"Retrospective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very early, though," said Ewbert, with a gentle sigh, in which her sympathetic penetration detected a retrospective exhaustion. ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... to speak the English tongue. In the Twelfth Book Michael is guilty of a graver lapse where he mentions baptism without explanation or apology. On the other hand, Raphael, who had a pleasanter occasion and more time for his retrospective summary, explains the military manoeuvring of angels by what Adam had already seen of the flight of birds, and after describing the great war in Heaven and the fierce hosting of the opposed forces, ventures, at a later point in his story, ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... 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 ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... Bostil been gloomy or retrospective on the day of a race. In the press of matters he had only a word for Lucy, but that earned a saucy, dauntless look. He was glad when he was able to join the procession of villagers, visitors, and Indians moving out toward ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... a retrospective glance at the situation. The ship Nupple-duck, (Abersouth, master) had, it will be remembered, gone down with all on board except me. I had escaped on the ship Bonnyclabber (Troutbeck) which I had quitted owing to a misunderstanding with ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... remain fully employed." The amount of the emergency grant in addition to the refund of one-sixth already payable will be either one-third or one-sixth of the expenditure on out-of-work pay, depending on the amount of the trade union levy. Under special conditions the grant is to be retrospective. It is, therefore, possible for trade unions to be subsidised so far as unemployment benefit is concerned, to the extent of one-half their payments. But this scheme does nothing to assist trade unions (of which there are many) which get no ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... interest of the tale. Briefly, this has two movements, one forward, which deals with the evolution of Mag from a fat, rather down-at-heel little carrier of washing into the charming young lady of the cover; the other retrospective, and concerned with the mystery of a wonderful artist who has disappeared before the story opens. I have no idea of clearing up, or even further indicating, this problem to you. But I will say that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 28, 1917 • Various
... 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 Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... 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 ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... Madame Olenska two lovers parting in heart-broken silence; they were client and lawyer separating after a talk which had given the lawyer the worst possible impression of the client's case. Wherein, then, lay the resemblance that made the young man's heart beat with a kind of retrospective excitement? It seemed to be in Madame Olenska's mysterious faculty of suggesting tragic and moving possibilities outside the daily run of experience. She had hardly ever said a word to him to produce this impression, but it was a part of her, either a projection ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... wanted to weep and to laugh before this simple faith comparable only to the retrospective memory of the poet Labarta and that village secretary who was always lamenting the remote defeat ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Philosophy proceeds backward, and points out errors of thought and action chiefly when it has become too late to mend them. But it is possible to be poor in the possession of erstwhile prospective wealth, and rich in retrospective poverty. Oh, blessed is he ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... In taking a retrospective view of all the best collections in Italy and of the Italian school in particular, I have been struck by the endless multiplication of the same subjects, crucifixions, martyrdoms, and other scripture horrors;—virgins, saints, and holy families. The prevalence of the former class ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... principle of the measure which I introduce, is designed to cut off the very source of all costliness, insecurity, litigation, by abolishing altogether the system of retrospective titles and ordaining that as often as the fee simple is transferred, the existing title must be surrendered to the Crown, and a fresh grant from the Crown issued ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... 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."—Lamb. ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... 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
... an imperceptible pause Justine sank into the seat beside her. "I am very glad, just now, to give my energies a holiday," she said, leaning back with a little sigh of retrospective weariness. ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... 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 ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... reigns of kings or the lives of politicians, with whose names history has often found it convenient to mark its epochs. These are but milestones on the turnpike. Human progress is over a vast field, and it is only at considerable intervals that a retrospective view enables us to discern whether the movement has been slow or rapid, onward ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 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 ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... 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
