"Retrospection" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... villagers have tried to persuade them that they must be lonely, but they know better than that. Old men love a great deal of quiet and of gentle meandering retrospection; and David and Sandy have each of them forty years' history to tell the other. Then they are both very fond of young Sandy ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... small fish I take it that human wisdom is admirably figured and symbolized; for whereas the crayfish doth move only backward, and can have only retrospection, seeing naught but the perils already passed, so the wisdom of man doth not enable him to avoid the follies that beset his course, but only ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... of a lighted match Mrs. Pettengill's eyes sparkled with a kind of savage retrospection. She shrugged ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... has somewhat faded. The pathos of the Broken Heart and the Pride of the Village, the mild satire of the Art of Book-Making, the rather obvious reflections in Westminster Abbey are not exactly to the taste of this generation. They are the literature of leisure and retrospection; and already Irving's gentle elaboration, the refined and slightly artificial beauty of his style, and his persistently genial and sympathetic attitude have begun to pall upon readers who demand a more nervous and ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... considerable time in Scotland. I made occasional visits to the more picturesque parts; but my habitual residence was on the blank and dreary northern shores of the Tay, near Dundee. Blank and dreary on retrospection I call them: they were not so to me then. They were the eyry of freedom, and the pleasant region where unheeded I could commune with the creatures of my fancy. I wrote then—but in a most common-place style. It was beneath the trees of the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... ardent feelings chilled. He loved, admired, almost worshipped the beautiful girl from whom consent had been extorted, and her quiet, cold manner, troubled his sorely. Glimpses of the real truth dawned into his mind. He let his thoughts go back, and went over again, in retrospection, every particular of their intercourse—dwelling minutely upon her words, looks, manner and emotions at the time he first pressed his suit upon her. The result was far from satisfactory. She had not met his advances as he had hoped; but rather fled from ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... remote past; rust of antiquity. [study of the past] paleontology, paleography, paleology^; paleozoology; palaetiology^, archaeology; paleogeography; paleoecology; paleobotany; paleoclimatoogy; archaism, antiquarianism, medievalism, Pre-Raphaelitism; paleography. retrospect, retrospection, looking back, memory &c 505. laudator temporis acti [Lat.]; medievalist, Pre-Raphaelite; antiquary, antiquarian; archmologist &c; Oldbuck, Dryasdust. ancestry &c (paternity) 166. V. be past &c adj.; have expired &c adj., have run its course, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... with safety; then such a "gamester," however terrible the risks to which he may have exposed his country, is a great man. Complete unity of aims throughout, power given to carry them out, a wonderful absence of very serious mistakes, and finally a life sufficiently prolonged to admit of retrospection; in each of these respects the career of Bismarck resembles ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... behold the loved mistress of my heart, the opposed, yet resistless object of my fondest admiration, caressing an animal she knew to be mine, mourning over him his master's ill health, and sweetly recommending to him fidelity,—Ah! forgive the retrospection, I will dwell on it no longer. Little, indeed, had I imagined with what softness the dignity of Miss Beverley was blended, though always conscious that her virtues, her attractions, and her excellencies, would reflect lustre upon the highest station to which human grandeur could raise her, and ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... sagacious averred, however, that the secret of her continued youth lay in her kindly, unwithered heart, in her loving thoughtfulness for others' weal, and her avoidance, upon philosophical and religions grounds, of whatever approximated the discontented retrospection winch goes with the multitude by the name ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... lengthening tree-shadows creep across the reddish-brown carpeting of straw, and in the long nights when sleeplessness betrayed her into the clutches of torturing retrospection, she waited and longed for the pearly lustre that paved the east for the rosy feet of dawn; listened to the beating of Nature's heart in the solemn roar of the Falls two miles away, in the strophe and anti-strophe of winds quivering through pine tops, the startled ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... suggest a few general questions, which may help you in your retrospection. Have my meditations been pure and acceptable to God through this day? Have I not spoken one idle word? Am I as thankful to God for blessings as I should be? Has there been any feeling of pride in my heart? Has there been any feeling ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... 