"Retrospective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sight or movement, space in its two manifestations—Time and Distance—of which the former is the space of the intellect, the latter is physical space? Sometimes they found it reconstructing the past, either by the power of retrospective vision, or by the mystery of a palingenesis not unlike the power a man might have of detecting in the form, integument, and embryo in a seed, the flowers of the past, and the numberless variations ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... inside, the people under the wheels; the philosopher gets out of the way. Stand aside, and let them pass. As to myself, I love lords, and shun them. I lived with one; the beauty of my recollections suffices me. I remember his country house, like a glory in a cloud. My dreams are all retrospective. Nothing could be more admirable than Marmaduke Lodge in grandeur, beautiful symmetry, rich avenues, and the ornaments and surroundings of the edifice. The houses, country seats, and palaces of the lords present a selection of ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... prepared himself most carefully. So did Guizot. We see from the "Revue retrospective" that he even prepared his replies. His long experience enabled him to foresee what he should have to answer. Pasquier used to bring his speech ready written. It lay on the desk before him, but ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... is a meeting nobly retrospective, a meeting that has about it a certain October gold. I drink to old days;" and he finished his ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... satisfaction, she returned to the parlour; where the locksmith, stimulated by quietness and Toby, had become talkative, and was disposed to take a cheerful review of the occurrences of the day. But Mrs Varden, whose practical religion (as is not uncommon) was usually of the retrospective order, cut him short by declaiming on the sinfulness of such junketings, and holding that it was high time to go to bed. To bed therefore she withdrew, with an aspect as grim and gloomy as that of the Maypole's own state couch; and to bed the rest ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... indeed, I have not myself been wholly free from apprehension of possible embarras, should we, at this period, visit London; for though M. d'Arblay not only could stand, but would court, all personal scrutiny, whether retrospective or actual, I see daily the extreme susceptibility which attends his very nice notions of honour, and how quickly and deeply his spirit is wounded by whatever he regards as injustice. Incapable, too, of the least ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... long month of masquerade meandered night and day through the public places. His carnality and hers, so startling in their later developments, showed now in fact but as the engaging force of youth, since youth, however unpromising its antecedents, can never have sinned irretrievably. Yet to curious retrospective minds not long afterwards, these graceful follies would seem tragic or allegoric, with an undercurrent of infernal irony throughout. Charles and his two brothers, keeping the gates of a mimic paradise in the court of the Louvre, ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... again. He had been led on by pure enthusiasm in his subject, and had really forgotten what bearing this retrospective survey had on his listener. He had found occasion for saying the same thing more than once before, and was not distinctly aware that he had ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... 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 that of the patient patriarch on ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... half an hour later, all the retrospective confessions and disclosures having taken some time to get through,—"when shall I install a mistress in the capacious but exceedingly gloomy abode my ancestors so ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... wild judgments, its quaint old-fashioned dress and phraseology; then comes the second volume, full of actual work and serious responsibility, with those childish parents to provide for, whose lives, though so protracted, never seem to reach beyond their nurseries. Miss Mitford's third volume is retrospective; her growing infirmities are courageously endured, there is the certainty of success well earned and well deserved; we realise her legitimate hold upon the outer world of readers and writers, besides the reputation which she won upon the ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... "Tacks?" queried Harvey, a retrospective grin appearing on his lips. "Gee! I wish I'd thought to put a couple——But, excuse me, I can't talk ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, criticisms. The foregoing generations beheld God and Nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... because he can 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
... 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, ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... that characteristic phenomenon, to us of considerable importance, which might be called retrospective illumination of perception. It consists in the appearance of a sense- perception under conditions of some noticeable interruption, when the stimulus does not, as a rule, give rise to that perception. I cite a simple ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... to God as well as to man; and that past unfaithfulness to a solemn covenant cannot be made good merely by keeping to its terms for the future. No honest man dishonours a past debt, or compromises with his integrity by simply beginning anew and paying as he goes. Reformation takes a retrospective glance and begins in restitution and reparation for all previous wrongs and unfaithfulness. It is one of the worst evils of our day that even disciples are so ready to bury the financial and moral debts of their past life in the grave of ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... we had often met Lord Slang, or beyond all doubt, that we were on intimate terms with Sir Chipkins Glogwog. Finding that we were equally unable to lay claim to either of these distinctions, he expressed great astonishment, and turning to his wife with a retrospective smile, inquired who it was that had told that capital story about the mashed potatoes. 'Who, my dear?' returned the egotistical lady, 'why Sir Chipkins, of course; how can you ask! Don't you remember his applying it to our cook, and saying that you and I were so like the Prince and Princess, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... more congenial to his feelings. Then he found leisure not 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
