the luxuries of the south, gave rise to manufactures as well as fishing on the southern confines of the Baltic Sea; from whence arose the wealth of Flanders, Holland, and the Hans Towns. This forms an epoch entirely new in its nature and description, and its termination was only brought on by the great discovery of the passage to Asia, by the Cape of Good Hope, and to America, by sailing straight out ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair

... its grand, pretentious character. It is even at the present day proverbial to calculate the number of acres of roofing, the reparation of which would, in our age, be the ruin of fortunes cramped and narrowed as the epoch itself. Vaux-le-Vicomte, when its magnificent gates, supported by caryatides, have been passed through, has the principal front of the main building opening upon a vast, so-called court of honor, inclosed by deep ditches, bordered by a magnificent stone ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... his work The Parousia, has contended for the belief that the fall of Jerusalem and Judaism in 70 A.D. marked a stupendous epoch in the unseen world, a personal—although unrecorded—return of the Saviour to the earth then taking place (cp. Ac 7:55; 9:7; 1Co 9:1), accompanied by a spiritual judgement of bygone generations, a resurrection from Hades to Heaven of the faithful of past ages, and an ingathering of saints ...
— Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions - Third Edition 1913 • R F Weymouth

... brethren," he said, "we are assembled to celebrate the anniversary of that day which Providence had marked, in His eternal decrees, to become the epoch of liberty and independence to the ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett

... population which, directly or indirectly, fed upon it, and grew with its growth. To the reptiles, the birds, and the mammals, we must devote special chapters. Here we may briefly survey the less conspicuous animals of the Mesozoic Epoch. ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... of graduation marked a new epoch in my military life. Then my fellow-cadets and myself forgot the past. Then they atoned for past conduct and welcomed me as one of them as ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper

... fair sprinkling even of "philosophic thinkers" to whom it may be a profitable, perhaps even a novel, task to descend from the heights of speculation and go over the A B C of the great biological problem as it was set before a body of shrewd artisans at that remote epoch. ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... upon them. The larger colonies of Great Britain are not indeed reaching their majority, for that they did long ago; but the idea formulated in the phrase "imperial federation" shows that they, and the mother country herself, have passed through and left behind the epoch when the accepted thought in both was that they should in the end separate, as sons leave the father's roof, to set up, each for himself. To that transition phase has succeeded the ideal of partnership, more complex indeed and difficult of attainment, but trebly strong ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan

... the hats came a burning of fish panniers defective in measure; while in the reign of Edward III. some false chopins (wine measures) were destroyed. This was rough justice, but still the seizures seem to have been far fewer than they would be in our boastful epoch. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... we are to astonish the echoes on the 30th of July. My grandfather has given me carte blanche for once, and I promise you the entertainment shall be worthy of the occasion. The world will not see the grand epoch of my majority twice. I think I shall have a lofty throne for you, Godmamma, or rather two, one on the lawn and another in the ballroom, that you may sit and look down upon us ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... different functions of the clergy, revenues, independent means of action, rallying points which suit a great society, councils provincial, national, general, the habit of arranging in common the society's affairs. In a word, at this epoch Christianity was not only a religion but a Church. If it had not been a Church, I do not know what would have become of it in the midst of the Roman empire's fall. I confine myself to purely human considerations: I put aside every element foreign to the natural consequences of natural ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... a long step from the spear to the ploughshare, but the moccasined feet of White Horse soon took the step. Concerning this epoch in his life, he said: "The most important event in my life was when the Government began to give annuities to the Indians and we were placed on the reservation. I have always been a leader of the Indians and a chief. When farming implements were assigned us, and the allotments made, I was appointed ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon

... traditions to history will deny that history is likely to gain much by the proper interpretation of such traditions. Every yard of British territory has its historic interest, and there are innumerable peaks above the general level which should be worth much to national history. Every epoch of British history has its great personage, who in popular opinion stands out from among his fellows. When once it is understood that traditions attaching to places and persons yield facts of a kind worth searching for, there will arise the desire to obtain all that is now obtainable ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... by describing it now. Let me only say that Naomi's conduct strengthened me in the conviction that she possessed a noble nature. I was unconscious of the state of my own feelings at the time; but I am now disposed to think that this was the epoch at which I began to envy Ambrose the wife whom he ...
— The Dead Alive • Wilkie Collins

