Literary notes about epoch (AI summary)
Writers employ "epoch" to evoke both the weight of historical change and the subtle shifts in personal or cultural narrative. Some voices use it to critique the intellectual or moral state of their times, suggesting that a society may squander its finest qualities ([1], [2]), while others mark pivotal chapters within a story—dividing a life’s progress or a narrative’s unfolding into distinct, memorable periods ([3], [4], [5]). The term also finds a home in scientific and historical texts, where it delineates critical phases such as geological eras or momentous events that shape collective memory ([6], [7], [8]). Even when used metaphorically to herald revolutionary ideas or dramatic transformations, "epoch" carries with it a resonance that underscores change as both inevitable and profound ([9], [10]).
- Our epoch, however much it may babble about economy, is a spendthrift: it wastes intellect, the most precious thing of all.
— from The Dawn of Day by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - For that is the test of their power—they must first of all rise out of the illness of their epoch to reach their own health.
— from The Genealogy of Morals by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - The Woman in White The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins CONTENTS First Epoch THE STORY BEGUN BY WALTER HARTRIGHT
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins - THE THIRD EPOCH THE STORY CONTINUED BY WALTER HARTRIGHT.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins - Second Epoch THE STORY CONTINUED BY MARIAN HALCOMBE.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins - EOCENE.—The earliest of the three divisions of the Tertiary epoch of geologists.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin - It was at this epoch that the rocks called feldspars, syenites, and porphyries appeared.
— from A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne - "It was the most brilliant epoch of Masonry," wrote the Freemason Bazot in his History of Freemasonry.
— from Secret societies and subversive movements by Nesta Helen Webster - That sounds simple enough now, but it marked an epoch in the history of literature.
— from English Literature by William J. Long - Professor Freud’s monumental work, The Interpretation of Dreams [5] , marked a new epoch in the history of mental science.
— from Totem and Taboo by Sigmund Freud
