"Retrospection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... same reason, I have confined my statements of theory as to method, to those which reflect my own experience; my "rules" were drawn from introspection and retrospection, at the urging of others, long after the instinctive method they exemplify ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... world is only momentary. One is never wholly satisfied; there is always some hidden barb. The child wears the mother's skirts enviously while the mother mourns her youth. Expectation leads us to the dividing line of life, and from there retrospection carries us to the end. Experience teaches us that fire burns and that water quenches; beyond this ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... Cecil—pretending to deduce from their silence that the Boers imagined it to be Sunday—was most profuse in the distribution of "compliments." But no acknowledgment came back, no error was admitted, and the day dragged itself to an end, leaving little in its train to turn one's thoughts from gloomy retrospection. ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... retire into the near past, and stay there, if it were possible? (What a weakness!) Retrospection was once a way of escape for those who had not the vitality to face their own fine day with its exacting demands. Yet who now can look squarely at the present, except officials, armament shareholders, and those in perambulators? This side-turning offered me a chance to dodge the calendar ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... in the thought of this quiet ordinary little man telling us in a quiet matter-of-fact tone that love had nearly killed him. We had no comment worthy of the fact. He looked across the valley for a moment as though lost in retrospection. ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... of leaping as straight as I did with Anna to what we thought the inevitable. I based no calculation on all Mrs. Harbottle had gone back to, just as I had based no calculation on her ten years' companionship in arms when I kept her from the three o'clock train. This last was a retrospection in which Anna naturally could not join me; she never knew, poor dear, how fortunate as to its moment was the campaign she deplored, and nothing to this day can have disturbed her conviction that the bond she was ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... am fond of indulging, beyond a hope of sympathy, in such retrospection, may be the symptom of some sickly idiosyncrasy. Or is it owing to another cause; simply, that being without wife or family, I have not learned to project myself enough out of myself; and having no ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... sorrow; and which, instead of conceding to young people to be wild and thoughtless, as a privilege belonging to their age and circumstances, prompts him to warn them against what had proved to himself matter of such bitter retrospection! Thus, throughout the whole of life, some means or other are devised for stifling the voice of conscience. "We cry peace while there is no peace;" and both to ourselves and others that complacency is furnished, which ought only to proceed from a consciousness of being reconciled to God, and a ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... Miss Seward Mrs. Piozzi's Theory of Style Attacked by Walpole and Gifford The Preface Extracts Anecdote of Goldsmith Publication of her "Synonyms"—Gifford's Attack Extract Remarks on the Appearance of Boswell's Life of Johnson "Retrospection" Moore's Anecdotes of her and Piozzi Lord Lansdowne's Visit and Impressions Adoption and Education of Piozzi's Nephew, afterwards Sir John Salusbury Life in Wales Character and Habits of Piozzi Brynbella Illness and Death of Piozzi ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... (anybody but myself might perhaps give some of them a worse appellation), that by way of some balance, however trifling, in the account, I am fain to do any good that occurs in my very limited power to a fellow-creature, just for the selfish purpose of clearing a little the vista of retrospection. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... time; remote past; rust of antiquity. [study of the past] paleontology, paleography, paleology^; paleozoology; palaetiology^, archaeology; paleogeography; paleoecology; paleobotany; paleoclimatoogy; archaism, antiquarianism, medievalism, Pre-Raphaelitism; paleography. retrospect, retrospection, looking back, memory &c 505. laudator temporis acti [Lat.]; medievalist, Pre-Raphaelite; antiquary, antiquarian; archmologist &c; Oldbuck, Dryasdust. ancestry &c (paternity) 166. V. be past &c adj.; have expired &c adj., ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... to humanity, is in itself an infinite marvel, which vindicates, as a beautiful wonder, the statuary's art from the more Protean rivalry of pictorial skill. If we call to mind even a few of the sculptured creations which are "a joy forever," even to retrospection,—haunting by their pure individuality the temple of memory, permanently enshrined in heartfelt admiration as illustrations of what is noble in man and woman, significant in history, powerful in expression, or irresistible ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... to the literature of the stage. All these great names are written in the book of death. All that part of old Boston to which I have referred—the scene equally of Gilbert's birth and youth and first successes and of his tender retrospection—has been swept away or entirely changed. Gone is the old Federal Street Theatre. Gone that quaint English alley with the cosey tobacconist's shop which he used to frequent. Gone the hospitable Stackpole where many a time at the "latter end of a sea-coal fire" he heard the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... artistic and intellectual effort when disconnected from the ultimate test of the conduct it inspired. The serene and soothing touch of history also aroused old enthusiasms, although some of their manifestations were such as one smiles over more easily in retrospection than at the moment. I fancy that it was no smiling matter to several people in our party, whom I induced to walk for three miles in the hot sunshine beating down upon the Roman Campagna, that we might enter ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... however, be borne in mind that this thrilling dramatic effect is fully experienced only in retrospection, or when there is knowledge ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... your babes coming at the still hour of midnight to drain from their veins the very life blood she gave to them. To drive you