"Retrospection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... composition that may be denominated local poetry, of which the fundamental subject is some particular landscape, to be poetically described with the addition of such embellishments as may be supplied by historical retrospection, or ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... literature of the stage. All these great names are written in the book of death. All that part of old Boston to which I have referred—the scene equally of Gilbert's birth and youth and first successes and of his tender retrospection—has been swept away or entirely changed. Gone is the old Federal Street Theatre. Gone that quaint English alley with the cosey tobacconist's shop which he used to frequent. Gone the hospitable ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... life, my good 15 deeds, of which there were few that I could recall at the moment, and my misdeeds, of which there were many. I pondered if they would miss me at the office. I thought of other offices and other fellows and the nature of their retrospection, fellows who had been in positions similar 20 to mine—and I knew where they were, or ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... in the poor forsaken woman. You may easily imagine that a double interest was attached by her to the ways and companionships of those with whom she had been acquainted in the days which, when present, she had considered hardly-worked and monotonous, but which now in retrospection seemed so happy and unclouded. Accordingly, she had, as we have seen, known where to meet with John Barton on that unfortunate night, which had only produced irritation in him, and a month's imprisonment to her. She had also observed that he was still ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... condensed documents, which, if fully gone into and spread out at length, would have swelled the dimensions of the work, as well as broken the thread of the narrative. It must be borne in mind, that a reader can only be held to the line of a subject, by an occasional retrospection and reiteration of what must be constantly kept in view. The traveler needs, at certain points and suitable stages, to turn and survey the ground over which he has passed. A condensation that would strike out such recapitulations and repetitions, might impair ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... import, purport. Meet, encounter, collide, confront, converge. Meeting, assembly, assemblage, congregation, convention, conference, concourse, gathering, mustering. Melt, thaw, fuse, dissolve, liquefy. Memory, remembrance, recollection, reminiscence, retrospection. Misrepresent, misinterpret, falsify, distort, warp. Mix, compound, amalgamate, weld, combine, blend, concoct. Model, pattern, prototype, criterion, standard, exemplar, paragon, archetype, ideal. Motive, incentive, inducement, desire, purpose. Move, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... never saw other tears from this King,—though in private I do not warrant him; his sensibilities, little as you would think it, being very lively and intense. "To work, however!" This King can shake away such things; and is not given overmuch to retrospection on the unalterable Past. "Like dewdrops from the lion's mane" (as is figuratively said); the lion swiftly rampant again! There was manifold swift ordering, considering and determining, at Nimburg, that day; and towards night Friedrich shot rapidly into Head-quarters at Prag, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... original rest-cure had really safely commenced, and that she was leaving, not only her worries, but her very identity behind her—Lady Ingleby had leaned back with closed eyes in a corner of her reserved compartment, and given herself up to quiet retrospection. ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... fond of indulging, beyond a hope of sympathy, in such retrospection, may be the symptom of some sickly idiosyncrasy. Or is it owing to another cause; simply, that being without wife or family, I have not learned to project myself enough out of myself; and having no offspring of my own to dally with, I turn back upon memory ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... imagined it to be Sunday—was most profuse in the distribution of "compliments." But no acknowledgment came back, no error was admitted, and the day dragged itself to an end, leaving little in its train to turn one's thoughts from gloomy retrospection. ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... low voice, but the tone was clear until the last, when his words were very pathetic. As he closed, his head dropped forward, and he sat gazing fixedly at his ring in an attitude of mournful retrospection. ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... think that retrospection has coloured my view too darkly when I say that my brief experience in Fleet Street made me feel that the Daily Gazette party, the supporters of "The Destroyers" (as naval folk had named the Government of the day) consisted of a mass of smugly hypocritical self-seekers; ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... reached the age of retrospection. He pecked as prettily as any bird. Seated on the right hand of his delightful hostess, nobody could be better pleased; supervised by his jaeger, who stood behind his chair, no one could be better attended. He smiled, ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... burnt itself out between two puffs of his cigar. Ten years ago, perhaps, this particular brand of amusement might have urged him successfully. But not now; he was done with tomfool nights. Indeed, his dissipations had been whimsical rather than banal; and retrospection never aroused a ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... a very full account of the genesis of Waverley. These introductions, written before the final inroad had been made on his powers by the united strength of physical and moral misfortune, animated at once by the last glow of those powers, and by the indefinable charm of a fond retrospection, displaying every faculty in autumn luxuriance, are so delightful that they sometimes seem to be the very cream and essence of his literary work in prose. Indeed, I have always wondered why they have not been published separately as a History of the Waverley Novels by their ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... turmoil of thoughts half indignant, half self-compassionate, came reproach and a great wave of tenderness filial. She saw, as with a sudden gift of retrospection, her mother's long battle with inadequacy, and how it had aged her; saw, too, that the battle had been fought unselfishly, since she knew her mother's declaration that she could contentedly "go back to nothing" was no mere petulant boast. It was for her daughters that she had grown thin ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... fragrant retrospection—for the loving thoughts that start Into being are like perfume from the blossom of the heart; And to dream the old dreams over is a luxury divine— When my truant fancy wanders with that old ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... something numbing to me in the thought of this quiet ordinary little man telling us in a quiet matter-of-fact tone that love had nearly killed him. We had no comment worthy of the fact. He looked across the valley for a moment as though lost in retrospection. ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... far-away look in his eyes betokening an effort of retrospection, withdrew the key from the lock and entered the garage, Gatton and I following. There was a sky window to light the place, so that when Bolton reclosed the door we could see well enough. His movements were as follows: ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... been without its pangs of sorrow, and there were moments of retrospection—as now. She saw herself on Uncle Tom's arm, walking up the aisle of the old church. How many Sundays of her life had she sat watching a shaft of sunlight strike across the stone pillars of its gothic arches! She saw, in the chancel, tall and grave and pale, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... so lost in retrospection that Mary tapped him on the shoulder, when he resumed as ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... covet that which is beyond my reach." 'Tis often a true thing that when we sit within our dark and dismal chamber without comfort, hope or happy retrospection, there stands upon the threshold a joyous phenomenon of which we have never so much as dreamt as being in existence; and this had come to Constance. If the Duke loved her, what would it matter if Cedric did ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... down from the hills and choked up the garden. He listened to the wind as it rose and swelled down the valley, rushing through the orchard boughs, and tossing them up and down in the darkness. The old man was not reposing; thoughtful and aroused he took a clear retrospection of those phases of life that had left scars even ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... with a thing like a fountain pen, a modern touch that prohibited any historical retrospection, and as he finished each sheet, writing in an easy flowing hand, he added it to a growing pile upon a graceful little table under the window. His last done sheets lay loose, partly covering others that were ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... with the vain retrospection, The bond of affection no longer endures. Too late you may droop o'er the fond recollection, And sigh for the friend who was ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... more exalted pleasures of memory and retrospection await the Christian in a future world. Having ascended above this cloudy spot into the glory of the divine presence, it will be his pleasing and privileged employment to retrace the events of past existence, when nothing but a remembrance ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... turbulent struggle of twenty-five hundred years, its poor inhabitants living along only from habit. The only new things in it—the two caravansaries of the traveler—are a hotel and a cemetery. One might end his days here in serene retrospection, and more cheaply than in other places of fewer attractions, for it is all Past and no Future. Probably, therefore, it would not suit the American, whose imagination does not work so easily backward ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... afterward in dreary retrospection how he had survived that first troublous year after his daughter's elopement, when he was so lonely, so heavy-hearted at home, so harried and angered abroad. His comforts, it is true, were amply insured: a widowed sister ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them, and carried them all the days of old." Here is retrospection on the part of the prophet. He thinks of all the oppressions of Israel, and recalls how God's interests have been bound up with theirs. He was not their adversary; He was their sympathetic, loving friend. He suffered with them. Isa. 49:15, 16—"Can a ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... persecution of the Catholics—rack-rents and unjust evictions, are all alike swept away into the limbo of things dead and done with. What Ireland has to deal with now are the enactments and facts of the day, and to shake off the incubus of retrospection, as a strong man awaking would get ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... the roadway they found a hat which she at once identified as the count's. Farther on there was a carriage lamp, and later a mackintosh which had been cast aside as an impediment. "Oh, it was cruel!" She smiled, however, in retrospection. ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds |
