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Retrograde   /rˈɛtrəgrˌeɪd/   Listen
Retrograde

adjective
1.
Moving from east to west on the celestial sphere; or--for planets--around the sun in a direction opposite to that of the Earth.
2.
Of amnesia; affecting time immediately preceding trauma.
3.
Going from better to worse.  Synonym: retrogressive.
4.
Moving or directed or tending in a backward direction or contrary to a previous direction.  Synonym: retral.



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"Retrograde" Quotes from Famous Books



... this must seem to you to be very unhomelike,' he was saying, as he lounged on a low chair not very far from her. 'The girls didn't like it at all at first. I suppose it's a retrograde step in civilization. Servants are decidedly of that opinion; we have a great difficulty in getting them to stay here. The reason seems to me that they miss the congenial gossip of the area door. At this moment we are without a domestic. I found she compensated ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing

... has been later applied to the problem, but with quite different results from those reached by more recent investigators. He says, "By setting out from Nipe which is the point where Columbus struck Cuba and proceeding in a retrograde direction along his course, we may surely trace his path, and shall be convinced that Guanahani is no ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various

... stars that have such irregular, uncertain, vagarious ways that they were called vagabonds, or planets, by the early astronomers. Here is the path of Jupiter in the year 1866 (Fig. 44). These bodies go forward for awhile, then stop, start aside, then retrograde, [Page 112] and go on again. Some are never seen far from the sun, and others in all ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren

... be no retrograde movement. Highly educated women have acquired such a footing that they may do what ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... son-in-law, because he is his son-in-law. In the Bouches-du-Rhone, where the canton of Seignon, by mistake or through routine, swore "to maintain the constitution of the kingdom," it sets aside these retrograde elected representatives, commences proceedings against the "crime committed," and sends troops against Noves because the Noves elector, a justice who is denounced and in peril, has escaped from the electoral den.—After the purification of persons it proceeds ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... there is in them not a trace of artistic or really human stuff. If I were to take up the cudgels once more, it would be rather against these unfortunate enlightened people than against the intentionally retrograde Jesuits of literature, with whom one need not trouble one's self unless one wants to talk for victory as a litterateur, which has never entered my mind. Certainly, most certainly, I should be very glad to know that I had been rightly understood by many people, glad to see ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... superior soils, the quotient from the entire dividend, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, is always tending gradually to a higher expression.] by requiring more labor for their production; manufactures, from the changes in machinery, which are always progressive and never retrograde, are constantly tending to grow cheaper by requiring less; consequently, there is nothing which, upon Mr. Ricardo's theory, can long continue stationary in value. If, therefore, he had proposed any measure of value, he must have forgotten ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... America. He was preaching at a camp meeting, and he was preaching upon the miracle of Joshua, and he began his sermon with this sentence: "My hearers, there are three motions of the sun. The first is the straightforward or direct motion of the sun; the second is the retrograde or backward motion of the sun; and the third is the motion mentioned in our text—'the ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser

... solidity in the South. It may be that four years hence the candidate and platform of the Democratic Party will more approve themselves to the South and to the intelligent men of the South. Under these conditions there may seem to be a retrograde step, and the South continue solid, but I venture to think that the movement now begun will grow, slowly at first, but ultimately so as to extend the practical political arena for the discussion of party issues into all the ...
— The South and the National Government • William Howard Taft

... whole army; and very little more on the other, to secure the eastern Colonies, and the important passes leading through the Highlands to Albany, and the country about the lakes.... I am wearied almost to death with the retrograde movement of things, and I solemnly protest that a pecuniary reward of twenty thousand pounds a year would not induce me to undergo what I do, and, after all, perhaps to lose my character; as it is impossible, under such ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... transportation and stores. During the night, General Banks fell back to Pleasant Hill, where another battle was fought on the 9th, and the enemy repulsed with great loss. During the night, General Banks continued his retrograde movement to Grand Ecore, and thence to Alexandria, which he reached on the 27th of April. Here a serious difficulty arose in getting Admiral Porter's fleet which accompanied the expedition, over the rapids, the water having fallen so much since they passed up as to prevent ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... it were only nervous despondency, my friend. But it is not so. All the while I am conscious of a retrograde instead of ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur

... in the House of Representatives, the retrograde of a badly demoralized Army, its routed fragments still coming in with alarming stories of a pursuing Enemy almost at the gates of the city, had no terrors for our legislators; and there was something of Roman dignity, patriotism, and courage, in the adoption, on that painfully ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... and with his eyes fixed upon the reptile, he made a retrograde movement to extricate himself from the unpleasantness of at least his damp location; but he was not a little surprised to find the snake approaching still nearer to him. This puzzled him exceedingly; he could not understand the idea of a snake attacking a man, when there was a chance ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro

... the human race, and the low and humid coast extending from the mouth of the Sinu towards the Gulf of Darien. The comparison of these scenes, which have again relapsed into a savage state, confirms what I have elsewhere advanced relative to the strange and sometimes retrograde nature of civilization in America. On one side, the coast of Paria, the islands of Cubagua and Marguerita; on the other, the Gulf of Uraba and Darien, received the first Spanish colonists. Gold and pearls, which were there found in abundance, because from time ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt

... with a novel in his hand the catastrophe of his terrible history. In contemplating this obstinate and inflexible character thus struggling with impossibility, his officers would observe to each other that, having arrived at the summit of his glory, he no doubt foresaw that from his first retrograde step would date its decline; that for this reason he continued immovable, clinging to, and lingering a few moments longer on, ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote

... first signal of retreat the whole army of the Inca would be upon them. Their movements would be anticipated by a foe far better acquainted with the intricacies of the Sierra than themselves; the passes would be occupied, and they would be hemmed in on all sides; while the mere fact of this retrograde movement would diminish the confidence and with it the effective strength of his own men, while it doubled that ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott

... ultimately reach the happy period when she was carried about in long clothes, and took a tenacious delight, peculiar to babies, in pulling gentlemen's whiskers. In fact, I wonder that, carrying out this retrograde movement, a married lady, as she advances in years, does not re-appear on the stage of life as the ball-room girl, and throw off the matronly title of MRS., to put on the more flowery salutation of MISS. It would be more consistent with the representation of figures—we mean, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... something wonderful; it laughs at the ages; its bones, found side by side with those of the cave hyena, are the same as those found in its body as it exists to-day. It is an anomaly, an animal which does not advance nor retrograde. ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... poor inmates of the gaol, and yet few or no important steps were taken to remedy the glaring evils which he pointed out. Some feeble reforms certainly did take place immediately after his first and second visits to Liverpool, but a retrograde movement succeeded, and things relapsed into their usual jog-trot way of dirt and disorder. When Mr. Howard received the freedom of the borough an immense fuss was made about him; people used to follow him in the street, and he was feted and invited to dinners and parties; ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... Let us cast a retrograde glance to the history of this period. It was only fifty years before that Columbus had dropped anchor off the coral reef of Samana Cay, and thrilled the Old World by announcing the discovery of the New. Elizabeth, the virgin Queen of England, was a proud, haughty girl just entering her teens, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various

... art to which my humble aspirations are confined, my lyre has been a solace when every thing else has failed; soothing when agitated, and when at peace furnishing that exercise and excitement without which the mind becomes sick, and all her faculties retrograde when they ought to be advancing. Men, when they feel that nature has kindled in their bosoms a flame which must incessantly be fed, can cultivate eloquence and exert it, in aid of the unfortunate before the judgment seats of their country; ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks

... with a view to take up his headquarters at the meeting-point of Ariminum, and from that point to hold the passes of the Apennines on the one hand and the valley of the Po on the other. In this retrograde movement different divisions fell into the hands of the enemy, and not only so, but Sena Gallica was stormed and Carbo's rearguard was broken in a brilliant cavalry engagement by Pompeius; nevertheless Carbo attained ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... retrograde movement of the Germans began, those who could not see the nature of the fighting believed that the German line of communication, the one from Aix-la-Chapelle through Belgium, had proved too long, and that the left wing was voluntarily withdrawing ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis

... opinion of the day. They are conscious that in them is concentrated the enlightenment of the period. The class to which they belong is socially and politically dominant—the advance guard of national progress. It has finally cast off the incubus of a retrograde political system; it has placed the nation in a position of unprecedented importance in Europe; and it is setting an example of ordered liberty to the whole civilised world. It has forced the Church and the priesthood to abandon the old claim to spiritual supremacy. It has, in the ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... was found that Sheridan had begun a retrograde movement down the valley to take a defensive position in front of Halltown. The brigade brought up the rear, the Sixth ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd

... orbitual revolutions of the satellites of Uranus have not as yet been clearly scanned. It has been thought that their path is retrograde compared with the rest. Perhaps this may be owing to a bouleversement of the primary, for the inclination of its equator to the ecliptic is admitted to be unusually high; but the subject is altogether so obscure, that nothing can be ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers

... my next duty was to keep up my strength. I felt very weak, and in the weakness lost something of the amazement at what had occurred. I fell asleep on the sofa, however, wondering over and over again how Lucy had made such a retrograde movement, and how she could have been drained of so much blood with no sign any where to show for it. I think I must have continued my wonder in my dreams, for, sleeping and waking my thoughts always came back to the little punctures in her ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker

... sufferance, by the supposition, under the national laws. Will the causes of war die away because war is forbidden? Certainly not; and the only result of the prohibition would be to throw back the exercise of war from national into private and mercenary hands; and that is precisely the retrograde or inverse course of civilization; for, in the natural order of civilization, war passes from the hands of knights, barons, insulated cities, into those of the universal community. If, again, it is attempted to put ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... respect for it, that after a few years it fell into a veritable desuetude. Thus it happened that, while France at a short distance from this region was advancing with rapid strides towards the enfranchisement of the poorer classes, Varenne was executing a retrograde march and returning at full speed to the ancient tyranny of the country squires. It was easy enough for the Mauprats to pervert these poor folk; they feigned a friendly interest in them to mark their difference from the other nobles in the province whose manners ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... them rather than on lands, and because landlords did not anticipate that bread-stuffs brought from this country would interfere with the value of their rents. But England, with all her proud and selfish boasts about free-trade, may yet have to take a retrograde course, like France and Prussia, or her landed interests may be imperilled. The English aristocracy, who rule the country, cannot afford to have the value of their lands reduced one-half, for those lands are so heavily mortgaged that such ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord

... figure we represent a portion of the circular tracks in which the earth and Mars move in accordance with the Copernican doctrine. I show particularly the case where the earth comes directly between the planet and the sun, because it is on such occasions that the retrograde movement (for so this backward movement of Mars is termed) is at its highest. Mars is then advancing in the direction shown by the arrow-head, and the earth is also advancing in the same direction. We, on the earth, however, being unconscious of our ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... ahead of him, and it went on until it was stopped by a telegram from General Van Dorn, who had been appointed to command the Confederate Army of the West because Price and McCulloch could not agree. The new general, who declared that "all retrograde movements must be stopped at once," and that "henceforth the army must press on to victory," arrived on the 2d of March, drove Siegel out of Bentonville on the 5th, and on Friday and Saturday fought the ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon

... terrors which this trip has for timid travellers will entirely disappear. It is a pity that the skyds system should not be improved in equal ratio, instead of becoming even more inconvenient than at present. Holmen, hitherto a fast station, is now no longer so; and the same retrograde change is going on at other places along the road. The waiting at the tilsigelse stations is the great drawback to travelling by skyds in Norway. You must either wait two hours or pay fast prices, ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor

... feeble-minded which marks our honored Dr. Morgan and her fellow workers, they took up the burden, determined to do their best. Yet, despite their great efforts, the class did not advance as other classes have done. Nor yet could it retrograde for it stood in a position where any backward movement was impossible. It was known throughout Exeter as the 'caudal appendage' class, ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird

... forum for the commoner, "the coffee house soon became the plaything of the leisure class; and when the club was evolved, the coffee house began to retrograde to the level of the tavern. And so the eighteenth century, which saw the coffee house at the height of its power and popularity, witnessed also its decline and fall. It is said there were as many clubs at the end of the century as there were ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... refractory, refulgent, rejuvenate, relevant, rendezvous, rendition, reparation, repercussion, repertory, replenish, replete, replevin, reprehend, reprobate, repulsive, requisite, rescind, residue, residuum, resilient, resplendent, resurgence, resuscitate, reticulate, retribution, retrograde, retrospect, rigorous, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... in the progress of human history that higher civilizations should supersede the lower. Wherever the contrary has been the case and a lower civilization overran the higher the movement of humanity was retrograde. Hence, if the Indian type of civilization in Western Canada was to be superseded by the British type and this change effected without injustice and hardship for the original dwellers in the country, ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... poisons [Lachesis, arrow-poison, obtained from a serpent (Pulte). Crotalus horridus, rattlesnake's venom (Neidhard). The less dangerous Pediculus capitis is the favorite remedy of Dr. Mure, the English "Apostle of Homoeopathy." These are examples of the retrograde current setting towards barbarism] against which a part of the Discourse at the beginning of this ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... of the army for a new chief, but a declaration in their own name and that of the troops "that if any order came from St. Petersburg, to suspend hostilities and greet the invaders as friends"—for it had all along been believed that the retrograde movements were the result of the advice of the minister, Count Romanzow—"such an order would be regarded as one that did not express his Imperial Majesty's real sentiments and wishes, but had been extracted from his Majesty under false representations or external control, ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty

... the point where—resided, having come from his seat in the middle of the island, to a small house on the shore, as we believe, that he might, with less reproach, entertain us meanly. If he aspired to meanness, his retrograde ambition was completely gratified, but he did not succeed equally in escaping reproach. He had no cook, nor, I suppose, much provision, nor had the lady the common decencies of her tea-table; we picked up our sugar with our fingers. Boswell was very angry, and reproached him with his improper ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... [Footnote: De Motu Animal., cap. 8.] further remarks, retracing her steps, reverts to where she had set out, and returns at the end of her course to the goal whence she had started. As animal generation proceeds from that which is not animal, entity from nonentity, so, by a retrograde course, entity, by corruption, is resolved into nonentity, whence that in animals, which was last created, fails first and that which was ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... thus: the assimilation of great and new ideas is always a slow and gradual process: there is no haste either here or in any other department of Nature. Die Zeit ist unendlich lang. Steadily the forces work, sometimes seeming to accomplish nothing; sometimes even the motion appears retrograde; but in the long run the destined end is reached, and the course, whether of a planet or of men's thoughts about the universe, is permanently altered. Then, the controversy was about the earth's place in the universe; now, if there be any controversy of the same kind, it is about man's place ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... checked him. "Do not do that! Not yet! It is too great a shock in the retrograde. It was ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... a puzzle which it cannot solve alone, but which at once becomes clear when germinal selection is added. For the determinants of organs that have no further value for the organism, must, as we have already explained, embark on a gradual course of retrograde development. ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel

... characteristic summary of the question of the Red Indian. It marks the combination between the mental narrowness and the moral justice of the old Liberal. Dickens can see nothing in the Red Indian except that he is barbaric, retrograde, bellicose, uncleanly, and superstitious—in short, that he is not a member of the special civilisation of Birmingham or Brighton. It is curious to note the contrast between the cheery, nay Cockney, contempt with which Dickens speaks of the American Indian and that chivalrous and pathetic essay ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton

... their disposal; they subsist principally, many of them entirely, on the flesh of wild cattle; they have lost most of the arts of civilized life; not a few of them are in a state of deplorable misery; and if they should continue, as it seems probable they will, to retrograde as at present, the beautiful pampas of Buenos Ayres will soon be fit for another experiment in colonization. Slaves, black or yellow, would have cultivated those plains, would have kept together, would have been made to assist each other; would, by keeping together and ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... illustrious spouse of Jove that art to be; if aught of this hath any charms for thee.[64] Thence madly rushing along the seaside track, thou didst dart away to the vast bay of Rhea, from which thou art tempest-driven in retrograde courses: and in time to come, know well that the gulf of the deep shall be called IO-nian, a memorial of thy passage to all mortals. These hast thou as tokens of my intelligence, how that it perceives somewhat ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus

... a great dislike to reconsider any decision, even when it was acknowledged to be unjust. In little as well as in great things he evinced his repugnance to retrograde. An instance of this occurred in the affair of General Latour-Foissac. The First Consul felt how much he had wronged that general; but he wished some time to elapse before he repaired his error. His heart and his conduct were at variance; but his feelings ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... by its fantastic character to failure. It confused great issues; it brought into play what Mr. Bright called fancy franchises; it did not lower the voting qualification in boroughs; its new property qualifications were of a retrograde character; and it left the working classes where it found them. It frightened staid Tories of the older school, and excited the ridicule, if not the indignation, of all who had seriously grappled with ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... found that if the velocity of the detached fragment exceeded that of a cannon ball in the proportion of 121 to 1 the fragment would become a comet with a direct motion; but if the velocity rose in the proportion of 156 to 1 the motion of the comet would be retrograde. If the velocity was less than in either of these cases the fragment would revolve as a planet in an elliptic orbit. For any other planet besides the earth the velocity of explosion corresponding to the different cases would vary in the inverse ratio of the square root of the mean distance. ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss

... heavy-jawed, with a strong step, and a short manner; obviously proud, reserved, silent, slightly imperious, self-centred, self-opinionated, well-educated in the kind of knowledge all such men must possess, but narrow in intellect, retrograde in sympathy, a stickler for social conventions, an almost unyielding upholder of royal rights, prerogatives, customs, and usages (although by his own marriage he had violated one of the first of the laws of his class, and by his unfailing fidelity to his wife continued ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine

... plate and said he could not eat crabs. Since he had learned that the crab was nought else but a beetle living in water, and since a company had been formed in Germany for making beetles into preserves for dessert, he had been unable to look with undismayed eye upon these retrograde monsters. ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... water failed entirely by the end of the first day's retrograde march. Our fluid aliment was now nothing but gin; but this infernal fluid burned my throat, and I could not even endure the sight of it. I found the temperature and the air stifling. Fatigue paralysed my limbs. More than ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... the importance of the divine agents. The homage due to saints and angels became an almost idolatrous worship amongst the majority of the Christian world; and apprehensions might be entertained for a moment lest the religion of Christ should retrograde towards the superstitions which it had subdued. It seems evident, that the more the barriers are removed which separate nation from nation amongst mankind, and citizen from citizen amongst a people, the stronger is the bent of the human mind, as if by its own impulse, towards the ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... carry Wood's position. It was here that I lost Schaefer, who was killed instantly, making my fourth brigade commander dead that day. The enemy in front of Wood having been checked, our whole line east of the railroad executed undisturbed its retrograde movement to a position about three hundred yards to its rear. When I fell back to the edge of the clump of timber, where when first coming on the ground I had formed to help Wood, I was ordered by Rosecrans to prepare ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... has been long in the Victory; but, if the Admiralty will not promote my lieutenants, they must all make a retrograde motion. But, I hope, they will not do such a cruel thing. I have had a very affectionate letter from Lord Minto. I hope George will be confirmed; but, the Earl will not ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol. I. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson

... Security for the farmer is essential—of what nature should the security be? The phrase 'unexhausted improvements' is often used. But should the legislature contemplate, or make provision for the exhaustion of improvements? Is the improving tenant to be told that his remedy is to retrograde—to undo what he has done—to take out of the land all the good he has put in it, and reduce it to the comparative sterility in which he, or those whom he represents, first received it? Should not the policy of the legislature ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... could leave the canoe at a carrying place and go overland to the salt water in eleven days. From other tribes down the same river, Mackenzie gathered similar facts. He knew that the stream was misleading him; but a retrograde movement up such a current would discourage his men. He had only one month's provisions left. His ammunition had dwindled to one hundred and fifty bullets and thirty pounds of shot. Instead of folding his hands in despondency, Mackenzie ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut

... any other cause may be traced the change in the perspective, so to speak, of Virtue, which characterises modern notions of perfection as contrasted with antique ones. Contrast the Greek and Roman type with the mediaeval ascetic, or with the philanthropic type of modern times. Carlyle's ideal is retrograde and an anachronism. Women and patient sufferers find example in Him. But we have in Jesus Christ, too, the highest example of all the stronger and robuster virtues, the more distinctly heroic, masculine; and that not ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... acted the part of a willing accomplice. At the same time, Clerical opinions still reigned supreme in the yellow drawing-room. It was more particularly in the following year that this group of reactionaries gained decisive influence in the town, thanks to the retrograde movement which was going on at Paris. All those anti-Liberal laws which the country called "the Roman expedition at home" definitively secured the triumph of the Rougon faction. The last enthusiastic bourgeois saw the Republic tottering, and hastened to rally round the ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... ass which invaded the ears of Peregrine and his mistress, neither of whom could form the least rational conjecture about the cause of such strange disturbance, which increased as the animal approached their apartment. At length the bourrique's retrograde motion was obstructed by the door, which it forced open in a twinkling, with one kick, and entered with such complication of sound as terrified the lady almost into a fit, and threw her lover into the utmost ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... provincial parlements turned, under other names and in other forms, upon this very issue of the unification of the law. The Crown was with the progressive party, but it lacked the strength and courage to set aside retrograde local sentiment as the Constituent Assembly was ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley

... You are doing miracles," he answered in a whisper. "And yet, look at his brow, how noble in shape! Isn't it like the classic or traditional brow given by sculptors to Lycurgus and the Greek sages? The revolution of July has an evidently retrograde tendency," said the doctor (who might in his student days have made a barricade himself), ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... out of sight for almost two days. In her eagerness to catch something the schooner had gone far beyond the highway toward which she had first shaped her course, but this retrograde movement brought her back to it. On the morning of the third day the thrilling cry "Sail ho!" came from aloft, and in an instant the deck was in commotion, the man at the wheel so far forgetting himself as to allow ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon

... Christianity itself most eagerly embraced when its light was obscured by fables and superstitions? Why did the Roman Empire perish, with all the aid of a magnificent civilization; why did this civilization itself retrograde; why did its art and literature decline? Why did the grand triumphs of Protestantism stop in half a century after Luther delivered his message? What made the mediaeval popes so powerful? What gave such ascendency ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord

... shunned the vanity which lessens it, the self-interest which debases it, and that continual recurrence to egotism which travesties it in intrigue. But she failed to crown her career by that true glory. Seeing the King and Queen of Spain very much offended at the retrograde step of Louis XIV., she further irritated them by her peevish attitude and marked discontent. The Marquis de Brancas, sent by Louis into Spain, proceeded to represent the articles of the Treaty of ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... and told him the number of the spheres and heavenly bodies, as also their triangular, square, and sextile aspect; their progressive and retrograde motion; their size and several prognostications; and other things which the reason of ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake

... made this retrograde movement, he gave a gentle pull to the wooden handle of an old-fashioned wire bell-pull in the midst of buggy, four-in-hand, and other whips, hanging in the entrance, a touch that was acknowledged by a single tinkle of the ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... fire, and had suffered most terribly in the operation; while my brigade, being forgotten by the division commander, or by the officer whose duty it was to convey the order, had held its ground until it had twice repulsed the enemy, and then changed position in comparative safety. A retrograde movement under fire must necessarily be extremely hazardous. It demoralizes your own men, who can not, at the moment, understand the purpose of the movement, while it encourages the enemy. The one accepts it as an indication of defeat; the other ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... garb and having the manners of civilisation! They see a girl, too,—now woman-grown—in whom the change, though less extreme, is still strikingly sadly for the worse. In both, the transformation is so complete, so retrograde, so contrary to all experience, that they can scarcely realise it. It is difficult to believe that any nature, however savage, after such pains had been taken to civilise it, could so return to itself! It seems a very ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid

... Backward. The electric germ of the Soul—delicate, fiery, and imperishable as it is—can be forced by its companion Will to take refuge in a lower form of material existence, dependent on the body it first inhabits. For instance, a man who is obstinate in pursuing ACTIVE EVIL can so retrograde the progress of any spiritual life within him, that it shall lack the power to escape, as it might do, from merely lymphatic and listless temperaments, to seek some other chance of development, but shall sink into the form of quadrupeds, birds, and other creatures dominated by purely physical needs. ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli

... 'tis thou inflam'st The threatening Scorpion with the burning tail, And fir'st his cleys:[649] why art thou thus enrag'd? Kind Jupiter hath low declin'd himself; 660 Venus is faint; swift Hermes retrograde; Mars only rules the heaven. Why do the planets Alter their course, and vainly dim their virtue? Sword-girt Orion's side glisters too bright: War's rage draws near; and to the sword's strong hand ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... of a body to the glorified spirit will, therefore, be a help, and not an encumbrance. For we are not to suppose that the soul, after having been for centuries in a state superior to its present condition, would retrograde, in returning to the body. A common idea respecting a body is, that it is necessarily a clog. True, by reason of sin and its effects, it is now a "vile body;" and Paul speaks of it as "the body of this death." But, even while we are in this world, a body is an indispensable help ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams

... religion also may decay. A lower race may borrow religious ideas from a higher and adapt them to their own position, i.e. degrade them. And the progress of religion may still have been upwards on the whole, although retrograde movements have taken place in certain races. On these and other grounds it is now held with growing certainty that fetishism cannot be the original form of religion, and that the higher stages of it are ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... principal safeguard is found, not in Legislature, but in the interests of the Women themselves. For, although they can inflict instantaneous death by a retrograde movement, yet unless they can at once disengage their stinging extremity from the struggling body of their victim, their own frail bodies are liable ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott

... the satellites so picked up would be direct: that is, would move round the planet in the direction of his axial rotation. Others, on the chances, would be retrograde: that is, would move against his axial rotation. They would describe orbits making the same various angles with the ecliptic as do the asteroids; and we may be sure they would be of ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly

... room as they all considered that. Ashe slipped down in his chair, his thoughts enmeshed in memories. First there had been Operation Retrograde, when specially trained "time agents" had shuttled back and forth in history, striving to locate and track down the mysterious source of alien knowledge which the eastern Communistic nations had ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton

... some evidence Should that existence to the present bind; Some innate inkling of experience Should still imbue and permeate the mind, If we, progressing, pass from state to state, Or retrograde, as ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... that time which was the end of Treta and the commencement of Dwapara, when the period came for many creatures superannuated by age to lay down their lives, the thousand-eyed deity of heaven poured no rain. The planet Vrihaspati began to move in a retrograde course, and Soma abandoning his own orbit, receded towards the south. Not even could a dew-drop be seen, what need then be said of clouds gathering together? The rivers all shrank into narrow streamlets. Everywhere ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... do reject, And Luna in Cancro in sextile he behold. I will the effect hereafter unfold: Now Jupiter the gentle, of temperature mean, Poor Mercury the turncoat, he forsook clean. Now murthering Mars retrograde in Libra, With amiable tryne apply to my beam; And splendent Sol the ruler of the day, After his eclipse to Jupiter will lean: The goddess of pleasure (dame Venus, I mean) To me her poor servant seem friendly to be: So also doth Luna, otherwise ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley

... superior to his own in numbers, with two of his three corps commanders dissatisfied with the ground and positions assigned them. He then and there made up his mind to retreat still farther south, to put the Etowah River and the Allatoona range between us; and he at once gave orders to resume the retrograde movement. ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... greatest number of moons, would be likely to retain some of his inner rings unbroken; that the earth would be likely to have a long day and Jupiter a short one; that the extreme outer planets would be not unlikely to rotate in a retrograde direction; and so on, through a long list of interesting and striking details. Not only, therefore, are we driven to the inference that our solar system was once a vaporous nebula, but we find that the mere contraction of such a nebula, under the influence of the enormous ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... less abstract topic of the bloomers, I often tease Luccia and Irene about them, seeking for further information as to why they ever came to retrograde from a position so heroically taken, one of such serious import to human progress, and to condescend once more to don the livery of feminine servitude, and appear, as they do today, in delicate draperies which the eye searches in vain ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... After taking his midday meal he should choose a quiet place and sitting down pass through the four Jhanas in succession. On rising from the fourth trance he should consider the event which last took place, namely his sitting down; and then in retrograde order all that he did the day and night before and so backwards month after month and year after year. A clever monk (so says Buddhaghosa) is able at the first trial to pass beyond the moment of his conception in the present existence and to take as the object of his thought ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... and fishes. But what gave special interest to these discoveries was the fact, ascertained by careful study, that not all of these beings were gifted with normally developed organs of vision, but that in some these organs had undergone a retrograde development, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various

... intelligent action: even in that mechanical routine which, in the eyes of the Emperor Francis, constituted the life of the State, everything was antiquated and self-contradictory. In all that affected the mental life of the people the years that followed the peace of Luneville were distinctly retrograde. Education was placed more than ever in the hands of the priests; the censorship of the press was given to the police; a commission was charged with the examination of all the books printed during the reign ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... the number of competing units. There are not wanting people who, having gained a dim perception that monopolies are an inevitable result of the modern concentration of industry, conclude that, after all, "the former days were better than these," and that our wisest course is a retrograde one. Fortunately, however, these people are comparatively few. It is a fact so plain that even the dullest can hardly fail to perceive it, that the consolidation and concentration of industry which have gone on everywhere have wonderfully cheapened the cost of production,—made ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker

... the state of things in the Northern army at the beginning of the civil war, before discipline had been enforced by disaster. The campaign opened with a cleverly-won victory on the part of Black Hawk, and a rapid retrograde movement on the part of the militia, as to which we will be content to say with Mr. Lamon, "of drunkenness no public account makes any mention, and individual cowardice is never to be imputed to American troops." Ultimately, however, Black ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... Washington, it is certain we were betrayed; for, on arriving near his encampment, we found his cannon mounted, his troops under arms, and at every point so perfectly prepared to receive us, that we were compelled, like fools, to make a retrograde movement, without inflicting on our enemy ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson

... May, 1884, concludes the prosperous period which followed the crisis of 1873. During this period the most gigantic speculations in railroads occurred; the zenith of the movement was in 1880, and as early as 1881 a retrograde movement began, only to end in the disasters in question. The decline in prices had been steady for three years; they had sunk little by little under the influence of a ruinous competition, caused by the number of new lines and the lowering of rates, but above all through the manipulations ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar

... has a hold on us which it asserts whenever a disappointment knocks us down. Our old loves (with the bad natures I know in them) are always lurking to avenge themselves on the new by tempting us to a little retrograde infidelity. A schoolgirl in Fallow field, the tailor's daughter, had sighed for the bliss of Beckley Court. Beckley Court was her Elysium ere the ardent feminine brain conceived a loftier summit. Fallen from that attained eminence, she sighed anew for Beckley Court. Nor was this ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... now have returned to Ticonderoga, and thence crossed to the head of Lake George, from which there was a waggon-road to Fort Edward, only eighteen miles distant. But fearing that a retrograde movement might check the enthusiasm of the army, now elated with their rapid career of victory, underrating the difficulties of the country, and too much despising an enemy who had been so easily dispersed, he determined to ascend Wood Creek as far as Fort Anne, whence ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler

... Why judge of all women from Ariadne alone? The very struggle of women for education and sexual equality, which I look upon as a struggle for justice, precludes any hypothesis of a retrograde movement." ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... "A military republic, a government founded on mock elections and supported only by the sword," was nearly a quarter of a century since pronounced by Daniel Webster, when speaking of the South American States, as "a movement, indeed, but a retrograde and disastrous movement, from the regular and old-fashioned monarchical systems;" and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson

... summoned his generals and gave them aloud these new orders, but, in a whisper, he instructed them to begin the retrograde movement, and to let the troops occupy the positions he had selected for them on the extensive ground he ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... responsible solely to the State. Many Communists, including some of the best known, while recognizing the need of greater efficiency if the revolution is to survive at all, regard this step as definitely retrograde and likely in the long run to make the revolution not worth ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome

... whites are at least four to one. In the Cotton States the slaves and the culture of cotton are increasing at the rate of at least five per cent.; in the Border States the slave population is either stationary or retrograde, and the future of those States is clearly indicated. Down to a recent period the march of the planter and his forces across the Cotton States has been like that of an invading army. Vast forests of heavy timber have been felled, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... Hessian troops had passed, we saw several men appear at the outskirts. After looking about them, it seemed to us, they descended rapidly the hill. Others followed, and it appeared as if the main body were making a retrograde movement, and perhaps might march along the very road we were taking. At all events I was anxious not to expose my charges to any fresh insults, and therefore once more put the party in movement. Spinks volunteered to ride back to ascertain in what ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... Luis de Leon's verse, as well as his prose, has noticeable roughnesses; but let us not derive a wrong impression from this assertion. Luis de Leon is not 'finicking'. Withal he is a master of his art. Retrograde as we may perhaps think him in some matters, he was on the side of the reformers in the matter of metrics. He was a partisan of Boscan's innovating methods: so much might be expected from a man of his period. It is to be noted that, in his best poems, he shows a decided preference for liras, ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly

... earth, besides its annual motion which carries it round the sun from west to east in the space of a year, has also a singular revolution which was quite unknown till within these late years. Its poles have a very slow retrograde motion from east to west, whence it happens that their position every day does not correspond exactly with the same point of the heavens. This difference, which is so insensible in a year, becomes pretty considerable in time; and in threescore and ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire

... indications of prosperity except in the flourishing and improved appearance of the coconut-trees now in full bearing, as if nature boldly asserted her rights in opposition to the dormant or even retrograde condition of everything else ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... the Kohlgaerten. From my position this advance of the allies was not to be perceived except by the approach of the thunder of the artillery. The French centre yet stood immoveable; at least we could not observe from the city any change which denoted a retrograde movement. The sanguinary character of this tremendous conflict might be inferred from the thousands of wounded, who hobbled, crawled, and were carried in at the gates. Among the latter were many officers of rank. If you ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)

... a larger purpose than that of satisfying personal interest alone. In Connecticut such development was not marked, as so often elsewhere, by wild disorder, outrageous oppression, tyranny of classes, civil war, or by any great retrograde movement. Connecticut was more modern in her progress towards such liberty, and her contribution to advancing civilization was a pattern of stability, of reasonableness in government, and of a slow broadening out of the conception of liberty, as she gradually softened down her ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... Andrea returned to the Scalzo, the Barefoot Brothers offering better pay than the Servites. Here he did the allegory of Justice and the Sermon of S. John in monochrome. In these he took a fancy to retrograde his style, for they have the rugged force and angular form that recalls the more stern old Italian masters, or that Titan of northern art, ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)

... the least sign of improvement in a people who are commonly condemned by their own habits, their religion, and the opinions of Europeans, to a retrograde or eternally stationary existence. I was much pleased to observe in one of the small squares of the city a tree recently planted, (the tout[23], a species of small white mulberry,) which promises to afford not only a grateful ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... there are continued signs of the plan of the retrograde party to effect similar demonstrations in different places at the same hour. The 15th of May was one of these marked days. On that day the king of Naples made use of the insurrection he had contrived to ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... ancestors. Nor did he afterwards show any inclination to change his mind. All the internal reforms which he initiated were intended to correct what he considered as the too liberal tendencies of the previous reign, so that he left behind him the reputation of a sovereign of the retrograde type. In his opinion Russia was to be saved from anarchical disorders and revolutionary agitation, not by the parliamentary institutions and so-called liberalism of western Europe, but by the three principles which the elder ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... retirement, remigration[obs3]; recession &c. (motion from) 287; recess; crab-like motion. refluence[obs3], reflux; backwater, regurgitation, ebb, return; resilience reflection, reflexion (recoil) 277[Brit]; flip-flop, volte- face[Fr]. counter motion, retrograde motion, backward movement, motion in reverse, counter movement, counter march; veering, tergiversation, recidivation|, backsliding, fall; deterioration &c. 659; recidivism, recidivity[obs3]. reversal, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... the various Hindostan versions. To Mr. William H. Chandler, of Pembroke College, Oxford, I have expressed (Supp. vol. iii.) the obligations due to a kind and generous friend: his experiments with photography will serve to reconcile the churlishness and retrograde legislation of the great Oxford Library with the manners and customs of more civilised peoples. Mr. W. A. Clouston, whose degree is high in "Storiology," supplied my second and third Supplemental volumes with valuable analogues ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... those which we do not yet see are in the future. But it is possible to conceive beings built in such fashion that they perceive simultaneously what we regard as the past and the future. We may conceive beings who perceive phenomena in a retrograde order, and see them unroll themselves from our future to our past. Animals disposing of space otherwise than ourselves, and able, for instance, to move at a speed greater than that of light, would conceive an idea of the succession ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France

... homicide the climes o'erspread. —For that fine apologue, writh mystic strain, Gave like the rest a golden age to man, Ascribed perfection to his infant state, Science unsought and all his arts innate; Supposed the experience of the growing race Must lead him retrograde and cramp his pace, Obscure his vision as his lights increast, And sink him from an ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... earth rattling among the branches of the trees directly over the heads of the troops stationed in the rear of their captain. Much of the success of an attack, made by irregular soldiers, depends on the direction in which they are first got in motion. In the present instance it was retrograde, and in less than a minute after the bellowing report of the swivel among the rocks and caverns, the whole weight of the attack from the left rested on the prowess of the single arm of the veteran. Benjamin received a severe contusion ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... which so frequently originate in rumours and party fictions. From this time, newspapers and periodical literature became distinct works—at present, there seems to be an attempt to revive this union; it is a retrograde step for ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... something better. What is mechanical, reducible to rule, or capable of demonstration, is progressive, and admits of gradual improvement: what is not mechanical, or definite, but depends on feeling, taste, and genius, very soon becomes stationary, or retrograde, and loses more than it gains by transfusion. The contrary opinion is a vulgar error, which has grown up, like many others, from transferring an analogy of one kind to something quite distinct, without taking into the account the difference in ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... the one religion for all men and all time, is convicted of absurdity and imposture by its failures; by the retrograde which marks its whole history in Western Asia. As a universal religion it has been ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... that the other cage was after us again! Migul tried to elude it, to shake it off. But he had less success than formerly. It seemed to cling. We sped in the retrograde, constantly accelerating back to the Beginning. Then came a retardation, for a swift turn. In the haze and murk of the Beginning, Migul told us he could ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... the future. Is everything to perish which our forefathers planned and founded? Is this dismal superstition to overwhelm and bury the world and all that is bright and beautiful, as the lava stream rolled over the cities of Vesuvius? No, a thousand times no! Our retrograde and cowardly generation, which has lost all heart to enjoy life in sheer dread of future annihilation, may perhaps be doomed by the gods, as was that of Deucalion's day. Well—if so, what must be must! But such a world as they dream of never ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... the most certain discoveries which have been made in the domain of criticism and the history of literature. Whatever the anticritical party may bring forward to the contrary, it will maintain itself, and not retrograde again through any thing, so long as there exists such a thing as criticism; and it will not be easy for a reader upon the stage of culture on which we stand in the present day, if he goes to the examination unprejudiced, and with an uncorrupted power of appreciating ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... at which we could subsist by hunting untill we procured a guide. we left our instruments papers &c beleiving them safer here than to wrisk them on horseback over the roads and creeks which we had passed. our baggage being laid on scaffoalds and well covered we began our retrograde march at 1 P.M. having remained about 3 hours on this snowey mountain. we returned by the rout we had come to hungry creek, which we ascended about 2 miles and encamped. we had here more grass for our ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... battle, was itself an error which a sagacious commander would never have made. It is not to be denied, that the Americans were not satisfied with their situation. Some of their officers openly declared their discontent. But it was too late for a retrograde movement, nor is it likely, feeling as he did and sanguine as he was, that Gates would have believed any such movement necessary. The ground was equally unknown to both commanders; but Cornwallis had one advantage: he was in the command of veterans, who are generally ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms

... ahead we were sure of finding, at all events, some food for man and beast. Furthermore, we had by now traversed almost two-thirds of the total distance; a large force of Boers was known to be intercepting our retreat, and we were convinced that any retrograde movement would bring on an attack of Boers ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... advances, a retrograde movement in the doctrine of the leucocytes has gained ground surprisingly, especially in the last few years. Ever since Virchow's description of the lymphocytes, observers have tried to separate the various forms of leucocytes one from ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich

... Indus. Always it must be on and on. One night of rioting in Babylon may arrest the conquering march. Genius is essentially athletic, resolute, aggressive, persistent. Possession is grip, that tightens more and more. Ceasing to gain, we begin to lose. Ceasing to advance, we begin to retrograde. Brief was the interval between Roman conquest of Barbarians, and Barbarian conquest of Rome. Blessed is the man who keeps out of the hospital and holds his place in the ranks. Blessed the man, the last twang of whose bow-string is as sharp as any that went before, sending its ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... of Pius the Ninth's progress through his States, in 1857, is alone a sufficient reply to the calumnies of those enemies who never ceased to assert that ever since his return to Rome he had pursued a retrograde policy. Reform was always an object of his solicitude. It was with a view to improve the condition of his people that he undertook, when almost a septuagenarian, a four months' journey through the States of the Church. ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... that if the Mills bill had become a law in 1888, I should have been disinclined to agitate its repeal until it had a fair trial, though my study, both in the Senate and committee on finance, led me to oppose it. It seemed to me a retrograde measure, born of the ideas of the south, narrow in its scope, and not suited to a great country of unbounded but undeveloped resources. Still, as I say, if it was the law, I would not repeal it without trial. Now, this McKinley bill does meet, substantially, my views of public policy. Some items ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... (in quantum est imago expressa Patris). With the troubadours, we may find traces of the hedonistic view of art, and the rigoristic hypothesis finds in Tertullian and in certain Fathers of the Church staunch upholders. The retrograde Savonarola occupied the same position at a later period. But the narcotic, moralistic, or pedagogic view mostly prevailed, for it best suited an epoch of relative decadence in culture. It suited admirably the Middle Age, offering at once an excuse for the new-born Christian ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce

... precession of the equinoxes; that is to say, why every year the vernal equinox comes a day sooner than it would if the earth were perfectly round. This comes from the attraction of the sun operating in a different way on the heaped-up land of the equator, which then experiences a retrograde movement. Subsequently it displaces this Pole a little, as I just said. But, independently of this effect, this flattening ought to have a more curious and more personal effect, which we should perceive if ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... ordinary means of keeping a garden in order, how shall it escape running to weeds and waste? Or, if we neglect the opportunities for cultivating the mind, how shall it escape ignorance and feebleness? So, if we neglect the soul, how shall it escape the natural retrograde movement, the inevitable relapse into ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... sales. In 1861, I think it was, the farmers were over anxious to sell, for no other reason than because at that time the price of wool was very low and the market dull. They then overlooked the well established commercial fact that depressed markets generally advance, rather than retrograde, and that Government disbursements then certain to be made would create funds and a higher market, and that the demand for the staple would increase. They consequently sold for twenty-five cents per pound, fleeces, that in less than three months commanded ...
— Address delivered by Hon. Henry H. Crapo, Governor of Michigan, before the Central Michigan Agricultural Society, at their Sheep-shearing Exhibition held at the Agricultural College Farm, on Thursday, • Henry Howland Crapo

... the Government, and who doubts which is to conquer? The struggle may be a long one, a costly one, and freedom may at last barely escape with her life. But so sure as humanity sweeps onward; so sure as the average progress of the race is never retrograde; so sure as right bears in its bosom the seeds of eternal life, and wrong the seeds of eternal death; so sure as God sits on His throne and the heavens do rule,' the free ideas of New England will yet bear sway over this continent, and, in their ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... springs of human action, and your lively description of "hair-breadth 'scapes," to make one care whether the hog bites the dog, or the dog bites the hog. Both nations were in rapid declension from their short-lived age of heroism, and in the act of experiencing all those retrograde movements which are the natural consequence of selfishness on the one hand, and ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... in the presence of so wary a foe, and it was not until this had been duly impressed upon the two sailors that Oliver began the retrograde movement so slowly and softly that his companions could hardly realise the fact ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn

... they managed to make him retrograde a few steps, so that he could be made to shy enough to leave the dangerous vicinity, and once more started upon the ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis

... in science- -combine with our natural and physical advantages to place us at the head of those nations which profit by the free interchange of their products. And is this the country to shrink from competition? Is this the country to adopt a retrograde policy? Is this the country which can only flourish in the sickly, artificial atmosphere of prohibition? Is this the country to stand shivering on the brink of exposure to the ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy

... defending the Missouri Compromise. More than this; he had declared in distinct words that the principle of territorial prohibition was no violation of Southern rights; and denounced the proposition of Calhoun to put a "balance of power" clause into the Constitution as "a retrograde movement in an age of progress that would astonish the world." These repeated affirmations, taken in connection with his famous description of the Missouri Compromise in 1849, in which he declared it to have had "an origin akin to the Constitution," and to have become ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... the Argonauts, who delineated the expedition under the name of Argo, one of the constellations. And as the equinoctial colure passed through the middle of Aries, when that sphere was constructed, he infers, by calculations of their retrograde motion from their place then till the year A.D. 1690, that the expedition took place in 937 before Christ. To this, however, there seem to be insurmountable objections, which it is surprising did ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... were two figures in geomancy, representing two constellations-the one signifying Mars retrograde, the other Mars direct. ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... Yet you wou'd have my Daughter take you with all these Faults; they're Virtues there, but to the name of Mother, they all turn retrograde: I can endure a Man As wild and as inconstant as she can; I have a Fortune too that can support that Humour, That of Lucretia does depend on me, And when I please is nothing; I'm far from Age or Wrinkles, can be ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... other kindred subjects, and the substitution of odes, poems, etc., in which aspiration took the place of experimental religion. The hymn-books of more than one, or two, or three denominations, showed this retrograde movement, through their several ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson

... Romeo;" he is almost as poetical as they, quite as philosophical, only a little madder. After all, Love's sectaries are a reason unto themselves. We have gone retrograde to the noble heresy, since the days when Sidney proselyted our nation to this mixed health and disease: the kindliest symptom, yet the most alarming crisis, in the ticklish state of youth; the nourisher and the destroyer of hopeful wits; the mother of twin births, wisdom and folly, valor and ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... hands shaken, courteous remarks made, and thus the company gradually evaporated. Mac's turn came. Before His Serene Highness he successfully accomplished his sweeping earthward curves, thanked the Sultan for his kindness, but, unaccustomed to the retrograde manner of leaving a room backwards, he unfortunately found that the door was in the wrong place, and met the wall with a resounding thwack. However, it was all in the game, even though he did not think much of this method of quitting a room. So, leaving by the normal mode, he ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... gemmation,—and this, differently from sexual reproduction, may occur at any period of growth,—if there were places for the support of many individuals at some one stage of development, the simplest plan would be that they should be multiplied by gemmation at that stage, and not that they should first retrograde in their development to an earlier or simpler structure, which might not be fitted for the ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... was derived from a pagan superstition, and was a stronghold of heathenism. Schwartz was all his life trying to make it wear and die out, lest the violent renunciation should be too much for his converts' faith. But his successors had allowed the feeling to retrograde; and Bishop Wilson found separate services, sides of the church allotted to the high and low castes, and the most unchristian distinctions made between them. He decided that toleration of the prejudice was only doing harm, and issued orders ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... will not close this lengthened answer, without suggesting a suspicion, that those who have taken the notion that the Act of 1862 was a retrograde step, have done so without comparing ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... resources and accumulated feelings, or who improve with age. He belongs to a class (common in Scotland and elsewhere) who get up school-exercises on any given subject in a masterly manner at twenty, and who at forty are either where they were—or retrograde, if they are men of sense and modesty. The reason is, their vanity is weaned, after the first hey-day and animal spirits of youth are flown, from making an affected display of knowledge, which, however useful, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... thought it prudent to make a retrograde motion, as he looked at the masculine arm of the dame, and remembered the little relish she had evinced for his talent of drawing portraits, and the manner in which she remunerated ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... calmed down as if by magic; and then, a large rent disclosed itself in the sombre curtain of cloud to the north-west, the heavy masses of vapour that had been previously piling themselves along the horizon there and spreading up to the zenith falling back again and scurrying away in a retrograde direction, like skirmishers on a battle- field driven-in on to their supports by a rush of cavalry ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson

... foorth, Send Constantine to us; so leave me all, I am best accompanied with none at all. [Exeunt. Manet Duke. Either the Plannets, that did meete together In the grand consultation of my birth, Were opposite to every good infusion, Or onely Venus stood as retrograde; For, but in love of this none-loving trull, I have beene fortunate even since my birth. I feele within my breast a searching fire Which doth ascend the engine of my braine, And when I seeke by reason to suppresse The heate it gives, the ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... lives. Is not the solemn reception into Rome of instructed men and women among ourselves a matter of every day? In France it is otherwise, and when a change is made we shall generally find that the step is no retrograde one. ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards



Words linked to "Retrograde" :   lose, fall back, retire, fall behind, recapitulate, pull back, worsen, backward, direct, orbit, revolve, draw back, withdraw, pull away, recap, orb, astronomy, uranology, regressive, travel, drop off, decline, recede, progress, locomote, anterograde, move, go, move back, temporal relation



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