and them mad with the expected horror of such visitations—to make your nights hideous—your days but so many hours of melancholy retrospection. Oh, you know not the world of terror, on the awful brink of which you stand, when you talk of making Flora Bannerworth ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... decreed, has been as deaf to my pleadings, and my heart-breaking cries, as the golden calf was to the indignant denunciations of Moses. I was hurried prematurely into society, thrown into a maelstrom of gaiety that whirled me as though I were a dancing dervish, and left me apparently no leisure for retrospection or regret, or for the indulgence of the rosy dream that lay like a lovely morning cloud above and behind me. My clothing was costly and tasteful; I was exhibited at Saratoga, Long Branch, and Newport, those popular human expositions, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... dearest pleasure when free. I lived principally in the country as a girl, and passed a considerable time in Scotland. I made occasional visits to the more picturesque parts; but my habitual residence was on the blank and dreary northern shores of the Tay, near Dundee. Blank and dreary on retrospection I call them: they were not so to me then. They were the eyry of freedom, and the pleasant region where unheeded I could commune with the creatures of my fancy. I wrote then—but in a most common-place style. It ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... protection to one who will feel for the indignity that has been shown her. How will his generous nature shudder, when he hears that she is on the point of being dragged to a loathsome dungeon, for want of the paltry sum of fifty pounds! Retrospection may convince the man of her heart, that her soul is superior to mercenary considerations; else, she would not now be reduced so low in the power of her enemies: she scarcely knows what she writes—her heart bleeds—her ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... to forget. When such persons are brought to that proper state of mind, to return good for evil, without either boasting of their lenity, or enumerating their wrongs, the best way of inducing an oblivion of the past, is to avoid such intercourse as may revive painful retrospection. It is impossible for those who have minds capable of appreciating the delicacies of friendship, to re-unite the bonds of esteem and confidence, when they have been violently rent asunder by cunning or treachery. Beside, Barton admitted that he saw ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... was lying I could look straight into Little Lottie's heart, now a steady, glowing mass of coals. Little Lottie invited me to retrospection. How different it all was in reality from what I had imagined it would be! In the story-books it is always so alluring—this coming to a great city to seek one's fortune. A year ago I had been teaching in a little school-house ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... world I bid farewell, My mind to retrospection give, Remote as hermit in his cell, For wisdom and wise friends I'll live." "Is Thursday's worldling, Friday's sage? Too good such news," I bantering spoke. "How oft you've vowed to turn the page, Each ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the most cruel—the mind feeding on itself with the rapacity of a cormorant, when the conscience quickens its activity and feeds its longings. Happily for Adrienne, she had too many positive cares, to be enabled to waste many minutes either in retrospection, or in endeavors to conjecture the future. Far—far more happily for herself, her conscience was clear, for never had a purer mind, or a gentler spirit dwelt in female breast. Still she could blame her own oversight, and it was days before her self-upbraidings, ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... strivings, the accomplishments, the pretensions and the failures of the new town blended in the product of human progress. Each man fell into his place in the community as though appointed thereto, and the eyes of all were set forward. There was no retrospection, there were no imaginings, no fears, no disbeliefs. The people were as ants, busy building their hill, underletting it with galleries, furnishing it with chambers, storing it with riches, providing it with defences; yet no ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... the adjourned meeting in the one held at Chicago, because I saw no advantage, but great disadvantage, in one student's opinions or modus oper- [15] andi becoming the basis for others: read "Retrospection" on this subject. Science is absolute, and best under- stood through the study of my works and the daily Chris- tian demonstration thereof. It is their materiality that clogs the progress of students, ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... however, yet a great deal to overcome, before I can yet attain even an old man's health. Write, do write to me now and then; we are now old acquaintance, and perhaps few people have lived so much and so long together, with less cause of complaint on either side. The retrospection of this is very pleasant, and I hope we shall never think on each other ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... neighbor's, and as I was less afraid of Aunt Jerusha than of any other being of her sex, and as there was not another frock, sun-bonnet, or apron within the radius of a mile, I promised myself a month of that negative bliss which comes from retrospection, solitude, and the pleasure of following the men about the harvest-field. Sitting quietly under some shadowing tree, with my line cast into the still pool of a little babbling trout-brook, where it was held in some hollow of nature's hand, I had leisure to forget the past and to make good ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... with which, after many attempts, we at length made a fire. It was not sufficient however to warm the whole party, much less to thaw our shoes, and the weather not permitting the gathering of tripe de roche we had nothing to cook. The painful retrospection of the melancholy events of the day banished sleep, and we shuddered as we contemplated the dreadful effects of this bitterly cold night on our two companions, if still living. Some faint hopes were entertained of Credit's surviving the storm as he was provided with ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... may divide them into two groups, of three each. The first to include (1) Progressive retrospection, viz., a gradually acquired power to look backward in time towards the origin of things; (2) Progressive foresight, or power of prophecy; (3) Gradual extinction of desires ...
— The Buddhist Catechism • Henry S. Olcott
... been painful to me, in many ways, to recall the dreary years I passed in bondage. I would gladly forget them if I could. Yet the retrospection is not altogether without solace; for with those gloomy recollections come tender memories of my good old grandmother, like light, fleecy clouds floating over ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... was no time to think, the remainder of that evening, she was so tired she had to sleep, while her mother did not awaken her until she barely had time to dress, breakfast and reach school. There was nothing in the new life to remind her of the old. It seemed as if there never came a minute for retrospection, but her mother appeared on the scene with more work, or some entertaining ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... a pathos—a kind of tender retrospection in Anne Valery's manner as she touched the brown curls and smoothed the neat dress, which—riding hat and skirt having been laid aside or tucked up—made a pretty mountain-maiden out of Nathanael's wife. Agatha never could understand the peculiar fondness with which Miss ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... three and a half years it is a case of Things sticking out, like hillocks in a flat country, and it is retrospection rather than impressions at the time that show what mattered and what did not. But, on the whole, the vital things at Dawson's are pretty plain to the eye and must be squeezed into a ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... pretense of chasing away a marauding hen, she sallied out upon the waste near the wagon. It then became evident that the traveler had seen her, and was not averse to her interest in his movements, although he had not changed his attitude of savage retrospection. An occasional ejaculation of suppressed passion, as if the memory of some past conflict was too much for him, escaped him even in this peaceful occupation. As this possibly caused the young girl to still hover ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... earth, quite ample to explain the facts of the case and solve the problem of our destiny. The grasp of our intelligence and the richness of our sensibility increase along the ages. The generalizations of our philosophy grow wider, the gropings of our sympathetic faith become vaster, the retrospection and the prevision of our science keener and longer and more inclusive, every generation. It is very significant that the further away we get from the prehistoric times the more we learn about them. Archaology is one of the latest and most ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... to make a dash for the outside world, fighting his way through if necessary. Looking back over the ground, he wondered how he could have been deceived at all by the unconventional American. In the clear light of retrospection he now saw how impossible it was for her to have been the princess. Every act, every word, every look should have told him the truth. Every flaw in her masquerading now presented itself to him and he was compelled to laugh at his own simplicity. Caution, after all, was the largest component part ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them, and carried them all the days of old." Here is retrospection on the part of the prophet. He thinks of all the oppressions of Israel, and recalls how God's interests have been bound up with theirs. He was not their adversary; He was their sympathetic, loving friend. He suffered with them. ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... accuse me of having shown too much fondness—of having dwelt with a too loving tenderness in my retrospection of the middle ages. But in the course of my studies I have found much to admire. In parchment annals coeval with the times of which they speak, my eyes have traversed over many consecutive pages with increasing ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... him her full attention. She had a feeling that she had seen the man somewhere before, but where and under what circumstances she could not recall. It was no moment for retrospection ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... in mental retrospection, witness the unheard-of massacre that ensued! Behold the ruffians that invade the sacred abode, each bearing in his hand some exterminating weapon; in his eye, a more than fiend-like ferocity. Can it be you they seek, ye men ...
— Brief Reflections relative to the Emigrant French Clergy (1793) • Frances Burney
... in dreary retrospection how he had survived that first troublous year after his daughter's elopement, when he was so lonely, so heavy-hearted at home, so harried and angered abroad. His comforts, it is true, were amply insured: a widowed sister had come to ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... documents, which, if fully gone into and spread out at length, would have swelled the dimensions of the work, as well as broken the thread of the narrative. It must be borne in mind, that a reader can only be held to the line of a subject, by an occasional retrospection and reiteration of what must be constantly kept in view. The traveler needs, at certain points and suitable stages, to turn and survey the ground over which he has passed. A condensation that would strike out such recapitulations and repetitions, might impair the ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... monopolise all the respectable offices of the government, all the functions of emolument, dignity, and power, themselves." "How can they expect pardon of God, if they withhold oblivion from their repentant fellow creatures." "Retrospection should not be pushed beyond the period of arrival, but then subsequent good behaviour should be subject to the severest tests. The re-convicted offender, branded with the lasting impressions of infamy, should be ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... past, and awake a million ages before our own epoch, in the midst of the earliest geologic times,—there is no reason to believe that sea, or sky, or the aspect of the land would warn us of the marvellous retrospection. ...
— Time and Life • Thomas H. Huxley
... my friends imagine me to be the same man whom they knew as Gilbert Pollingray a month back? I see the change, I feel the change; but I have no retrospection, no remorse, no looking forward, no feeling: none for others, very little, for myself. I am told that I am losing fluency as a dinner-table talker. There is now more savour to me in a silvery laugh than in a spiced ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that I myself headed the flight. I remember well that I dashed up the Strand, and dashed down a singular little shed, from which emanated the steam of tea, and a sharp, querulous scream of "All hot—all hot! a penny a pint." I see, now, by the dim light of retrospection, a vision of an old woman in the kennel, and a pewter pot of mysterious ingredients precipitated into a greengrocer's shop, "te virides inter lauros," as Vincent would have said. On we went, faster and faster, as the rattle rung in our ears, and the tramp ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... companionship, not closer than his, but of a different fiber. She had found herself, of late, vaguely hungering for some influence less autumnal, less vesper-like, to hold and wall her back from those grayer hours of retrospection which crept into her life. Yet this was a secret she had kept always locked in her own holy of holies. For even in the face of that indeterminate feeling, it still stabbed her like a knife to think of any thought or life coming between her ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... was rather eager than lasting. He was roused from the reverie of retrospection and regret produced by it, by some inquiry from Edmund as to his plans for the next day's hunting; and he found it was as well to be a man of fortune at once with horses and grooms at his command. In one respect it was better, as ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... was, I cannot inform the reader, nor is it, perhaps, of much consequence. My father was a man who invariably looked forward, and hated anything like retrospection: he never mentioned either his father or his mother; perhaps he was not personally acquainted with them. All I could collect from him at intervals was, that he served in a collier from South Shields, and that a few months after his apprenticeship was out, he found himself ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... peaceful, with the yellow autumnal sun shining upon its moss-grown roof, with no sound to break the deep silence, save the low, continuous warbling of a solitary mockingbird which, perched upon an overhanging bough, seemed to review its past joys in low, sweet notes of retrospection. ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... silent to you concerning myself, it is because for me retrospection has little that attracts. While yet it was in my power to return to those parents whom I deserted in my boyhood, I thought not of repentance; and now that they must be but too surely lost to me, my yearning towards them is of no avail. Of my ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... villagers have tried to persuade them that they must be lonely, but they know better than that. Old men love a great deal of quiet and of gentle meandering retrospection; and David and Sandy have each of them forty years' history to tell the other. Then they are both very fond of young Sandy ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... gentleman, with an air of retrospection, "I don't recall nothin' of the sort in Wolfville. We're too much in a huddle, anyway; thar ain't room for no sech fracas, no how. Now the nearest we-alls comes to anythin' of the kind is when the new ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the consciousness of the one existed for the time in the mental circumstances of the other. Nay, so complete at times was the communication, that I even doubted her testimony as to some strange correspondence in our past history on this very ground, suspecting that, my memory being open to her retrospection, she saw my story, and took it for her own. It was, therefore, easy for me to account for Dr. Ruthwell's scientific bewilderment ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... a haunting suggestiveness to me about the expression Rue du Temps Perdu—the Street of Lost Time. Down this shadowy vista we all come to peer with tear-dimmed eyes sooner or later. Usually this pensive retrospection is the premonitory sign that one is nearing the last milestone before the downhill side of life begins. But to some this yearning backward glance comes early; they feel its compelling power while still in the vigor of middle life. Why this is so it is not easy to say, but imaginative, brooding ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... the Shalem House dance last night?" asked Cornelian, by way of explaining his air of complacent retrospection. ...
— When William Came • Saki
... look back on it all with the eye of fond retrospection, and contrast it with the horrifying situation into which we, all unwittingly and all unsuspectingly, were so shortly to be plunged, our sojourn in England is to me as a ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... is beyond my reach." 'Tis often a true thing that when we sit within our dark and dismal chamber without comfort, hope or happy retrospection, there stands upon the threshold a joyous phenomenon of which we have never so much as dreamt as being in existence; and this had come to Constance. If the Duke loved her, what would it matter if Cedric did love Katherine? She could not compel him ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... never saw other tears from this King,—though in private I do not warrant him; his sensibilities, little as you would think it, being very lively and intense. "To work, however!" This King can shake away such things; and is not given overmuch to retrospection on the unalterable Past. "Like dewdrops from the lion's mane" (as is figuratively said); the lion swiftly rampant again! There was manifold swift ordering, considering and determining, at Nimburg, that day; and towards night Friedrich shot ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... turmoil of thoughts half indignant, half self-compassionate, came reproach and a great wave of tenderness filial. She saw, as with a sudden gift of retrospection, her mother's long battle with inadequacy, and how it had aged her; saw, too, that the battle had been fought unselfishly, since she knew her mother's declaration that she could contentedly "go back ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... was Theodore N. Vail. His energy and enterprise so impressed Hubbard that he immediately asked Vail to become General Manager of the company which he was then forming to exploit the telephone. Viewed from the retrospection of forty years this offer certainly looks like one of the greatest prizes in American business. What it signified at that time, however, is apparent from the fact that the office paid a salary of $3500 a year and that for the first ten years Vail did not succeed ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... the tear of sympathy, the glance of affection, the tone of love, or to listen again to the thrilling sounds of soul-enrapturing music, that has once delighted us. But so varied is our pathway of life, that a thorough retrospection must ever be fraught with sad as well as pleasing reflection. Is memory thus faithful to her trust? Then how necessary that we should improve each moment, as it glides along into the unbounded ocean of eternity, ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... see, Minister," said Mr. Slick, "where there is nothin' to be gained, and harm done, by this retrospection, as you call it, why I think lookin' a-head is far better ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... shall I say of this fourteen years' experience as a public advocate of the cause of my enslaved brothers and sisters? The time is but as a speck, yet large enough to justify a pause for retrospection—and a pause ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... without its pangs of sorrow, and there were moments of retrospection—as now. She saw herself on Uncle Tom's arm, walking up the aisle of the old church. How many Sundays of her life had she sat watching a shaft of sunlight strike across the stone pillars of its gothic arches! She saw, in the chancel, tall and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... or rather late in the next day, after his night's work, he was no longer able to tell himself that the world was all right with him. Who does not know that sudden thoughtfulness at waking, that first matutinal retrospection, and prospection, into things as they have been and are to be; and the lowness of heart, the blankness of hope which follows the first remembrance of some folly lately done, some word ill-spoken, some money misspent,—or perhaps a cigar too much, or a glass of ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... which Jem Agar went back in mental retrospection to the only interview he had ever had with Seymour Michael, and the old lurking sense of distrust awoke within ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... faded. The pathos of the Broken Heart and the Pride of the Village, the mild satire of the Art of Book-Making, the rather obvious reflections in Westminster Abbey are not exactly to the taste of this generation. They are the literature of leisure and retrospection; and already Irving's gentle elaboration, the refined and slightly artificial beauty of his style, and his persistently genial and sympathetic attitude have begun to pall upon readers who demand a more nervous and accentuated ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... our dreams. Others have lighted a candle in England, he lit a sun. Through him our daily suns, and also the backward and historic suns long since set, which he did not sing, are magnified; and he bestows upon us an exalted retrospection. Through him Napoleon's sun of Austerlitz rises, for us, with a more brilliant menace upon arms and the plain; through him Fielding's "most melancholy sun" lights the dying man to the setting-forth ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... historians filled their inkhorns; the poets went without their dinners, either that they might buy paper and goose-quills, or because they could not get anything to eat. Antiquity scowled sulkily out of its grave to see itself outdone; while even Posterity stood mute, gazing in gaping ecstasy of retrospection on the ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... strain, covered so much ground in the last twenty-four hours, that he wanted to think how it had all come about. Lulled by the sound of the wind, the warm air, and the cool fragrance of the flowers, he sank into deep, drowsy retrospection. ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... retrospection Milly would say: "However I didn't get into trouble as a girl, with no mother, and such an easy, unsuspecting father, I don't know. Think of it, my dear, out almost every night, dances, rides, picnics, theatres. Perhaps the men were better those ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... all the seeds away, Betty snuggled into one of the comfortable reed chairs and gave herself up to her own thoughts. Since leaving Washington, the novelty and excitement of the trip had thoroughly occupied her mind, and there had been little time for retrospection. ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... inclined to dwell upon or even to speak about; which they preserve jealously, as secrets in their own hearts, selfishly indisposed to acquaint others with them lest some of the magic of the actual moment, reinduced by retrospection, may be lost in the telling. But I could not recite the history of my experiences in St. Petersburg at that time without uncovering my innermost soul, as it was affected and influenced by Zara de Echeveria, whose charm of manner, ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... exertion, I had known the exalted destiny of creation in the effort to be useful. Like an exile turning to take a last glance at the blue outlines of his native land, I, too, have lingered to look back; yet the pleasant retrospection of three happy months is at an end; and I now dream of its delight as one who feels that, in the swift transition of existence, such peace of mind ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... at her family sorrow; she was not one at any time to dwell upon her feelings, nor to indulge in morbid retrospection, but it was true that the loss of that dearly loved son and brother had clouded the bright home atmosphere. Mrs. Lambert had borne her trouble meekly, and had striven to comfort her husband who had broken down under the sudden blow. She spoke little, even to ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... retrospection—for the loving thoughts that start Into being are like perfume from the blossom of the heart; And to dream the old dreams over is a luxury divine— When my truant fancy wanders with ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... the vain retrospection, The bond of affection no longer endures. Too late you may droop o'er the fond recollection, And sigh for the friend who was ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... All walking with hands laid heavily on their paunches, or where they used to be. Lovers had lost the light of interest from their eyes, wedded people the light of retrospection, statesmen the pride of intellect, princes and legates the pride of power. Wealth flashed in a thousand diamonds to contrast with the heavy eyes that had no vanity in them, and religion wore the asceticism of everlasting gloom instead of the hope of ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... 'Billy,' says I to myself, 'you must let up, you've made a record; it's a long one and an honorable one. Now you must retire. Your life henceforth shall be reminiscent and its declining years shall be hallowed by the refulgent rays of retrospection.' To that resolution I have adhered steadily. People tell me that I am as young as ever; but no, they can't ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... Song of Life Prayer In the Long Run As you go through Life Two Sunsets Unrest Artist's life Nothing but Stones Inevitable The Ocean of Song "It might have been" Momus, God of Laughter I Dream The Sonnet The Past A Dream Uselessness Will Winter Rain Life Burdened Let them go Five Kisses Retrospection Helena Nothing Remains Comrades What Gain? To the West The Land of Content Warning After the Battles are over And they are dumb Night All for me Into Space Through Dim Eyes The Punished Half Fledged The Year The Unattained In the crowd ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... could connect with the presence of David Hosmer. She had often wondered—indeed was wondering now—if the memory of those happenings to which he belonged would ever grow strange and far away to her. It was a trick of memory with which she indulged herself on occasion, this one of retrospection. Beginning with that June day when she had sat in the hall and watched the course of a white sunshade over the ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... and he would have to be looking out for lodgings soon. He might have twenty years before him, but one never knew. Twenty years without an aunt or uncle, with a wife of whom one had better not know anything, with a daughter gone from home. His mood inclined to melancholy and retrospection. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... fact, nothing more than a confused and mingled sympathy with some great political truths, which were at the bottom of every boy's heart, but nowhere else; and with the personal achievements and distinction of the chieftains of the party; when all this hubbub had subsided, and retrospection, in the course of a year, had exercised its moralising influence over the more thoughtful part of the nation, inquiries, at first faint and unpretending, and confined indeed for a long period to limited, though inquisitive, circles, began gently to ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... against the placid bosom of the Detroit: "recollect you the scene that was acted on it? As for me, it is ever present to my mind,—it haunts me in my thoughts by day, and in my dreams by night. I shall never forget it while memory is left to curse me with the power of retrospection. On the very spot on which I now stand was I borne in a chair, to witness the dreadful punishment; you see the stone at my feet, I marked it by that. I saw you conduct Halloway to the centre of the bridge; I beheld him kneel to receive his death; I saw, too, the terrible race for life, that interrupted ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... certain moral symptoms, which go to disprove his assumed youth. He is in the habit of falling into reveries, caused, I have no doubt, by some circumstance which suggests a comparison with his experience in his remoter boyhood, or by some serious retrospection of the past years. He has been detected lying awake, at times when he should have been asleep, engaged in curiously comparing the bed-clothes, walls, and furniture with some recollection of his youth. At such moments he ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... sadder than an early death. We cannot count on raveled threads of age Whereof to weave a fabric. We must use The warp and woof the ready present yields And toil while daylight lasts. When I bethink How brief the past, the future still more brief, Calls on to action, action! Not for me Is time for retrospection or for dreams, Not time for self-laudation or remorse. Have I done nobly? Then I must not let Dead yesterday unborn to-morrow shame. Have I done wrong? Well, let the bitter taste Of fruit that turned to ashes on my lip Be my reminder in temptation's hour, And keep ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... double interest was attached by her to the ways and companionships of those with whom she had been acquainted in the days which, when present, she had considered hardly-worked and monotonous, but which now in retrospection seemed so happy and unclouded. Accordingly, she had, as we have seen, known where to meet with John Barton on that unfortunate night, which had only produced irritation in him, and a month's imprisonment to her. ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... serenity; from that moment I ceased to enjoy a pure unadulterated happiness, and on a retrospection of the pleasure of my childhood, I yet feel they ended here. We continue at Bossey some months after this event, but were like our first parents in the Garden of Eden after they had lost their innocence; in appearance our situation ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... shadows. All through his working hours he was re-living with incredible minuteness every incident of their obliterated past; as a man who has mastered the spirit of a foreign tongue turns with renewed wonder to the pages his youth has plodded over. In this lucidity of retrospection the most trivial detail had its significance, and the rapture of recovery was embittered to Glennard by the perception of all that he had missed. He had been pitiably, grotesquely stupid; and there was irony in the thought that, but ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... Porter was not a woman to waste time in retrospection. She had not been in her room five minutes before her mind was made up. It was improbable that Kirk and his guilty accomplice had sought so near and obvious a haven as the studio, but it was undoubtedly there that pursuit must begin. She knew nothing ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... laudable endeavor, on the part of another, to instil milder counsels, being availingly expended, they repaired to the Police Magistrate's office. He, by invoking old recollections on either side, and judiciously inviting them to a retrospection of their former mutual courtesies, and early undimmed pleasures, gradually brought the would-be sundered people to a wiser mind. I believe there have only been two or three outbursts ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... birthday of Mrs. Ann Peterson Lines on the death of Jane Flounders What is Matter? Anniversary Hymn The Intellectual Telegraph Lines on an Indian Arrow-Head Acrostic to Miss Annie Eliza McNamee Minutes of the Jackson Hall Debating Society, Dec. 5, 1877 Retrospection Acrostic to Miss Florence Wilson McNamee The Book of Books The Lesson of the Seasons John A. ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... He seems to have been, at least among us, the author of a species of composition that may be denominated local poetry, of which the fundamental subject is some particular landscape, to be poetically described with the addition of such embellishments as may be supplied by historical retrospection, or ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... Amelia is suddenly a far older man than the Fielding of Tom Jones. The robust and irrepressible vitality, the full veined delight of living, the energy of observation and strength of satire, which characterise the one, give place in the other to a calmer retrospection, a more compassionate humanity, a more benignant criticism of life." Murphy's Irish tongue declares a similar feeling in his comparison of the pages of this, the last of the three great novels, to the calm of the setting sun; a sun that had first broken ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... arose and sauntered around to the barn, to look at the litter of new pigs that just then served to interest and amuse him. The girl remained seated upon the grass, her hands clasped over her knee and a look of deep retrospection upon ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... Reflection, retrospection sickened him. It was snowing and growing late when he wrote to a steamship agent making inquiries and asking for ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... new illusion we wake to is seen in the exclamation that so often follows retrospection: "Oh, what a fool I was!" As a rule, nothing can be more conceited than this use of the past tense. A few people, perhaps, can look back complacently upon "a well-spent life" (wherein all the years have been ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... he wrote; "You ask many questions about our sufferings at Ava, but how can I answer them now? There would be some pleasure in reviewing those scenes if she were alive; now I can not. The only reflection that assuages the anguish of retrospection is, that she now rests far away, where no spotted-faced executioner can fill her heart with terror; where no unfeeling magistrate can extort the scanty pittance which she had preserved through every risk to sustain her ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... to look leniently on evil, no matter how small, never come out the clean potato in the finish," trenchantly concluded the old woman; and Miss Flipp was so disconcerted that she immediately retired to her room, but noticed by no one but me. Probably the poor girl, if gifted with any capacity for retrospection, wished that she had heeded the spark that she might not now be in danger of being consumed by ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... those mental recreations, nor does that interfere with her domestic virtues; she is equally capable of performing every social duty, but she devotes not so considerable a portion of her time and thoughts to dress, nor is she so totally absorbed in the anticipation and retrospection of balls and soirees, to the exclusion of every other feeling, as long as the season for parties continues, which is but too much the case with females in Paris, except with those whose business or occupations prevent ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... extricate himself from a situation of much difficulty with respect to Lucy; nor did he omit to avail himself of it, in order to give a new turn to her feelings. The affectionate girl's heart was now in a tumult of delight, checked, however, so obviously by the gloomy retrospection of the obligation she had imposed upon herself, that from time to time she could not repress those short sobs by which recent grief, as in the case of children who are soothed after crying, is frequently indicated. Next to the hated marriage, however, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... happened, Harlan would have been saved a great deal of trouble if he had followed out her suggestion and burned all of the beds in the house except two or three, but the balance between foresight and retrospection has seldom ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... feelings chilled. He loved, admired, almost worshipped the beautiful girl from whom consent had been extorted, and her quiet, cold manner, troubled his sorely. Glimpses of the real truth dawned into his mind. He let his thoughts go back, and went over again, in retrospection, every particular of their intercourse—dwelling minutely upon her words, looks, manner and emotions at the time he first pressed his suit upon her. The result was far from satisfactory. She had ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... cheered him wonderfully, and when he had gone Liddy sat down a moment to watch the dying embers. She, too, had felt the contagion of his mood, and strange to say, his hopes and fears were insensibly merging themselves into her own. She watched the fading fire for a full half hour, absorbed in retrospection, and then lighting a small lamp and turning out the large one, she walked down the hall and upstairs ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... of Abraham Lincoln suggests some retrospection. I remember that when, sixteen years ago, in 1915, our national debt was all finally paid off, great exultation was felt. In a Fourth-of-July oration at Omaha, the speaker, a young colored lawyer, referring to the civil war of 1861-65, as so largely adding ...
— 1931: A Glance at the Twentieth Century • Henry Hartshorne
... valley, my gaze is turned affectionately towards those early days. I do not think they were always bright and joyous, and I am sure I often chafed under the burdens imposed upon me; but how inviting they seem when viewed through the golden haze of retrospection. ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... joyful mood that Daniel worked at and completed the fifth movement of his symphony, a scherzo of grand proportions, beginning with a clarinet figure that symbolised laughing sans-souci. All the possibilities of joy developed from this simple motif. Nor was retrospection or consolation lacking. If the main themes, mindful of their former pre-eminence, seemed inclined to widen the bed of their stream, they were appeased and forced back into their original channel by artistic and capriciously alternating means. Once all three themes ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... Retrospection. A peculiar combination of the ideas of development and formation from without has given rise to the recapitulation theory of education, biological and cultural. The individual develops, but his proper development ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... stepped in to set the matter straight. The miracle which we all hope for, which never seems impossible in our own case, had been wrought. All lesser ways of making wrong right were unnecessary now. All was over, the pain of retrospection, the painful expedients of law, the danger of publicity, all over. The choice of her poor little leavings for a token to remember her by! Dick shuddered at the thought. To remember her by! when to forget her was all ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... back. How few are the scenes, which memory's kaleidoscope presents in their pristine bright colours, of that journey, performed so slowly, as it once appeared, but which, to the eye of retrospection, seems to have hurried to its end with the ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... not think that retrospection has coloured my view too darkly when I say that my brief experience in Fleet Street made me feel that the Daily Gazette party, the supporters of "The Destroyers" (as naval folk had named the Government of the day) consisted of a ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... heart-wrung. The foot of the berth was by the door. There old Joy stood silently weeping. At its head knelt her mother in prayer and on it lay her playmate brother peacefully gasping out his life. A flash of retrospection told her he must have had the malady long before he had confessed it and that something—something earlier than her singing—yes, and later—not twins nor Gilmores nor river—oh, something, what was it?—had kept her—these two long, ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... death of two most particular friends within little more than a month; but as all observations on such subjects are superfluous and unavailing, I leave the dead to their rest, and return to the dull business of life, which however presents nothing very pleasant to me either in prospect or retrospection. ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... readers retrospection, as vividly as painted on a canvas, a phantasmagoric procession of past events, and of those to come in the travail of the Negro; commencing with the sailing of the first "Slaver's Ship" for the shores of the ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... collected by Sir Thomas Malory, than the general tone of the present Idyls. Those first experiments, charged like a full sponge with the essence and volume of primitive legend, went to their purpose without retrospection or vacillation: each short tale, whether it laughed or moaned, promulgated itself like an oracle. The teller seemed to have been listening to the voice of Fate, and whether, Guinevere swayed the bridle-rein, or Elaine's web flew out and floated wide, or Lancelot sang tirra-lirra ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... velvet embroidered with gold. By his side, and seated on a globe, was a tall female form dressed in white, with an open book in one hand, and in the other a wand, pointing towards the portrait. This figure was to represent the Muse of History:—may she one day cast a glance of friendly retrospection on the prototype of her pictured companion! A body of cavalry followed the car, and the carriages of the most distinguished inhabitants of the place closed the procession. Several Chinese triumphal arches crossed the streets, through which ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... at intervals by crises of creative discovery. Continuity and discontinuity will thus admit possibility of reconciliation, the one as an aspect of ascent towards the future, the other as an aspect of retrospection after the event. And we shall see that the same key will in addition disclose to us ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... look in his eyes betokening an effort of retrospection, withdrew the key from the lock and entered the garage, Gatton and I following. There was a sky window to light the place, so that when Bolton reclosed the door we could see well enough. His movements were as follows: Relocking the door from the inside, ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer |
