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Hark back   /hɑrk bæk/   Listen
Hark back

verb
1.
Go back to something earlier.  Synonyms: come back, recall, return.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Hark back" Quotes from Famous Books



... with some hauteur, and it was several days before entire cordiality was reestablished; in fact, in all her after life, Mammy would, when in certain moods, hark back to "dat time when dat long-mouthed Polly had de imperdence to say dat our folks' backs weren't as straight ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux

... He was to sail next morning. We had dinner that day with his family, and then came up to San Francisco for a last and farewell bachelor night. We could take in the opera together, have supper at our favourite cafe, and then turn in. It was a long hark back to our childhood; but for all that we ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... singer and the hearer is complete. The infinite joy is manifesting itself in manifold forms, taking upon itself the bondage of law, and we fulfil our destiny when we go back from forms to joy, from law to the love, when we untie the knot of the finite and hark back ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore

... in a less enlightened age the Church should have adopted rigorous measures—although no more rigorous than their own laws demanded—against those Jews who practised magic and witchcraft must appear deplorable to the modern mind, but so must many other phases of mediaeval life. Why then hark back perpetually to the past? If the Jews were persecuted in a less enlightened age, so were many other sections of the community. Catholics were persecuted, Protestants were persecuted, men were placed in the stocks for minor offences, scolding women were ducked in the village pond. But ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... gaze for many years; but he had found his treasure for himself, buried safe in the earth since ages ago, and he had brought her thence directly to that upper room where few eyes but his own had ever seen her. Perhaps he was a little mad on this point, for strong natures that hark back to primitive types often seem a little mad to us. But at the root of his madness there was that which no man need be ashamed of, for it has been the very foundation of human society—the right of every ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... the lakes, rounding up with Como. I will follow with the trip from Como to Milan, and Milan shall be my care. You can do Verona and Padua; I Venice. Then we can both try our hands at Rome and Naples; in the latter place, to save time, I will take Pompeii, you Capri. Thence we can hark back to Rome, thence to Pisa, Genoa, and Turin, giving a day to Siena and some of the quaint Etruscan towns, passing out by the Mont Cenis route from Turin to Geneva. If you choose you can take a run along the Riviera and visit Monte Carlo. For my ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs

... hark back to the incident of the wonderful volcano upheaval which wrecked Ohinemutu and its terraces, its mountains and its lakes. For about a month previous to the eruptions the captains of the coastal boats plying along the eastern coast from Wellington to Auckland, ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon

... greater and greater powers to the executive; in other words, he was becoming a figure of importance. No such office as that of President of the United States was then in existence. It was a new position which they were creating. We have become so accustomed to it that it is difficult for us to hark back to the time when there was no such officer and to realize the difficulties and the fears of the men who were responsible for ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand

... impossible one does not argue. We must select. Selection implies skilful practice. Skilful practice is only another term for Art. So far plain common-sense leads us. On this point, then, let us set up a rest and hark back. ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... over which I still hang fascinated; I must have kept intensely still in my corner, all wondering and all fearing—fearing notice most; and in a definite way I but remember the formidable interest of my so convincing dowager (to hark back for a second to her) and the fact that a great smooth white cloth was spread across the denuded room, converted thus into a field of frolic the prospect of which much excited my curiosity. I but recover the preparations, ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... in a minute," Dick assured his hearers. "Yet, before telling you, I want to impress upon you that, whenever you are tempted to be angry, to be harsh in judgments, or when you can think only ill of your neighbor, then you should always hark back to just what the man on the ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock

... greatness of nations. The longing for colonial possessions, for the extension of commerce, the great jealousy and apprehension of peoples in regard to their trade routes, and the fear nations have for their commerce, quite out of relation to present needs and conditions, hark back to an old romance of the sea. The waterways of the world, the islands and new continents have a traditional appeal, which comes down to us from the days when the small countries of Europe, one after another—Portugal, Holland, Spain, England—became great in wealth, and grew to be world powers, ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge

... as good or bad. But this area is, of necessity, limited, and for the reasons that have been given above. Properly understood morality is not something very abstract, but something that is very concrete. The underlying reason for morality is always the same, and we are compelled to hark back to it for justification. And no rejection of religion can alter the basis ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... of the rest of Mexico, and though I took up new lodgings en famille in aristocratic Chapultepec Avenue, with a panorama of snow-topped Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl, her sleeping sister, and all the range seeming a bare gunshot away, the imagination was more inclined to hark back to the Bowery than to the great Tenochtitlan of the days ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... and many others record the giant figures of history who took Tahiti from the mist of the half-known, and wrote it on the charts and in the archives. Other streets hark back to that beloved France to which these French exiles gaze with tearful eyes, but linger all their years ten thousand miles away. They saunter along the rue de Rivoli in Papeete, and see again the magnificence of the Tuileries, and hear the dear noises of la belle Paris. They are sentimental, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... "I shall hark back to my boyhood days," said he, "and relate an incident in my early life, and its sequel when I attained man's estate. I suppose all of us have had experiences which have more than once brought home the weight of that bewhiskered old ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald

... hark back a little now to the moment when Torquato Trotto, having given his instructions to Piero, went into the house. The stairway was empty, for both I and my charge were with La Marmotte, and the Italian ran upstairs with a footfall as light as that of a cat. On reaching the landing he stopped for ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... incriminate three entirely different people, only one of whom can be guilty, and your faith in circumstantial evidence dies of overcrowding. I never see a shivering, white-faced wretch in the prisoners' dock that I do not hark back with shuddering horror to the strange events on the Pullman car Ontario, between Washington and Pittsburg, on the night ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... she said, "you didn't exactly begin your acquaintance with this planetary sphere yesterday—couldn't, you know, though you are very beautiful to look at. So, if you don't very particularly much mind, we'll hark back to ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... supply of ammunition, and the reserve was handy to draw more from. Tommy Atkins carried 100 rounds of the new hollow-nosed Lee-Metford cartridges. Behind him were mules loaded with a further twenty rounds for him. The Khedivial soldiers had 120 rounds of Martini-Henry cartridges. To hark back: at 4.30 a.m., ere dawn had tinged the east, the Sirdar bade Colonel Broadwood, commanding the Egyptian cavalry, send out two squadrons to ascertain what the enemy was about. Thereupon one squadron rode off to the hills ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... this plan that Edison has now constructed a phonograph which delivers its reproduction to a roomful of people. Keys and pedals are provided with which to stop the apparatus either in recording or receiving, and in the latter case to hark back and repeat a word or sentence if required. This is a convenient arrangement in using the phonograph for correspondence or dictation. Each instrument, as we have seen, can be employed for receiving as well as recording; and as all are made ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... Oahu over the cliff of Nuuanu. The language of Hawaii resembles the tongues spoken in the southern archipelagoes, thereby bearing out the legend of early migrations. As, in the East, we hear tales that seem to hark back to the lost Atlantis, so among the Pacific tribes are faint beliefs in a continent in the greater ocean that sank thousands of years ago, and of coral islands built on its ruins that crumbled or were shaken down in their ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... all seems! Yet how—er—happy were those days. No cares. No sorrows. No troubles. No misunderstandings. Excuse me, Josiah. I don't know why it is that I hark back like this when we get together. But it does me a world ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper

... country, belligerent or neutral. What lesson? That we have erred in permitting ourselves to grow dependent on the industry, goodwill, and intercourse of other nations, and that we should endeavor to hark back to an earlier economic state of national independence? Well, there are even in Britain rhetorical politicians who speak of the necessity of retaining all "key" or "essential" industries within their national control—who propose to reverse ...
— Morals of Economic Internationalism • John A. Hobson

... past. But while English art can point to such work in black-and-white as Frank Reynolds (to say nothing of others, with whom this volume is not concerned) produces, he must have dull senses who deplores the present and must hark back to the days, let us say, of Charles Keene to find satisfaction for his ...
— Frank Reynolds, R.I. • A.E. Johnson

... crow (Corneille) was plucked. Now comes the painful side of this grotesque performance: after he had been thus quenched at his first flash, this genius, thoroughly modern, fed upon the Middle Ages and Spain, being compelled to lie to himself and to hark back to ancient times, drew for us that Castilian Rome, which is sublime beyond question, but in which, except perhaps in Nicomede, which was so ridiculed by the eighteenth century for its dignified and simple colouring, we find neither the real ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... in print is terrible to me, especially when it is about things the significance of which has for a long time lain far behind me. In fact, if I still trouble myself about these earlier operas, it is only from the necessity of circumstances, not from any desire to hark back. This leads me to Berlioz and Raff. Candidly speaking, I am sorry to hear that Berlioz thinks of recasting his "Cellini". If I am not mistaken, this work is more than twelve years old. Has not Berlioz developed in the meantime so that he might ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... hand gently upon his shoulder and looked straight into his eyes: "Don't, Win," she said; "don't always hark back to ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx

... searching in the bazaars we have found not one Christmas card that showed even a glimmering of the true romance, which is to see the beauty or wonder or peril that lies around us. Most of the cards hark back to the stage-coach up to its hubs in snow, or the blue bird, with which Maeterlinck penalized us (what has a blue bird got to do with Christmas?), or the open fireplace and jug of mulled claret. Now these things are merry enough in their way, or they were once ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... Again, to hark back to the other romances, we have found the word fay attached to the name of King Arthur's sister Morgan. Nothing is more remarkably certain than the close and constant association in mediaeval lore of the fairies and the fairy-world with the Arthurian cycle of romance;[74] King Arthur's sister ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick

... to his farm. He noticed about this time that his hind, Parsons, did oft drag up the subject of Miser Brimpson Drake; and first Jonathan laughed, and then he was angered, and bade Thomas hold his peace. But, though a very obedient and humble sort of man, Parsons would hark back to the subject, and tell how his father had known a man who was own brother to a miser; and how, when the miser died, his own brother had seen him clear as truth in the chimley-corner of his room three nights after they'd buried him; and how they made search, and found, not three ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough

... the new revelation, its certain proofs and its definite teaching, let us hark back for a moment upon the two points which have already been treated. They are not absolutely vital points. The fresh developments can go on and conquer the world without them. There can be no sudden change in the ancient routine of our religious habits, nor ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle

... other hand, was a limited monarchy. Her king could not have acted thus even if he so desired. Such mesures had to have the sanction of Parliament, which would have to hark back to an enlightened public opinion since Parliament was a representative body. And public opinion, especially in matters of education, is slow of creation. As a matter of fact, even tho the English people ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd

... so far a call, even now, for this divine humanity, weaned upon the nutritious food of intelligence, nursed in the refining lap of civilization, to hark back, driven by one rush of events, to the lowest forms of nature that exist. If, in the hour of death, seeking immunity from peril, there live men who have trodden down the bodies of women, beaten them with naked ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... though it is not possible to repress a single phase of that humanity, which, because we live and move and have our being in the life of humanity, makes us what we are, it is possible to isolate such a phase, to throw it into relief, to be divided against ourselves in zeal for it; as we may hark back to some choice space of our own individual life. We cannot truly conceive the age: we can conceive the element it has contributed to our culture: we can treat the subjects of the age bringing that into relief. Such an attitude towards Greece, aspiring to but never actually reaching its ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater



Words linked to "Hark back" :   go back, recur, refer, denote



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