... the 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 object was without a parallel in our history, and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Alexander the Great was divided, at his death, among his generals; but, before relating their history, it is necessary to take a brief retrospective glance at the affairs of Greece. Three years after Alexander had quitted Europe the Spartans made a vigorous effort to throw off the Macedonian yoke. They were joined by most of the Peloponnesian states; but though they ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... 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, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... short chapters on books, authors, the circumstances in which they wrote, the moods in which they should be read to be appreciated, the nature and specific qualities of taste, poetry, fiction, the drama, history, and philosophy. The author's turn of mind is chiefly retrospective: he writes more in the spirit of the last age than of the present. Indeed, he seems too much inclined to ignore the value of our later literature; almost the only modern authors whom he quotes are ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... support the proposal, will do all that he can to prevent it from being considered as indicative of hostile or altered feeling towards France, and will assume for the increase in question any degree of responsibility present or retrospective which can fairly attach ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... was there. He had a book in his hand, and tears in his eyes. I never beheld a look more melancholy. Capable as he is of resisting the cowardice of self-complaint and gloom, still there are moments, I perceive, in which he can yield; and, sighing over others woes, can cast a retrospective glance on self. He had been reading the Julia of Rousseau. The picture given by St. Preux of his feelings had awakened sympathy too ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... courts, in such their proceedings, have exceeded their jurisdiction, violated the rights of the subject, and acted in direct opposition to the Bill of Rights of this state, considered justly as part of the constitution thereof; by giving to a law, not intended to affect this case, a retrospective operation, thereby to deprive free men of this state of their liberty, contrary to the laws of the land. In consequence of this decree several of the negroes were again set at liberty; but the next General Assembly, early in ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Moreau received the command of the armies of the 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 be from ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... laws of exact science, so 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 Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... mine eye, by sorrow shaded, Drops the solitary tear, O'er remember'd joys, now faded, To young love and rapture dear. E'en the retrospective feeling, Leaves a momentary thrill; All the wounds of sorrow healing, For my ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various
... to take at various intervals a retrospective view of life, and of the characters they have met with, seems to be a natural feeling of human nature; and every one is disposed at times to recall to memory many circumstances and many individuals which suggest abundant subjects ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... 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
... Nor, indeed, is the future; but it will be. We cannot alter, we cannot benefit, we cannot serve the past, because it is not and will not be. Our besetting tendency as individuals is to live for our own pasts, more especially as we grow old; to become retrospective, to cease to look forward, even to dedicate what remains to us of life to the service of what is not at all. In this respect, as in so many others, we are less wise than children. We will not let the dead bury its dead. This is also the tendency of all institutions. Even ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... 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 stood the usual tests ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... had much pleased him—for it was long before his smile of retrospective pleasure faded from his pleasant mobile face. Morris's trust and confidence in him had been extraordinarily pleasant to him: and modest and unassuming as he was, he could not help a secret gratification ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... 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: ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... was the mistake in not obtaining an accurate legal opinion respecting the character of these meetings at the first, and then prohibiting them, a far greater mistake is now, we think, committed in instituting these retrospective prosecutions. For this mistake the law officers of the crown must, we infer, be held responsible. Were they men of energy and vigour, with the necessary knowledge of the world, they would not have ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... speaking of "the ancient gentleman" in a tone of reverential eulogy, quite at variance with the free comments we have just quoted. But the Rev. John Jones was probably of opinion, with Mrs. Montagu, whose contemporary and retrospective letters are also set in a different key, that "the interests of religion were connected with the character of a man so distinguished for piety as Dr. Young." At all events, a subsequent quasi-official statement weighs nothing as evidence against ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... out for Genoa, while walking in the garden with Countess G——, he went into a retrospective view of his mode of life in England. She, on hearing how he passed his time in London, perceiving what an animated existence it was, so full of variety and occupation, showed some fears lest his stay in Italy, leading such a peaceful, retired, concentrated sort of life, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... stock of 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 days ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various
... practice that I contemplate purchasing at Budmouth—hardly more than twenty miles off. Forgive my saying that it will be far better if nobody there knows where you come from, nor anything about your parents. Your beauty and knowledge and manners will carry you anywhere if you are not hampered by such retrospective criticism." ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... Christian or Jew.' And we are men, Mr. Van Ostend; men primarily before we are either financier or priest. Let us speak as man to man; put aside all points of view entailed by difference of training, and meet on the common ground of our manhood, I am sure the perspective and retrospective ought to be in the same line of ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... from necessity, modern civilized women are faithful from the sense of honor, duty, affection, and in return for their devotion they expect men to be faithful for the same reasons. Their jealousy has not yet become retrospective, like that of the men; but they justly demand that after marriage men shall not fall below the standard of purity they have set up for the women, and they insist on a conjugal monopoly of the affections ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... ever said against the heiress, is obliged to confess to herself that the great "er" had had to express everything. Contempt, dislike, kindly disdain—he was always kindly—he made quite a point of that. Truly, thinks Miss Kavanagh to herself after this retrospective glance, "er" is the greatest word in the ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... felicitate each other on another recurrence of the season of the Christian's rejoicing, 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 neither Miss —- nor yourself are exceptions. Miss —-'s ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... Webb was a lady who supported an impossible present upon an important past. She had once been heard to remark that if she had not something to look back upon she could not live: and, as her retrospective view was racial rather than individual, the consolation attained might be considered disproportionate to the needs of the case. The lines of her present had fallen in a white frame house in the main street of Kingsborough; those of ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... 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 in all ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... 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 ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... life little is known; for, unless cradled in the higher circles of society, the early lives of eminent men frequently remain shrouded in obscurity. The development of their genius alone draws attention to their history, which is generally progressive; hence a retrospective view is ambiguous. Little is known either of Rembrandt's birth or the place of his death; what is known has already been related, from Houbraken to Bryan, and from Bryan to Nieuwenhuys, and anecdotes have accumulated, for something new must be said. It is, however, fortunate that in searching ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... though it is many degrees higher than anything we have seen (up to the middle of July) in England this dreadful year. The illustrations are helpful, and, without being obtrusively antiquarian, have most of them a retrospective or historical interest, as well as the more obvious one which is common to illustrations. The forty short chapters of which the book consists are filled with sketches of the life our English friends lived in the mountain nook, and of the manners and daily lives of the peasantry ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... the beauty of Greece, on which we gaze as upon some wondrous flower wafted from Elysian Fields, and too ethereal for this gross world; nor that of Rome, with Pallas' snow-clad bosom and retrospective eye; but the sensuous beauty of the far south, that casts a Circean spell upon the souls of men. Her eyes are not dove's eyes that softly shine along the path to Heaven, but wandering fires that light the way to Hell. Her lips are not a thread of scarlet, chaste ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... ill, he became convinced he was going to die. A 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 ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... 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 course he had not been ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... triumph, mother, we shall only save the family. Calyste has killed within me the holy fervor of love,—killed it by sickening me with all things. What a honey-moon was mine, in which I was made to feel on that first day the bitterness of a retrospective adultery!" ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... western side. Thinking of that morning's journey, it has sometimes seemed to me that there was something ridiculous in my position; a man, armed to the teeth, but wholly unable to fight, and equally so to run away, traversing a dangerous wilderness, on a sick horse. But these thoughts were retrospective, for at the time I was in too grave a mood to entertain a very lively sense ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... water—and out of those two disinterested impulses, by some impressive law of compensation, material prosperity had come. What Ralph understood and appreciated was Mrs. Spragg's unaffected frankness in talking of her early life. Here was no retrospective pretense of an opulent past, such as the other Invaders were given to parading before the bland but undeceived subject race. The Spraggs had been "plain people" and had not yet learned to be ashamed ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... stranger may count on a hearty welcome from King David (whom Heaven long preserve!) and from his household much civility; and here, with capital fare, over a fire of wood,—never use anthracite in a close room,—will find, if he has been as observant as he ought, much to amuse and gratify him in a retrospective glance over a journey of some hundred miles, performed with little fatigue or inconvenience, between the chief cities of quaker ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... stay; what was that dark film, like a tiny cloud, that came sweeping down toward them from far up the lake? Dick, the practical, was the first to catch sight of it, for Phil was standing like one in a trance gazing at the scene with a retrospective look in his eyes that seemed to say his thoughts were far away. As Dick watched the approaching cloud-like film it resolved itself into a flock of wild ducks, making, as it seemed, directly for the patch of rushes near which ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... struggling against a passionate desire for fellowship. She had 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 ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... get invitations to these parties," a famous actor declared, "are the most elusive chaps on earth. Half London is dying to know what really goes on there, and yet, if by any chance one comes across a prospective or retrospective guest, he is as dumb about it as though it were some Masonic function. We've got you this time, Baler, though. We'll put you under the ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... What went on behind the 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 ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... with the true character of a Proclamation of Martial Law, and was suggested by the refusal of the Privy Council, on April 2, 1906, to grant leave to appeal from sentences passed in Natal by court-martial, in respect of acts committed on February 8, 1906, whereby retrospective effect had, it was alleged, been given to a proclamation not issued till the day after the acts were committed, See Mcomini Mzinelwe and Wanda v. H.E. the Governor and the A.G. for the Colony of Natal, 22 Times Law ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... that Aunt Hester and her mother were on the eve of a quiet chat went to her own room. It was in the gloaming and the girl enjoyed that hour more than words can tell. Her thoughts were happy ones. All was now bright and fair, and if at times she took a retrospective glance at the unhappy past it gave her more cause to be thankful. It always brought up a quotation from a sermon which she heard in a ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... attempt the recovery of taxes for the past, and make them equal to the present; and that he who is content with a moderate victory is always most successful; for those who would more than conquer, commonly lose." With such words as these he calmed the disturbance, and this retrospective equalization was no ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... 17: The Retrospective Review, however (Vol. I, November, 1852), has an article, 'Mrs. Behn's Dramatic Writings,' which warmly praises her comedies. The writer very justly observes that 'they exhibit a brilliance of conversation in the dialogue, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... scene, Prospero's 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 of the moment chosen ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... us in the future, but she cannot prevent our having enjoyed them in the past. We are frequently not able to enjoy a benefit for long, but the benefit is not thereby destroyed. Let Nature struggle as hard as she please, she cannot give herself retrospective action. A man may lose his house, his money, his property—everything to which the name of benefit can be given—yet the benefit itself will remain firm and unmoved; no power can prevent his benefactor's having bestowed them, or ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... word with eager interest. No one had ever told her as much of Old Swallowtail as he was now telling her of himself. She wondered why he was so confidential. Was it because she seemed dull and stupid? Because she was a stranger who was likely to decamp instantly when he let her go? Or was the retrospective mood due to the hour and the unwonted situation? She waited, scarce breathing lest she lose ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... a poet seems to have taken a retrospective view of the age of peace of James I. contemplating on its results in his ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... substitute a paper medium in the place of coin. Had every State a right to regulate the value of its coin, there might be as many different currencies as States, and thus the intercourse among them would be impeded; retrospective alterations in its value might be made, and thus the citizens of other States be injured, and animosities be kindled among the States themselves. The subjects of foreign powers might suffer from the same cause, and ...
— The Federalist Papers
... 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 ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... The stretching and tension of healthy muscles, the deep draughts of out-of-door air, the excitement of rivalry, the comradeship of cooperative endeavor, the ABANDON of effort, the glow of achievement, contribute much in immediate and retrospective pleasure to the ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... word, as if doing so were rather smart conduct than a mean action, for which the poor victim herself, encumbered with a child, and not I, had really to pay the penalty, in spite of certain pecuniary aid that was given. There, that's the retrospective trouble that I am always unearthing; and you may hardly believe that though so many years have elapsed, and it is all gone by and done with, and she must be getting on for an old woman now, as I am for an old man, it really often destroys my sense ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... 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 Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... imagination hideous. Now we leave the sterner presence Of the earth and all its changes, And we take the wings of fancy, (Which is sister to poesy), Guided by the light of record Thereon mount, and fly, surveying, Far above the heights of knowledge. And we take a retrospective Of the ancient times and people, When was nature young and blooming, When our fathers were created, And within the blessed Eden Set to tend and to adorn it. Adam with his Eve beloved, Happy in their ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... the broad, ample playgrounds of her stately old Academy, and shared in the wholesome, health-giving sports their breadth permitted. I have known certain of her astute schoolmasters and felt the full rigor of their discipline. Stern tutors they were, at times seemingly cruel, but what retrospective mind will not now accord them unstinted praise and gratitude? Something more than the mere awakening and development of slumbering intellects was their province: raw, untamed spirits were given into their hands for a brief ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... other eyes Might have uplit my highway? That fond, sad, retrospective sight Would catch from this dim byway Prized figures different quite From ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... in a preceding letter about "Gladstone, Gore, and Co." turned out to be prophetic as well as retrospective. Mr. Gladstone published this autumn in "Good Words" his "Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture," containing an attack upon Huxley's position as taken up in ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... 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
... now take a brief retrospective glance at the FACTS mentioned in the foregoing pages. They seem to teach us that, in ages so remote as to be well nigh lost in the abyss of the past, the Mayas were a great and powerful nation, whose people had reached a high degree of civilization. That it is impossible for us to ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... miraculous, it is not only improbable, but impossible likewise, that they should have been done by men whose knowledge and experience were considerably less than our own. It has seemed to me, in fact, that this question of the retrospective possibility of miracles is more important to us Rationalists, and, for the matter of that, to Christians also, than the question of their prospective possibility, with which Professor Huxley's article mainly deals. Perhaps the Professor himself could help those of us who think so, ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... mountain-climbing that I have been doing with my boys and girls stands out like a cameo in my retrospective view. Sometimes we looked back toward the valley, and it seemed so peaceful and beautiful that it caused the mountain before us to seem ominous. At such times, when courage seemed to be oozing, we needed to reinforce one another with words of cheer. The steep places seemed perilously rough at times, ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... A retrospective survey of the progress made and of the reforms instituted in medical education in the United States is instructive. In many respects there is cause for much congratulation, while for other reasons the situation gives rise to feelings of alarm. It is pleasing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... of the 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 more than he ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... wanting. But this does not in the least alter the matter. The people who inveigh the most fiercely against the pretensions of blue blood are generally, the world over, the ones who are devoured by the most ardent retrospective ambitions for grandfathers and grandmothers; and the Americans who cry out loudest against the hollow vanity of the European aristocracy are generally those who have genealogical trees and coats-of-arms of authenticity more or less questionable hanging in their back parlor, and think themselves ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... would lead us to a side-table, where a selection of theological works was displayed, and bid us take our choice. "Kay on the Psalms" was a possession thus acquired, and has been used by me from that time to this. Nor must this retrospective page omit some further reference to J. W. Burgon, Fellow of Oriel and Vicar of St. Mary-the-Virgin. Dean Church called him "the dear old learned Professor of Billingsgate," and certainly his method of conducting controversy savoured (as Sydney Smith said about Bishop ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... 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 and ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... antediluvian, antebellum, never to return, gone with the wind, exploded, forgotten, irrecoverable; obsolete &c (old) 124. former, pristine, quondam, ci-devant [Fr.], late; ancestral. foregoing; last, latter; recent, over night; preterperfect^, preterpluperfect^. looking back &c v.; retrospective, retroactive; archaeological &c n.. Adv. paleo-; archaeo-; formerly; of old, of yore; erst [G.], whilom, erewhile^, time was, ago, over; in the olden time &c n.; anciently, long ago, long since; a long while, a long time ago; years ago, yesteryear, ages ago; some time ago, some time since, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... sadly retrospective countenance. "Travelling, lad—contemplating the world, from the King's highways. Take note, my boy,—a prosperous man! I came into the world without a rag that I could call my own, and now I have an abundance. Saith the philosopher: Some men are born to rags, some achieve ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... father and his 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 long ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... 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 Jim died for want of material, ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... high, And the great green apples growing, Rested she her wandering eye, With a retrospective knowing. "This," she said, "the shelter is, Where, when gay and raven-headed, I consented to be his, And our willing hearts ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... arms. "What power," exclaimed she indignantly, "has the admiral to give away my vassals?" [68] Determined, by one decided and peremptory act, to show her abhorrence of these outrages upon humanity, she ordered all the Indians to be restored to their country and friends. Nay more, her measure was retrospective. She commanded that those formerly sent to Spain by the admiral should be sought out, and sent back to Hispaniola. Unfortunately for Columbus, at this very juncture, in one of his letters, he advised ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... section located in the northeastern part of the building, comprised a collection par excellence of elegant paintings, masterpieces from the best artists of this country. Very interesting was the retrospective art exhibit in this department; illustrating the various stages in the development of American art, from its incipiency to the ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... during my rebellious childhood at the orphanage without adding imaginary woes," Lawrence went on, amusedly retrospective. "I remember one day when I was at the awkward stage. I was all dressed for church and happened to stumble over another boy lying in the grass. I fell against a bench, my trousers caught on a projecting nail, and ripped ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... alone that has the privilege of rendering men passionate. Such was the legitimate result of these retrospective views. I now ask myself whether, by labouring to put the truth of this aphorism in full light, the passionate advocate of Mesmerism showed ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... 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 ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... quite wrong. I did enjoy that evening. It was a—a misunderstanding, I think," said Claire, much exercised to find an explanation of what could really not be explained. Of the third "At Home" she had heard nothing until this moment, and a pang of retrospective disappointment mingled with her present content. "I have been to the house several times when they were alone," she continued eagerly. "They even asked me on ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... have borrowed many strokes for the picture of Muggleton, that town of sturdy Kentish cricket. Sometimes he would walk across the marshes to Gravesend, and returning through the village of Chalk, would pause for a retrospective glance at the house where his honeymoon was spent and a good part of Pickwick planned. In the latter end of the year, when he could take a short cut through the stubble fields from Higham to the marshes lying further down the Thames, he would often visit the desolate churchyard ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... 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 ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... 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 ...
— The Lost Guidon - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... object, seeming to be the finding of his friend, who is rolled, like 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 ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... the real man-within-the-man that she knew now revealed himself only after marriage. Jadwin her husband was so different from, so infinitely better than, Jadwin her lover, that Laura sometimes found herself looking back with a kind of retrospective apprehension on the old days and the time when she was simply Miss Dearborn. How little she had known him after all! And how, in the face of this ignorance, this innocence, this absence of any insight into his real character, had she dared to take the irretrievable ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... I figured out on shipboard. But, as is so frequently the case with the most pleasing things in life, I found the anticipation rather outshone the realisation. Already I detect myself, in a retrospective mood, hankering for the savoury ragouts we used to get in peasant homes in obscure French villages, and for the meals they gave us at the regimental messes of our own forces, where the cooking was the home sort and good honest American ...
— Eating in Two or Three Languages • Irvin S. Cobb
... 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
... consulted an eminent man of science, who is thoroughly conversant with the present stage attained by this branch of pathology, to which he has himself rendered important service. I asked Doctor Georges Dumas, Professor at the Sorbonne, whether sufficient material exists for science to make a retrospective diagnosis of Jeanne's case. He replied to my inquiry in a letter which appears as the first ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... and prayers, which by some are supposed to have been the composition of Aldhelm. That Alfred had the highest opinion of Aldhelm, and of his predecessors and contemporaries, is indisputable; for in his famous letter to Wulfseg, Bishop of London, he takes a retrospective view of the times in which they lived, as affording "churches and monasteries filled with libraries of excellent books in several languages." It is quite clear, therefore, that our great Alfred was not a little infected with the ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... hours. He looked out to sea with a meditative and retrospective mind. He was going over the past which seemed so far away, so vague, since he had gone sailing in the Annie Laurie ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... at the climax of her narrative, Theresa—seized by a spasm of retrospective resentment and jealousy, the picture of the young man carrying the girl tenderly in his arms across the dusky lawns arising before her—choked and her voice cracked up into a bat-like squeaking, Charles ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... expected to be made during the ensuing year, with a copy of the various correspondence deemed necessary to throw light on the subjects which seem to require additional legislation. Claims have been made for retrospective allowances in behalf of the superintendent and some of his assistants, which I did not feel justified in granting. Other claims have been made for large increases in compensation, which, under all the circumstances of the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... SS. (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 to its ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 37. Saturday, July 13, 1850 • Various
... find the sum of all religion. They make the highway along which man may return, without danger of erring, to the order and happiness that were lost far back in the ages now but dimly seen in retrospective vision. No lion is found in this way, nor any ravenous beast; but the redeemed of the Lord may walk there, and return with songs and everlasting joy upon ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... occasioned by the Assemblee des Notables, have prevented the reducing the substance of the letter into the form of an Arret, as yet though I have continued soliciting it as much as circumstances would bear. I am now promised that it shall be done immediately, and it shall be so far retrospective to the date of the letter, as that all duties paid since that, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Electricity, occupying an area exceeding 2,000 square meters. In the center of the exhibit there was a space 350 square meters in area, used as a resting room for visitors. There were to be seen in a circular arrangement the show cases that made up the retrospective and modern exhibits sent by the French department of ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... about two years," began Evangelist again, speaking in a retrospective tone. "I had two little children, the elder not eight years old, and my sister was my housekeeper. She did not like housekeeping nor taking care of children. Some women don't. She came to me one day with a very serious ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... surface there had commenced even then a decline. Under 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 ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele
... retrospective appreciations came a doubt. She wondered whether, after all, her school had been right. Whether it ought to have treated them all so seriously. If she had gone to the other school she was sure she would never ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson |
