"Retrospective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... our Henry 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, and much more, in ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... in my mind that the true solution of my problems lay in a working back upon my life's tracks. My thoughts wandered insistently to the northern half of the coast of New South Wales. Even now I could hardly say just how much of my retrospective vision was genuine recollection, and how much the glamour of youth. I tried to recall without sentiment the effects produced upon me, for example, by the climate of that undoubtedly favoured region. But I am not sure that my efforts gave results of ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... to be the finding of his friend, who is rolled, like a mummy, in numberless boas and shawls:—during the process of unswathing, which was no easy job to one in a hurry, so artfully were the pins introduced, Master Tommy treats his friend Walter to a railroad retrospective review of the good things in store—recounting all the "lummy" things left yesterday;—telling about the "nobby" Christmas tree Captain de Camp gave them—though his ma' did say it was "a pretty give!"—it was stolen out of his ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... Tillie seemed fast asleep. She had slipped to the floor at the beginning of the song, and sat with her head upon her drawn-up knees, with her hands clasped above them. She made no move. The officer continued his singing, still softly, and in a retrospective mood. He was a born musician. His whole soul craved song, and the greatest deprivation to him in Alaska was the lack of music. For this reason, he kept his own banjo with him, and many an evening's entertainment had he furnished in cabin and beside camp fire, ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... best style, as the novelist of manners. It opens, like Vanity Fair, with a short amusing scene that poses, as the French say, some leading actor in the play, and encourages the reader to go on. Next follows, as is usual with our author, a short retrospective account of the people and places among whom the plot is laid, with a descriptive pedigree of his hero. In his habit of setting his portraits in a framework of family history (compare the Crawleys, the Newcomes, the Esmonds) he resembles, though with ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... looked away with an absent expression in his faded near-sighted eyes. Was he enjoying his present life? Ben would have taken his oath to the contrary. Again there flashed over him the impression of a prison with this fellow-being in confinement. There was indescribable pathos in that dull retrospective gaze, and Ben looked away. In the land from which he came there could not be found such an example of hopeless and useless age. There the aged had occupation,—the care of their children's children, a garden, ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... this consciousness of the rectitude of his own attitude had not 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, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... irrecoverable; obsolete &c (old) 124. former, pristine, quondam, ci-devant [Fr.], late; ancestral. foregoing; last, latter; recent, over night; preterperfect^, preterpluperfect^. looking back &c v.; retrospective, retroactive; archaeological &c n.. Adv. paleo-; archaeo-; formerly; of old, of yore; erst [G.], whilom, erewhile^, time was, ago, over; in the olden time &c n.; anciently, long ago, long since; a long ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... 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 Lamb, and Southey; and it is evident, both ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... 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 ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... SEC. 32. Retrospective laws, punishing acts committed before the existence of such laws, and by them only declared criminal, are oppressive unjust and incompatible with liberty, wherefore no ex post facto law ought to be made. No law taxing retrospectively sales, purchases, ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... took no notice. There was a retrospective light in his dark eyes. He tapped upon the table again with his ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... say, may prevent this; but nations have no gratitude, they only know their interest, and nothing retrospective is any motive for action. We need not search into remote periods for proofs of this, see Holland, Spain, Russia, &c. during the latter part of the last war. [end ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... military estimates, Sir Robert Peel will support the proposal, will do all that he can to prevent it from being considered as indicative of hostile or altered feeling towards France, and will assume for the increase in question any degree of responsibility present or retrospective which can fairly attach ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... 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 glorified itself; but he checked ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... 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 ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... the street. But every day for the past ten years he has been coming to our office for his bundle of old newspapers. These he reads carefully, and sometimes what he reads inspires him to write something for our paper on the future of the Queen City, though much oftener his articles are retrospective. He is the president of the Old Settlers' Society, and once or twice a year he brings in an obituary which he has written for the family of ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... 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 ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... variously interpreted, and to attempt to analyse the motives of a double-minded man is always a hazardous experiment; but a comparison of date, the character of Clement himself, the circumstances in which he was placed, and the retrospective evidence from after events, points almost necessarily to but one interpretation. It is scarcely disputable that, frightened at the reception of Anne Boleyn in France, the pope found it necessary ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... 26th.—By taking a retrospective view of what is past, we learn to ask more wisely in the time to come. The cool dictates of reason, assisted by that inward monitor, conscience, placed within the breast of every individual, strongly condemns every deviation from propriety, justice, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... at various intervals a retrospective view of life, and of the characters they have met with, seems to be a natural feeling of human nature; and every one is disposed at times to recall to memory many circumstances and many individuals which suggest abundant subjects for reflection. We thus find recollections ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... Christian's rejoicing, permit me to tender to yourself, and by you to your Sister, mine and my Wife's heartfelt congratulations and warmest wishes with respect to the coming year. It is a common belief that if we take a retrospective view of each departing year, as it behoves us annually to do, we shall find the blessings which we have received to immeasurably outnumber our causes of sorrow. Speaking for myself I can fully subscribe to that sentiment, ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... him in the same chair, in the same position, his hat and gloves still on, his stick in his hand, but he was silent, apparently lost in contemplation of his boot toes, and his smile was less imbecile and even a bit retrospective. ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... This case has been often referred to in law-books, but I have never met with so full a statement of the contents of the declaration as in the Retrospective Review (vol. v. ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... From the retrospective view which the narrative required, I now turn to speak of the alarm caused by the young King's march into England. Though Cromwell was personally in Scotland, he continued to govern in London through ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... 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 a handsome fellow Morris ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... requires retrospective consideration. Unlike the laws of perspective, distance gives it greater size. So it was with Gorham's supreme and final demonstration of his strength. To Covington, who, true to his promise of the night before, was present at this crucial meeting of the Board of Directors, ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... case always you will do the thing which is right. For he cannot discern independently what will make him happy; and he must decide on the spot. The use of the nexus between morality and happiness must therefore be inverted; it is not practical or prospective, but simply retrospective; and in that form it says no more than the good old rules hallowed in every cottage. But this furnishes no practical guide for moral election which a man had not, before he ever thought of this nexus. In the sense in which it is true, we need not go to the professor's ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... not that of a country woman. The thin, high-bridged nose, the fallen cheeks, the shadows under eyes gloomy and retrospective—these were marks of the town; above all, perhaps, that sallow greyness of the ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... statement "Sacrifice and burnt offerings Thou wouldst not" (Ps. xl, 6), and on Jesus' own explanation of his death, that He offered himself in testimony to the Truth—that is, that the Eternal Life will no more exercise a retrospective vengeance upon us for our past misunderstanding of It, than would electricity or any other force. We may explain the modus operandi of the great offering in any of these ways, for the Scripture presents it in all ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... a practical thing, of course," Fulkerson admitted. "But as something retrospective, speculative, I believe it would make a hit. There's so much going on now about social questions; I guess people would like to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the admiral to give away my vassals?" [68] Determined, by one decided and peremptory act, to show her abhorrence of these outrages upon humanity, she ordered all the Indians to be restored to their country and friends. Nay more, her measure was retrospective. She commanded that those formerly sent to Spain by the admiral should be sought out, and sent back to Hispaniola. Unfortunately for Columbus, at this very juncture, in one of his letters, he advised the continuance of Indian slavery for some time longer, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... neck; his chin was very long and ended in a point; his nose was broad, with sensitive nostrils that marked every breath he drew. As for his eyes, which instantly attracted attention, they were brown and gentle as a girl's but had that retrospective expression that suggests far-away thoughts or an utter lack of interest in one's surroundings. They never looked at but through one. The effect of Carg's ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... toward the end of his London career, rode the 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 ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... to these parties," a famous actor declared, "are the most elusive chaps on earth. Half London is dying to know what really goes on there, and yet, if by any chance one comes across a prospective or retrospective guest, he is as dumb about it as though it were some Masonic function. We've got you this time, Baler, though. We'll put you under the inquisition on ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to see them run," he said. Mike was a tough, but with a better chance he might have been a hero. The thought came to him, too, when it was all over and the end in sight. He put it all in one sober, retrospective sigh, that had in it no craven shirking of the responsibility which was properly his: "I never had no ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... before the murder, according to Knox. She had been in my mind, whence (on the theory of thought transference) she may have passed to Miss Angus's mind; but I had never speculated on Mariotte's costume. Nothing but conjecture, of course, comes of these apparently 'retrospective' pictures; though a most singular and picturesque coincidence occurred, which may be told in a very ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... of Alexander the Great was divided, at his death, among his generals; but, before relating their history, it is necessary to take a brief retrospective glance at the affairs of Greece. Three years after Alexander had quitted Europe the Spartans made a vigorous effort to throw off the Macedonian yoke. They were joined by most of the Peloponnesian ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... to which he soon after became a victim had an equally fatal effect in disenchanting the dream of his existence. Those imaginary, or, at least, retrospective sorrows, in which he had once loved to indulge, and whose tendency it was, through the medium of his fancy, to soften and refine his heart, were now exchanged for a host of actual, ignoble vexations, which it was even more