... a civil service examination on him, and very uncertain indeed, not only as to the epoch at which the pie appeared in history, but also as to the measurements of that indispensable fact, Barbox Brothers made a shaky beginning, but under encouragement did very fairly. There was a want ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens

... volleys of joy fired as those sailors alone could feel. For four years they had followed the foolish quest of the learned world's error. That night Vancouver gave a gala dinner to his crews. They deserved it. Their four years' cruise marked the close of the most heroic epoch on the Pacific coast. Vancouver had accomplished his life-work—there {290} was no northeast passage through the ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... the memory when the letterpress is forgotten. He cites Menzel as the highest example of such performance. He next refers to the illustrated volume of Poems by Tennyson in 1860, for which Millais and Rossetti and others designed small woodcuts, the publishing of which, he says, made an epoch in English book illustration, importing a new element to which he finds it difficult to give a name. "I still adore," he says, "the lovely, wild, irresponsible moon-face of Oriana, with a gigantic mailed archer kneeling at her feet in the yew-wood, and stringing his fatal bow; the strange ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood

... belonged to a late geological period, the Pliocene, just before the glacial epoch, and therefore could have no connection with the carboniferous ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... then ten degrees above the pole of cold; and as to the parallels of temperature, they might as well have been ten degrees to the other side. There was nothing surprising in the sea being open at this epoch, as it must have been at Disco Island in Baffin's Bay. So a sailing vessel would have plenty of sailing ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... So a marked epoch came to its close, and this was one of the many forms in which the great Anglican impulse expended itself. While Newman and others sank their own individuality in religious devotion to authority and tradition, Pusey turned what had been discussion into controversy, and from a theologian ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley

... great this must be, but it is possible to set limits to it in both directions. On the one hand, not a tittle of evidence is on record to carry the age of man in America beyond the present geological epoch. Dr. Lund examined in Brazil more than eight hundred caverns, out of which number only six contained human bones, and of these six only one had with the human bones those of animals now extinct. Even in that instance the original stratification ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... chapter in my life. This journey in the East, especially in Egypt and Greece, marked a new epoch in my thinking. I became more and more impressed with the continuity of historical causes, and realized more and more how easily and naturally have grown the myths and legends which have delayed the unbiased observation of human events and the scientific investigation of natural laws. On a ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... English at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, and the close of the French and Indian war in 1763—a period of a century and a half—a new nation was being prepared on this continent to take its place among the powers of the earth. It was an epoch of migration. Western Europe contributed emigrants of many races and nationalities. The English led the way. Next to them in numerical importance were the Scotch-Irish and the Germans. Into the melting pot were also cast Dutch, Swedes, French, Jews, Welsh, and Irish. Thousands ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... affected by them, were now regarded, in some degree, as public injuries, and as infringements of a charter calculated for general security. And thus the establishment of the great charter, without seeming anywise to innovate in the distribution of political power, became a kind of epoch in ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... the hymn of Callimachus, but with very different qualities, is the idyll of Theocritus on the Shepherds' Journey. Although it is possible to define an epoch in mythological [126] development in which literary and artificial influences began to remodel the primitive, popular legend, yet still, among children, and unchanging childlike people, we may suppose that that ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... rendered more terrible and blasting from its very infrequency. And this was the man upon whom was laid the burden of the war of the Revolution, and to whom, under God, were due the mighty results of that epoch-making contest. Seldom, if ever, do we see men of such rare qualities that when they leave their appointed places no other can be found to fill them; but if such a one ever did live, this ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... critics, for his music could never have been the product of a crazy brain—he was pronounced an arch-enemy to mankind, because he told infamous secrets in his music, secrets that had lain buried in the shale of a vanished epoch. And, lest the world grow cold, he drove to its very soul the most hideous truths. A hypnotist, he conducted his orchestra through extraordinary and malevolent forests of tone. The audience went into the night, some ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... in his last hours consigned to the care of the British conquerors the colonists he had loved and for whom he had fought, he proclaimed a momentous epoch in the world's history—the loss of an Empire to a great nation of Europe and the gain of an Empire to another. Within a generation the Saxon Conquistador was to suffer the same humiliation, and to yield up that colonial territory from ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... next place, being the Father of all men, he would naturally wish to have them find the truth. So we believe in revelation. Not in revelation confined to one book or one epoch in the history of the world, though we do not deny the revelation contained in them. We believe that all truth, through whatever medium it comes to the world, is in so far a revelation of our Father; and it is infallible revelation when it is ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage

... themselves possessed of an instrument of flight that could hover or ascend or descend vertically and gently as well as rush wildly through the air. The last dread of flying vanished. As the journalists of the time phrased it, this was the epoch of the Leap into the Air. The new atomic aeroplane became indeed a mania; every one of means was frantic to possess a thing so controllable, so secure and so free from the dust and danger of the road, and in France alone in the year 1943 thirty ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... err, all the real knowledge which we possess of the fossil remains of man goes no farther back than the Quaternary epoch; and the most that can be asserted on Professor Virchow's side respecting these remains is, that none of them present us with more marked pithecoid characters than such as are to be found among the existing races of mankind.[4] But, if this be so, then the only just ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel

... saw her was an epoch in the history of this gentleman's mind. He had learning and refinement, and he had not great practical experience, and such men are most open to impression from the stage. He saw a being, all grace and bright nature, move like a goddess among the stiff puppets of the scene; her glee ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade

... military despotism, which had taken place n the Roman empire, and which, previously to the irruption of those conquerors, had sunk the genius of men, and destroyed every noble principle of science and virtue, was unable to resist the vigorous efforts of a free people, and Europe, as from a new epoch, rekindled her ancient spirit, and shook off the base servitude to arbitrary will and authority under which she had so long labored. The free constitutions then established, however impaired by the encroachments of succeeding princes, still preserve an air ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner

... of Semitic art were confined to the Persian and later periods, they could only be employed to throw light on their own epoch, when through communication had been organized, and there was consequently a certain pooling of commercial and artistic products throughout the empire.(1) It is true that under the Great King the various petty states and provinces were encouraged to manage their ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King

... necessary to make a choice, I acknowledge that my prejudices are in favor of the good old times when the French and English Guards courteously invited each other to fire first,—as at Fontenoy,—preferring them to the frightful epoch when priests, women, and children throughout Spain plotted the murder of ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... epoch, beginning with the Sung Dynasty (from A.D. 960 to 1333) and lasting to our own time, was ushered in by a period of intense mental energy. Strange to say (and most interesting is the fact to Americans of this generation), the immediate occasion of the recension ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... Parry from the polar region of Melville island, are identical with those of England, and of course with those of this distant part of the same hemisphere in which the former are formed, although the character of the climate is so diverse. At the epoch of the coal formation, there existed plants, of genera, which, in temperate climates, at present rarely rise to more than a few inches in height, and which were at that remote period of enormous size. Thus, the forus must have attained the height of from fifty to sixty ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... sympathy. Though Suzanne is a fair specimen of those handsome Norman women whom a learned physician reckons as comprising one third of her fallen class whom our monstrous Paris absorbs, it must be stated that she remained in the upper and more decent regions of gallantry. At an epoch when, as Monsieur de Valois said, Woman no longer existed, she was simply "Madame du Val-Noble"; in other days she would have rivalled the Rhodopes, the Imperias, the Ninons of the past. One of the most distinguished writers of the Restoration has taken her under his ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac

... new epoch altogether in our history. The stirring events now to be noted do not so much concern the material fabric of the cathedral as in the past, but they were of the most momentous interest, and St. Paul's took more part in them ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham

... domestic arrangements was funny. I suppose it must have been like the prospect of a complete alteration in his life. An epoch. He was going, too, to part with the Diana! He had served in her for years. He had inherited her. From an uncle, if I remember rightly. And the future loomed big before him, occupying his thought exclusively ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad

... notice was given to the Admiral both by Mr. Foster and the Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Baron Engestroem. At this time everything seemed to go well on the Continent, and the period of the new King's accession to the throne was thought a proper epoch to sue for peace with Russia. This, however, was not done without the knowledge of Mr. Foster, to whom assurances were given that the alliance with England should not be broken; and in this the King subsequently showed great ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross

... outbreak of the present World War is epoch-making because it is at bottom a fight between the principle of democratic and constitutional government and the principle of militarism and autocratic government. The three new points in the present demand for a League ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim

... from each inn; and this select body comprised men who were alike remarkable for talents, accomplishments, and ambition, and some of whom were destined to play strangely diverse parts in the drama of their epoch. It comprised Edward Hyde, then in his twenty-sixth year; young Bulstrode Whitelock, who had not yet astonished the more decorous magnates of his country by wearing a falling-band at the Oxford Quarter Sessions; Edward Herbert, the most unfortunate ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... Monarch well down them, The fiend, Indigestion, would fly far away, And the regicide lampreys[12] be foiled of their prey! Such, DICK, are the classical sports that content us, Till five o'clock brings on that hour so momentous, That epoch—but whoa! my lad—here comes the Schneider, And, curse him, has made the stays three inches wider— Too wide by an inch and a half—what a Guy! But, no matter—'twill all be set right by-and-by. As we've MASSINOT's[13] ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... brothers is a great epoch in the reign of James. From that time it was clear that what he really wanted was not liberty of conscience for the members of his own church, but liberty to persecute the members of other churches. Pretending to abhor tests, he had himself imposed a test. He thought ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... was induced, from the considerable increase that had taken place in the public herds, to issue cows at L28 per head, payable in agricultural produce, to all indiscriminately who chose to purchase them. Hundreds of them, therefore, at this epoch, were distributed among the settlers, and their extreme value insured that degree of care and attention from their owners, which was naturally followed by a rapid increase, and produced in the short lapse of two years, that declension ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... initiated at Berkeley, has been done by any public institution to promote the publication of California history or the collection of material therefor. With a history such as ours, with its halo of romance, with its peculiarity of incident, with its epoch-making significance, is it not a burning shame that our people have not long ago, either through private endowment or through public institutions, taken as much pride in the preservation of our history as its makers did in the creation of it? Is it not time that civic societies ...
— California, Romantic and Resourceful • John F. Davis

... the entertainment, remarked, "It is an inspiring fact, as well as indisputable evidence of social growth, that this appeal for arbitration as a permanent policy has come, not so much from kings, from rulers, or from statesmen, as from workingmen.... It would create an epoch in human history second only in influence to the birth of Christ, and be such a practical exemplification of religion as would awake the conscience and touch ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various

... great interest, as in it we find formulated for the first time in an official despatch those exalted ideals of international policy which were to play so conspicuous a part in the affairs of the world at the close of the revolutionary epoch, and issued at the end of the 19th century in the Rescript of Nicholas II.2 and the conference of the Hague. The outcome of the war, Alexander argued, was not to be only the liberation of France, but the universal ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... things, all about one of the greatest scandals of modern times; and yet how few people now recall it or care anything about the dramatis personae and the actual facts! Metternich, next after Napoleon and Talleyrand, was an important figure in a stirring epoch. He, too, indicted an autobiography, which is equally neglected among the books that are sometimes quoted and extolled, but rarely read. Rousseau, the half insane, and Barras, the wholly vicious, have twenty readers where Talleyrand and ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... does not matter. The moving forces of our epoch do not come from business offices nor from the street, the rostrum, the pulpit, or the professorial chair. The noisy rush of yesterday, to-day and to-morrow is only the furious motion of the outermost circle, the centre moves upon its way, quietly ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau

... an epoch important has with the century risen; But the moment so great finds but a ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... I grant, but every time has been one of decay, and has, however, prepared the way for a new epoch. The fallen leaves of autumn form a forcing-bed for the coming spring; Nature, life, and history ever renew themselves through death. Therefore death is to me only a renewal, a change, and whenever I meet a funeral, I always say to myself, 'O how ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... satire until that monstrous growth of political caricature created by the Revolution. Italy in the same period has but little to offer us, Germany as little or less; and it is to England that we must turn for the pictorial humour, whether social or political, of that interesting epoch. And this because the England of that time is a self-conscious creature, emergent from a successful struggle for freedom, and strong enough to enjoy a hearty laugh—even at her own expense. While the Bastille still ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton

... humanitarian; they have a very high sense of duty. So have the Germans, so have the Americans. [To the DUTCH YOUTH] I judge even in your little country they have that. This is an epoch of equality and high-toned ideals. [To the LITTLE MAN] What is your ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... winter by the sturdy hands of slaves, and new fields were opened to cotton culture each spring to supply the places of those that had been rapidly worn down by unscientific methods of agriculture. The cabins which made the homes of well-to-do men in the Jeffersonian epoch gave way to substantial frame houses with massive columns and wide verandas, with great hallways and broad banquet-rooms, which so much delighted the heart of the planter of Calhoun's day. In a warm climate like that of the cotton ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd

... began in the year 3102 B.C., shortly after the great war described in the Mahabharata. The date 3102, I need hardly remark, is of no historical value, being based merely upon the theories of comparatively late astronomers; but the statement as a whole is important. The Great War marks an epoch. It came at the end of what may be called the pre-historic period, and was followed by a new age. To be strictly correct, we must say that the age which followed the Great War was not new in the sense that it introduced any startling novelties that had been unknown ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett

... coffee are those of modern thought; they mark the serious moments of the brilliant epoch of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... the wisdom of the Brahmins, but not satisfied with that, after years of solitary retirement and quiet meditation, penetrated with the principles of the Sankya, he traversed the land as pilgrim (Sakya-muni, Sramana, Gautama) and opened to the people of India a new religious epoch. The tendency of the new doctrine was to break up the system of caste, and free the people from the galling yoke of the Brahminical hierarchy and dogmas. While in Brahminism man was deprived of his individuality, and regarded only as an effluence from Brahma, and tormented ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten

... trees filled up the horizon, there seemed to come an echo of flourishes blown by ivory trumpets, and mythological ballets, gathering together under the foliage princesses and nobles disguised as nymphs or fauns—an epoch of ingenuous science, of violent passions, and sumptuous art, when the ideal was to sweep away the world in a vision of the Hesperides, and when the mistresses of kings mingled their glory with the stars. There was a portrait of one of the most beautiful of these celebrated women ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert

... From the epoch when the Ottomans made durable conquests in the Greek empire, Asia each spring threw new hordes into Europe, until the time when the successors of Orkhan had extended their domination from the shores of the Sea of Marmora ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... that I did I not take the time of Hadrian for the background of a tale till after I had dealt with the still later period of the early monastic move in "Homo Sum." Since finishing that romance my old wish to depict, in the form of a story, the most important epoch of the history of that venerable nation to which I have devoted nearly a quarter century of my life, has found its fulfilment. I have endeavored to give a picture of the splendor of the Pharaonic times in "Uarda," of the subjection of Egypt to the new Empire of the Persians in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... the inside details of their schemes you find that discretion is not only the better part but the whole of their valour. For arms you find incendiary speeches; for ammunition, viperish propaganda, and for epoch-making action you have nothing. In that "nothing" lies their main ingenuity and strong hope. If they can prevail on the masses to do nothing, at the right moment, and to go on doing nothing till there is nothing left, then, say they, they will have civilisation ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various

... justified Johanna; posterity has restored to her the fame and honour of which a malicious fate had for a season deprived her. The poet was obliged to change his catastrophe, in order to introduce, in his own epoch, that finger of justice which, in reality, revealed itself ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... landscape until it becomes one of the prettiest, quietest scenes that heart could wish. I know nothing so drowsily comfortable as the pictures in this gallery that show the battles of the seventeenth century,—the Grand Monarch's own particular epoch. This is a wide, rolling landscape with here and there little clusters of soldiers to add a touch of colour to the foliage of the woods; there are woolly little puffs of smoke rising in places to show that the artillery is ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock

... temple of Solomon, which is also treated as a leading epoch in chronology, a new period in the history of worship is accordingly dated,—and to a certain extent with justice. The monarchy in Israel owed its origin to the need which, under severe external pressure, had come to be felt for bringing together into the oneness of a people and a kingdom ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... Christian Church was a period of astonishing literary productivity, commensurate in extent and worth with the importance of Christianity. It was a creative epoch in history. The life and teachings of Jesus stirred the minds and thrilled the souls of men. The higher spheres brooded low upon our world. Spiritual influences of unparalleled magnitude were working in society. The "Spirit of God moved upon ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton

... To this epoch of ardent abstractions and impassioned logomachies belongs the philosophical reign of Julian, an illuminatus and Initiate of the first order, who believed in the unity of God and the universal Dogma of the Trinity, and regretted the loss of nothing of the old world but its magnificent ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... of this proclivity, and, as war is equally the enemy of man, here again woman gives to man as much as she receives. Whatever force the argument based on the right of soldiers to rule may once have had is rapidly passing away. The era of the destroyer is dying, the epoch of the Creator is ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... Lincoln's views on the subject are defined in a notable letter to his friend Joshua Speed, a resident of Kentucky. The following passages show, in Lincoln's own words, where he stood on the slavery question at this memorable epoch: ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... greater, perhaps, never was or will be decided among men. A resolution was passed without one dissenting Colony, 'That the United States are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.' The day is passed. The fourth day of July, 1776, will be a memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as a great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to Almighty ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... restrained me: for his sake and for my own I held myself in courageously. Though, indeed, it needed some courage and self-control. I withdrew my hand slowly. 'Do you remember,' I said, 'you asked me that first day at Schlangenbad'—it was an epoch to me now, that first day—'whether I was mediaeval or modern? And I answered, "Modern, I hope." And you said, "That's well!"— You see, I don't forget the least things you say to me. Well, because I am modern—'my lips trembled and belied me—'I can answer you No. I can even now refuse ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... had our period of probation to go through together, and she told me that all the other chelas here were going through the necessary training preparatory to wedlock like myself, and that there would be a general marrying all round, when the long-expected culminating epoch should arrive. ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant

... down, and is now building another one appropriate to the new destination of the acquired estates. As for the trussing of the cupola, that is considered as a work of art, and care has been taken not to touch it. It was constructed at the beginning of this century, at an epoch when nothing but rudimentary tools were to be had for working iron, and it was, so to speak, forged. All the pieces were made with the hammer and were added one to the other in succession. This cupola will be glazed at ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various

... longitudinal columns of the cornea. I must also mention Dr. Dean's exquisite microscopic photographs from sections of the medulla oblongata, which appear to me to promise a new development, if not a new epoch, in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... shire, and, what is more remarkable, of deputies from the boroughs, an order of men which, in former ages, had always been regarded as too mean to enjoy a place in the national councils.[**] This period is commonly esteemed the epoch of the house of commons in England; and it is certainly the first time that historians speak of any representatives sent to parliament by the boroughs and even in the most particular narratives delivered of parliamentary transactions, as in the trial of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... father, who was of an economical turn of mind, always bought his own cloth, and had his servants make the clothing for the family. He usually bought good but old-fashioned materials, and trimmings from some forgotten epoch in the world's history. These trimmings, of the Paleozoic period or some still remoter date, together with the unprofessional and antiquated cut of the garments, made up such a grotesque appearance that Goethe was received with undisguised mirth wherever he went in Leipsic, ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... in such an epoch, have understood the wickedness of the struggle for life, the filth of sexual relations, the horror of lyings-in, those are they who save the honour of the ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... of being thus dealt with. The speed of his craft enabled him to keep his distance and to distract the aim of his foes, and he proposed to make the best use of this advantage. Thus equipped, the two fleets came together in the month of September, and an epoch-making battle in the history of the ancient ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall

... tormenting. Why should not he then, this youth of twenty-one, ready for any deed and every pleasure, earnestly longing for success, enter upon the same course? Beethoven appeared to him as the keystone of a great epoch to be followed by something new and different. The fruit of this restless seething struggle was "Das Liebesverbot oder die Novize von Palermo," his first ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl

... have to say in my pamphlet bearing on this head is that it is the destiny of the historical epoch beginning with February, 1848, to install the ethical principle of the working classes as the dominant principle of society, to make it the guiding principle of the State; the nature of this principle is expounded in my pamphlet, and I have already restated it in outline in the introductory ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... he gave to the world the two first volumes of his "Border Minstrelsy," printed by his old schoolfellow, Ballantyne; its literary merits were enhanced by the beauty of its typographical execution, and its appearance made an epoch in Scottish literary history. The ballads of this collection had been very carefully edited, while the notes contained a mass of antiquarian information relative to border life, conveyed in a beautiful style, and enlivened with a higher interest than poetic fiction. This ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... that the reason why in novels the story ends with a marriage is partly that the excitement of the tale ceases then, and partly also because of a theory that marriage is an epoch, determining the career of life after it. The epoch once announced, nothing more need be explained; everything else follows as a matter of course. These notes of mine are autobiographical, and not a romance. I have never known much about ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford

... they not see the flame increase as if it had been nourished by the provisions offered? Thus the meal was divided between the man and the god. It was a sacred ceremony, by which they held communion with each other.... The religion of the sacred fire dates from the distant and dim epoch when there were yet no Greeks, no Italians, no Hindus, when there were only Aryas. When the tribes separated they carried this worship with them, some to the banks of the Ganges, others to the shores of the Mediterranean.... Each ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller

... persons who deceived themselves into thinking that the pains of rheumatism, neuralgia, or some similar malady were caused by the malevolent influence of a neighbor against whom they had perhaps long harbored a grudge. They were the true witches and goblins of that epoch, and the only ones, if any, who ought to have ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... left the genealogy of Monte Beni, tradition took it up, and carried it without dread or shame beyond the Imperial ages into the times of the Roman republic; beyond those, again, into the epoch of kingly rule. Nor even so remotely among the mossy centuries did it pause, but strayed onward into that gray antiquity of which there is no token left, save its cavernous tombs, and a few bronzes, and some quaintly ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... embellished with original fancies, and eloquent with an earnest meaning. The various scenes and characters are obviously studies from life—the life of restlessness, of fear, of devotion, among the friends of martyrs, described by the chroniclers of that epoch, stained with the blood of fanatical wars and persecutions. Colette, as delicately and distinctly limned in the successive chapters, might have formed a figure in the fifteenth-century group, drawn by a home-inspired artist. Then, ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous

... 1818, then, in a serious and solemn mood, and I have decided that the Christmas feast which has just gone by will be the last Christmas feast that I shall celebrate. If anything is to come of our efforts, if the cause of humanity is to assume the upper hand in our country, if in this faithless epoch any noble feelings can spring up afresh and make way, it can only happen if the wretch, the traitor, the seducer of youth, the infamous Kotzebue, falls! I am fully convinced of this, and until I have accomplished the work upon which I have resolved, I shall have no rest. Lord, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - KARL-LUDWIG SAND—1819 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... ocean that the naturalist need never be idle, no, not even for one of the twenty-four hours of daylight during a whole Antarctic summer, and I look to the results of a comparison of the oceanic life of the Arctic and Antarctic regions as the heralding of an epoch in the history ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... increased of late, by an accidental bias in favor of what he supposed to be natural science. Somebody had accosted him in the street, mistaking him for a no less personage than Doctor Dubble L. Dee, the lecturer upon quack physics. This set him off at a tangent; and just at the epoch of this story, my granduncle, Rumgudgeon, was accessible and pacific only upon the points which happened to chime in with the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... did not look back any longer. It marks an epoch in a man's life when he first catches sight of a prairie landscape, especially if that landscape be one of those great rolling ones to be seen nowhere so well as in Minnesota. Charlton had crossed Illinois ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston

... in the facades of giant hotels. The Saturday and Monday pops were still an institution; and the bell of the muffin-man, in such a wintry season, passed frequently along the foggy streets and squares. Already the epoch seems remote. ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... period excessive profits and losses ceased on the part of the American banks. The change of directory of the National Bank, called forth by the unfortunate experience of 1818, was the beginning of a very fortunate epoch. As was always the case, business affairs resumed their usual course when liquidation ceased. Among the various causes assigned for the panic, the increase of import duties had to be pointed out, and the decrease of the Public Debt ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar

... husband. The movements of the sun and moon, and some of their phases, had a mythical bearing on various social acts, or on the date of their assemblies, since the sun was the object of great veneration; and the full moon, the epoch of assemblies, was celebrated with feasting and dancing. Dances of many different kinds were connected with traditional myths, astrological superstitions, and the phallic worship. Some remains of circular buildings and concentric compartments, ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli

... remark he testified to a keen recollection of his Viennese experiences and the double dealing (no pun intended) of the Austrian shopkeeper just at the present epoch in the national finance ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner

... territory, and declared it independent and inviolate against aggression or conquest. Should any such be attempted, the allies present were to help according to their power. Your fathers rewarded us thus for the courage and patriotism that we displayed at that perilous epoch; but you do just the contrary, coming with our bitterest enemies, the Thebans, to enslave us. We appeal, therefore, to the gods to whom the oaths were then made, to the gods of your ancestors, and lastly to those of our country, and call upon you to ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides

... suffices for our needs. Our people are one of the most prolific in the world and certainly not the least intelligent. We have behind us a continuity of national existence lacking in other nations in this quarter of the globe. In our modern epoch we have assimilated French culture with indisputable success, and have given in every field proof of a great faculty of adaptability and progress. We can become the most important second-class power in Europe the day after the war stops; ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl



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