What is period?

Famous quotes containing the word period:

“His singing carried me back to the period of the discovery of America ... when Europeans first encountered the simple faith of the Indian. There was, indeed, a beautiful simplicity about it; nothing of the dark and savage, only the mild and infantile. The sentiments of humility and reverence chiefly were expressed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

“There is always a period when a man with a beard shaves it off. This period does not last. He returns headlong to his beard.”
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)

“There’s always a period of curious fear between the first sweet-smelling breeze and the time when the rain comes cracking down.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)