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 ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... kind of tender retrospection in Anne Valery's manner as she touched the brown curls and smoothed the neat dress, which—riding hat and skirt having been laid aside or tucked up—made a pretty mountain-maiden out of Nathanael's wife. Agatha never could understand the peculiar fondness with which Miss Valery sometimes regarded ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... to which this ardour of criticism has naturally given occasion, none is more obscure in itself, or more worthy of rational curiosity, than a retrospection of the progress of this mighty genius, in the construction of his work; a view of the fabrick gradually rising, perhaps, from small beginnings, till its foundation rests in the centre, and its turrets sparkle in the skies; ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... sun. This was so recent that certainly there did not seem to be any meaning, there did not and what was the result, any one asking any one is not asking any one that, any one asking any one is asking any one why is there no retrospection, why is there more furniture than there was when the houses were empty, why is silence so anxious to please and so distressing, why is it all so changed and so simple, why is there such a long shadow. Any one asking any other one nothing is enjoying plenty of investigation ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... public, characterized Mr. Adams. Every day had its assigned object, which every hour successively, as far as possible, fulfilled. Daily he called himself to account for what he had done or omitted. At the close of every month and year he submitted himself to retrospection concerning fulfilled or neglected duties, judging himself by ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... bosom friend of her own sex, to apply for assistance and protection to one who will feel for the indignity that has been shown her. How will his generous nature shudder, when he hears that she is on the point of being dragged to a loathsome dungeon, for want of the paltry sum of fifty pounds! Retrospection may convince the man of her heart, that her soul is superior to mercenary considerations; else, she would not now be reduced so low in the power of her enemies: she scarcely knows what she writes—her heart ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... a fool to give way to retrospection. He was no exception to the general rule; most men mismanaged their careers—more or less. Still, he was bound to confess that he had done so rather more than less. Oh well, he would settle down to his fate. As for that other girl in the Yukon miner's dress, ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... night is a form of retrospection, or else it is a form of impulsive exclamation, direct from the blood, and unbalanced. Because the active physical consciousness of the night is the blood-consciousness, the most elemental form of consciousness. Vision is perhaps our ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... new illusion we wake to is seen in the exclamation that so often follows retrospection: "Oh, what a fool I was!" As a rule, nothing can be more conceited than this use of the past tense. A few people, perhaps, can look back complacently upon "a well-spent life" (wherein all the years have been laid out to advantage, and every hour has been made to go as far as seventy-five ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... we know it, had already reached its hight, two thousand years before our time. It was already gray with years before the North had begun its infancy. Homer is the boundary which is insurmountably opposed to our further retrospection, and Homer is already the beginning of perfection in Greek letters. Of earlier periods we can but conjecture that there must have been such, bearing a character analogous to the relics of those nations whose fabulous history is better known to us. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Retrospection flickering as a shadow picture on the brain has more than once averted tragedies. In the passing of a second she now saw two long-ago scenes: one, his desperate and victorious fight with a boy who had kicked her puppy; the other, neighbors ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... headed the flight. I remember well that I dashed up the Strand, and dashed down a singular little shed, from which emanated the steam of tea, and a sharp, querulous scream of "All hot—all hot! a penny a pint." I see, now, by the dim light of retrospection, a vision of an old woman in the kennel, and a pewter pot of mysterious ingredients precipitated into a greengrocer's shop, "te virides inter lauros," as Vincent would have said. On we went, faster and faster, as the rattle rung in our ears, and the tramp of the enemy echoed after ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I cannot inform the reader, nor is it, perhaps, of much consequence. My father was a man who invariably looked forward, and hated anything like retrospection: he never mentioned either his father or his mother; perhaps he was not personally acquainted with them. All I could collect from him at intervals was, that he served in a collier from South Shields, and that a few months after his apprenticeship was out, he found himself one fine morning ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... 