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Age of Reason   /eɪdʒ əv rˈizən/   Listen
Age of Reason

noun
1.
A movement in Europe from about 1650 until 1800 that advocated the use of reason and individualism instead of tradition and established doctrine.  Synonym: Enlightenment.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Age of Reason" Quotes from Famous Books



... outgrown an opinion while I was going through the same process. At twenty-three I confessed that all freshmen were insufferable, and immediately afterward took my degree and went out into the world to convince it that seniors are by no means adolescent. Having successfully passed the age of reason, I too felt myself admirably qualified to look with scorn upon all creatures employed in the business of getting an education. There were times when I wondered how on earth I could have stooped so low as to be a freshman. I still ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... so too can we sanctify spiritual pain by the memory of this darkness. If He Who never left the Father's side can suffer this in an unique and supreme sense, how much more should we be content to suffer it in lower degrees, who have so continually, since we came to the age of reason, been leaving not His side only, but His ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson

... Equality, Fraternity, had no conception of that liberty and equality which were as ancient as the hills. Leaders and followers of the Revolution were clamoring for new privileges, new rights, new morals, new creeds. They acclaimed an "Age of Reason" as a modern and marvelous discovery; they dreamed not simply of a new society, but of a new man. A multitude of clubs or parties, some political, some literary or educational, some with a pretense of philosophy, sprang up as if by magic, all believing that they must soon enter ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... tenth to the twelfth centuries presented a dreary contrast, in almost every particular, to the brilliant life of southern Spain. Just emerging from barbarism, it was still in an age of general disorder and of the simplest religious faith. [6] The age of reason and of scientific experiment as a means of arriving at truth had not yet dawned, and would not do so for centuries to come. Monks and clerics, representing the one learned class, regarded this Moslem science as "black ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... with the mind of Christ?' but, 'What is this Scripture to which all appeal?' 'Who is this Christ whom all own as Master?' This is really what is meant, so far as religion is concerned, when it is said that the eighteenth century was the age of reason—alike in the good and in the bad sense of that term. The defenders of Christianity, no less than its assailants, had to prove, above all things, the reasonableness of their position. The discussion was inevitable, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... Napoleon; "but I mean it for a memorial in expiation of the murder of Louis XVI." He said to Metternich: "When I was young I favored the Revolution out of ignorance and ambition. When I came to the age of reason I followed its counsels and my own instinct, and crushed the Revolution." At another time he said: "The French throne was empty. Louis XVI. had not been able to hold it. If I had been in his place, in spite of ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... of the soul had their origin in these poetical musings. His study was the kitchen, where his wife's bellows served him for a desk; and he wrote amidst the cries and cradlings of his children. Paine's 'Age of Reason' having appeared about this time and excited much interest, he composed a pamphlet in refutation of its arguments, which was published. He used afterwards to say that it was the 'Age of Reason' that ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... Revelling in the realization of at least a partial emancipation from the tyranny of priestcraft, men and nations debauched their newly acquired liberty of thought, speech, and action, in a riot of abhorrent excess. The mis-called Age of Reason, and the atheistical abominations culminating in the French Revolution stand as ineffaceable testimony of what man may become when glorying ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... of a tavern bearing the sign of the Virginia arms, a group of students of William and Mary, the new aristocrats of the West, were singing, gambling, drinking; while at intervals one of them, who had lying open before him a copy of Tom Paine's "Age of Reason," pounded on the table and apostrophied the liberties of Man. Once Gray paused beside a tall pole that had been planted at a street corner and surmounted with a liberty cap. Two young men, each wearing the tricolour cockade as he did, were standing, there engaged in secret ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen

... human fate; Keats and Shelley turned from the forlornness of human society as it was to the transfigured humanity of myth. All three were out of sympathy with civilisation; and their revolt went much deeper than a distaste for the types of men it bred. They attacked a triumphant age of reason in its central fastness, the brilliant analytic intelligence to which its triumphs were apparently due. Keats declaimed at cold philosophy which undid the rainbow's spells; Shelley repelled the claim of mere understanding ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... itself to reason," I reply, "But how much more necessary is it to watch for the rise of some military adventurer who may destroy the Republic: and, to my mind, that young Major Bonaparte has rather a restless air." It is only in such language from the Age of Reason that we can answer such things. The age we live in is something more than an age of superstition—it is an age of innumerable superstitions. But it is only with one example of this that ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton

... to the good sense or humanity of all this. I yield the point that this is a proof that the age of reason is in progress. Let it be philanthropy, let it be patriotism, if you will; but it is no indication that any treaty would be approved. The difficulty is not to overcome the objections to the terms; it is to restrain the repugnance to any stipulations ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... memorial, "as hope to convert the Indians in any other way [than that of civilizing them]; for thus far all the fruits of the missions consist in the baptism of infants who die before reaching the age of reason."[25] This was not literally true, though the results of the Jesuit missions in the west had been meagre and transient to a ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman

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

... shudder shook the frame of Angelo, but he said nothing and the conversation ceased. Each buttoned his own share of the nightshirt in silence; then Luigi, with Paine's Age of Reason in his hand, sat down in one chair and put his feet in another and lit his pipe, while Angelo took his Whole Duty of Man, and both began to read. Angelo presently began to cough; his coughing increased and became mixed with gaspings for ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain



Words linked to "Age of Reason" :   age, enlightenment, historic period, reform movement



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