"Retrograde" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as the several objects to which they are to be applied, which arises from, and characterises, the superficial life of the insect creation. This grade of ascension, however, like the former, is accompanied by an apparent retrograde movement. For from this very accession of vital intensity we must account for the absence in the fishes of all the formative, or rather (if our language will permit it) fabricative instincts. How could it be otherwise? These instincts ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of Great Britain and that of Ireland during the last century—in the one case showing progress and prosperity, advancing, it is not too much to say, by leaps and bounds, and in the other a stagnation which was relatively, if not absolutely, retrograde—is one of the most dismal factors in English politics. Those who would explain it by natural, racial, or religious considerations are probing too deep for an explanation which is in reality much closer at hand. If the external forces in the two countries ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... a great dislike to reconsider any decision, even when it was acknowledged to be unjust. In little as well as in great things he evinced his repugnance to retrograde. An instance of this occurred in the affair of General Latour-Foissac. The First Consul felt how much he had wronged that general; but he wished some time to elapse before he repaired his error. His heart and his conduct were at variance; but his feelings were overcome by what he ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... heretofore altogether unused, have been heard in various quarters, touching the superior advantages of 'strong government,' the speakers, mostly of the higher or wealthier order of life, meaning thereby, the old and retrograde forms of monarchy, or something of that sort. Periods of disaster tend to reveal a latent lack of confidence in the permanency of existing things. Investigations in Sociology impeach the wisdom of our institutions, in common with that of all others that have been tried in the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... they are known throughout the country as the cerillos of Tenon, but nobody suspects their glacial origin; even the geologists of Santiago assign a volcanic origin to them. What is difficult to describe in this history are the successive retrograde steps of the great southern ice-field that, step by step, left larger or smaller tracts of the valley to the north of it free of ice, so that large glacial lakes could be formed, and seem, indeed, always to ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
|