... recompense—if pecuniary. The majority carried the day. Thus at first the Body of People present on the occasion were the law-makers, the law-appliers, and law-executors. Each law was special—designed for the particular case in hand, retrospective for vengeance more than ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... the memory of Tom Gray continue to haunt her? Grace gave her shoulders an impatient twitch. How foolish she was to allow herself to grow retrospective over Tom. She had deliberately sent him away because she did not, nor never could, love him. Still she wished that the memory of him would not intrude upon her thoughts so constantly. "It's only because he's associated with the good times the Eight Originals ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... we 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 ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... suppose it is possible for a man ever to thoroughly understand a woman?" he asked, with a retrospective slowness, directed, I was sure, towards that ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... we find him 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 ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... Central Powers, an 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 to devote a ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... 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 Hallam, Charles ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... The instinctive posture of grief is a shuffling compromise between defiance and prostration; and pride feels the need of striking a worthier attitude in face of such a foe. Grancy, by nature musing and retrospective, had chosen the role of the man of action, who answers blow for blow and opposes a mailed front to the thrusts of destiny; and the completeness of the equipment testified to his inner weakness. We talked only of what we were not thinking of, and parted, after a few days, with a sense of relief ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... the Never Never Land. Barrie proved himself a genius when he created Peter Pan, for Peter symbolises man's highest wish—to become a little child and never grow up. "Genius," he says, "is the power of being a boy again at will." It is true in his case. Yet this kind of genius is retrospective; it is a regression. The genius who will help man to look forward instead of backward must not return to boyhood; he must go forward to superman. To put it psychologically, Barrie's genius comes from the unconscious, but what the world needs is a man whose genius ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... 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 which will supply young men with inexpensive ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... 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
... Gibbs, a Chilian named 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 ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... the man to indulge in retrospective fancy. The girl was naught to him, and there was no sense of remorse in his soul for the terrible wrongs which he had inflicted on her. All that he thought of now was the wallet which contained the fortune. That which would ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... turn watched the king as he engaged in the aimless drawing. His meditation grew retrospective, and his thoughts ran back to the days when he first befriended this lonely prince, who had come to England to learn the language and manners of the chill islanders. He had been handsome enough in those days, this Leopold of Osia, ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... is relative. Every thinker is retrospective. The learned member of the legislature, at Westminster or at Washington, speaks and votes for thousands. Show us the constituency, and the now invisible channels by which the senator is made aware of their wishes; the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... will be found in the collections of Hakluyt and Purchas. An article upon his travels, which were published in 1601, occurs likewise in the second volume of the Retrospective Review. The travels of the three brothers, Sir Thomas, Sir Anthony, and Master Robert Sherley, were published from ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... 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 by Prospero (the very Shakespeare himself, as it ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... appear, 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 at the thought. What ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... longitude of Greenwich, as far as I can remember, that these quiet rites of Almayer's and Nina's resurrection were taking place. In the prolonged silence it occurred to me that there was a good deal of retrospective writing in the story as far as it went. Was it intelligible in its action, I asked myself, as if already the story-teller were being born into the body of a seaman. But I heard on deck the whistle of ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... interesting to take a retrospective view of the causes, or rather the means, by which this ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... 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 ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell
... collapse a few hours later, without having said anything more to her husband on the subject of her love for the poet. William Marchmill, in truth, like most husbands of several years' standing, was little disturbed by retrospective jealousies, and had not shown the least anxiety to press her for confessions concerning a man dead and gone beyond any power ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... 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 often ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... 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
... after another they disappeared below, until I was left alone. I know no spot so conducive to reflection as the deserted deck of a ship at anchor on a lovely night, and in a genial latitude. In this instance, however, my thoughts assumed more of a speculative than retrospective character, large as was the field for the indulgence of the latter. The shades of emperors and doges faded away, giving place to the more terrestrial forms of living sovereigns; and the wild shouts of the Moslem conquerors resolved themselves ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... required why the children deserved to be entitled a "thriving" family, to distinguish worthy from unworthy success. This manuscript collection might hereafter develop into a "golden book" of thriving families. The Chinese, whose customs have often much sound sense, make their honours retrospective. We might learn from them to show that respect to the parents of noteworthy children, which the contributors of such valuable assets to the national wealth ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... meal, when more secularly-minded hosts might have suggested pipes, 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 ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... "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
... would be his last on earth. His surroundings seemed incongruous and unreal, and his mind ran in a vein of whimsical speculation. It is strange to think, but it is a fact, all the same, that certain temperaments, when face to face with death, allow their thoughts to take an oddly critical and retrospective view of things in general. The fear of death does not affect them, although, at the same time, they are fully conscious of the momentous ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... puts certain foibles (the more pleasant as they are opposed to the received rules and necessary restraints of society) and do not trouble ourselves about the consequences resulting from them, for no mischievous consequences do result. Sir John is old as well as fat, which gives a melancholy retrospective tinge to the character; and by the disparity between his inclinations and his capacity for enjoyment, makes it ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... of a strong defense at the bar of public sentiment. It would be difficult to account in any other way for the extravagant statements and one-sided arguments made by this class of writers. Yet railroad literature has not confined itself to the retrospective field. Its scope has grown with the significance of its contributors. In more than one instance have men at the head of large railroad corporations, influenced by temporary interest, become the authors of documents containing assertions and prophecies highly pathetic at the time, but ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... 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 time to ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... were the movements of the tongue of Mangel while he formed the letters; elevated were the eyebrows of Mangel and sidelong the eyes, as, with his left whisker reposing on his left arm, they followed his performance; many were the misgivings of Mangel, and slow was his retrospective meditation touching the junction of the letter p with h; something too active was the big forefinger of Mangel in its propensity to rub out without proved cause. At last, long and deep was the breath drawn by Mangel when he laid down the pen; long ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... the slaying of a butcher; and the Seigneur d'Esneval gave sworn testimony that when a friend of the dead butcher publicly called the accomplice in the crime "a murderer," that accomplice would have been delivered up to justice if the principal had not carried the Fierte. The retrospective action of the pardon on the principal also extended to his accomplices, who began life afresh just as he did. And this extension was solemnly confirmed at the inquiry, from which I have just quoted. There is no doubt, however, that so excessive a "prolongation" of the powers of pardon ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... is 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 the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... Constitution was adopted, many persons understood the terms ex post facto laws, to "embrace all retrospective laws, or laws governing or controlling past transactions, whether * * * of a civil or a criminal nature."[1470] But in the early case of Calder v. Bull,[1471] the Supreme Court decided that the ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... remorse; but he cultivated one and seemed to do well with it. He used to reflect upon his mother and his wife, both of whom he had affectionately murdered, and justified himself by declaring that a great artist, who was also the Roman Emperor, would be lacking in breadth of emotional experience and retrospective wisdom, unless he knew the melancholy of a two-pronged family remorse. And from Nero's standpoint it was one of the best thoughts that he ever ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... we enjoyed this pleasure in anticipation. Viewed in the retrospective it is wanting. We did know exactly what we were going to have after the first week. We learned the combination perfectly in that time, and solved the system of deductive boarding-house economy within the ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... 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 with her engine running, and ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... rather!) makes his conquest 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 in all reports of this particularly crass and ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... Royal pardon and received the formal announcement of the decision of the Universities. The "stern and lofty moral principles" [Footnote: Froude, i., 307, 310 (Ed. 1862). The historian's enthusiasm may seem to require some qualification. The retrospective creation of crimes is a dangerous practice: and the penalty applied might even be considered savage.] of the nation were however vindicated, in consequence of the wholesale poisoning of the bishop of Rochester's household, attributed ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... a retrospective glance on what we have hitherto briefly stated, it will be easy to deduce, from the aggregate of these notions, the principal characteristic of that wondrous institution, which it pleased the Divine mercy to found upon earth for the benefit ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... 