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, ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... sufficiently incorporated in action. The progress of the drama is now retarded; and again, as if the author perceived that the story had fallen behind or remained stationary, it is accelerated by sudden jerks. A dialogue of retrospection is a common device at the opening of popular plays, with a view to expound the position of affairs to the audience; but a dramatic writer of genius usually works forward through his dialogue to the end which he has set before him. With Browning for the purpose of mental analysis ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... of the professional singer in those ancient times among the Teutons. It has a long list of kings and places, partly historical, partly mythical or not identified. The poem, though narrative and descriptive, is also lyrical. We find here the strain of elegiac sadness, of regretful retrospection, so generally present in Anglo-Saxon poetry of lyric character, and usually much more ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... strain, covered so much ground in the last twenty-four hours, that he wanted to think how it had all come about. Lulled by the sound of the wind, the warm air, and the cool fragrance of the flowers, he sank into deep, drowsy retrospection. ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... Henceforth thy lips shall cease to smile Upon the beauties of this Isle; Henceforth thy mental glance shall roam, O'er the Mediterranean foam, Toward thy far-off Tuscan home! Alarms for young Francisco's weal, And doubts into thy breast steal; While retrospection carries back Thy memory o'er time's beaten track And stops at that dread hour when thou With burning eyes and flashing brow, Call'd Heaven to hear the solemn vow Dictated with the latest breath Of the fond mother on the untimely ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... spending their money freely, soon had every trace of the late troublous times swept away and fresh crops planted. Don Hermoso did not long survive the triumph of the cause which he had so nobly espoused: with the coming of peace there came also time for memory and retrospection, and time for him to miss the dear ones torn from him during the struggle; and shortly after the completion of his great work of restoring his estate to its original prosperous and well-managed condition he passed ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... views, or his seeming isolation from their work-a-day, business world in which he had formerly taken so active a part. They knew naught of his years of solitary life or of how lives spent in years of contemplation and reflection, of retrospection and introspection, become gradually lifted out of the ordinary channels of thought and out of touch with the more practical life of the world. But they had had abundant evidence of his love and devotion to his wife, and of his kindness and liberality towards many of their ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... Sister Josepha been in the world, the eyes would have been an incident. But in this home of self-repression and retrospection, it was a life-story. The eyes had gone their way, doubtless forgetting the little sister they pitied; but the ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... Rowland, I am confounded with confusion at the retrospection of my own rudeness,—I have more pardons to ask than the pope distributes in the year of jubilee. But I hope where there is likely to be so near an alliance, we may unbend the severity of decorum, and dispense ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... anticipation is in vivid contrast to Jeremiah's sorrowful attitude of retrospection. The picture brings out clearly the fact that the keynote of Daniel's prophecy is hope. Looking into his rapt face, we may imagine that this is the message he is writing: "They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... 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 ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... not a woman to waste time in retrospection. She had not been in her room five minutes before her mind was made up. It was improbable that Kirk and his guilty accomplice had sought so near and obvious a haven as the studio, but it was undoubtedly there that pursuit must begin. She knew nothing of his way of living at that ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... been strange, with Barwood's habits of retrospection and continual casting about for the rare and curious, if the subject matter of his conversation with the old painter at Gruyere's had not taken some hold upon his imagination. But to explain the rapidity with which the notion there suggested grew, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... that was when we had the coldest night in forty years, if one can believe the weather bureau." Here Hawkins allowed "Bleak House" to drop listlessly into his lap while he indulged in a moment or two of retrospection. "Let's see; that was said to have been the deadliest cold snap Chicago has ever known. Scores of people were frozen to death on the streets and many of them in their homes. I hope there is no one so luckless as to be homeless tonight. ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... background shifts from the Orient to Troy, where he was the hero of so many deeds of cunning and valor, and where both Menelaus and Helen were chief actors. The literary form passes out of the Domestic Tale of the Present into the Heroic Tale of the Past, from sorrowful retrospection to bracing description of daring deeds. Helen and Menelaus, each in turn, tell stories of Ulysses at Troy to the son, who thus learns much about his father. As already said, the background of this portion is the Trojan war which was the grand Hellenic separation from the Orient. The Iliad, and specially ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... Boers 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
... and Bulwer were yet to be seen by him as fresh contributions to the 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 Stackpole where many a time at the "latter end of a sea-coal fire" he heard the bell strike midnight ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... must use The warp and woof the ready present yields And toil while daylight lasts. When I bethink How brief the past, the future, still more brief Calls on to action, action! Not for me Is time for retrospection or for dreams, Not time for self-laudation or remorse. Have I done nobly? Then I must not let Dead yesterday unborn to-morrow shame. Have I done wrong? Well, let the bitter taste Of fruit that turned to ashes on my lip Be my reminder in ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... bid farewell, My mind to retrospection give, Remote as hermit in his cell, For wisdom and wise friends I'll live." "Is Thursday's worldling, Friday's sage? Too good such news," I bantering spoke. "How oft you've vowed to turn the page, Each ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the mental circumstances of the other. Nay, so complete at times was the communication, that I even doubted her testimony as to some strange correspondence in our past history on this very ground, suspecting that, my memory being open to her retrospection, she saw my story, and took it for her own. It was, therefore, easy for me to account for Dr. Ruthwell's scientific bewilderment ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... personal reminiscences, which are published under the title of "Retrospection and Introspection," much is told of herself in detail that can only be touched upon in this ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... card, his gray eyes lost in retrospection; then he sauntered over to the bookcases, scanning the titles. The Searcher for Lost Persons studied him for a moment or two, turned, and began to pace the room. After a moment or two he touched a bell. A sweet-faced young girl entered; she ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... been silent to you concerning myself, it is because for me retrospection has little that attracts. While yet it was in my power to return to those parents whom I deserted in my boyhood, I thought not of repentance; and now that they must be but too surely lost to me, my yearning towards ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... Life Two Sunsets Unrest Artist's life Nothing but Stones Inevitable The Ocean of Song "It might have been" Momus, God of Laughter I Dream The Sonnet The Past A Dream Uselessness Will Winter Rain Life Burdened Let them go Five Kisses Retrospection Helena Nothing Remains Comrades What Gain? To the West The Land of Content Warning After the Battles are over And they are dumb Night All for me Into Space Through Dim Eyes The Punished Half Fledged The Year The ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... but remained standing. He stood still, and stared, with that curious retrospection into which the mind can often be diverted from even its intensest channels, at the cases of leather-bound books and the grimy medicine-bottles, green and brown with the sediments of old doses, which had so impressed him in his childhood. He saw, with an acute throb of memory, the old valerian ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... is best that is left, Or if it be before, Retrospection is prospect's half, Sometimes ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... surely as she still cried out for the solace of some companionship, not closer than his, but of a different fiber. She had found herself, of late, vaguely hungering for some influence less autumnal, less vesper-like, to hold and wall her back from those grayer hours of retrospection which crept into her life. Yet this was a secret she had kept always locked in her own holy of holies. For even in the face of that indeterminate feeling, it still stabbed her like a knife to think of any thought or life coming ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... 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 had come to preside over his household—a deaf old ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... music and the sunlight had a living value—were no longer mere reminders of past enjoyment. There was something now to live for which stirred him continually to anticipation. He lived in that, not in retrospection; the difference is considerable to any so old as he. The pleasures of the table, never of much consequence to one naturally abstemious, had lost all value. He ate little, without knowing what he ate; and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... from which material has been most freely drawn are as follows: Bernard's "Retrospection of the Stage"; Dr. Burney's various histories of music; Chorley's "Thirty Years' Musical Recollections"; Dibdin's "Complete History of the English Stage"; Ebers's "Seven Years of the King's Theatre"; Fetis's "Biographie des Musiciens"; Hogarth's "Musical Drama"; Sutherland Edwards's "History of ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... slips from my reflection; Whatever follows ne'ertheless may be As a propos of hope or retrospection, As though the lurking thought had follow'd free. All present life is but an interjection, An 'Oh!' or 'Ah!' of joy or misery, Or a 'Ha! ha!' or 'Bah!'—a yawn, or 'Pooh!' Of which perhaps the ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... to me, in many ways, to recall the dreary years I passed in bondage. I would gladly forget them if I could. Yet the retrospection is not altogether without solace; for with those gloomy recollections come tender memories of my good old grandmother, like light, fleecy clouds floating over a ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... eighteenth-century forerunners had essayed in vain. He possessed the true enchanter's wand, the historic imagination. With this in his hand, he raised the dead past to life, made it once more conceivable, made it even actual. Before Scott no genius of the highest order had lent itself wholly or mainly to retrospection. He is the middle point and the culmination of English romanticism. His name is, all in all, the most important on our list. "Towards him all the lines of the romantic revival converge." [2] The popular ballad, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... he did not go out to assist Clemency into the buggy, and bid her good-by. He seemed about to question him, then he took another puff at his pipe, and his face settled into its wonted expression of gloomy retrospection. Boy's and girl's love affairs seemed as motes in a beam of sunlight ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... his childhood, a multitude of trivial and long-forgotten incidents recurring to his memory with inconceivable rapidity. He was a dying man; the agony of drowning was over, and he had entered upon that curious phase of retrospection that most drowning people experience, and that so pleasantly precedes ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... his last hours at the University in the dust and ashes of self-condemnation and regretful retrospection No farewell orgie celebrated his leave-taking. Only one of his friends was invited to his room that night and he no denizen of "Rowdy Row," but the quiet, irreproachable librarian. To this gentle guest The Dreamer confided his past sins and his penitence, while he laid upon the glowing ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... still hour of midnight to drain from their veins the very life blood she gave to them. To drive you and them mad with the expected horror of such visitations—to make your nights hideous—your days but so many hours of melancholy retrospection. Oh, you know not the world of terror, on the awful brink of which you stand, when you talk of making ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... was crowded in those days. . . Pardieu! it is scarce three months since then—and yet . . . Holy Paul, what, changes!" He half closed his eyes in retrospection. . . "It is marvellous what memory can show us in an instant," he said, and turning sharply from the casement struck the bell again. . . "Summon the Lord Steward," he ordered . . . then, to De Lacy, when the page had gone: "And do you attend to what is said and pay no regard to Stanley's glances ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... by thanking Antony for putting Dec'imus Brutus to death; who, being abandoned by his army, had been taken, as he was endeavouring to escape into Macedo'nia, and was beheaded by Antony's soldiers. 3. They then entered upon the business that lay before them, without any retrospection to the past. ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... as well as know, Edward," said his wife. "God is good. In looking back through all our past life, does not the retrospection lead to this undoubting conclusion? I am sure you will say yes. Has he not, in every case, proved better to us than all our fears?—Why, then, should we distrust him now? In the beautiful language of Cowper, let us say in these ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... I avoided discussions and 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 the effect of a work of any ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... twenty-one years since I entered public life, I have experienced many exciting hours under the influence of reformer, orator and actor, but, in this mood of retrospection, I do not know that I have ever passed through a more thrilling, terrible, and yet hopeful experience than last evening, while I listened to your interpretation ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... 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
... 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
... purposes for which this colony was founded, wish to monopolise all the respectable offices of the government, all the functions of emolument, dignity, and power, themselves." "How can they expect pardon of God, if they withhold oblivion from their repentant fellow creatures." "Retrospection should not be pushed beyond the period of arrival, but then subsequent good behaviour should be subject to the severest tests. The re-convicted offender, branded with the lasting impressions of infamy, should be rendered ever ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... infantile trust, which will allow all the innate principles within—all God-bestowed graces which have been bruised and bowed by the tempest, to blossom gently upwards again, in "the clear shining after rain"—a breathing time in life—not too much retrospection or self-examination—keep that for the healthy and vigorous hours of the mind—but a silent basking in the light of God's presence—a time for faith, more than for labour; for general and unexpressed, more than for ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... and Diamond broke into a trot. Back to Blue Hill Farm they went, leaving the silence and the loneliness behind them as they drew near. Mary Ann was scolding the girl from the open door of the kitchen. Her shrill vituperations banished all retrospection from Sylvia's mind. She found herself laughing as she slipped to the ground and handed the horse ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... Each little tribe is a book unread before, and full to the brim of fascination. When they are confronted with the picture of an elephant in a current magazine, they are all excitement. The book is carried eagerly to the old man sunning himself down in the anchored oomiak. Animation, retrospection, agitation chase from his seamed face all traces of drowsiness. "We used to know it." "Our fathers have told us." "This land-whale with its tail in front once lived in the land of the Innuit." We are now the ones to become excited. ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... was rather eager than lasting. He was roused from the reverie of retrospection and regret produced by it, by some inquiry from Edmund as to his plans for the next day's hunting; and he found it was as well to be a man of fortune at once with horses and grooms at his command. In one respect it was better, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... obtrusively offered, to the new knightships and lordships of King James's venal chivalry and parasitic nobility, may naturally have encouraged the satirist to repeat his stroke next year—and must have astounded his retrospection, when he found himself in prison, and under threat of worse than imprisonment, together with his unoffending associates in an admirable and inoffensive comedy. It is impossible to suppose that he would not have come forward ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... astounding Mrs. Knoxwell by the sudden burst of angry words; for she had not spoken for more than an hour, in which the blacksmith's wife had administered occasional appropriate sentences of stinging condolence and well-meant retrospection. "I wish you would ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... serenity; from that moment I ceased to enjoy a pure unadulterated happiness, and on a retrospection of the pleasure of my childhood, I yet feel they ended here. We continue at Bossey some months after this event, but were like our first parents in the Garden of Eden after they had lost their innocence; in appearance ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... 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 ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... own youthful days with shame and sorrow; and which, instead of conceding to young people to be wild and thoughtless, as a privilege belonging to their age and circumstances, prompts him to warn them against what had proved to himself matter of such bitter retrospection! Thus, throughout the whole of life, some means or other are devised for stifling the voice of conscience. "We cry peace while there is no peace;" and both to ourselves and others that complacency is furnished, which ought only to proceed from a consciousness ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... commonplace a suggestion. Under the pretense of chasing away a marauding hen, she sallied out upon the waste near the wagon. It then became evident that the traveler had seen her, and was not averse to her interest in his movements, although he had not changed his attitude of savage retrospection. An occasional ejaculation of suppressed passion, as if the memory of some past conflict was too much for him, escaped him even in this peaceful occupation. As this possibly caused the young girl to still hover timidly in the distance, he ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... am 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 ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... knew—but away 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 ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... light, as phases of gradual maturation, rounded at intervals by crises of creative discovery. Continuity and discontinuity will thus admit possibility of reconciliation, the one as an aspect of ascent towards the future, the other as an aspect of retrospection after the event. And we shall see that the same key will in addition disclose to us the theory ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... one effect has been common with us as a result of this effort at retrospection, and that it has been to leave us more than ever amazed at the stupendous change which one brief century has made in the material and ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... the Egyptians, looking back on the past with a melancholy retrospection, confessed that "never had the valley been more flourishing or happier than under Amasis; never had the river shown itself more beneficent to the soil, nor the soil more fertile for mankind, and the inhabitated towns might be reckoned at 20,000 ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... 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: Relocking the door from ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... the blacksmith exchanged looks on hearing the old soldier give utterance to this singular retrospection of the past. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... delineated a plan of despotism, which however uncommon it may be, for the laws and constitution of the state to be openly and boldly oppos'd, our enemies have long threatened to establish by violence. If Philanthrop upon retrospection shall think so, he will, like a prudent physician, administer an antidote for the poison: If not, I hope the attention of others will be awakened to that excellent maxim, "no less essential in politicks than in morals", principiis obsta. It is ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... and love the towering piles, the strange, black, desolate pathways that are the world to-day. The figure that one discerns in the compositions beginning with the "Dwarf Suite," Opus 16, is one that we all have known intimately a space. These pieces are not youth seen through the golden haze of retrospection. They are the expression of groping, fumbling youth as it feels and as it feels, itself to be. They are music young in all its excess, its violence, its sharp griefs and sharper joys, its unreflecting, trembling strength. ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... at the Shalem House dance last night?" asked Cornelian, by way of explaining his air of complacent retrospection. ...
— When William Came • Saki
... sympathy with some great political truths, which were at the bottom of every boy's heart, but nowhere else; and with the personal achievements and distinction of the chieftains of the party; when all this hubbub had subsided, and retrospection, in the course of a year, had exercised its moralising influence over the more thoughtful part of the nation, inquiries, at first faint and unpretending, and confined indeed for a long period to limited, though inquisitive, circles, began gently to ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... Dimsdale ceased to be the practical scientist—he was all sentimentalist. He gave himself the luxury of retrospection, he enjoyed the languorous moment; the music, the voice, the tinkle of the tambourine, the girl herself, sinuous, sensuous. It struck him that he had never seen an a'l'meh so cleanly and so finely dressed, so graceful, so delicate in manner. It struck ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... his room after luncheon to get some belated letters off his conscience; and when he had left her she had continued to sit in the same place, her hands crossed on her knees, her head slightly bent, in an attitude of brooding retrospection. As she looked back at her past life, it seemed to her to have consisted of one ceaseless effort to pack into each hour enough to fill out its slack folds; but now each moment was like a miser's bag stretched to bursting with ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... sense of the duration of our dreams is found to be grossly erroneous; that, owing to the rapid succession of the images, the realization of which would involve a long duration, we enormously exaggerate the length of dreams in retrospection.[74] From this it is argued that the dream which is recalled on our being suddenly awakened may have had its whole course during the transition state ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... gladness, a sensation of guilty joy. God had stepped in to set the matter straight. The miracle which we all hope for, which never seems impossible in our own case, had been wrought. All lesser ways of making wrong right were unnecessary now. All was over, the pain of retrospection, the painful expedients of law, the danger of publicity, all over. The choice of her poor little leavings for a token to remember her by! Dick shuddered at the thought. To remember her by! when to forget her was all that ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... in mental retrospection, witness the unheard-of massacre that ensued! Behold the ruffians that invade the sacred abode, each bearing in his hand some exterminating weapon; in his eye, a more than fiend-like ferocity. Can it be you they ...
— Brief Reflections relative to the Emigrant French Clergy (1793) • Frances Burney
... the author of a species of 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 incidental meditation. ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... impulse to make a dash for the outside world, fighting his way through if necessary. Looking back over the ground, he wondered how he could have been deceived at all by the unconventional American. In the clear light of retrospection he now saw how impossible it was for her to have been the princess. Every act, every word, every look should have told him the truth. Every flaw in her masquerading now presented itself to him and he was compelled to laugh at his own ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... then went away to a co-educational boarding school. Here for the first time I became happy. A girl of my own age, of fine character and noticeable refinement, fell in love with me and caused me to reciprocate. On retrospection I believe this to have been a genuine and beautiful love on both sides. After a few months, however, our relation, at my initiative and against my friend's will, became a physical one. We expressed our affection by ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... to give him her full attention. She had a feeling that she had seen the man somewhere before, but where and under what circumstances she could not recall. It was no moment for retrospection and ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... of morbid retrospection. I think I can say at this time there was, with the exception of certain Indian nabobs, hardly a wealthy man left in the world who did not owe in some way the retention of his riches to me. I controlled ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... long fast, let me tell you what I know about this new world which will now be your home for a long time. You will learn all, but I am not watching to-night. In seeing you and hearing the familiar English speech I am moved myself by currents of retrospection; my earth home comes back to me. I will satisfy your curiosity, and, you in turn, must tell me what has happened in the ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap |
