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Retrospect   Listen
noun
Retrospect  n.  A looking back on things past; view or contemplation of the past. "We may introduce a song without retrospect to the old comedy."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Retrospect" Quotes from Famous Books



... up with it all. I used to go there with Mina Zabriska." She smiled in retrospect; it would have been pardonable if Neeld had smiled too. "I haven't seen her for ever so long," Janie added, "but she'll ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... first fire of winter, when the deepening dusk had compelled me to close my book and wheel my chair closer, I indulged in a retrospect. The objects of it were not far distant, and yet they seemed already to glow with the mellow tints of the days that are no more. In the crackling flame the last remnant of the summer appeared to shrink up and vanish. But the flicker of its destruction made a sort of fantastic imagery, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... one might have found Washington Irving reading law in Wall Street, and little dreaming of the fame which awaited his advancing years. Such are among the changes which the retrospect of a long life affords. Among the events which marked Judge Edwards's advent to New York was the fearful duel between Burr and Hamilton. Burr and Edwards were cousins, but the former was more than twenty years the senior, and the blow which he received could not but ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... She remembers that she burst asunder the bonds of duty, that she caused the death of a fond parent; while I, through Heaven's mercy, have never been subject to the temptation to create for myself a retrospect so dreadful." ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... think of this in retrospect it seems that the blind musician stood in some peculiar and significant relation to the more ordinary life about him. But for him, I should probably have omitted to describe my night among the Turks. He made the coffee-house worth living in, ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... venture to let the season preach to us, and to confine myself simply to suggesting for you one or two very plain and obvious thoughts which may help to make our retrospect wise and useful. And there are two main considerations which I wish to submit. The first is —what we ought to be chiefly occupied with as we look back; and secondly, what the issue of such a ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... our own heart—nor knows that heart if it be a dream of imagination or of memory. Yet why should we wonder? In our happiest hours there may have been something in common with our most sorrowful—some shade of sadness cast over them by a passing cloud, that now allies them in retrospect with the sombre spirit of grief; and in our unhappiest hours there may have been gleams of gladness, that seem now to give the return the calm character of peace. Do not all thoughts and feelings, almost all events, seem to resemble each other—when they are dreamt of as ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... fertile retrospect to conceive of the apple as an attendant of the course of Western civilization. Without voice and leaving no record, it has nevertheless followed man in his wanderings, encouraged his attainment of permanent habitations, succored him in his emergencies. ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey

... heart-broken accents. "I guess the Good Book ain't far wrong in calling money the root of all evil. Up till you come into this prop'ty, you was all a man could ask for in a sister." Like many another, Joel found his blessings brightest in retrospect. "But now you're as set as a post and as stubborn as a mule. It's pretty dangerous, Persis, when a woman gets the idea she knows all that's worth knowing. As the poet says, 'A little learning is a dangerous thing.' I feel in my bones that there's trouble ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith

... remarks, "is more governed by fortune than by reason, is to be regarded more as a dull pastime than a serious occupation, and is more influenced by particular humor than by general principles." Yet, in a philosophical retrospect of English historians, we can trace a progressive development from the purely antiquarian researches of Camden to the personal memoirs of Clarendon and Burnet; thence to the comprehensive erudition and majestic narrative of Gibbon; onward to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... short retrospect of life as it has been allotted him; the sighs well out between his words as he tells his story. Eight years he wandered after the taking of Troy; for he passed across the sea, to Egypt, even to AEthiopia and Lybia, which he portrays as a wonderland of golden plenty. But ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... and confusion of events. Personally at the time, in traversing this battlefield, I was slightly horrified at first, but chiefly conscious only of the frightful odour of mortality. It is on thinking the thing over in retrospect and with cold blood that the real sense of horror begins to creep into one's soul. Such is the so-called "ennobling influence of war"! As I went over this grim battlefield, with all its tragic sights, I reflected bitterly on ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... presence of a torturingly beautiful youth, immaculately raimented, who commanded in the great house with a smile more royal and debonair than that of the master thereof, Member of Parliament though he was, and Justice of the Peace and Lord of the Manor? And Paul, fresh from his retrospect, looked at the girl's thin shoulders and sharp, intent profile, and wondered a little, somewhat ironically. He knew that she regarded him as a kind of god, for reasons of caste. Yet she was the daughter of a Morebury piano tuner, of unblemished parentage for generations. ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... or elements of the subject. The proportional allotment of time or space, the number of illustrations, the number of questions asked on a given point, the force of language—these are all means of bringing out the relative importance of constituent topics or principles. In retrospect, a well-organized lesson presents an appearance similar to a contour map; each part stands out in distinctive color ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... hot from the fight. It is not a retrospect written in the calm after-years, when the outline of things has grown indistinct and the sharpness of life is blurred. There is nothing mellowed about a battle-field. Even as I write these words, the post comes in and brings two letters. One tells ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael

... this life so imperfect? What is it but the obtrusive hindrance of the body? The body is at the mercy of the disturbing assaults of present impressions. Through ear, and eye, and touch external objects invade the mind, and dispel and distract fixed and steadfast retrospect. The present blots out the past. When we look back, scenes, and events, and words, and names fade from our memory, and are dimmed by the haze of distance. The past is smothered by what has happened since. Only with a supreme effort, ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson

... treated me to a rhapsody about a certain meek-faced virgin of Hans Memling, which seemed to me sounder sense than his compliments to Madame Blumenthal. He had his dull days and his sombre moods—hours of irresistible retrospect; but I let them come and go without remonstrance, because I fancied they always left him a trifle more alert and resolute. One evening, however, he sat hanging his head in so doleful a fashion that ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James

... dark comforter, I presently fell into a deep argument with myself on life and its chances, on destiny and her decrees. My mind, calmer and stronger now than last night, made for itself some imperious rules, prohibiting under deadly penalties all weak retrospect of happiness past; commanding a patient journeying through the wilderness of the present, enjoining a reliance on faith— a watching of the cloud and pillar which subdue while they guide, and awe while they illumine—hushing the impulse to fond ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... parish of St. John's, where, amidst the benedictions of his countrymen, and the caresses of numerous friends, he spent the short remnant of his days, participating every rural sweet with the dear woman of his choice, feasting on the happy retrospect of a life passed in fighting for THE RIGHTS OF MAN, and fondly cherishing the hopes ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... matter. I am coming to the very instant of actuality, to the show which I saw yesterday, and which I should have brought my paper down to mention if it had been accepted." He drew a long breath, and said, with a dreamy air of retrospect: "It is all of a charming unity, a tradition unbroken from the dawn of civilization. When I go to a variety show, and drop my ticket into the chopping-box at the door, and fastidiously choose my unreserved seat in the best place I can get, away from interposing posts and persons, and settle ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... poetic countenance, the sun of the white dinner-cloth, a deity to be invoked by two or three, all fervent, hushing their talk, degusting tenderly, and storing reminiscences—for a bottle of good wine, like a good act, shines ever in the retrospect—if wine is to desert us, go thy ways, old Jack! Now we begin to have compunctions, and look back at the brave bottles squandered upon dinner-parties, where the guests drank grossly, discussing politics the while, and even the schoolboy "took his ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... space in which she swung her petticoats. I may err in the belief that she practically lived on him, for though it was not in him to follow adequately Mrs. Highmore's counsel there were exasperated confessions he never made, scanty domestic curtains he rattled on their rings. I may exaggerate in the retrospect his apparent anxieties, for these after all were the years when his talent was freshest and when as a writer he most laid down his line. It wasn't of Mrs. Stannace nor even as time went on of Mrs. Limbert that we mainly ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... mastered the beginnings of social intercourse. You talked, and found there were things amusing to say. Also you had regular pocket money, and a voice in the purchase of your clothes, and presently a small salary. And there were girls. And friendship! In the retrospect Port Burdock sparkled with the facets of quite a cluster ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... memorial phantasms of visual perception, a largess bestowed, perhaps exclusively, on the sense of sight, and this bounty contributes essentially to the acquirement and retention of knowledge. They are the unfading transcripts of vision, and they exhibit the original picture to the retrospect of memory. They are but little under the immediate direction of the will, and cannot be arbitrarily summoned or dismissed, but owe their introduction to a different source, to be explained hereafter. They perform important offices, although they are not the materials ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam

... volume of a newspaper. Placing this volume across her knees, and resting her elbows upon it, with her forehead in her hands, the weary, bedraggled, world-worn Old Year heaved a heavy sigh, and appeared to be taking no very pleasant retrospect of her past existence. ...
— The Sister Years (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... after the first tournament at Shepherd's on the Nueces in June, '77, lingers as a pleasant memory. Veiled in hazy retrospect, attempting to recall it is like inviting the return of childish dreams when one has reached the years of maturity. If I danced that night with any other girl than poor Esther McLeod, the fact has certainly escaped me. But somewhere in the archives ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams

... than he can carry. When he begins to totter he tries to pass some of the load over to others, and it is usually the storekeepers who are willing to assist him to the limit if his assets are in good retrospect. And what could be a greater security than a whole mountain full of gold? So the storekeepers assumed a large portion of the Too Sure Man's burden. And their loads became heavier and heavier. One day a company came along, attracted by the noise that had ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)

... contending for the truth, love to the cause, example, and words of Christ, obedience to His precepts, delight in His ways, preservation from their own iniquities, and consistent behaviour, as evidences that their faith was living, and their hope warranted; and in this way the retrospect conduced to their encouragement. Moreover, they all concur in declaring that, while they left their infirmities behind them, they should take their graces along with them, and that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... in his historical retrospect, shows us how bitter experience convinced successive generations of English statesmen of the dangers that lay in an independent Ireland. One of the very earliest conflicts between the two countries was caused by the action of the Irish Parliament in recognising and crowning ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... certainly in the right, when he took the matter largely. I cannot prevail on myself to agree with him in his censure of his own conduct. It is not, he will give me leave to say, either useless or dangerous. He asserts, that retrospect is not wise; and the proper, the only proper subject of inquiry, is "not how we got into this difficulty, but how we are to get out of it." In other words, we are, according to him, to consult our invention, and to reject our experience. The mode of deliberation he recommends is diametrically ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... dream of idylls, his gentle bookish romance? Vanished before a reality which smacked horribly of crude melodrama and possibly of sordid crime. His gorge rose at the picture, but a thought troubled him. Perhaps all romance in its hour of happening was rough and ugly like this, and only shone rosy in retrospect. Was he being false ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan

... a degree and manner which are alike rare, of the more constant and the higher judgment of his people. It is plainer still that he embodied the resolute purpose which underlay the fluctuations upon the surface of their political life. The English military historians, Wood and Edmonds, in their retrospect over the course of the war, well sum up its dramatic aspect when they say: "Against the great military genius of certain of the Southern leaders fate opposed the unbroken resolution and passionate devotion to the Union, which he worshipped, of the great Northern President. As long as he lived, ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... American Cricketer's Manual will be published in that city during the present season indicates that home interest in the sport is on the increase. But the chief thriving-place of native American cricket is conceded to be Philadelphia, and it will be interesting, perhaps, to take a retrospect of the progress of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various

... to our good and evil account, save One, before whose awful wisdom we kneel, and at whose mercy we ask absolution? Here it ends," thought Pen; "this day or to-morrow will wind up the account of my youth; a weary retrospect, alas! a sad history, with many a page I would fain not look back on! But who has not been tired or fallen, and who has escaped without scars from that struggle?" And his head fell on his breast, and the young man's heart prostrated itself humbly and sadly before that Throne where sits wisdom, and ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... sufficiently alarming retrospect, in all conscience, to which we had just listened, and the prophetic utterance wherewith it had been wound up, while powerfully suggestive of a highly novel and picturesque experience in store for us, was certainly not attractive enough to cause us to look forward to its fulfilment with ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood

... Historical retrospect: Deborah sitting as a judge and prophetess under a palm-tree: sends to Barak to confront Sisera: accompanies him preparations for battle: victorious result: ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... All this, in rapid retrospect, passed through Mora's mind as she stood alone beside her splendid Knight, miserably conscious that she had shivered, and that he knew it; and fearful lest he divined the shrinking of her soul away ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... marry Barbara. "How could he marry her?" he had replied, in his soothing pity. "She, Isabel, was his wife. Who was Barbara? Nothing to them?" But it had all come to pass. She had brought it forth. Not Mr. Carlyle; not Barbara; she alone. Oh, the dreadful misery of the retrospect! ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... of despair have subsided, and sorrow has softened into melancholy, she amuses with a retrospect of innocent pleasures, and inspires that noble confidence which results from the consciousness of having acted well. When sleep has suspended the organs of sense from their office, she not only supplies the mind with images, but assists in their combination. And even in madness itself, when the soul ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers

... completed a painful retrospect of the appalling amount of crime committed by the colored population in the District at large, compared with the general mass of the white population, I now consider it my duty to advert more particularly to what has ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... in the same content which had flushed his waking revery. The plaudits of last night's mass-meeting still rang harmoniously in his ears, and the praise of Ruth Temple and Mrs. Hilliard was sweeter in retrospect than it had been in reality. This happy serenity bore him company through the bare echoing corridors of the hotel to the office, to be heightened by the gratulations of the landlord and the help, ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... Alexandrian stanza;[194]—read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing, contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not, and see it not. My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. The swallow over my window should interweave that thread or ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... their health, till it is too late to reap any benefit from their conviction: so that we may say of health, as we do of time, we take no notice of it but by its loss; and feel the value of it when we can no longer think of it but with retrospect and regret. ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett

... off, and if the Georges had never come from Hanover, the Whartons would now probably be great people and Britain a great nation. But the Evil One had been allowed to prevail, and everything had gone astray, and Sir Alured now had nothing of this world to console him but a hazy retrospect of past glories, and a delight in the beauty of his own river, his own park, and his own house. Sir Alured, with all his foibles and with all his faults, was a pure-minded, simple gentleman, who could not tell a lie, who could not do a wrong, and who was earnest in his ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... is conceived in mystical retrospect, beginning in vein of prologue: over mysterious murmuring strings, long sustained notes of the reed and horn in octave descent are mingled with a soft carillon of horns and trumpets in the call of the Scherzo. In broad swing ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp

... licentious, reckless rioter which some writers have been anxious to describe, or whether we regard him as a sincere believer, comparing his past life (though neither licentious nor reckless) with the perfectness of the divine law, the retrospect might well depress him with a consciousness of his own unworthiness, and of his total inability to perform the work which he saw (p. 004) before him, without the strength and guidance of divine grace. For that strength and that guidance, we are assured, he prayed, and laboured, ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... smiling as if in retrospect, and kept looking into the fire and turning about in his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... study its methods. In his fictitious plays, with two notable exceptions, it was Shakespeare's constant practice to bring the whole action within the frame of the picture, opening at such a point that no retrospect should be necessary, beyond what could be conveyed in a few casual words. The exceptions are The Tempest and Hamlet, to which we shall return ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... secessionism there; acquisition and filibusterism elsewhere. These were the formidable elements of misrule with which the Executive had to cope. How well he met, and how entirely he for the time overcame these enemies of the peace of the republic, we leave the historian to relate; but our retrospect would be incomplete and disingenuous, did we not accord the meed of praise justly due to high moral excellence and intellectual and administrative honesty and talent, as developed in ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... that Emancipation, when united with Rectitude and long-tried good Conduct, should land a man back to that Rank in Society which he had forfeited, and do away, in as far as the Case will admit, all Retrospect of former bad Conduct. This appears to me to be the greatest Inducement that can be held out towards the Reformation of the Manners of the Inhabitants, and I think it is consistent with the gracious and Humane Intentions of His Majesty ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne

... the Alamo after eleven days inside, that seemed in the retrospect almost as many months. He flattened himself against the wall, and stood there for a minute or two, looking and listening. He thought he might hear Crockett again inside, but evidently the Tennesseean had gone back at once. In front of him was only the ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler

... wished me to give you is more easily communicated by the pen than by the lips. I admit your claim to be acquainted with all the incidents of my life, be they momentous or trivial. I have often told you that the retrospect is very mournful; but that ought not to prevent me from making it, when so useful a purpose as that of thoroughly disclosing to you the character of one, on whom your future happiness is to depend, will be affected ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown

... which was written at Diodati in July, 1816 (probably towards the end of the month; see letters to Murray and Rogers, dated July 22 and July 29), is a retrospect and an apology. It consists of an opening stanza, or section, on the psychology of dreams, followed by some episodes or dissolving views, which purport to be the successive stages of a dream. Stanzas ii. and iii. are descriptive of Annesley Park and Hall, and detail two incidents of Byron's ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... language readership. But today Plaatje is regarded as a South African literary pioneer, as a not insignificant political actor in his time, and as a cogent commentator on his times. He was an explorer in a fascinating world of cultural and linguistic interaction, who was in retrospect truly a "renaissance man". ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... to the creed of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe; while Clay, by his imprudence in becoming secretary of State, incurred not only the odium of the "bargain and sale," but a share of the general unpopularity which at that time attached to the name of Adams. It is not in retrospect difficult to measure the advantages which Jackson possessed in the long contest, and to see clearly the reasons of his final triumph over the boldest of leaders, the noblest of foes. Still less is it difficult to see how largely the personality of the two men entered into the struggle, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... all this moving pageant, unseen by Sally's dim old eyes, before the saddened gaze of little Lily, whose life was growing to a retrospect. She stood in the sunny street, again a little child, holding old Sally by the hand, on a soft summer day. The sentries presented arms, and the corps marched out resplendent. Old General Chattesworth, as proud as Lucifer, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... career—an event of supreme importance; if we concede that any link in a chain regardless of size is of more importance than any other link. Undoubtedly it remains the most conspicuous event, as the world views it now, in retrospect. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... or our new hat, or our next summer holiday can interest anybody outside the radius of their influence. We demand another human being to smile when we smile, show anger when we show anger, echo our own admiration for our new hat, and generally retrace with us our life in retrospect and journey with us into the problematical future. For, as I said before, the wisdom which realises that the incidents of our own life need not—very probably do not, although they may be too polite to show ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King

... all the broad features of this century's history may be traced directly or indirectly to that process. And since an interesting light is thrown upon the new phases in land locomotion that are now beginning, it will be well to begin this forecast with a retrospect, and to revise very shortly the history of the addition of steam travel to the resources ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... her bosom, his lips against hers, his body strained to hers. She had listened to his heartbeats; with her own abundant strength she had shielded him, fought for him, drawn him, by very force of her will, back to life; the anguish she had suffered during those long hours became, in retrospect, a poignant pleasure. ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... is severe in his criticisms. In his "retrospect, pointing out the mistakes that were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... a melancholy retrospect. Mrs. Nesbit might be said to have perfectly succeeded in the object of her life. She had formed her beloved niece, like the fabled image of snow, moulded by the enchanter and animated by no will but his, and had seen her attain the summit of her wishes, universally admired ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of Cleveland, he heard of a place of prayer, or a meeting, or association for the promotion of temperance or morality, thither he bent his footsteps. Now in a ripe and happy old age he enjoys, not only the retrospect, but also the present—and not only these, but he is constantly looking for a consummation of perfect happiness, beyond what either the past has, or the present life ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... of incident in her own labors to require a longer narrative. Painful as many of her experiences were, yet she found as did many others who engaged in it that it was a blessed and delightful work, and in the retrospect, more than a year after its close, she uttered these words in regard to it, words to which the hearts of many other patriotic women will respond, "I mark my Hospital days as my happiest ones, and thank God for the way in which He led me into the good ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... wanted he had taken without question—impulse and possession had flowed for him with a rhythmic regularity of movement—and yet in glancing back he could place his finger upon no past events and say of them "this brought me happiness—and this—and this." In retrospect his pleasures showed cheap and threadbare—woven of perishable colours, of lost illusions—and he felt suddenly that he had been cheated into a false valuation of life, that he had been deluded into a childish yet ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... on picquet, in the delicious early summer of the South, and among the endless flowery forests of that blossoming isle. In the retrospect, I seem to see myself adrift upon a horse's back amid a sea of roses. The various outposts were within a five-mile radius, and it was one long, delightful gallop, day and night. I have a faint impression that the moon shone steadily every night for two months; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... had been in love with her. However, to kiss and forget might be one of the inscrutable ways of men. She was really afraid it was. But Wesley Elliot had never kissed her; had never even held her hand for more than a minute at a time. But those minutes loomed large in retrospect. ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley

... first time gave herself up to him with tears, with twinges of her conscience, and at the same time with such ardour and tenderness, that the poor secretary lost his head completely—was plunged entirely into that senile love, which no longer knows either reason or retrospect; which compels a man to lose the last thing—the fear of ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... struck deeper than even Ezekiel's dry malice imagined. For an instant, Blandford remained stupefied. In the five years' retrospect of his resolution on that fatal night, whatever doubt of its wisdom might have obtruded itself upon him, he had never thought of THIS. He had been willing to believe that his wife had quietly forgotten him as well as ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte

... reached this point in her retrospect the remembrance of Florida called up a vision of moonlit waters, magnolia fragrance and balmy airs; merging with the circumambient sweetness, it laid a drowsy spell upon her lids. Yes, there had been a bad moment: but ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton

... is further urged that in historical retrospect, and in the light of evolution, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that in the course of man's development from a savage and barbaric condition all manner of ills—bloodshed, slavery, etc.—have been necessary ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... the rescue. Brown received a good pummeling at the hands of the future humorist, who, though upheld by the captain, decided to quit the Pennsylvania at New Orleans and to come up the river by another boat. The Brown episode has no special bearing on the main tragedy, though now in retrospect it seems closely related to it. Samuel Clemens, coming up the river on the A. T. Lacey, two days behind the Pennsylvania, heard a voice shout as they approached the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... "A retrospect of the various changes through which the empire has passed shows us that after the decadence of the monarchical authority, power passed into the hands of the Minister of State; that by the wars of 1156 to 1159 the governmental power came into ...
— The Constitutional Development of Japan 1863-1881 • Toyokichi Iyenaga

... with an earnest and eloquent appeal from the missionaries for an increase to their number.1 And there is nothing more painful in the retrospect of this mission, than the numerous and often unexpected and surprising openings for usefulness, that were so often effectually closed, solely, as it would seem, because there were not missionaries ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson

... reminiscence of Mendelssohn. "Anyone can find that out," was the rough-and-ready reply of Brahms. But if Mendelssohn be the prevailing influence in the Scherzo, Schubert has his turn in the Trio. The fourth movement is an Intermezzo, entitled "Rueckblick" (Retrospect). The opening phrase, and indeed the whole of the short movement, carries us back to the picture of the lovers. Some change has taken place: have the lovers grown cold? or has death divided them? The themes are now ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock

... seasickness, had performed a radical operation for acute mastoiditis. There had been no facilities. The whole thing had been in the last degree makeshift. The half-trained stewardess had held his instruments ready for him, and the sea-sickness, comic in retrospect, had weighed heavily against Mr. Fletcher's chance of seeing land again. Nevertheless, the eminent New York surgeon, consulted at the first opportunity, had pronounced the operation a neat performance—under the circumstances ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... discriminating his attitude from that of the Hardys, the Horne Tookes, and the Thelwalls of the day. A little warmth of language might no doubt be allowed to a young friend of liberty in discussing legislation which, in the retrospect, has staggered even so staunch a Tory as Sir Archibald Alison; but Coleridge's denunciation of the Pitt and Grenville Acts, in the lecture entitled The Plot Discovered, is occasionally startling, even for that day of fierce passions, in the fierceness of its language. It ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... naturally falls,' said Mrs Wilfer, 'shall I say into a reverie, or shall I say into a retrospect? on a ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... thoughts were of necessity those with which the two youths were associated. How dreary but for them and theirs would the retrospect of her life have been! Several times every winter they had met at the minister's, and every summer she had again and again seen Gibbie with Mrs. Sclater, and once or twice had had a walk with them, and every ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... delegation. Final meeting of the Conference. Remarks of the leading representative of a Catholic power, on the correspondence between the Vatican and the Netherlands Government which had been presented to the Conference. Retrospect of the Conference. ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... announcement of the wedding shocked Crosson. He endured a jealousy whose intensity surprised him in retrospect. He endured a good deal of humor, too, from village cut-ups, who teased him because his best girl was marrying the ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... Gap itself—worth even the risk of being torpedoed. Our procession seemed to pass through a painted and tapestried corridor, so pink and purple and azure and gold were the rocks that lined our way, with millions of delicate wild flowers. And oh, the retrospect view! It was wonderful, too, crossing by ferry, and looking back. Albertson's ferry we chose, and one car at a time rolled sedately on to a flatboat to be rowed to the opposite side of the river by a very young Charon in a ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)

... the soft philosophy of this little retrospect, and it helps us to appreciate it to know that the writer had at this time just become engaged to be married to a charming and accomplished person, with whom his union, which took place two years later, was complete and full of happiness. But I quote it more particularly for the evidence it affords ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... his head. He leaned back, half closed his eyes, put his finger-tips together, and almost smiled as if something in retrospect ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... see empires torn by their dissensions; thrones overturned by their machinations; princes immolated to their power and revenge; subjects animated to revolt against the prince that ought to give them more happiness than they actually enjoyed; and when we take the retrospect of these, we find that the ambition, the cupidity, and vanity of the clergy have been the true causes and motives of all these outrages on the peace of the universe. And it is thus that their religion has so often produced anarchy, and overturned the very ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... Retrospect may involve regret, but can scarcely involve anxiety. To one who fully appreciates the actual, and above all the potential, importance of this society in its bearing upon the general progress of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various

... pattern, has proved to be seductive and alluring in prospect, but in retrospect unsatisfactory and frustrating. Civilization has proved to be not an opportunity for the ambitious, but a trap for the ignorant, inexperienced and unwary. For the many contestants who set out to conquer the world the experience has been disappointing and on the whole disastrous. ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing

... July 23rd, the Austro-Hungarian minister at Belgrade presented his impossible ultimatum to the Serbian government, and demanded a reply within forty-eight hours. With the wisdom of retrospect we know now clearly enough what that meant. The Sarajevo crime was to be resuscitated and made an excuse for war. But nine hundred and ninety-nine Europeans out of a thousand had still no suspicion of what was happening ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells

... (1) Saxo now goes back to the history of Denmark. All the events hitherto related in Bk. III, after the first paragraph, are a digression in retrospect. (2) M. conjectures that this was a certain Harald, the bastard son of Erik the Good, and a wild and dissolute man, who died in 1135, not long before the probable date of Saxo's birth. (3) Shakespere's tragedy, "Hamlet", ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... wrote an essay on the "Mode of Thought of the Germans, and a Sketch of the History of German Civilisation," "making use," he said, "in its general outlines, of the divisions which the treatment of the subject itself demands," and concluding with "a retrospect of the shortcomings of our time, with an appeal to every one to correct those shortcomings in his own case, and thus set a good example to others." Placed for some months under the care of King Leopold at Brussels, he came under the influence of Adolphe Quetelet, ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... to be myself." The two years in retrospect seemed to have passed with incredible swiftness, the months that followed them were heavy and slow with trouble. But from the very first, that is, from the moment when Grace saw Paul kiss Maggie in the evening garden, battle was declared. Maggie might not ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... their Gods, the names of cities, and their terms of worship, were imported: that their ancient hymns were grown obsolete: and that time had wrought a great change. They explained every thing by the language in use, without the least retrospect or allowance: and all names and titles from other countries were liable to the same rule. If the name were dissonant, and disagreeable to their ear, it was rejected as barbarous: but if it were at all similar ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant

... project had seemed to him when first he conceived it, he had put it into execution. The moment was worth living for. Whatever the future might keep in store for him of dreary, toilsome, colourless existence, the retrospect would always show him this patch of purple—a memory precious beyond all the possible results ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing

... looking back, realized that the night of the dinner at the Chris Valentines marked the beginning of a new epoch for him. Yet he never quite understood what it was that had caused the change. All that was clear was that in retrospect he always commenced with that evening, when he was trying to trace his own course through the months that followed, with their various changes, to the momentous ones ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... occupied us through two chapters. Before passing onward I must, however, invite the reader to pause awhile and reconsider, even at the risk of retrospect and repetition, some of the salient features of his character. And now I remember that of his personal appearance nothing has hitherto been said. 'Tasso was tall, well-proportioned, and of very fair complexion. His thick hair and beard were of a light-brown color. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... analytical process soon took an historical, that is etymological, character in so far as I tried to find out why any words should now mean exactly what, according to our definition, they ought to mean. For instance, in examining such words as Vernunft or Verstand, a little historical retrospect showed that their distinction as reason and understanding was quite modern, and chiefly due to a scientific definition given and maintained by the Kantian school of philosophy. Of course every generation has a right to define its philosophical terms, but from an historical ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller

... thought of home must excite a pang even in the first moments of freedom. Its glad shelter—its kindly guidance—its very restraints, how dear and tender must they seem in parting! How brightly must they shine in the retrospect as the youth turns from them to the hardened and unfamiliar face of the world! With what a sweet, sadly-cheering pathos they must linger in the memory! And then what chance and hazard is there in his newly-gotten freedom! What instincts of warning in its very novelty and dim inexperience! What ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... of mortals, but it is in many ways Russian rather than Continental in its atmosphere. That ought to have pleased and excited so sympathetic a soul as Henry. I am afraid that this moment of his arrival was the first realisation in his life of that stern truth that that which seems romantic in retrospect is only too often unpleasantly realistic in ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... fire still burning, Ian warmed and refreshed, they wheeled from retrospect into the present. Warburton revealed how thoroughly shattered were ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston

... interval, these, too, gradually disappear, and the liberated beings are called "freedmen." The revolution is then virtually accomplished; and nothing remains but to rectify the details, and drop the d. When the freedmen are lost in the mass of freemen, then the work will be absolutely complete; and the retrospect of its successive stages will be matter ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... so very much overcome by this retrospect that he was unable, until he had wiped his brow several times, to return any reply to the question whether he approved of railway communication, notwithstanding that it would appear from the answer ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens

... alone of its arrival was sufficient to satisfy his imaginative sentiment. He was not anxious to open the epistle, and in truth did not begin to read it for nearly half-an-hour, anticipating readily its terms of passionate retrospect and tender adjuration. When at last he turned his feet to the fireplace and unfolded the sheet, he was surprised and pleased to find that neither extravagance nor vulgarity was there. It was the most charming little missive he had ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy

... letter some idea may be formed of what this unhappy man suffered at this period of his life, from "the reflections of a mind not used to its own reproaches." The view of the future was as dreadful as the retrospect of the past. His thoughts continually dwelt upon the public trial which was preparing—before him he saw all its disgraceful circumstances. Then the horror of marrying, of passing his whole future existence ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth

... thee, no. Better were it for thee thou hadst never been born." And so on, in the controversial dialect of the time, calling the vice-chancellor a "poor mushroom," and abusing him generally. Elsewhere, in a retrospect which I shall presently quote at length, he refers to his university experiences: "Of my persecution at Oxford, and how the Lord sustained me in the midst of that hellish darkness and debauchery; of my being ...
— William Penn • George Hodges

... arbour and slowly imbibed a large allowance of white wine and picked a little bread and cheese with no very impetuous appetite, if a third of his meditations ran upon the missing treasure, the other two-thirds were more pleasingly busied in the retrospect of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... has been waiting long at the door of the hospitable headquarters which have entertained us! Let me return to it, to the great spectacle of the present—after this retrospect of the Past. ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... have been far too dependent for their appeal to the spectator upon the humorous, epigrammatic sayings of the characters. True, it is usually after leaving the theatre, and reviewing the picture in retrospect, that the spectator realizes that the accent has been too definitely on the sub-titling and not enough upon the action, but when he does realize it, he feels disappointed—and watches the next release featuring the same star to see if it will be repeated. ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds

... and realized how the first hours of the Sabbath had passed, he started up much vexed with himself, and after a brief retrospect said: "Such excitements as those of yesterday are little better than a debauch, and I must shun them hereafter. God has blessed and succeeded me, and it is but a poor return I am making. However my unfortunate attachment may end, nothing ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... had worshipped here, living and dying in a faith which was at best a helpful delusion. He could appreciate the beautiful aspects of Christianity as a legend, its nobility as a humanising power, its rich results in literature, its grandeur in historic retrospect. But at no moment in his life had he felt it as a spiritual influence. So far from tending in that direction, as he sat and brooded here in the churchyard, he owed to his fit of tearfulness a courage which determined him to abandon all religious ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... the way which the Lord has led us these forty years in the wilderness, we sometimes find in retrospect the Marahs no sadder than the Elims. Nay, there are times when ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... however, that this was written by a personal friend; for a year later the same magazine, in its semi-annual retrospect of British literature, expressed somewhat altered opinions. This time it says: "It is not for us to vindicate Mary Godwin from the charge of multiplied immorality which is brought against her by the candid as well as the censorious, by the sagacious as well as ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... plodding passivity of the older world. Only a false mediaevalism can paint the past in colors superior to the present. The haze of distance that dims the mountains with purple, shifts also the crude colors of the past into the soft glory of retrospect. Misled by these, the sentimentalist may often sigh for an age that in a nearer view would be seen filled with cruelty and suffering. But even when we have made every allowance for the all too human tendency to soften down the past, it remains true that in many senses the processes of industry ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock

... blank about those last minutes. In less than an hour after my escape I struck the highway, but it was an hour which in the retrospect unrolls itself into unquiet years. I was dimly conscious of scrambling through a ditch and coming to a ghostly white road. The schimmel swung to the right, and the next I knew some one had taken my bridle ...
— Prester John • John Buchan

... was not settled even in the final retrospect, when it appeared that at the very moment that Northwick showed himself mindful of the company's interests on those minor points, he was defrauding it further in the line of his defalcations, and keeping back a large sum of money that belonged to it. But at that moment Northwick did not consider ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... vision or his version of what had befallen them, and of how, in particular, it had come; and should never dream thereby (though much would she suffer from that!) of how interesting he might have been. She had, in a finer sense, no manners, and to be concerned with her in any retrospect was—since their discourse was of losses—to feel the dignity of history incur the very gravest. It was true that such fantasies, or that any shade of inward irony, would be Greek to Mrs. Folliott. It was ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James

... pauper, into "M. Madeleine," maire and (nummis gallicis) millionaire, through making sham jet. All this, by any one who really knew his craft, would have been sketched rapidly in fluent preliminary, and subsequent piecemeal retrospect, so as to start with Valjean's escape from Thenardier ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... minute. Lady Kilmarny had said it would not be many weeks before the Turnours went to England. There, if Miss Paget (who seemed extremely nice by contrast and in retrospect) were still of the same mind, I might find a good home. If not, she was as kind as she was queer, and would help me look further. So I replied that I would accept the fifty francs, and would do my best to ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... spotted with lamps. Each globe a sphere of pinkish yellow, they stretched before him in a line that marched into a distance of mingled lights and more accentuated shadows. He looked along them as if they were bearing his thoughts back over the past, every globe a station in the retrospect, stage by stage advancing him toward a final ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... laughed again, nodded, and disappeared. The consul, amused yet somewhat perplexed over the naive brusqueness of the interview, waited patiently. Presently she returned, a little out of breath, but apparently still enjoying some facetious retrospect, and said, "Maw will be down soon." After a pause, fixing her bright eyes mischievously on ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... The historical retrospect of the Darwinian theories, from their purely scientific side, leads us of itself to a critical review of their present state. We can briefly indicate in advance the result to which it will lead us, viz.: that the descent theory has gained, ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... of good action that it appears inevitable in the retrospect. We should have been cut-throats to do otherwise. And there's an end. We ought to know distinctly that we are damned for what we do wrong; but when we have done right, we have only been gentlemen, after all. There is nothing ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... of retrospect Stuart began to wonder at his host's strange behavior until of idle speculation suspicion was born, but as to that ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... his two companions as if for confirmation. He looked at the three crewmen, at Cal, all sprawled or crouched there beneath the tree at the edge of the clearing. "We thought it was the end of everything," he said in retrospect, "but we found out quick that things ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton

... never proposed to her, nor came within a measurable distance of doing so. A man so prone, as is my friend, to spend his time in modest admiration of the prowess of others is apt to lag behind. Miss Dashaway remains to Mr. Sims, as all else does, a retrospect and ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock

... went on Fritz, enjoying the retrospect, "one could see that quite well. He was putting on my boots for me all the time, and was willing to pay a good deal more for the accommodation than he ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... her with some parting request. When she had really gone, and the last sound of her footsteps died away, he went back into the dusky room, and threw himself down on the chair where she had sat, and abandoned himself to a delicious retrospect. ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... to shake his individuality from its centre, and thus destroyed his power of work and completed his soul-ruin. Oscar's second fall—this time from a height—was fatal and made writing impossible to him. It is all clear enough now in retrospect though I did not understand it at the time. When he went to live with Bosie Douglas he threw off the Christian attitude, but afterwards had to recognise that "De Profundis" and "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" were deeper and better work than ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... too much, he thought as he rode the hotel elevator. For in retrospect, the evening was a haze of pleasure that was hard to pin his attention to. Everything he had said, everything that had happened seemed profoundly right, an atmosphere which he had encountered rarely before and only then in the last stage of drunkenness. But he was sober. He had had only a ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye

... need of one. "I could not form my reading habits alone, and I had not sufficient help. I did enough, however, to show I was not an ass. I got a scholarship. I was twice in goodish places in the first class. I had a name for flute-playing;" and then, ending this retrospect, which he wrote with some disgust, he tells how he left Cambridge in his third year, going out B.A. with no contest for honours. His college vacations were spent either in London with college friends, or with a reading party under Wilkinson, the tutor, ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... blame was to be impartially divided between the sufferer and the oppressor, and in which, according to the standing manners of Bengal, he would recommend oblivion as the best remedy, and would end by remarking, that retrospect could have no advantage, and could serve only to irritate and keep alive animosities; and by this kind of equitable, candid, and judge-like proceeding, they hoped the whole complaint would calmly fade away, the sufferers remain in the possession of their patience, and the tyrant ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... Behavior in retrospect.—The caption of this chapter implies the behavior of human beings, as a matter of course, and the study of this subject is, at once, both alluring and illusive. No sooner has the student arrived at deductions that seem conclusive than exceptions begin to loom up on his speculative horizon ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... away of her gentle spirit for ever from their love. Isabella De Haldimar had, from her earliest infancy, been remarkable for her quiet and contemplative character; and, bred amid scenes that brought at every retrospect, recollections of some acted horror, it is not surprising that the bias given by nature, should have been developed and strengthened by the events that had surrounded her. Not dissimilar in disposition, as she was not unlike in form, to her mother, she was by ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... sacrifice would leave her penniless. She died after years of companionship; his children married and made homes of their own; he is a lonely man. Yet he is not unhappy, for the tremendous demands of his tremendous work leave him little time for sadness or retrospect. At times the realization comes that he is getting old, that friends and comrades have been passing away, leaving him an old man with younger friends and helpers. But such realization only makes him work with an earnestness still more ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell

... quarter of a century when books were neither so numerous nor so cheap as they are to-day. From these he set himself the maddening task of selecting one hundred volumes to be taken with us. The rest were to be sold. The whole of our preparations are dominated in the retrospect for me, by my father's absorption in the task of sifting and re-sifting his books. Acting under his instructions, I myself handled each one of the three thousand and odd volumes a good many times. Eventually, we took six hundred ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... A fair retrospect of Davenant's career enables us to select without difficulty that one of his labors which is most deserving of applause. Not his "Gondibert," notwithstanding it abounds in fine passages,—notwithstanding Gay thought it worth continuation and completion, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... situation now every hour became more irksome. The prince still unkindly persisted in withdrawing himself from my society. I was now deeply involved in debt, which I despaired of ever having the power to discharge. I had quitted both my husband and my profession. The retrospect ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson

... artificial utterance. He had clearly interrupted himself to indulge in this sad retrospect. He then points a moral from Mrs. Nickleby, who, he says, could not conceive the idea of anyone dwelling on such thoughts in secret. I have always had a notion that this worthy lady's incongruities and rambling methods were suggested by one of his ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald

... with the retrospect of English ethnology. The chief questions in the prospect are the one just indicated and the effects of change of area in the case of ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham

... burden that men can lay upon us, is not that they persecute us with their hatred and scorn, but that they thus plant hatred and scorn in our souls. That is what does not let us breathe freely or see clearly." Retrospect softened the odiousness of his Jewish persecutors; they were but children of a persecuting age, and it was indeed hard for a community of refugees from Spain and Portugal to have that faith doubted for which they or their fathers had ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... would be an occupation for you; and I have always hoped that, if it should please God you should retire while still in the prime of life for work, you would publish some great legal book, which should for ever be a record of your knowledge on these subjects. However it may be, the retrospect of upwards of twenty years spent on the Bench with the complete respect and admiration of all your friends, is no slight thing to fall back upon: and I trust that this fresh trial will turn to your good, and even happiness here, as we may trust ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... endure this terrible retrospect, Paslew strove to bend his thoughts on other things. The choir was singing the "Dies Irae," and their ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... to in the last letter was given at the Royal Institution, February 10, 1860. The following letter was written in reply to Mr. Huxley's request for information about breeding, hybridisation, etc. It is of interest as giving a vivid retrospect of the writer's experience ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin



Words linked to "Retrospect" :   retrospective, retrospection, remember, review, reflection, musing, think back, reflexion, thoughtfulness



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