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 of zones, ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... 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 continuance of Indian slavery for some time longer, as a measure important ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... time; and these 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, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... Beth's first public 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 ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... In taking this, my retrospective view at four-score, I have noted many heart-cheering tokens of social and religious progress, and many splendid mechanical and material inventions to make the world better and happier. Yet I have also seen some painful symptoms of decline and deterioration. All the changes ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... curiosity to learn what in his boyhood had entranced him, but he 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 ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... proceed immediately from beneath her feet, we foretell that a song is impending. When two gentlemen enter, for whom, by a happy coincidence, two chairs, and no more, are in waiting, we augur a conversation, and that it will assume a retrospective biographical character. When any of the performers who belong to the sea-faring or marauding professions are observed to arm themselves with very small swords to which are attached very large hilts, we predict that the affair will end in a combat. Carrying out the ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... 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, with the decorations of ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... particulars are taken from St. Luke's Annual Report of 1851, containing a retrospective sketch of its history, for the use of which we are indebted to the present superintendent, Dr. Mickley. Statistics of recovery are given for different periods, but the fallacies attending such comparisons are so great that I have not ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... 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, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... 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 distance from San Francisco ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... some insult which appeareth To 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 single nature, Thus brought forth to joy and ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... subjugation 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 longed ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... sort of retrospective laugh. "I'm not so sure. I guess she liked the excitement of that, too. You couldn't understand the kind of girl she—She wanted to flirt with me that night I brought ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... those acts which have been called 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 ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... Amy and I are concerned,' said Pendle, gloomily, 'but so late a ceremony will not make my children legitimate. In England, marriage is not a retrospective act.' ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... troubles 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 dreadfully. ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... some incomprehensible subconscious way. Before the perpetration of the deed, its possibility is remotest from our thoughts; but when we did know that he was dead, it seemed, somehow, that we had understood and looked forward to it all the time. This, by retrospective analysis, we could easily explain by the fact of his great trouble. I use "great trouble" advisedly. Young, handsome, with an assured position as the right-hand man of Eben Hale, the great street-railway magnate, there could be no reason for him to complain of fortune's ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... XII. Retrospective Review.—Tractatus de Ventriculo et Intestinis, cui praemittitur alius, de Partibus continentibus in Genere, et in Specie de iis Abdominis. Authore Francisco Glissonio. Lond. 1677, ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... miss'd his large horns, and she miss'd his fair tail, That had hung so retrospective; And his raven plumes, and some other marks Regarding his feet, that had left their sparks In ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... and, as in the screen play, that retrospective distant picture brings one back to an earlier vision, so from the distance we now ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... to suggest the following alternative proposal for consideration of Her Majesty's Government, which this Government trusts may lead to a final settlement: (1) The Government are willing to recommend to the Volksraad and the people a 5 years' retrospective franchise, as proposed by His Excellency the High Commissioner on the 1st June, 1899. (2) The Government are further willing to recommend to the Volksraad that 8 new seats in the First Volksraad, and, if necessary, also in the Second Volksraad, be ...
— Selected Official Documents of the South African Republic and Great Britain • Various
... retrospective lore, Whence cooler Reason tortur'd him before; Comparison of times, the Lab'rer's hire, And many a truth Reflection might inspire, Sunk powerless. 'Dame, I am a fool,' he cried; 'Alone I might have ...
— Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs • Robert Bloomfield
... 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 of my poverty. What, alas! are the advantages ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... 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 hopes ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various
... "this 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
... flushed 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 pleaded ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... eighty-five years old, and I can no longer look forward for future earthly happiness. All my joys are now retrospective, and in the long vista of years that I constantly look back upon, there is no time that affords me more pleasure than that when I was in the Treasury of the United States. The fact that I was instrumental in introducing women to employment in the offices of the Government, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... and half-forgotten. Again and again, when historical investigation has refused to afford me the means of resuscitating some remotely ancient scene, I have been obliged to take counsel of imagination and remember the saying that 'the Poet must be a retrospective Seer,' and could allow my fancy to spread her wings, while I remained her lord and knew the limits up to which I might permit her to soar. I considered it my lawful privilege to paint much that was pure invention, but nothing that was not possible at the period I was representing. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... loss of the wealth which ought to have gone to support the family earldom. It was monstrous to him that the property of one Earl Lovel should not appertain to the next Earl. He would on the moment have had the laws with reference to the succession of personal property altered, with retrospective action, so that so great an iniquity should be impossible. When the case against the so-called Countess was, as it were, abandoned by the Solicitor-General, and the great interests at stake thrown up, he would have put the conduct of the matter into other hands. Then ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... these logs of Pitt's is taken up almost entirely with a retrospective narrative of the events up to the time of Blood's first coming to Tortuga. This and the Tannatt Collection of State Trials are the chief—though not the only—sources of my ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... 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
... whirlwind and directed the storm of German socialism. Bismarck himself confesses to having received in private audience Lassalle, one certainly of the most capable men of modern Germany, and to whom as its first author, a retrospective inquiry would trace back the present formidable, closely ruled organization of socialist operatives of Germany. The first minister of the Prussian crown was closeted once—people say more than once, but that does ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... 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 same may be said of many women. Heart-breaking separations have taken place between young men and young ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... of these are ghostly poems, whether prospective or retrospective. Here is another ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... made him happier, there had been a certain grim pleasure in it. To the fact that he had ruined, by sheer over-righteousness, the last years of the sunny life of Sarah Austen he had been oblivious—until to-day. The strange, retrospective mood which had come over him this afternoon led his thoughts into strange paths, and he found himself wondering if, after all, it had not been in his power to make her happier. Her dryad-like face, with its sweet, elusive smile, seemed to peer at him now ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... that 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 Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... Muse of the County, and a portion of an historical study on Catherine de Medici. This last work, to which the Calvinist Martyr belongs, was undertaken with the idea of composing, as he said, a retrospective history of France treated clairvoyantly, and, as the fragment shows, with his peculiar bias towards despotism. In the experiment made with Catherine de Medici, he started out thinking to justify and rehabilitate her memory. Instead, he found ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... Numerous retrospective notices by himself and others exist of this period; but none of his really boyish letters have been preserved. The exquisite Essay intitled, "Christ's Hospital five and thirty years ago", by Lamb, is principally founded on that delightful writer's recollections ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... the principal sufferer—that every new passion should involve him in new difficulties, and subject him to a degree of mental distress which would have reduced the flesh of any man not hopelessly predisposed to fatness. As Mr. Matthew Maltboy stood by the fire, he was not taking the profitable retrospective view of his life which he should have taken, but was glancing with an expression of concern at the circumference of a showy vest pattern which cut off the view ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... poisoned 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 of it. The fact drew them much ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... were deemed miracles may be explained by natural causes, by figurative modes of expression which were common in Oriental nations, by the tendency of the human mind to embellish or exaggerate surprising facts, or invent supernatural causes for what it is unable to explain, by the retrospective imagination which seeks to dignify the distant past with a supernatural halo. The early annals of all nations are strewn with pretended miracles which no one will now maintain, and Milman shows in a powerful passage how the idea of the miraculous has been steadily ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... VII. affords a field of more doubtful speculation. Every one who takes a retrospective view of the wars of York and Lancaster, and attends to the regulations effected by the policy of that prince, must see they would necessarily lead to great and important changes in the government; but what the tendency of such changes would be, ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... English fires, it often does, on the peculiarities of an old nurse of the family, I was struck again by the tenderness and kindness, shot through with humour, that are always evoked by this particular retrospective mood. I would even say that people are at their best when they are remembering their nurses. To recall one's parents is often to touch chords that vibrate too disturbingly; but these foster parents, chosen usually with such strange carelessness but developing often ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... by a glimpse of an intenser life than the dingy foolery of the Corso. I walked down by the back streets to the steps mounting to the Capitol—that long inclined plane, rather, broken at every two paces, which is the unfailing disappointment, I believe, of tourists primed for retrospective raptures. Certainly the Capitol seen from this side isn't commanding. The hill is so low, the ascent so narrow, Michael Angelo's architecture in the quadrangle at the top so meagre, the whole place somehow so much more of a mole-hill ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... into consideration our different mental and physical constitutions, is there not rather a remarkable sameness in them? It is certainly a very unusual circumstance to hear of any dream that does violence to the common experience of mankind. One class of dreams, which may be termed RETROSPECTIVE, is of frequent occurrence. These are characterized by the revival of associations long since forgotten. The faculty of Memory appears to be preternaturally exalted; the vail is withdrawn which obscured the vista of our past life; and the minutest events of childhood pass ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... confusion, the immense element of rectification, not to say of rank disproof, that it introduced into Mrs. Connery's favorite picture of her own injured past—all this worked, even at the moment, to quicken once more the clearness and harshness of judgment, the retrospective disgust, as she might have called it, that had of late grown up in her, the sense of all the folly and vanity and vulgarity, the lies, the perversities, the falsification of all life in the interest of who could say what wretched frivolity, what ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... distinctly; and then coolly broke my 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 ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... 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 American themes in an English ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... is less pleasure in retrospective considerations, the mind is more disposed to wander forward into futurity; but, at sixty-four, what promises, however liberal, of imaginary good can futurity venture to make? yet something will be always promised, and some promises will be ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... yes, but all those labours would be more or less futile without that elusive element of inspiration, intuition, luck—call it what you will—which constitutes genius, which alone distinguishes such men from the other capable plodders about them. A brief retrospective survey of the surprising results achieved by Dr. Lepardo within the space of an hour will show these to have been due to brilliant imagination, deep knowledge of human nature, foresight, unusual mental activity, and—that other ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... discarded, but disgraced, and perhaps punished, by a Louis XVIII. Any person who would be imprudent enough to attempt to prove the impossibility, as well as the absurdity, of these impolitic and retrospective measures, would be instantly taken up and shot as an emissary of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... stayed with him long after they were seated at table; and far into the future the remembrance of the lunch itself, with its pleasant private sense of satisfaction, was destined to return to him in retrospective moments. The delightful atmosphere of the Fraides' home life had always been a wonder and an enigma to him; but on this day he seemed to grasp its meaning by a new light, as he watched Eve soften under its influence and felt himself drawn imperceptibly from the position of a speculative outsider ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... closed his eyes, 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 ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... conscious 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
... 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
... the existing government. The House of Commons was in actual possession of the supreme power. From that house they derived protection, to it they owed obedience, and with it they were ready to live and die. Cromwell and his friends had the wisdom to yield; the retrospective clauses were expunged,[b] and in their place was substituted a general promise of adhesion to the parliament, both with respect to the existing form of public liberty, and the future government of the nation, "by way of a republic without king ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... 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, and a skill in arranging ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... to her moonlight walk with Jack as one of the few occurrences in her life that, at the time, she had not understood. She understood well enough afterward, with retrospective vexation for her so ludicrous, yet, after all, so natural innocence. At the time she hadn't even seen that Jack had jockeyed her out of a communing with Sir Basil. She had actually thought that Jack might have some word of penitence or exculpation ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... book of life may be said to begin at the chapter where woman comes in; mine did. She came in years ago, when I was a raw undergraduate. With the sober thought of retrospective analysis, I may say she was not all my fancy painted her; indeed now that I come to think of it there was no fancy about the vermeil of her cheeks, rather an artificial reality; she had her bower in the bar of the Golden Boar, and I was madly ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... 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 the memorable ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... of the fundamental powers represented by the types, in the sense of a sublimation, does not manifest therefore in contrast to their retrospective form (titanic, purposeless form) an essentially foreign nature; the important novelty in them is that they no longer are used egotistically but have acquired a content that is ethically valuable, to which the intro-determination was an aid. This determination, whose external aspects we have ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... box 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
... house like?" I ventured to ask, in interruption of the retrospective melancholy she had ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... following remonstrance against the before-mentioned regulation of the Admiralty Court, that vessels captured within a certain distance of the shore should not be prize to the captor; this regulation being evidently intended as retrospective, with a view of nullifying the captures ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... my dear Henry, removed from my fond care and instruction; and young as you are, you have entered upon the vast theatre of the world. Some years hence, when time shall have matured your ideas, and enabled you to take a clear, retrospective view of your steps in life, you will be able to enter into my feelings, and to judge of the anxiety which at this moment agitates ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... 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 ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... result. It was probably in the ensuing 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 |