humiliating than painful to encounter. His misanthropy, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... known the broad, ample playgrounds of her stately old Academy, and shared in the wholesome, health-giving sports their breadth permitted. I have known certain of her astute schoolmasters and felt the full rigor of their discipline. Stern tutors they were, at times seemingly cruel, but what retrospective mind will not now accord them unstinted praise and gratitude? Something more than the mere awakening and development of slumbering intellects was their province: raw, untamed spirits were given into their hands for a brief spell—brief when ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... within moderate limits. My aim is not to write the "Life and Times" of Charles Lamb. Indeed, Lamb had no influence on his own times. He had little or nothing in common with his generation, which was almost a stranger to him. There was no reciprocity between them. His contemplations were retrospective. He was, when living, the centre of a small social circle; and I shall therefore deal incidentally with some of its members. In other respects, this memoir will contain only what I recollect and what I have learned from authentic ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... it may be noted. It, when referring to something that precedes, may be called "retrospective;" but when to something that follows, "prospective." In "Avoid indiscriminate charity: it is a crime," "it" is retrospective.[6] In "It is a crime to ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... and distinctly handsome. He was something above the medium height, and very well dressed. He wore a fur-lined coat which looked opulent. He had gray hair and a black mustache. There was nothing menacing in his face. He was, indeed, smiling a curious retrospective smile, as if at his own thoughts. Although his eyes regarded James attentively, this smiling mouth seemed entirely oblivious of him. The man gave an odd impression, as of two personalities: the one observant, with an animal-like observance for his ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... various embassies 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 original ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... back 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 ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Andelot, near Langres, with his young nephew Childebert, king of Metz, and Queen Brunehant, his mother, contains dispositions, or, more correctly speaking, words, which breathe a sincere but timid desire to render justice to all, to put an end to the vindictive or retrospective quarrels and spoliations which were incessantly harassing the Gallo-Frankish community, and to build up peace between the two kings on the foundation of mutual respect for the rights of their lieges. "It is established," says this treaty, "that ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... may expect the art of the days of real freedom to rise above that of those old violent days. But I do say that it was possible then to have social, organic, hopeful progressive art; whereas now such poor scraps of it as are left are the result of individual and wasteful struggle, are retrospective and pessimistic. And this hopeful art was possible amidst all the oppression of those days, because the instruments of that oppression were grossly obvious, and were external to the work of the craftsman. ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... youths of twenty were liable to serve for five years either on land or sea; and the contingent required was filled by the drawing of lots. Deep and strong resentment was felt throughout the country, the more so that the law was made retrospective to all who had reached the age of twenty in the three preceding years. The battalions thus raised were treated as French troops, and were sent to take part in distant campaigns—in Spain and in Russia. Of the 15,000 men who marched with Napoleon into Russia ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... the laws of exact science, so alien, I had almost said, to the experience of our lives. Yet is this true, or are such experiences only ignored and put aside without serious consideration? Are there not in the history of each of us passages which strike our retrospective thought with awe, almost with terror? Are there not in nearly every community individuals who possess a mysterious power, concerning whose origin, mode of action, and limits, we and they are alike in the dark? I refer to such organic ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... darkly; the sad and wailing cry of the pewet or the plover was the only sound that broke the stillness, and far as the eye could reach, a dreary waste extended. The air, too, was cold and chilly; it was one of those days which, in our springs, seemed to cast a retrospective glance towards the winter they have left behind them. The prospect was no cheering one; from heaven above or earth below there came no sight nor sound of gladness. The rich glow of the Peninsular landscape was still fresh in my memory,—the luxurious verdure; ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... easily conceive far more than you enlarge upon in this counsel: and, indeed, I have not myself been wholly free from apprehension of possible embarras, should we, at this period, visit London; for though M. d'Arblay not only could stand, but would court, all personal scrutiny, whether retrospective or actual, I see daily the extreme susceptibility which attends his very nice notions of honour, and how quickly and deeply his spirit is wounded by whatever he regards as injustice. Incapable, too, of the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... species, then, being at present the most admissible one, and the retrospective survey of such species showing convergence, as time recedes, to more simplified or generalised organisations, the result to which the suggested train of thought inevitably leads is very analogous in each instance. If to kosmos or the mundane system have been allotted powers equivalent to the development ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... it was late enough to make a call, Rosamond went to Mrs. Plymdale, Mr. Ned's mother, and entered with pretty congratulations into the subject of the coming marriage. Mrs. Plymdale's maternal view was, that Rosamond might possibly now have retrospective glimpses of her own folly; and feeling the advantages to be at present all on the side of her son, was too kind a woman not to ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Greek Philosophy: it becomes Retrospective, and in Philo the Jew and Apollonius of Tyana leans on Inspiration, ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... in the name of Victor Emmanuel," Garibaldi attacked and occupied Palermo, and having established his ascendency in the island, invaded the Neapolitan territory on the mainland. The Sardinian Government, for diplomatic reasons, disavowed the expedition, but gave a retrospective assent to it later ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... handsome face, and the sleek perfection of his limbs, clear cut against the dusky background beyond. And now the javelin was going. Surely the mystic would think better of it at the last moment! No! the initiate held his ground with tight-shut lips and retrospective eyes, and even as I looked the weapon ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... was suggested by the refusal of the Privy Council, on April 2, 1906, to grant leave to appeal from sentences passed in Natal by court-martial, in respect of acts committed on February 8, 1906, whereby retrospective effect had, it was alleged, been given to a proclamation not issued till the day after the acts were committed, See Mcomini Mzinelwe and Wanda v. H.E. the Governor and the A.G. for the Colony of Natal, 22 ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... literary connoisseurs who cast a retrospective glance over days long past, may awaken into memory that delicately constructed and pensive-looking man, of Pearl-street, recognized by the name of Charles Smith. I believe he was a New-Yorker. Pulmonary suffering was his physical infirmity—his relief, tobacco, the fumes of which aver surrounded ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... or dignity of character specially associated with Rome he shows equally few traces. His outlook on life is not sufficiently serious, he shows little interest in Rome of the past, and has nothing of the retrospective note so prominent in Lucan, Juvenal, or Tacitus; he lives in and for the present. He writes, it is true, of the famous suicide of Arria and Caecina Paetus,[671] of the death of Portia the wife of Brutus,[672] of the bravery ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... the memory of Mr. Cox's services, the governor deemed it a tribute justly due to him to give his name to this grand and extraordinary pass, and he accordingly called it Cox's Pass. Having descended into the valley at the bottom of this pass, the retrospective view of the overhanging mountain is ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... 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 pleasure, Innocent and sweet amusement, In attending ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... assistance, in the furtherance of plans which were always requiring, from little immaterial circumstances, some slight alterations, was found necessary; and it must here suffice those to know, who shall, after my destruction do me the melancholy favour of perusing this retrospective record, that some months after Antonia had taken the veil, I succeeded in restoring her to the arms of her lover, witnessed their private nuptials, visited them in their new residence, a villa in a secluded ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 531, Saturday, January 28, 1832. • Various
... From this retrospective philosophizing with the lesson that it taught, John turned to dreaming of Consuello as the one he loved. His imagination, from which he slipped the leash of worry and care, pictured for him gloriously delightful, utterly impossible scenes—Consuello and he on a yacht skimming ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... of the earth-moon evolution must from this point forward cease to be retrospective. Having begun at that critical moment when the month and day were first equal, we have traced the progress of events to the present hour. What we have now to say is therefore a forecast of events yet to come. So far as we can tell, no agent is likely to interfere with the gradual evolution ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... sunny France, where it was written, and the remainder of one's existence in mere London—or worse than mere London—as has been the case with me. If I had spent all my life from infancy upward in Bloomsbury, or Clerkenwell, or Whitechapel, my early days would be shorn of much of their retrospective glamour as I look back on them ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... a retrospective light in his eye. "He first joined us as a sleight-o'-hand man in the side-show. That cussed little brother of 'is got a job taking tickets. Dick 'ad been in jail a couple of times and he decided to turn over a new leaf. He'd 'a' been all right if it 'adn't been for Ernie. Ernie ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the Society, and those who have repeatedly enriched its Transactions, were distinguished by being collected into a separate and honourable list. It would also be found, perhaps, not less a future incentive than an act of retrospective justice, if the names of all those illustrious Fellows who have formerly obtained the medals, as well as of all those individuals who have been large benefactors to the Society, were recorded at the end of the list. ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... reserve which I have often noticed in myself with vexation. My heart never dares to speak seriously, either because it is ashamed of being thought to flatter, or afraid lest it should not find exactly the right expression. I am always trifling with the present moment. Feeling in me is retrospective. My refractory nature is slow to recognize the solemnity of the hour in which I actually stand. An ironical instinct, born of timidity, makes me pass lightly over what I have on pretence of waiting for some other ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... heavily on the harvest of originality, he shows us that this plant—this part of the garden—is but a relative thing. It is dependent also on the richness that ages have put into the soil. "Every thinker is retrospective." ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... of the works of Cotton Mather I shall examine, in this scrutiny of his retrospective opinions and position, relating to the witchcraft prosecutions, is the Magnalia, printed at London, in 1702. He had become wise enough, at that time, not to commit himself more than ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... is!' suddenly exclaimed Avice, whose attention had wandered somewhat from his retrospective discourse. She was looking from the window towards the cliffs, where, upon the open ground quite near at hand, a slender female form was seen rambling along. 'She is out for a walk,' Avice continued. 'I wonder if she is going to call here this afternoon? She is ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... quickly alienated by his aggressive intolerance. They urged upon the Satsuma baron the dangers that attended such propagandism, and he, already smarting from commercial disappointment, issued an edict, in 1550, declaring it a capital offence to embrace Christianity. The edict was not retrospective. About one hundred and fifty converts whom Xavier, aided by Anjiro, had won during his two years' sojourn, were not molested, but Xavier himself passed on to the island of Hirado, where he was received by salvos ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... important general 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 queen hath ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... 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
... is inside, the people under the wheels; the philosopher gets out of the way. Stand aside, and let them pass. As to myself, I love lords, and shun them. I lived with one; the beauty of my recollections suffices me. I remember his country house, like a glory in a cloud. My dreams are all retrospective. Nothing could be more admirable than Marmaduke Lodge in grandeur, beautiful symmetry, rich avenues, and the ornaments and surroundings of the edifice. The houses, country seats, and palaces of the lords present a selection of all that is greatest and most magnificent in this ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... kept himself aloof from contemporary thought, produced almost a new type of serious prose, distinguished for color, ornamentation, melody, and poetic thought. Even such prosaic objects as wood and brick were to his retrospective gaze "half mere soul-stuff, floated thither from who knows where." His object was to charm his reader, to haunt him with vague suggestions rather than to make a logical appeal to him, or to add to his world of vivid fact, after the ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... can be done in C, but it requires a {language lawyer} to know what is and what is not legal— the design is *almost* too large to hold in even hackers' heads. Much of the {cruft} results from C's attempt to be backward compatible with C. Stroustrup himself has said in his retrospective book "The Design and Evolution of C" (p. 207), "Within C, there is a much smaller and cleaner language struggling to get out." [Many hackers would now add "Yes, and it's called ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... suspected, vanquished him more, by comparison, than her vivid intellect, which he originally, and still lingeringly, appreciated in condescension, as a singular accomplishment, thrilling at times, now and then assailably feminine. But, after her consent to a proposal that caused him retrospective worldly shudders, and her composed recognition of the madness, a character capable of holding him in some awe was real majesty, and it rose to the clear heights, with her mental attributes for satellites. His tendency to despise women was wholesomely ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... be 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 ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... David with a retrospective air. "Well, I never enjoyed a conversation so much in ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... laughing gas when she wrote for us this precious manuscript of Spiridion. That great destinies are in prospect for the human race we may fancy, without her ladyship's word for it: but more liberal than she, and having a little retrospective charity, as well as that easy prospective benevolence which Mrs. Sand adopts, let us try and think there is some hope for our fathers (who were nearer brutality than ourselves, according to the Sandean creed), or else there is a very poor chance for us, who, great philosophers as we are, are ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... one of those instances of placability and pliableness with which his life abounded. We have seen, too, from the manner in which he mentions the circumstance in one of his note-books, that the reconcilement was of that generously retrospective kind, in which not only the feeling of hostility is renounced in future, but a strong regret expressed that it ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... the 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 of conducting controversy savoured (as Sydney Smith said about Bishop Monk) ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... woman, child, or dotard rule, And just her wisest monarch made a fool? Know, God and Nature only are the same: In man, the judgment shoots at flying game, A bird of passage! gone as soon as found, Now in the moon, perhaps, now under ground. In vain the sage, with retrospective eye, Would from the apparent what conclude the why, Infer the motive from the deed, and show, That what we chanced was what we meant to do. Behold! if fortune or a mistress frowns, Some plunge in business, others shave their crowns: To ease the soul of one oppressive weight, This quits ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... other, as far as we know, was a plagiarist. This, however, does not disprove the contrary proposition, that he who begins as a thief or an iconoclast is likely to end as such. But the actuating motive has nothing to do with what we, in our retrospective analysis, are pleased to prove. Not so far forth are we willing to piddle among the knicknacks of Shakib's ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... years the history of a great war waged by a successful nation is commonly reviewed by that nation with retrospective complacency. ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... such as none of his successors matched. On the other hand, the Golden Age of Judaism, as Kenan said, was thrown forward into the future. That on the whole Judaism has taken the prospective rather than the retrospective view, is the sole justification for the modern conception of the Messianic Age which is fast becoming predominant in the Synagogue. The Synagogue does not share ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... 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
... relieve the patience of my readers with the thirty-first chapter; but when the retrospective kaleidoscope closed, a vision rose before me so vivid, so real, that I am constrained to describe it in the hope that the warning may prevent the tragic part of the ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... glad to come in out of the cold!" burst out Miss Sally, with a retrospective shudder. "Mr. Peyton, you've a bitter night for your going." She stood before the fire and ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Lane, with a retrospective air, 'we talked for a while, and he was good enough to promise me a hiding if I didn't keep out of his way—meaning, of course, at your father's house. I didn't seem to take it quite so meekly as he thought I ought to, and by and by says he, "You seem to be ...
— Bulldog And Butterfly - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... 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 chief officer, and ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... consequence of the inconvenience which the public sustained from the innumerable quantity of edicts of the Statue at present in force, had last night consolidated them all into this single act, which, to render its operation still more simple, was gifted with a retrospective power for the last ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... after stating that the exiles, "in the midst of their hard usage abroad, could not be brought to repent of their obstinacy," justifies their refusal by the way in which the Articles of Limerick were afterwards disregarded by the Irish Parliament. But this is evidently an argument of retrospective invention, and it may fairly be argued that the position would have been very different if peace on equal terms had been made on the direct authority of the King before Aughrim rather than by his ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... Town Malling, from which he may well have borrowed many strokes for the picture of Muggleton, that town of sturdy Kentish cricket. Sometimes he would walk across the marshes to Gravesend, and returning through the village of Chalk, would pause for a retrospective glance at the house where his honeymoon was spent and a good part of Pickwick planned. In the latter end of the year, when he could take a short cut through the stubble fields from Higham to the marshes lying further down the Thames, he ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... belong to 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
... went off in sudden 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 of inconveniencing ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... said, the meddling of untrained amateurs with the details of psychic phenomena, and felt that the rule should be made retrospective. An amendment was carried to add Julius Caesar and Richard III. to the motion ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... Go you to the stream, O Nimrod of the waters, since you alone have the prestige of success. We will wander quietly in the woods, build a fire, fry the potatoes, and await your return with the fish." They go to the woods. I hang my prospective trout on my retrospective cod, and march river-ward. Halicarnassus, according to the old saw, "leaves this world, and climbs a tree," and, with jackknife, cord, and perseverance, manufactures a fishing-rod, which he courteously offers to me, which I succinctly decline, informing him ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... reader may inform himself, from Captain King's relation of the several voyages, of the opportunities that were afforded me in forming my collections of plants, still it appears necessary, in this place, to take a general retrospective view of those parts of the coasts under examination, whereon my researches were made, adverting, at the same time, to the prevalent unfavourable seasons for flowering plants, during which it should seem the survey of the North-west Coast could alone ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... retrospective glance at the numerous changes of costume which we have endeavoured to describe in this hurried sketch, we shall find that amongst European nations, during the Middle Ages, there was but one common standard of fashion, which varied from time to time according to the particular custom ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... it to pounce upon me that way at school?" exclaimed Alice suddenly, throwing off her retrospective mood and smiling again. ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... honour, which for a short period, however, was deferred. Individual genius has a cycle of its own, and moves only in that path, or by the powers influencing it. Genius has been properly defined 'prospective', talent on the contrary 'retrospective': genius is creative, and lives much in the future, and in its passage or progress may make use of the labours ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... of the mother, opened by so firm a hand, took in with one retrospective glance the whole course of her life. Illumined by this flash of light, she saw her involuntary wrong-doing and burst into tears. The old priest was so deeply moved at the repentance of a being who had sinned solely through ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... he had found leisure to fish, though from the very outset of his Potwell career he had promised himself abundant indulgence in the pleasures of fishing. Fishing, as the golden page of English literature testifies, is a meditative and retrospective pursuit, and the varied page of memory, disregarded so long for sake of the teeming duties I have already enumerated, began to unfold itself to Mr. Polly's consideration. A speculation about Uncle Jim died for want of material, and gave place to a reckoning of the years and months ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... this light sketching of the event she could not avoid a retrospective pang of apprehension, and the tightened grasp of his hand was as if she were holding him fast from that and all ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... forbear to take a retrospective view of the manner in which they had been expended. Could I approve of that manner? Could I forget how short a time it was, though I had squandered my own money, since I had forfeited no atom of my independence by accepting the earnings of ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... providences began to enter Christiana's life, till, as time went on, her whole life was filled full of secret providences. And not her present life only, but her discoveries of God's secret providences towards her and hers became retrospective also, till both her own parentage and birth, her husband's parentage and birth also, the day she first saw him, the day of their espousals, the day of their marriage, and the day of his death, all shone out now as so many secret and special providences ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... be unjust to give this rule a retrospective application, and exclude a State which, acting upon the past practice of the Government, has already formed its constitution, elected its legislature and other officers, and is now prepared to enter the Union. The rule ought to be adopted, whether we consider its bearing on the people ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... an English-basement 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
... take a retrospective view of this our noble theme, and our interest will be the more strengthened thereon. All the world knows that a convent stood in this neighbourhood, and the present market was the garden, unde Convent Garden; would that all etymologists were as distinct. Of course ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... for the three hundred thousand belonging to Felicie and Jean. Under these circumstances your father will be obliged to mortgage his property on the plain of Orchies, which he has already encumbered to the amount of three hundred thousand francs. The law gives a retrospective priority to the claims of minors; and that will save you. Monsieur Claes's hands will be tied for the future; your property becomes inalienable, and he can no longer borrow on his own estates because ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... exhibition, Mr. Matthews remarks, would at least dispel any lingering belief in the old saying that there are only thirty-eight good stories in existence and that thirty-seven of these cannot be told before ladies; and the Retrospective Section would certainly be the constant resort of any true folklorist. For most of the good stories of our time are really folklore, myth survivals, echoes of the past. The two well-known American proverbs, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... people the only form of poetry which they indulge. If a soul turns to the future for consolation in a sad or wearied or disappointed present, it is in religion that hope and strength are sometimes found; but if it is a retrospective nature—and the poetical nature is generally retrospective, because poetry is concerned with the beauty of actual experience and actual things, rather than with the possible and the unknown—then it finds its ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... lamentably in reconciling our practice with our principles. There was not the faintest suggestion of jollity in the appearance of the four motionless, prostrate figures against the wall. Seasickness had triumphed over philosophy! Prospective and retrospective reverie of a decidedly gloomy character was our only occupation. I remember speculating curiously upon the probability of Noah's having ever been seasick; wondering how the sea-going qualities of the Ark would compare with those ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... originality is relative. Every thinker is retrospective. The learned member of the legislature, at Westminister,[571] 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 crowd of practical and ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... memory bears many blurred and hazy impressions on its surface, but now and again some special dramatic happening remains fixed there in a series of sharply-etched pictures in which every line has its retrospective meaning and value. ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... far as 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
... in her most pronounced accent, "if I've got to think of 'em, I might as well talk of 'em, and I'm bound to think of 'em!" She relaxed the grasp of her knees, and lay back against the trunk of a tree, chuckling softly in retrospective triumph. "I've had such heaps of fun! I just love to carry on, and have half-a-dozen boys quarrelling over me, and hustling to get the first chance. I've had as many as ten bouquets before a ball, and I wore an eleventh, ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... 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 ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... been dead about two years," began Evangelist again, speaking in a retrospective tone. "I had two little children, the elder not eight years old, and my sister was my housekeeper. She did not like housekeeping nor taking care of children. Some women don't. She came to me one day with a very serious ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... in this valley of darkness and ignorance, allowed this retrospective view; and am led to say not one word of all that he promised has failed. 'Hitherto the Lord hath helped, he hath been the guide of my youth, and even unto hoar hairs will he lead me;' and when he calls me to pass through the valley of the shadow ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... sudden tremor of retrospective fear. She was glad she had not remembered the Lutin when she was sitting, eating ices, and exchanging frivolous, chaffing talk with Lieutenant Paritot in that chamber of little ease, the drum-like interior of the Neptune, where not even she, a ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... not my intention here to add to this department of modern literature. But I shall select from among my volumes some which seem less known in detail to modern readers than they should be, and I shall give brief "retrospective reviews" of these as though they were new discoveries. In other cases, where the personal history of a well-known book seems worth detaching from our critical estimate of it, that shall be the subject of my lucubration. Perhaps it may not be an unwelcome novelty to apply ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... 40 south, and nearly in the 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 the officer of the watch and remained on the alert to catch the ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... I never thought then of attempting to write like Goldsmith. I accepted his beautiful work as ignorantly as I did my other blessings. I was concerned in getting at the Greeks and Romans, and I did not know through what nimble air and by what lovely ways I was led to them. Some retrospective perception of this came long afterward when I read his essays, and after I knew all of his poetry, and later yet when I read the 'Vicar of Wakefield'; but for the present my eyes were holden, as the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... this old book of the ordinance and virtues of the familiar herbs, I escape from the severities of botanical science into a maze of queer fancies, well suited to those retrospective hours when we love best what we least believe. And by the pleasant suggestion of astrology I am led on to contemplate the starry heavens, which I do in the ancient pastoral way, peopling them with mythical forms ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... the heart. I could not, in a few disjointed phrases describe to you the strange emotions of my friend. It would take pages and pages to make you understand the tenderness, both present and at the same time retrospective, for the dead through the living; the hypnotic condition of the soul which does not know where dreams and memories end and present feeling begins; the daily commingling of the most unreal thing in the world, the phantom of a lost love, with the freshest, the ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... which he was making, and the terrible mosaic that he was piecing together out of such 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 to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... immodesty; which is worth all the strong lines against the harlot's profession, with which both parts of this play are offensively crowded. A satirist is always to be suspected, who, to make vice odious, dwells upon all its acts and minutest circumstances with a sort of relish and retrospective fondness. But so near are the boundaries of panegyric and invective, that a worn-out sinner is sometimes found to make the best declaimer against sin. The same high-seasoned descriptions, which in his unregenerate state served but to inflame his appetites, in his new province ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... county courts, in such their proceedings, have exceeded their jurisdiction, violated the rights of the subject, and acted in direct opposition to the Bill of Rights of this state, considered justly as part of the constitution thereof; by giving to a law, not intended to affect this case, a retrospective operation, thereby to deprive free men of this state of their liberty, contrary to the laws of the land. In consequence of this decree several of the negroes were again set at liberty; but the next General Assembly, early in 1779, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... conceived and soundly modelled nude by the Munich artist, Ernest Liebermann, one of the most gifted of the younger men and no relation of Meister Max of the same name. Local art in Vienna did not give me a thrill. I attended a retrospective exhibition of two half-forgotten mediocrities, Carl Rahl and Josef Hasslwander, and also the autumn exhibition in the Kuenstlerhaus. There, amid miles of glittering, shiny, hot paint, I found the best manipulator of paint to be a man bearing the ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... 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
... starvation and death, so had he come again to save her from sin and from despair. Whoever has known a deadly peril will remember how swiftly thought then travelled back through scenes clean forgotten, and will understand how Sylvia's retrospective vision merged the past into the actual before her, how the shock of recovered memory subsided in the grateful utterance of other days—"Good ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... citizens of as fine a calibre as any Nelson or Wellington knew, and they carried the Sword of Duty that day into the camp of an enemy who, with all his skill, had not learned, till it was written in his blood for survivors to read, that England had awakened from her long sleep. For my part, if retrospective power were mine, I would not raise a finger to rob those stern converts ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... this must be to the thoughts of men, how fascinating to their retrospective and aspiring reveries, it should be needless to repeat. How baseless it is as a philosophical theory demanding sober belief, it should be equally ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... des Notables, have prevented the reducing the substance of the letter into the form of an Arret, as yet; though I have continued soliciting it as much as circumstances would bear. I am now promised that it shall be done immediately, and that it shall be so far retrospective to the date of the letter, as that all duties paid since ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... 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 fashion, and interpreted to an American public the ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... at Lisbon and Rome. The play was evidently touched up afterwards, for it includes the sending of the elephant to Rome (1514) and the marriages of the princesses. It is barely possible that it was written after the victory, in which case the words na partida would be retrospective and the date given in the 1st edition was not a slip. Parts of the play suit 1514 better than 1513. Trist[a]o da Cunha's special mission (cf. lines 195-6) to the Pope (with Garcia de Resende for secretary) left early in 1514 and entered Rome on March 12. One of the ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... subtle harmony of mirth. Laughing faces nodded and uplifted like flowers in the merry romping throngs in the middle of the room, while the sober ones against the walls watched with grave, elderly, retrospective eyes. ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... been passed at Mon Reve, Lady Susan's villa at Montricheux, and with a jerk Ann emerged from her train of retrospective thought to the realisation that her lines had really fallen in very pleasant places, ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... drinking, swearing, card-playing, Godless parents to halt and reflect? God knows; we hope so. Does this fill the mother of cherished, idolized little ones with remorse of conscience? Does it occasion her to take a retrospective view of the time when, during courtship days, she was warned and advised of the indiscreet marriage she was about to make, because of her sweetheart's well-known dissolute propensities? Yet all those warnings ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... scene, Prospero's speeches, till the entrance of Ariel, contain the finest example I remember of retrospective narration for the purpose of exciting immediate interest, and putting the audience in possession of all the information necessary for the understanding of the plot. Observe, too, the perfect probability ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... had been frightened at the mention of a mob, and her retrospective regard for the religious communion of her youth by no means inspired her with the temper of a martyr. Her husband looked at her with an expression of tender and grieved remonstrance, which might have been that of the patient ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... 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 make me do?.. Then, ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... the Union failing to fulfill its duty under the articles thereof." That was, to give Congress the power to coerce the States; to bring the States into subjection to the Federal Government. Now, sir, let us see how that was treated; and first I will refer to one whose wisdom, as we take a retrospective view, seems to me marvelous. Not conspicuous in debate, at least not among the names which first occur when we think of that bright galaxy of patriots and statesmen, he was the man who, above all others, it seems to ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... Taking a retrospective view of this singular venture in journalism, one day, the explanation of the whole matter came to my understanding in the light of a revelation, and was ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... fact," answered Amos to the retrospective musings of the Judge. "Time was you an' me would go t' singing-school or sleigh-riding with the girls on a night like this and never ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... improved a great deal and finally appeared very natural, gave the retrospective account noted in the history, had a clear appreciation of the fact that she was married and had a child. She claimed that she had previously forgotten about her marriage and thought she was still merely keeping company with Mr. F. She claimed not to remember coming to the hospital, did not ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... her and she resumed her position on the couch, but her entire manner had undergone another change. The contempt, the scorn, the anger had all died out of her face which now assumed a retrospective expression and when she next addressed me her eyes had in them a dreamy, far away light, as though she were living in the past while she recited the strange tale that thrilled me as nothing else ever had, or ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... past, and make them equal to the present; and that he who is content with a moderate victory is always most successful; for those who would more than conquer, commonly lose." With such words as these he calmed the disturbance, and this retrospective equalization was ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... they were written. At the request of the Publishers, Mr. Whittier has allowed his early poems, discarded from previous collections, to be placed, in the general order of their appearance, in an appendix to the final volume of poems. By this means the present edition is made so complete and retrospective that students of the poet's career will always find the most abundant material for their purpose. The Publishers congratulate themselves and the public that the careful attention which Mr. Whittier has been able to give to this revision of his works has resulted ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... 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 not his port-wine ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... had ever said against the heiress, is obliged to confess to herself that the great "er" had had to express everything. Contempt, dislike, kindly disdain—he was always kindly—he made quite a point of that. Truly, thinks Miss Kavanagh to herself after this retrospective glance, "er" is the greatest word in ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... of the Sinn Feiners therefore to establish such an extreme and antiquated definition was strictly against nature—a retrospective move, in other words, as against the blending progressive force of ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... now take a retrospective view of the whole trilogy. In the Agamemnon we have a predominance of free-will both in the plan and execution of the deed: the principal character is a great criminal, and the piece ends with the revolting impressions produced by the sight of triumphant tyranny and crime. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... 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
... there. He had a book in his hand, and tears in his eyes. I never beheld a look more melancholy. Capable as he is of resisting the cowardice of self-complaint and gloom, still there are moments, I perceive, in which he can yield; and, sighing over others woes, can cast a retrospective glance on self. He had been reading the Julia of Rousseau. The picture given by St. Preux of his feelings had awakened sympathy too strong to ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft |
