"Retrospective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Philip II. she was still magnificent, Europe was bowing down to her, but the decline was growing more manifest; and with the accession of his puny son, Philip III., there was little left but a brilliant past, which a proud and retrospective nation was going to feed upon for over three centuries. But it takes some time for such dazzling effulgence to disappear. The glamour of the Spanish name was going to last a long time and picturesquely veil her decay. The memory of such an ascendancy in Europe nourished the intense ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele
... services, the governor deemed it a tribute justly due to him to give his name to this grand and extraordinary pass, and he accordingly called it Cox's Pass. Having descended into the valley at the bottom of this pass, the retrospective view of the overhanging mountain ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... himself, from Captain King's relation of the several voyages, of the opportunities that were afforded me in forming my collections of plants, still it appears necessary, in this place, to take a general retrospective view of those parts of the coasts under examination, whereon my researches were made, adverting, at the same time, to the prevalent unfavourable seasons for flowering plants, during which it should seem the survey of the North-west Coast could alone ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... practice with our principles. There was not the faintest suggestion of jollity in the appearance of the four motionless, prostrate figures against the wall. Seasickness had triumphed over philosophy! Prospective and retrospective reverie of a decidedly gloomy character was our only occupation. I remember speculating curiously upon the probability of Noah's having ever been seasick; wondering how the sea-going qualities of the Ark would compare with those of our brig, and whether she had our brig's ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... korekti. Retrace reveni, repasxi. Retract malkonfesi. Retreat (place) rifugxejo. Retreat foriri, remarsxi. Retribution repago. Retrieve trovi, gajni, re—. Retrograde malprogresi. Retrospect retrospekto. Retrospective retrospektiva. Return (give back) redoni. Return (come back) reveni. Return, to make a raporti. Return (report) raporto. Return, in reciproke. Reunion rekunigo. Re-unite rekunigi. Reveal malkasxi. Revel festenego. Revenge revengxo. Revenue rento, ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... the arrival of Mdlle. de Cardoville at the garden-door of the house occupied by Djalma, we must cast a retrospective glance at previous events. On leaving Doctor Baleinier's, Mdlle. de Cardoville had gone to take up her residence in the Rue d'Anjou. During the last few months of her stay with her aunt, Adrienne had secretly caused ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... returned the embrace with equal fervor, but her eyes were retrospective as she answered, "Oh, it's wonderful, of course, and I haven't even begun to get used to it yet, but I don't think it's ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... tailor behaved very well; but as thy profound retrospective glance led thee to forbode, the cravats, the hats, and the silk hosen perplexed our souls, for there was nothing in our purse to be perplexed thereby. As said Blondet, so say we; there is a fortune awaiting the establishment ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... the upper part of the pulpit was at one time used as a font. The old font, restored, for many years formed part of the wall of the churchyard. The road continues up the long tongue of Okeford Hill with wide retrospective views. At the summit a by-way turns to the right along the ridge, which gradually increases in height until it reaches its summit three miles away at Bulbarrow Hill (902 feet) just above Rawlsbury Camp. The magnificent view up Blackmore Vale and northwestwards toward Yeovil is worth ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... that in that case always you will do the thing which is right. For he cannot discern independently what will make him happy; and he must decide on the spot. The use of the nexus between morality and happiness must therefore be inverted; it is not practical or prospective, but simply retrospective; and in that form it says no more than the good old rules hallowed in every cottage. But this furnishes no practical guide for moral election which a man had not, before he ever thought of this nexus. In the sense in which it is true, we need not ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... extraordinary documents concealed (of all places in the world—it was as fantastic as a nightmare) in a "bargain" picked up at second-hand by an obscure scribbler, would be a calculable blow to the retrospective mind. Baron saw vividly that if these relics should be made public the scandal, the horror, the chatter would be immense. Immense would be also the contribution to truth, the rectification of history. He had felt for several days (and it was exactly what had made him so nervous) as if he ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... pounce upon me that way at school?" exclaimed Alice suddenly, throwing off her retrospective mood and smiling again. "Was ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... six months had been passed at Mon Reve, Lady Susan's villa at Montricheux, and with a jerk Ann emerged from her train of retrospective thought to the realisation that her lines had really fallen in very ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... competent; but, for the purpose of removing all doubt, a bill was brought into the Upper House; and to this bill several Lords offered an opposition which seems to have been most unreasonable. The proposed law, they said, was a retrospective penal law, and therefore objectionable. If they used this argument in good faith, they were ignorant of the very rudiments of the science of legislation. To make a law for punishing that which, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Edwards, and the Chilian Government. On February 23, 1878, Bolivia saw fit to impose a tax of 10 centavos (41/2 pence) per quintal (152 pounds) on all nitrates. Chili remonstrated; but Bolivia insisted, and declared, in addition, that the tax was meant to be retrospective, and that unless all dues were paid before February 14, 1879, the nitrates in the hands of the exporters would be seized and sold by auction. As the day which had been fixed for the seizure drew near, a Chilian squadron, under Rear-Admiral Rebolledo Williams, was got ready for the ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... in nursing, and your power over a sick person," Hyacinth interjected scornfully, and then in the next moment apologised for the little spurt of retrospective jealousy. ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... month or so later he moved from Baltimore, which had been his home, and began employment with the government in Washington. He had more emissions and immediately developed hysterical heart trouble, and from his retrospective account also had ideas of people influencing him. A year later (June 1905) a frank psychosis with considerable manic flavor developed. Secretary of State Hay had died, and peace negotiations between Russia and Japan were in progress. He got the idea that he was to succeed Hay (whose face he saw ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... afflicted with retrospective jealousy, Schumann's widow, in editing these letters, would have received a pang from many other passages revealing Schumann's fondness for the fair sex. He allowed no good-looking woman to pass him on the street without taking the opportunity to cultivate his sense of beauty. After his engagement ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... scenes no one could tell. I raised my hat with the profoundest deference as the carriage containing the two ladies dashed by; I knew not which was the cleverest hypocrite of the two, therefore I did equal honor to both. I was in a meditative and retrospective mood, and when I reached the Toledo the distracting noises, the cries of the flower-girls, and venders of chestnuts and confetti, the nasal singing of the street-rhymers, the yells of punchinello, and the answering laughter of the populace, were all beyond my endurance. ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... described as almost gigantic; his voice loud and harsh; his features stern and terrible. His cruel and criminal character we already know. Yet it is but just here to recall that much of the horror and odium which has accumulated on his memory is posthumous and retrospective. Some of his cotemporaries were no better in their private lives than he was; but then they had no part in bringing in the Normans. Talents both for peace and war he certainly had, and there was still a feeling of attachment, or at least of regret, cherished ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... answered Amos to the retrospective musings of the Judge. "Time was you an' me would go t' singing-school or sleigh-riding with the girls on a night like this ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... a retrospective glance at this unusual man. Though his opponents deny him the divine commission with which his friends believe he was charged, they all, friends and foes alike, admit that he was a great man. Through the testimony of his life's work and the sanctifying seal of his martyrdom, ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... On a retrospective view of the route from Tripoli to Mourzuk, via Mizdah, I am inclined to divide the country, for convenience sake, into a series ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... to take a retrospective view of what was my then situation. By the orders of Capi I was sent prisoner as a contemptible common deserter, and was unable to call him to account. In Poland, indeed, I had that power, but was despised as a vagabond because ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... remembering little Ishmael in his poor orphaned infancy—so pale, thin, and sickly, so disliked, avoided, and neglected! At this remembrance her penitent heart melted in remorseful tenderness. The advent of her own children had shown to Hannah by retrospective action all the cruelty and hardness of heart she had once felt and ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... parliament that a conference being held between the two houses respecting a bill for making the patrimonial estates of accountants liable for their arrears to the queen, and the commons desiring that it might not be retrospective, the lord treasurer pithily said; "My lords, if you had lost your purse by the way, would you look back or forwards to find it? The ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... the Senate so far as regarded the appointment, but without concurrence in the retrospective effect proposed to be given ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... of the ordinance and virtues of the familiar herbs, I escape from the severities of botanical science into a maze of queer fancies, well suited to those retrospective hours when we love best what we least believe. And by the pleasant suggestion of astrology I am led on to contemplate the starry heavens, which I do in the ancient pastoral way, peopling them with mythical forms and connecting them with the seasonable changes of rustic toil. I forget for the ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... through which yet ran a subtle harmony of mirth. Laughing faces nodded and uplifted like flowers in the merry romping throngs in the middle of the room, while the sober ones against the walls watched with grave, elderly, retrospective eyes. ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... strategically important. If Mr. Podmore, hitherto the prosecuting attorney of the S. P. R., so far as physical phenomena are concerned becomes converted also, we may indeed sit up and look around us. Getting a good health bill from "Science," Eusapia will then throw retrospective credit on Home and Stainton Moses, Florence Cook (Prof. Crookes' medium), and all similar wonder-workers. The balance of presumptions will be changed in favor of genuineness being possible at least ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... cantered on to the Row, as goodly a couple (if I may be pardoned this retrospective vanity) as any there; and by and by, I saw, with the quick eye of a lover, Diana's willowy form in the distance. She was not alone, but I knew that the Colonel would soon have to yield his ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... been frightened at the mention of a mob, and her retrospective regard for the religious communion of her youth by no means inspired her with the temper of a martyr. Her husband looked at her with an expression of tender and grieved remonstrance, which might have been ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... use in trying to be retrospective while Hippy is with us," declared Mrs. Gray when their mirth had subsided and Hippy had clambered to his feet. A long scratch ornamented one fat cheek and his hands showed the result of his fall among thorns. But his smile was as wide ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... process I shall attempt in the following pages to give a sketch. Such a sketch, though mainly retrospective, is pertinent to the issues which now divide the country. It will indicate the origin and the strength of the chief reasons by which Liberals are now governed. And, if executed with proper fairness and truth, it may, as a study in contemporary history, be of some little interest to those ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... took no notice. There was a retrospective light in his dark eyes. He tapped upon the table again ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... fain would guess its mystery— For often I can trace A fellow dreamer's history Whene'er it haunts the face; Your fancy's running riot In a retrospective race! ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... exchanging its retrospective light for the look of slightly shadowed watchfulness which he had known as most habitual ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... which is worth all the strong lines against the harlot's profession, with which both parts of this play are offensively crowded. A satirist is always to be suspected, who, to make vice odious, dwells upon all its acts and minutest circumstances with a sort of relish and retrospective fondness. But so near are the boundaries of panegyric and invective, that a worn-out sinner is sometimes found to make the best declaimer against sin. The same high-seasoned descriptions, which in his unregenerate state served but to inflame his appetites, in his new province of a ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... received with the condescension and feeling natural to his character, he was pleased to direct that it should take date as near to that of general De Caen's permission to quit Mauritius, as the patent which constituted the existing Board of Admiralty would allow. A more retrospective date could be given to it only by an order of the King in council; unhappily His Majesty was then incapable of exercising his royal functions; and when the Regency was established, my proposed petition did not meet with that official encouragement which was necessary to obtain success. ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... feel in the least sleepy—he drew forward a deep, comfortable armchair close to the fire, and took up a book. But soon he put it down again, and, staring at the dancing flames, his mind dwelt with retrospective pleasure on ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... retrograde, retrogressive, reverse, regressive; retrospective; reluctant, averse, loath, disinclined, unwilling; dull, inapt; late, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... remembered, however, that, unless a sound criterion be applied to the limitation of Families, they, like all other groups introduced into zooelogical systems, must forever remain arbitrary divisions, as they have been hitherto. A retrospective glance at the progress of our science during the past century, in this connection, may perhaps help us to solve the difficulty. Linnaeus, in his System of Nature, does not admit Families; he has only four kinds of groups,—Classes, Orders, Genera, and Species. It was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... conclusion upon observation of matters of fact, and is merely retrospective: an Idea, or, if you like, a Principle, carries knowledge within itself, and is prospective. Polonius is a man of maxims. Whilst he is descanting on matters of past experience, as in that excellent speech to Laertes before ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... contemplation. I look back, at this moment, to the period of my life I am describing, as prosperous men recall the day-spring of their fortunes. They, from the proud eminence on which they stand, trace, step by step, in retrospective view, the paths by which they ascended; and I, looking through the dark vista of my by-gone years, behold the fatal series of crimes and follies that stained their progress, stretching to my boyhood. The gay and frolic irregularities, as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various
... permit me to tender to yourself, and by you to your Sister, mine and my Wife's heartfelt congratulations and warmest wishes with respect to the coming year. It is a common belief that if we take a retrospective view of each departing year, as it behoves us annually to do, we shall find the blessings which we have received to immeasurably outnumber our causes of sorrow. Speaking for myself I can fully subscribe to that sentiment, and doubtless ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... a picture of the author toiling across a bare common in a hot summer day, and reaching at last a ruined hut surrounded with tall trees, where he meets by appointment with a hale old man, with an iron-pointed staff lying beside him. Then follows a retrospective account of their first acquaintance—formed, it seems, when the author was at a village school; and his aged friend occupied "one room,—the fifth part of a house" in the neighbourhood. After this, we have the history of this reverend person at no small length. He was born, we are happy to ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... suspended? When the sixth trumpet,—the "second woe,"—has effected its objects, we naturally expect the seventh trumpet to sound; yet we are held in suspense till we come to the fourteenth verse of this chapter. Hitherto we have met with no similar interruption. Let us take a retrospective view:—The seven epistles to the churches followed each other in regular succession. The seals, in like manner, followed successively; and this is true of ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... he said with a retrospective consciousness of folly. "No, to tell the truth, I haven't been out at all lately. ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... injured people would not be led into action by a raw volunteer; and they confided to every ear that would hear that the citizen soldiers could be trusted in a crisis—to shoot each other! But imagine the discomfiture of these veterans when at a later stage an army order, retrospective in its operation, was issued which cancelled the original monetary conditions of service for Officers and non-commissioned Officers, and increased the rates of pay to which their respective ranks entitled ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... national wealth and importance. How many stories of love, war, and chivalry are told of its halls, castles, and monasteries, their lords and ladies and maidens of high birth. Kenilworth and STRATFORD—Leicester, SHAKSPEARE and Warwick—like long trails of light, all flit before us in this retrospective dream of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various
... the follies of the Republic, a little reflection on that eloquence of ruin ought to put the Republic on its guard. A sentimental tourist may venture to remark that in presence of all the haunted houses that appeal in this mystical manner to the retrospective imagination it cannot afford to be foolish. I thought of all this as I drove back to Blois by the way of the Chateau de Cheverny. The road took us out of the park of Chambord, but through a region of flat woodland, where the trees were not mighty, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... The young, with a long life in perspective, (if any life can be called long, in so brief an existence) are unable to realize the impressions of a man, nearer eighty than seventy, when the shadows of evening are gathering around, and, in a retrospective glance, the whole field of past vision appears, in all its complexities, like the indistinct tumults of a dream. The acute reasoner—the fiery politician—the eager polemic—the emulous aspirant after fame; and many such have I known, where are they? and how mournful, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... speeches, till the entrance of Ariel, contain the finest example I remember of retrospective narration for the purpose of exciting immediate interest, and putting the audience in possession of all the information necessary for the understanding of the plot. Observe, too, the perfect probability ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... to hear Captain Glazier's lecture upon 'Echoes from the Revolution.' The frequent applause of the audience evinced not only a sympathy with the subject, but an evident liking of the manner in which it was delivered. The lecture itself was a retrospective view of the leading incidents of the Revolution. It would have been unfair to expect to hear anything very new upon a subject with which the veriest school-boy is familiar; but Captain Glazier wove the events together ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... not that of a country woman. The thin, high-bridged nose, the fallen cheeks, the shadows under eyes gloomy and retrospective—these were marks of the town; above all, perhaps, that sallow greyness of the skin which speaks ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... appeal of a drowning Caesar to "Help me, Cassius, or I sink," he had answered, "Sink!" That answer he had no wish to reconsider. That he might not reconsider he had sought to escape. It was his experience that a sixty-horse-power racing-machine is a jealous mistress. For retrospective, sentimental, or philanthropic thoughts she grants no leave of absence. But he had not escaped. Jimmie had halted him, tripped him by the heels and set him again to thinking. Within the half-hour that followed those who rolled past saw at the side of the road a car ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... first time he had found leisure to fish, though from the very outset of his Potwell career he had promised himself abundant indulgence in the pleasures of fishing. Fishing, as the golden page of English literature testifies, is a meditative and retrospective pursuit, and the varied page of memory, disregarded so long for sake of the teeming duties I have already enumerated, began to unfold itself to Mr. Polly's consideration. A speculation about Uncle ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... of regret and not that of hope. My clear-sightedness is retrospective, and the result with me of disinterestedness and prudence is that I attach myself to what I ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... prospective grant would be of little personal benefit to me or to my numerous family, your Excellency would have been happy to have recommended, and the Congress to have conceded, that it should likewise be retrospective, especially as Chili had not (as is the case in my native country) to rear and maintain numerous officers for ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... "this shall be no day of thoughtless joy; it brings me sad retrospective thoughts and the consciousness of weighty duties. On this day my father seems to me to die anew. Dismiss, therefore, your extravagant fancies to a more fitting time. I cannot trust you, Pollnitz, ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... to go to Cincinnati at any moment. Pressure of work was holding him pretty close when the news came that his father was dead. Lester, of course, was greatly shocked and grieved, and he returned to Cincinnati in a retrospective and sorrowful mood. His father had been a great character to him—a fine and interesting old gentleman entirely aside from his relationship to him as his son. He remembered him now dandling him upon his knee as a child, telling him stories of his early life ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... Southern (editor of "The Retrospective Review") wrote the "Conversations of Lord Byron," and "The Fanariotes of Constantinople," ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... But his success was a step on the road to political preferment, and his ambitious eyes were on the future. Into the midst of his quiet incumbency as register came Fate, all intrusive, and found him through the infrequent medium of a weekly mail. It was at the beginning of the retrospective enthusiasm that has served to revive the memories of the War, and he received a letter from an old comrade-in-arms, giving the details of a brigade reunion shortly to be held at no great distance, and, being of the committee, inviting him ...
— The Lost Guidon - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... us, I would first ask: How are we now situated? For more than two and a half years we have fought for our just rights, and what do we see if we take a retrospective view? Are we making progress, or are we gradually going down the precipice? I have been in correspondence with my officers in all parts of the country, and have received information from them as to the condition ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell
... Nelson or Wellington knew, and they carried the Sword of Duty that day into the camp of an enemy who, with all his skill, had not learned, till it was written in his blood for survivors to read, that England had awakened from her long sleep. For my part, if retrospective power were mine, I would not raise a finger to rob those stern ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... we walk the busy street, lose all their interest the moment we are borne into the quiet graveyard which borders it. For my own part, my spirit had not become so mixed up with earthly existence, as to be now held in an unnatural combination, or tortured much with retrospective cares. I still love my parents and a younger sister, who remain among the living, and often grieve me by their patient sorrow for the dead. Each separate tear of theirs is an added weight upon my soul, and lengthens my stay among the graves. As to other matters, it exceedingly rejoices ...
— Other Tales and Sketches - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Gratitude, some will say, may prevent this; but nations have no gratitude, they only know their interest, and nothing retrospective is any motive for action. We need not search into remote periods for proofs of this, see Holland, Spain, Russia, &c. during the latter part of the last war. [end of page ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... to the application of the man-child to the Saviour, that it should be prophetic, and not retrospective. This objection would be equally valid to the application of the symbolic heads, against which it is never urged. That which is retrospective, to be appropriately symbolized, must be in harmony with, and explanatory of other parts. ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... is not the usually received opinion. There is, I am aware, the theory that the novel is wholly and solely a means of relaxation. In spite of manifest facts, that was the dominant view of the great period that we now in our retrospective way speak of as the Victorian, and it still survives to this day. It is the man's theory of the novel rather than the woman's. One may call it the Weary Giant theory. The reader is represented as a man, burthened, toiling, worn. He has been ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... Statute of Westminster, passed in 1275; at the Statute of James the First, passed in 1623; at Sir George Savile's Act, passed in the last century; at Lord Tenterden's Act, passed in our own time. Every one of those Acts was retrospective. Every one of them barred claims arising out of past transactions. Nor was any objection ever raised to what was so evidently just and wise, till bigotry and chicanery formed that disgraceful league against which we are now contending. But, it is said, it is unreasonable ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... were all for the man whose last thought was for her and her babies; she told herself over and over again that her tears were all for him. After this the autumn began to hurry on, and the snow fell capriciously, days of biting cold giving place to retrospective glances at summer. The last of the vegetables were taken out of the garden and buried in the cellar; and a few tons of coal—dear almost as diamonds—were brought out to provide against the severest weather. ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... no pleasure in it. The same compression of the throat, the same retrospective anguish, caused me to revolt against man's cowardice which hid under the name of civilisation the most unjust ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... commencement of a dialogue between Collen and Thenot; which is described as "an Eglogue on the noble assemblies revived on Cotswold Hills by Mr. Robert Dover". An able criticism of Randolph's works, with extracts, will be found in the sixth volume of the "Retrospective ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... works of Cotton Mather I shall examine, in this scrutiny of his retrospective opinions and position, relating to the witchcraft prosecutions, is the Magnalia, printed at London, in 1702. He had become wise enough, at that time, not to commit himself ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... and malice to which he soon after became a victim had an equally fatal effect in disenchanting the dream of his existence. Those imaginary, or, at least, retrospective sorrows, in which he had once loved to indulge, and whose tendency it was, through the medium of his fancy, to soften and refine his heart, were now exchanged for a host of actual, ignoble vexations, which it was even more humiliating than painful to encounter. His misanthropy, instead ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, [410] Whether the legal guilt of murder could be brought home to Jeffreys may be doubted. But he was morally guilty of so many murders that, if there had been no other way of reaching his life, a retrospective Act of Attainder would have been clamorously demanded by the whole nation. A disposition to triumph over the fallen has never been one of the besetting sins of Englishmen: but the hatred of which Jeffreys was the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... had been run outside the verge of chronicles. Its early stages left few direct records. They have to be pieced together by retrospective allusions proceeding from himself or others, after he had already risen. The difficulties of his biographers are not at an end when he has mounted into the full blaze of publicity. His name thenceforth was in a multitude of mouths; yet much in his character, position, and motives ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... actions, these characters, must be set forth succinctly, in such-wise that we shall know just as much as is essential to our understanding of them. In drama, the presentment is, in a sense, more vivid. It is not—not usually, at least—retrospective. We see the actions being committed, hear the words as they are uttered. But how often do we have an illusion of their reality? Seldom. It is seldom that a masterpiece in drama is performed perfectly by an ideal cast. In a law-court, on the other hand, it is always in perfect form that ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... Maria Branwell's letters were given into the hands of her daughter Charlotte and that daughter's most dear and faithful friend, the two young women felt a keen pang of retrospective sympathy for the gentle independent little person who, even before her marriage, had time to perceive that her guide and instructor was not the infallible Mentor she had thought him at the first. I quote the words of Charlotte's friend, of more authority and weight on this matter than those ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... uses of it may be noted. It, when referring to something that precedes, may be called "retrospective;" but when to something that follows, "prospective." In "Avoid indiscriminate charity: it is a crime," "it" is retrospective.[6] In "It is a crime to give indiscriminately," ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... attempt to enter Austria through a back window. Such, at least, was the supposition of military critics the world over. Incidentally the presence of so large a force of the Allies in Macedonia served various other purposes. Viewing the situation with a retrospective eye, at the present moment, there can be no doubt that Greece would by now have thrown her lot in with the Central Powers had it not been for her fear of Sarrail's forces. Also, the Teutons and the Bulgarians were compelled ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... part of my plan. I mean to proceed by bill; and I cannot stop for such an inquiry. I know some gentlemen may blame me. It is with great submission to better judgments that I recommend it to consideration, that a critical retrospective examination of the pension list, upon the principle of merit, can never serve for my basis. It cannot answer, according to my plan, any effectual purpose of economy, or of future, permanent reformation. The process in any way will be entangled and difficult, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... shrewd guesses which he was making, and the terrible mosaic that he was piecing together out of such stray fragments as he could pick up—and he was always picking them up—were hidden from her; and she understood nothing of the mingled surmise and certainty which made his interest in her partly retrospective and partly prophetic, as he fitted in bit by bit that hidden thing in the past or foresaw the discovery that must come in the future. She only thought him tiresome and inquisitive, and wished that he would not come so ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... Dalhousie, Duc de Broglie, Pelissier, Panizzi, Motley, Delane, Dufferin; and of gifted women, the three Sheridans, Lady Seymour - the Queen of Beauty, afterwards Duchess of Somerset - Mrs. Norton, and Lady Dufferin. Amongst those who have a retrospective interest were Mr. and Lady Blanche Balfour, parents of Mr. Arthur Balfour, who came there on their wedding tour in 1843. Mr. Arthur Balfour's father was Mrs. ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... them, and had been detached in the course of ages. And the parliaments of Lorraine, Alsace, and Franche Comte were directed to ascertain what places there were, what fragments under feudal tenure, to which that retrospective principle applied. They were called chambers, or courts, of reunion, and they enumerated certain small districts, which the French troops accordingly occupied. All this was futile skirmishing. The real object was ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... a tendril of smoke showed above the arc of tumbling waves that ringed the limit of his vision; the sun was warm and pleasant, and the figure on the conning-tower crossed his legs, encased in heavy thigh boots, and gave himself over to retrospective thought. ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... five pound note proved too much for his caution and his self-control. On the small neutral ground of self-importance, the best men and the worst meet on the same terms. Captain Wragge's indignation, when he saw the answer to his advertisement, stooped to no retrospective estimate of his own conduct; he was as deeply offended, as sincerely angry as if he had made a perfectly honorable proposal, and had been rewarded for it by a personal insult. He had been too full of his own grievance to keep it ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... Marian's cheek as his voice lapsed unconsciously into a dreamy, retrospective tone, and a slight restraint came over her manner, which did not depart. Esterbrook went away at sunset. Marian asked him to remain for the evening, but he ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... comfortably speculate on the particular complications from which his foresight had probably saved him. The climax was unexpectedly dramatic. Miss Lombard, on the brink of a step which, whatever its issue, would have burdened her with retrospective compunction, had been set free before her suitor's ardor could have had time to cool, and was now doubtless planning a life of domestic felicity on the proceeds of the Leonardo. One thing, however, struck Wyant as odd—he saw no mention ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... openly congratulated himself on his find. "I really wasn't sure I knew how to pick out a horse," he remarked, in a glow of retrospective modesty, "but I certainly ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... see nothing "cheekie" in anything you have done. Your letters have naturally given me much pleasure, for it seems to me you are a pretty good young fellow, as young fellows go; and if I add that you remind me of myself, you need not accuse me of retrospective vanity. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pitifulness, to fail of putting her silent trust in him. Besides, had she not read in the newspapers the utterance of a certain worshipful judge on the bench that no man had any thing to do with his wife's ante-nuptial history? The contract then was certainly not retrospective. What in her remained unsatisfied after all her arguments, reasons, and appeals to common sense and consequences, she strove to strangle, and thought, hoped, she had succeeded. She willed her will, made up ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... longer is Leopold, as he sits there, ruminating, chewing the cud of reminiscence, that staid agent of publicity and holder of a modest substance in the funds. A score of years are blown away. He is young Leopold. There, as in a retrospective arrangement, a mirror within a mirror (hey, presto!), he beholdeth himself. That young figure of then is seen, precociously manly, walking on a nipping morning from the old house in Clanbrassil street to the high school, his booksatchel on him bandolierwise, and ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... These retrospective visions of Sue only made Jude the more miserable that he was unable to woo her, and he left the cottage of his aunt that day with a heavy heart. He would fain have glanced into the school to see the room in which Sue's little figure had so glorified itself; ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... take a retrospective view of this our noble theme, and our interest will be the more strengthened thereon. All the world knows that a convent stood in this neighbourhood, and the present market was the garden, unde Convent Garden; would that all etymologists were ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... happy times it is instructive to take a retrospective glance at the days of our forefathers of the nineteenth century, and to meditate upon the political struggles and events of the past hundred years, that by so doing we may gain a clear insight into the causes which have led to the present wonderful developments. We, in the year of Grace ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius
... of Victor Emmanuel," Garibaldi attacked and occupied Palermo, and having established his ascendency in the island, invaded the Neapolitan territory on the mainland. The Sardinian Government, for diplomatic reasons, disavowed the expedition, but gave a retrospective assent to it ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... race, living apart from the rest, have independently devised means for the interchange of thoughts and ideas. Their grammatical rules are so widely different from all our European forms that it forces the mind to a retrospective view of first principles. ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... public and private, to the countries and to the individuals named in that tale! to persons of even as lofty names and excellences, of our own and other lands, who were mutually affected with me in admiration and regret for the virtues and the sorrows described! In sitting down now to my retrospective task, I find myself writing this, my second preface to the story of "Thaddeus of Warsaw," just thirty years from the date of its first publication. Then, I wrote when the struggle for the birthright independence ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... no more for the moment; the paradox of this retrospective gratitude was too absorbing. What! Sir Asher was thankful because over three thousand years ago his ancestors had obtained—not without hard fighting for it—a land which had already been lost again for eighteen centuries. What a marvellous long memory ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... pale with retrospective terror, and for one moment he hesitated... This landscape of polar cataclysm, cold, gloomy, yawning with gulfs... those laments of the old hut-man still weeping in his ears... Outre! what will they make me do?.. Then, suddenly, ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... the mother, opened by so firm a hand, took in with one retrospective glance the whole course of her life. Illumined by this flash of light, she saw her involuntary wrong-doing and burst into tears. The old priest was so deeply moved at the repentance of a being who had sinned solely through ignorance, that he left the room hastily ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... singular, to recall our state on the eve of some acquaintance which transfigures our being; with some man whose philosophy revolutionises our mind; with some woman whose charms metamorphose our career. These retrospective meditations ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... that I can take a retrospective view of the past and note the many changes that have taken place within my recollection. Many sad changes have taken place within the past fifty years. Dynasties have arisen, lived and have had their day; they have fallen, and are known as things that were. But four of the companions ...
— The Dismal Swamp and Lake Drummond, Early recollections - Vivid portrayal of Amusing Scenes • Robert Arnold
... of the Statue, in consequence of the inconvenience which the public sustained from the innumerable quantity of edicts of the Statue at present in force, had last night consolidated them all into this single act, which, to render its operation still more simple, was gifted with a retrospective power for the last ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... the representative of severe economy, insisted that the honour of the King required that the referees, whoever they were, should be called to account. The gathering clouds shifted a little, when the sense of the House seemed to incline to giving up all retrospective action, and to a limitation for the future by statute of the questionable prerogative—a limitation which was in fact attempted by a bill thrown out by the Lords. But they gathered again when the Commons determined to bring the whole matter before the House of Lords. ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... speeches, till the entrance of Ariel, contain the finest example, I remember, of retrospective narration for the purpose of exciting immediate interest, and putting the audience in possession of all the information necessary for the understanding of the plot.[1] Observe, too, the perfect probability of the moment chosen by Prospero ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... magistrate to an illegal course of action, it seems that the individual senator who moved, or perhaps supported, the decree which led to the forbidden jurisdiction, was made liable to the penalties of the law.[595] The operation of the enactment was made retrospective, or was perhaps conceived by its very nature to cover the past abuses which had called it into being; for in a sense it created no new crime, but simply restated the principle of the appeal in a form suited to the proceedings against which it wished to guard. It might ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... appearance as a disturber of the peace, and the beginning of the bad name she earned for herself in certain circles eventually. But she was let off lightly for it. Mrs. Caldwell's punishments were never retrospective. She was thunder and lightning in her wrath; a flash and then a bang, and it was all over. If she missed the first movement, the culprit escaped. She could no more have punished one of her children in cold blood than she could have cut ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... vanquished him more, by comparison, than her vivid intellect, which he originally, and still lingeringly, appreciated in condescension, as a singular accomplishment, thrilling at times, now and then assailably feminine. But, after her consent to a proposal that caused him retrospective worldly shudders, and her composed recognition of the madness, a character capable of holding him in some awe was real majesty, and it rose to the clear heights, with her mental attributes for satellites. His tendency to despise women was wholesomely checked ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his other good qualities. They always combine a respect for those things that are foreign, with their decided patriotism. The hospitality the stranger receives at their hands is nothing short of marvellous, and no greater insult can be inflicted than to offer to pay for accommodations. I find any retrospective glance over the days I spent among these people coloured with much pleasure when I review incidents connected with my contact with them. There is a word in the Portuguese language which holds a world of meaning for anyone who has been in that land so richly bestowed ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... Mrs. Stowe was wholly possessed by her theme, rapt away like a prophet in a vision, and that, in her feeling at the time, it was written through her quite as much as by her. This idea grew upon her mind in the retrospective light of the tremendous stir the story made in the world, so that in her later years she came to regard herself as a providential instrument, and frankly to declare that she did not write the book; "God wrote it." In her own account, when she reached the ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... understand this by means of his own experience, in his own nursery. It is an appeal to conditions to which he is accustomed and for which no exercise of the imagination is needed, unless we take the effect of memory to be, according to Queyrat, retrospective imagination. ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... home, I know it well; "In love and honour's cause I would be strong, "Mine is a father's tale, perhaps too long, "For fathers, when a duteous child's the theme, "Can talk a summer's sun down, and then dream "Of retrospective joys with hearts that glow "With feelings such as ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... dull retrospective addresses, Fall damp as wet blankets on Drury Lane fire? Away with blue devils, away with distresses, And give the gay spirit to ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... that the resumption of hostilities would not be so long delayed. To understand more clearly the extraordinary complication of interests of which this country was now the scene, it will, however, be necessary to take a retrospective glance at its history during the seventeenth century, after the treaty of Komorn with the Porte, in 1606, had terminated for the time the warfare of which it had almost constantly been the theatre since the occupation of Buda ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... withered leaves float from a tree; or rather, one would never think of them; but now one has the sense of a certain number of beautiful days dealt out to one by God, and the knowledge that they are spent one by one. Another strange thing about the retrospective sadness of the vanished past is that it is not the memorable days of life, as a rule, whose passing one regrets. One would not, I think, wish to have one's days of triumph, of success, or even the days when one was conscious ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... one's existence in mere London—or worse than mere London—as has been the case with me. If I had spent all my life from infancy upward in Bloomsbury, or Clerkenwell, or Whitechapel, my early days would be shorn of much of their retrospective glamour as I look back on ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... French diamond mines of the Cape, where one may see all the details of this prosperous exploitation by means of photographs and specimens. The art bronzes, the objects of jewelry, of goldsmith's work, and of morocco work, the music boxes, Trouve's and Aboilard's electric jewelry, and the retrospective art collections especially attracted the attention ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... cracked corn for the horse and shed-room, where I tied him with retrospective security. There being no restaurant, I obtained some biscuits and cheese, and with these and six tickets for the very front row, Aunt Salomy and Mrs. Kobbe and Miss Pray and I stole early into the hall and sat us ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... only to revise his former writings, which were thirty volumes written with his own hand, but, what most pleased him, he was enabled to write a manual, which he called Vade Mecum, and which contained a retrospective view of his life, since he noted in that volume the most remarkable occurrences which happened to him. It is not probable that such a MS. could have been destroyed but by accident; and it ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... never found it. It was a small, fat volume, very like a pocket Bible in shape, bound cheaply in green cloth, and printed in England, probably somewhere in the '30's, but it had disappeared. The bereaved youth was, henceforth, in as sore a retrospective strait over "Don Sebastian" as Mr. Andrew Lang declares he is, to-day, with his "White ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... albeit the difference might perhaps appear a little less conspicuous if he had lived to a ripe old age and dressed up his recollections of youth in an autobiographical romance. He did not lack the data of experience, but without the charm of the retrospective poetic treatment his early love-affairs are not profoundly interesting. In the midst of his troubles it came over him that marriage might be the right thing for him; and so, one day in June, 1784, he offered himself ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... nights were cold still, but the sun was powerful during the day, and there were many tokens that the earth was about to wake from her long sleep and prepare for the refreshment of her children. "And time for her," sighed Janet, taking a retrospective view of all that had happened since she ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... A retrospective glance reveals the extent to which the Fathers attained their principal objects. A threefold purpose inspired them. Their first duty was to evolve a workable plan of government. In this they succeeded, as fifty years of experience shows. The constitution, after having ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... misfortunes, the vain struggles of the late king, the images of Raymond, Evadne, and Perdita, who had lived in the world's prime, were brought vividly before us. We consigned her to the oblivious tomb with reluctance; and when I turned from her grave, Janus veiled his retrospective face; that which gazed on future generations had ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... countries, to allay the soreness which the second war, of 1812-15, had left between England and America. He was well fitted for the task of mediator. Conservative by nature, early drawn to the venerable worship of the Episcopal Church, retrospective in his tastes, with a preference for the past and its historic associations, which, even in young America, led him to invest the Hudson and the region about New York with a legendary interest, he wrote of ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... denied herself to me, taken herself away; that much I could endure; but now came this blazing fact that showed her as it seemed in the most material and conclusive way—overcome. I had storms of retrospective passion at the thoroughness of her surrender.... Yes, and that's in everyone of us,—in everyone. I wonder if in all decent law-abiding London there lives a single healthy adult man who has not at times longed ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... a mummy, in numberless boas and shawls:—during the process of unswathing, which was no easy job to one in a hurry, so artfully were the pins introduced, Master Tommy treats his friend Walter to a railroad retrospective review of the good things in store—recounting all the "lummy" things left yesterday;—telling about the "nobby" Christmas tree Captain de Camp gave them—though his ma' did say it was "a pretty give!"—it was stolen out of his father's garden.—My father's a jolly sight richer than your's—he ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... (Vol. ii., p. 89.).—B. will find a great deal about these collars in some interesting papers in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1842, vols. xvii. and xviii., conmunicated by Mr. J.G. Nicholls; and in the Second Series of the Retrospective Review, vol. i. p. 302., and vol. ii. pp. 156. 514. 518. Allow me to add a Query: Who are the persons now privileged to wear these collars? and under what circumstances, and at what dates, was such privilege reduced ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 37. Saturday, July 13, 1850 • Various
... Many men, in taking retrospective glances, remember how they were devoted to women, the memory of whom calls up only a vague sort of wonder how they ever could have fallen into the state of infatuation in which they once were. The ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... to the end of his mission has kept us a long time away from the Louvre. The king, after having passed so bravely through his adventurous return from Vincennes, experienced that retrospective emotion which sometimes is felt by the bravest heart after the danger is over. He entered the Louvre without saying anything, made his prayers longer than usual, forgetting to thank the officers and guards who had served him so well. Then he went to bed, astonishing his valets by the ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... have imagined, for a single session, (and that an initial one), he had had enough. I should have expected him to spend the remainder of his day, a full man, in thankful tranquillity, in agreeable retrospective rumination. But no. Indulgence, it soon appeared, had but whetted his appetite. After a quarter-hour of walking about the garden, during which his jumble of sensations and impressions,—her soft-glowing eyes, her soft-drooping hair, under her wine-red hat; her slender figure, in its ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... again that, a few feet off, on the other side of a thin partition, a small keen flame of life was quivering and agitating the air. Sophy's face came hack to him insistently. It was as vivid now as Mrs. Leath's had been a moment earlier. He recalled with a faint smile of retrospective pleasure the girl's enjoyment of her evening, and the innumerable fine feelers of sensation she had ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... which I feel assured would conduce neither to your happiness, nor to mine. Let us embalm the past and bury it tenderly; raising no mound to trip our friendly feet in years to come. The serenity of our future might be marred by retrospective gleams of the beautiful ring that once enclosed two lives; hence, I have ordered the diamonds reset in the form of a four-leaved clover, which will be sent to dear Kittie as ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... thought proper to direct your attention to the state and circumstances of public affairs at the time of this transaction: let me also make a few retrospective observations on a period at which he has but slightly glanced. You know, gentlemen, that France had espoused the cause of America, and we became thereby involved in ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... considerations that Congress have passed laws giving actual settlers on the public lands a right of preemption to the tracts occupied by them at the minimum price. These laws have in all instances been retrospective in their operation, but in a few years after their passage crowds of new settlers have been found on the public lands for similar reasons and under like expectations, who have been indulged with the same privilege. This course of legislation tends to impair public respect for the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... she said. Should she tell him that they were not true? That he was building up a retrospective passion which had never existed? That what he supposed to have been renunciation and self-control and chivalry had in reality been a rather tactfully steered uninflammable affection? Why his voice now was far more broken up and moved than she had ever heard it before. Of ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... wintered him. But the Dabneys of Deer Trace—this was the old name of the estate, and it obtains to this day among the Paradise Valley folk—figure so largely in Thomas Jefferson's boyhood and youth as to be well-nigh elemental in these retrospective glimpses. ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... as usual; I felt listless and languid, and a drowsiness came over me; I did not fall asleep, but the power of my limbs seemed to fail me. Yet the brain was busy; all my life seemed passing in review before me; when these retrospective scenes became serious, I looked serious; when they were sorrowful, I wept hysterically; when they were joyous, I laughed loudly. Reminiscences of yet a young life's battles and hard struggles came surging into the mind in quick succession: events of boyhood, of youth, and manhood; ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... requires retrospective consideration. Unlike the laws of perspective, distance gives it greater size. So it was with Gorham's supreme and final demonstration of his strength. To Covington, who, true to his promise of the night before, was present at this crucial meeting of the Board ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price,'" quoted, the Bishop, a retrospective twinkle in ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... alien, I had almost said, to the experience of our lives. Yet is this true, or are such experiences only ignored and put aside without serious consideration? Are there not in the history of each of us passages which strike our retrospective thought with awe, almost with terror? Are there not in nearly every community individuals who possess a mysterious power, concerning whose origin, mode of action, and limits, we and they are alike in the dark? I refer to such organic forces as are popularly summed up under the words clairvoyance, ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... Rhine, while Massena, as a reward for the victory of Zurich, was made Commander-in-Chief in Italy, and while Brune was at the head of the army of Batavia, Bonaparte, whose soul was in the camps, consoled himself for his temporary inactivity by a retrospective glance on his past triumphs. He was unwilling that Fame should for a moment cease to blazon his name. Accordingly, as soon as he was established at the head of the Government, he caused accounts of his Egyptian expedition to ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... to do is to tabulate these results in the same order as that in which they occurred to me; and here I am met by a preliminary difficulty, not incidental to this subject only, but common to any narrative where we have to take a retrospective glance over a number of years. We are apt to view the subject from our present standpoint; and I shall try to avoid this by quoting, whenever I can, what I published, or committed to writing in the course of my investigations. I shall not cull from others, ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... all; no comment, no exclamation—she continued to gaze with that faint, retrospective smile toward the fire. He knew now why she angered him; it was because she had held the upper hand from the minute that ride over the short pass began—he had never once been able to assert himself impressively. He ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... reverted to this constructive process and studied its stages is an interesting achievement; but the construction is already made by common-sense and science, and it was visionary insolence in the Germans to propose to make that construction otherwise. Retrospective self-consciousness is dearly bought if it inhibits the intellect and embarrasses the inferences which, in its spontaneous operation, it has known perfectly how to make. In the heat of scientific theorising or dialectical argument it is sometimes salutary to be reminded ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Club gave a large reception in their honor at the Brown Palace Hotel, attended by over 1,200 women. The News, in its account, said: "The scene marked, to the retrospective mind, the enormous change that has taken place in the status of the sex within the lifetime of one woman. It hardly seemed possible, as the spectator beheld Miss Anthony surrounded by the richest and most conservative women of Denver, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... of perception by the intermediary of the thoughts of a living person; and the deceased is perceived through a mental representation. The experiment, for this reason, is valueless as evidence of the reality of retrospective psychometry and consequently of the recording part ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... outburst of Greene about "the only Shakescene," the "upstart crow beautified with our feathers," and so forth, is too well known to need extracting here. The Return from Parnassus, a very curious tripartite play, performed 1597-1601 but retrospective in tone, is devoted to the troubles of poor scholars in getting a livelihood, and incidentally gives much matter on the authors of the time from Shakespere downward, and on the jealousy of professional actors felt ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... be not only retrospective but contemporary. The reader of the present volume will appreciate "How to Criticize a Poem (In the Manner of Certain Contemporary Poets)", a critique of the mnemonic rhyme "Thirty days hath September," in the ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... with energy against the republican party which was powerful in the clubs and the jury-courts. The existing enactments as to elections were repeated and enforced by a special law; and by another against electioneering intrigues, which obtained retrospective force for all offences of this sort committed since 684, the penalties hitherto imposed were augmented. Still more important was the enactment, that the governorships, which were by far the more important and especially by far the more lucrative half of official ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... necessity of remaining over anywhere for the winter. At the same time I have been reckoning upon meeting Englishmen in Constantinople who, having travelled extensively in Asia, could further enlighten me regarding the best route to India. As I house my bicycle and am shown to my room I take a retrospective glance across Europe and America, and feel almost as if I have arrived at the half-way house of my journey. The distance from Liverpool to Constantinople is fully 2,500 miles, which brings the wheeling ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens |
