"Retrospective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... substance as follows:—Sir, the last day which was assigned to the consideration of this bill, was spent in long altercations, in vague and unnecessary disquisitions, in retrospective reflections upon events long past, and in aggravating of grievances that may never happen; much sagacity was exerted, and much eloquence displayed, but no determination was attained, nor even that expedient examined, by which those objections might be ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... hair, a girlish flush of shyness on his handsome face, and the sleek perfection of his limbs, clear cut against the dusky background beyond. And now the javelin was going. Surely the mystic would think better of it at the last moment! No! the initiate held his ground with tight-shut lips and retrospective eyes, and even as I looked the ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... Duty that day into the camp of an enemy who, with all his skill, had not learned, till it was written in his blood for survivors to read, that England had awakened from her long sleep. For my part, if retrospective power were mine, I would not raise a finger to rob those stern converts of ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... While Moreau received the command of the armies of the Rhine, while Massena, as a reward for the victory of Zurich, was made Commander-in-Chief in Italy, and while Brune was at the head of the army of Batavia, Bonaparte, whose soul was in the camps, consoled himself for his temporary inactivity by a retrospective glance on his past triumphs. He was unwilling that Fame should for a moment cease to blazon his name. Accordingly, as soon as he was established at the head of the Government, he caused accounts of his Egyptian expedition to be from time to time published in the Moniteur. He frequently ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... nature, the vanished hand of the literary man of Grub Street could not be replaced by Mrs. Barbauld's wish to instruct by using simple language. It is possible that he did her some injustice. Yet a retrospective glance over the story-book literature evolved since Newbery's juvenile library was produced, shows little that was not poor in quality and untrue to life. Therefore, it is no wonder that Lamb should have cried out against the sore evil which had "beset a child's mind." All ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... a scholar and a gentleman, but a determined foe to loose thinking (especially in Cambridge men), courteously acknowledged the gift, but took occasion to remind his brother of Helleston that Reflection was a retrospective process; that Man, as a finite creature, could but anticipate events before they happened; and that if the parishioners of Helleston wished to reflect on the New Century they would have to wait until January 1901, or something ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... India, if not obligatory, the custom forbidding the remarriage of widows works an injustice to the sex amounting to national disgrace. A Hindu maiden who at twelve or thirteen is unmarried brings social obloquy on her family and entails retrospective damnation on three generations of ancestors. A Hindu man must marry and beget children to make certain of his funeral rites, lest his spirit wander uneasily in the waste places of the earth or be precipitated into the temporary hell ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... thought, from the gestures to the finest feelings of the heart. I could not, in a few disjointed phrases describe to you the strange emotions of my friend. It would take pages and pages to make you understand the tenderness, both present and at the same time retrospective, for the dead through the living; the hypnotic condition of the soul which does not know where dreams and memories end and present feeling begins; the daily commingling of the most unreal thing in the world, the phantom of a lost love, with the freshest, the most actual, the most irresistibly ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... us to a side-table, where a selection of theological works was displayed, and bid us take our choice. "Kay on the Psalms" was a possession thus acquired, and has been used by me from that time to this. Nor must this retrospective page omit some further reference to J. W. Burgon, Fellow of Oriel and Vicar of St. Mary-the-Virgin. Dean Church called him "the dear old learned Professor of Billingsgate," and certainly his method of conducting controversy savoured (as Sydney Smith said about Bishop Monk) of the apostolic ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... [2] — This retrospective chapter has here been greatly condensed, as the ground is already covered, for English readers, by Dr. H. R. Mill's "The Siege of the South Pole," Sir Ernest Shackleton's "The Heart of the Antarctic," ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... host was now westward from over the river, and he felt the electric currents of joyous excitement, retrospective fear, and, above all, of eager, almost ferocious, curiosity, linking up rapidly about him. The rough and ready cordon of special constables seemed powerless to dam the human tide, and caught in that tide's eddies, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... part of the pulpit was at one time used as a font. The old font, restored, for many years formed part of the wall of the churchyard. The road continues up the long tongue of Okeford Hill with wide retrospective views. At the summit a by-way turns to the right along the ridge, which gradually increases in height until it reaches its summit three miles away at Bulbarrow Hill (902 feet) just above Rawlsbury Camp. The magnificent view up ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... Dabney until you have summered and wintered him. But the Dabneys of Deer Trace—this was the old name of the estate, and it obtains to this day among the Paradise Valley folk—figure so largely in Thomas Jefferson's boyhood and youth as to be well-nigh elemental in these retrospective glimpses. ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... his hat; unbuttoned his coat; folded his arms; inclined his head in a retrospective manner; and, after a few ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... scarcely fail to condemn. The triumvirs would do nothing. Pompey, after all his promises, avoided seeing Cicero as much as possible: Caesar offered him a legatio again; and though he spoke against giving the law a retrospective effect, he could not consistently object to the law itself, and shewed no sign of desiring to shelter Cicero, except on his consenting to leave Rome. Cicero then adopted the course which was open to all citizens threatened with a prosecution—that of ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... forming the only real basis of all our higher culture. History was undoubtedly a deductive science, but it could be verified and put to the best uses by the purely inductive study of facts. Any change, whether progressive or retrospective, in the social, political, or religious condition of men, would be a fact. The acting forces were men, of whom there were on the globe more than a thousand millions, all endowed with three principal ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... Victor Emmanuel," Garibaldi attacked and occupied Palermo, and having established his ascendency in the island, invaded the Neapolitan territory on the mainland. The Sardinian Government, for diplomatic reasons, disavowed the expedition, but gave a retrospective assent to it later in ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... introducing the President of the United States: "Not the Home Market Club, not the city of Boston, not Massachusetts only, but all New England give you greeting of welcome, Mr. President. In our retrospective of the year past we would give full meed of honor and praise to the President who so nobly met and so faithfully discharged the grave responsibilities of that great office, and thanksgiving to the Divine Providence that sustained him. ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... roar of conglomerate humanity. Up here in this strange bedroom, indifferent host to a thousand transient souls, it was quiet and even a little lonely. Once more Carlisle caught her mind at its retrospective misbehavior, and once more turned the key on it. Having laid out her dress on the bed, she stood and looked down into the cheerless light-well a minute, and then decided to wake up her mother. But she stopped on the way and turned back. Why wake up mamma half an hour too soon, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the pleasing program I figured out on shipboard. But, as is so frequently the case with the most pleasing things in life, I found the anticipation rather outshone the realisation. Already I detect myself, in a retrospective mood, hankering for the savoury ragouts we used to get in peasant homes in obscure French villages, and for the meals they gave us at the regimental messes of our own forces, where the cooking was the home sort and good honest American ...
— Eating in Two or Three Languages • Irvin S. Cobb
... a retrospective light in his eye. "He first joined us as a sleight-o'-hand man in the side-show. That cussed little brother of 'is got a job taking tickets. Dick 'ad been in jail a couple of times and he decided to turn over a new leaf. He'd 'a' been all right if it 'adn't been for Ernie. Ernie didn't ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... as Amy and I are concerned,' said Pendle, gloomily, 'but so late a ceremony will not make my children legitimate. In England, marriage is not a retrospective act.' ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... their own muddy conceit at one and the same time. The plea serves well with those artless readers who have been accustomed to consider the moral of a story as something separable from imagination, expression, and style—a quality, it may be, inherent in the plot, or a kind of appendix, exercising a retrospective power of jurisdiction and absolution over the extravagances of the piece to which it is affixed. Let virtue be rewarded, and they are content though it should never be vitally imagined or portrayed. If their eyes were opened they might cry with Brutus—"O miserable Virtue! ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... he practised thrift: he lighted a cigarette with the match before tossing it aside. Then he softly slid the car door back in its groove and looked out into the moist, impenetrable night. A deep sigh left his smiling lips; a retrospective langour took possession of his long frame; he sighed again, and still ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... origin of species, then, being at present the most admissible one, and the retrospective survey of such species showing convergence, as time recedes, to more simplified or generalised organisations, the result to which the suggested train of thought inevitably leads is very analogous in each instance. If to kosmos or the mundane system have been allotted powers ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... there was something tragic and retrospective in Jewdwine's smile. It had no joy in it, but an appeal, rather, to the memory of what he had been. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... government had been settled, the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, [410] Whether the legal guilt of murder could be brought home to Jeffreys may be doubted. But he was morally guilty of so many murders that, if there had been no other way of reaching his life, a retrospective Act of Attainder would have been clamorously demanded by the whole nation. A disposition to triumph over the fallen has never been one of the besetting sins of Englishmen: but the hatred of which Jeffreys was the object was without a parallel in our history, and partook but too largely ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... for men of disinterested ability, but the extraordinary documents concealed (of all places in the world—it was as fantastic as a nightmare) in a "bargain" picked up at second-hand by an obscure scribbler, would be a calculable blow to the retrospective mind. Baron saw vividly that if these relics should be made public the scandal, the horror, the chatter would be immense. Immense would be also the contribution to truth, the rectification of history. He had felt for several days (and it ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... and life-giving character as soon as we quit our inverted position and place ourselves in our true relation towards it. The laws of Nature do not harbour revenge; and once we adapt our methods to their character, they will work for us without taking any retrospective notice of our past errors. The law of Spirit may be more complex than that of electricity, because, as expressed in us, it is the law of conscious individuality; but it is none the less a purely natural law, and follows the universal rule, and therefore we may ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... was adopted, many persons understood the terms ex post facto laws, to "embrace all retrospective laws, or laws governing or controlling past transactions, whether * * * of a civil or a criminal nature."[1470] But in the early case of Calder v. Bull,[1471] the Supreme Court decided that the phrase, as used in ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... The Retrospective Review, however (Vol. I, November, 1852), has an article, 'Mrs. Behn's Dramatic Writings,' which warmly praises her comedies. The writer very justly observes that 'they exhibit a brilliance of conversation in the dialogue, and a skill in arranging the plot and producing ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... is a meeting nobly retrospective, a meeting that has about it a certain October gold. I drink to old days;" and he finished his sal-volatile with ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... each of us. Our own consciousness is the consciousness of a certain living being, placed in a certain point of space; and though it does indeed move in the same direction as its principle, it is continually drawn the opposite way, obliged, though it goes forward, to look behind. This retrospective vision is, as we have shown, the natural function of the intellect, and consequently of distinct consciousness. In order that our consciousness shall coincide with something of its principle, it must detach itself from ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... witty. He took part in a scheme, which came to nothing, for a school magazine, and he wrote verses for it, of which I only remember that they were good of their kind. When I knew him better, in later years, I thought I could recognise the sensitive nature which he had as a boy.... His change of retrospective feeling about his school days was very characteristic. In his earlier books he always spoke of the Charter House as Slaughter House and Smithfield. As he became famous and prosperous his memory softened, ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... Elizabeth felt how improbable it was that they should ever see each other again on such terms of cordiality as had marked their several meetings in Derbyshire; and as she threw a retrospective glance over the whole of their acquaintance, so full of contradictions and varieties, sighed at the perverseness of those feelings which would now have promoted its continuance, and would formerly have rejoiced ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... will say, may prevent this; but nations have no gratitude, they only know their interest, and nothing retrospective is any motive for action. We need not search into remote periods for proofs of this, see Holland, Spain, Russia, &c. during the latter part of the last war. ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... said Goldthorpe. He seemed to have had enough of this retrospective inventory. He looked at his watch and found ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... remonstrance against the before-mentioned regulation of the Admiralty Court, that vessels captured within a certain distance of the shore should not be prize to the captor; this regulation being evidently intended as retrospective, with a view of nullifying the captures ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... human or animal! Yet, stay; what was that dark film, like a tiny cloud, that came sweeping down toward them from far up the lake? Dick, the practical, was the first to catch sight of it, for Phil was standing like one in a trance gazing at the scene with a retrospective look in his eyes that seemed to say his thoughts were far away. As Dick watched the approaching cloud-like film it resolved itself into a flock of wild ducks, making, as it seemed, directly for the patch of rushes near which the two were standing, and, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... a myriad more came thronging to his quickened consciousness as he sat smoking. The retrospective visions rose before him, not as vague memories—they seemed living realities as they reproduced events more recent. At last one vivid picture—nay, was it not an actual scene?—one set of vital images, usurped his brain and would not vanish or fade. It showed a grassy ledge guarded by ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... minor pieces. Our "Notes" are, for the most part, from new books, and a similar object is explained in our "Selector." We could hardly place "Sleeping in Church" under "Manners and Customs," and sleep altogether is rather prospective, (in dreaming,) than "Retrospective."—Yet reader, here it is—a still subject—but fresh, vigorous, and written ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... in a preceding letter about "Gladstone, Gore, and Co." turned out to be prophetic as well as retrospective. Mr. Gladstone published this autumn in "Good Words" his "Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture," containing an attack upon Huxley's position as taken up in their ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... there is less pleasure in retrospective considerations, the mind is more disposed to wander forward into futurity; but at sixty-four what promises, however liberal, of imaginary good can futurity venture to make? Yet something will be always promised and some promises will always be credited. ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... mountain rising from the plain, he had stood unshaken by the surges or the winds. With that serenity of mind which arises from the consolations of a conscience void of offence toward God and man, he took a retrospective view; and with the eagerness of a prisoner about to be released from his cell, to breathe the free air of heaven and repose in peace in the bosom of his home, he approached the hour when he should bid adieu to the incessant labor and turmoil of political life. To his long-tried and dearly-loved ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... regressive; retrospective; reluctant, averse, loath, disinclined, unwilling; dull, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... with sadly retrospective countenance. "Travelling, lad—contemplating the world, from the King's highways. Take note, my boy,—a prosperous man! I came into the world without a rag that I could call my own, and now I have an abundance. Saith the philosopher: Some men are born to rags, some achieve rags and ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... he that day abstained from food. The humility and temperance of that good man are strongly marked in this relation, for he partook of the same ordinary food with the most wretched pauper. By a retrospective law, Roose was sentenced to be boiled to death, which was done accordingly. In Smithfield, the arch-rebel, Wat Tyler, met with, in 1381, the reward ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... graduate and teacher, who kept himself aloof from contemporary thought, produced almost a new type of serious prose, distinguished for color, ornamentation, melody, and poetic thought. Even such prosaic objects as wood and brick were to his retrospective gaze "half mere soul-stuff, floated thither from who knows where." His object was to charm his reader, to haunt him with vague suggestions rather than to make a logical appeal to him, or to add to his world of vivid fact, after the manner of Macaulay. A quotation ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... rang again. Great and serious as was the mistake in not obtaining an accurate legal opinion respecting the character of these meetings at the first, and then prohibiting them, a far greater mistake is now, we think, committed in instituting these retrospective prosecutions. For this mistake the law officers of the crown must, we infer, be held responsible. Were they men of energy and vigour, with the necessary knowledge of the world, they would not have suffered the executive to permit processions first, and then prohibit them, and at the same ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... fact," answered Amos to the retrospective musings of the Judge. "Time was you an' me would go t' singing-school or sleigh-riding with the girls on a night like this and ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... or less emphatic) from this leading melodic statement. It is, for a time, probably an evident continuation and development of the melodic theme embodied in the First Part; but it does not end there; it exhibits a retrospective bent, and—when thoroughly legitimate—its last few measures prepare for, and lead into, the melodic member with which the piece began. Its form is optional; but, as a rule, decisive cadence-impressions are avoided, unless it be the composer's intention to close it with a perfect cadence ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... confide my secret, because his assistance, in the furtherance of plans which were always requiring, from little immaterial circumstances, some slight alterations, was found necessary; and it must here suffice those to know, who shall, after my destruction do me the melancholy favour of perusing this retrospective record, that some months after Antonia had taken the veil, I succeeded in restoring her to the arms of her lover, witnessed their private nuptials, visited them in their new residence, a villa in a secluded spot far from Padua, and received my promised recompense. "Young man! you've ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 531, Saturday, January 28, 1832. • Various
... will be variously interpreted, and to attempt to analyse the motives of a double-minded man is always a hazardous experiment; but a comparison of date, the character of Clement himself, the circumstances in which he was placed, and the retrospective evidence from after events, points almost necessarily to but one interpretation. It is scarcely disputable that, frightened at the reception of Anne Boleyn in France, the pope found it necessary to pretend for a ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... laws of exact science, so alien, I had almost said, to the experience of our lives. Yet is this true, or are such experiences only ignored and put aside without serious consideration? Are there not in the history of each of us passages which strike our retrospective thought with awe, almost with terror? Are there not in nearly every community individuals who possess a mysterious power, concerning whose origin, mode of action, and limits, we and they are alike in the dark? I refer to such organic forces as are popularly summed up under the words clairvoyance, ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... circumstances; but we failed most lamentably in reconciling our practice with our principles. There was not the faintest suggestion of jollity in the appearance of the four motionless, prostrate figures against the wall. Seasickness had triumphed over philosophy! Prospective and retrospective reverie of a decidedly gloomy character was our only occupation. I remember speculating curiously upon the probability of Noah's having ever been seasick; wondering how the sea-going qualities of the Ark would compare with those of our brig, and whether she had our brig's ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... and, as in the screen play, that retrospective distant picture brings one back to an earlier vision, so from the distance we now see the ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... cracked corn for the horse and shed-room, where I tied him with retrospective security. There being no restaurant, I obtained some biscuits and cheese, and with these and six tickets for the very front row, Aunt Salomy and Mrs. Kobbe and Miss Pray and I stole early into the hall and ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... recalls to my mind,—" St. Armand paused with a retrospective smile, thinking of the compliment his little friend had paid him,—"to inquire if you know anything about a child who lives not far from the lower citadel, in the care of an Indian woman. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... the chair took no notice. There was a retrospective light in his dark eyes. He tapped upon the table again ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... notes made from year to year, in no way satisfies the writer, but has been given by the earnest solicitations of friends, who wished that the steady progress of the cause might be marked in this retrospective hour. There is much that should have been embodied in this sketch of the past, especially the resolutions which have marked varying phases of the work, and which seemed like a divine inspiration in their comprehensive grasp and far-reaching thought, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... are at the commencement of a dialogue between Collen and Thenot; which is described as "an Eglogue on the noble assemblies revived on Cotswold Hills by Mr. Robert Dover". An able criticism of Randolph's works, with extracts, will be found in the sixth volume of the "Retrospective Review". - ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... Tragic scene there. Farleton Knot. Glance back to Grandfather, etc. Joins Temperance movement. Visit of a man from Canada. His account of the country. Its consequences. WILLIAM'S taste in books. Rural rambles on business. Reflections on cruelty to animals. Retrospective ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... services, the governor deemed it a tribute justly due to him to give his name to this grand and extraordinary pass, and he accordingly called it Cox's Pass. Having descended into the valley at the bottom of this pass, the retrospective view of the overhanging ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... A retrospective glance reveals the extent to which the Fathers attained their principal objects. A threefold purpose inspired them. Their first duty was to evolve a workable plan of government. In this they succeeded, as fifty years of ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... retrospective lore, Whence cooler Reason tortur'd him before; Comparison of times, the Lab'rer's hire, And many a truth Reflection might inspire, Sunk powerless. 'Dame, I am a fool,' he cried; 'Alone I might have reason'd ...
— Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs • Robert Bloomfield
... should do, but I have no recollection that he ever got the breadth of a hair beyond that. One evening I took up my pen and began jotting down a few memories of my boyhood. I think we are all fond of taking retrospective glances, and more particularly when life's pathway trends towards the end. The relief I found while thus engaged was very soothing, and for the time I got altogether away from the present, and lived over again many a joyous hour. ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... this retrospective assault, it pushed Margaret Ransom—feeling herself a mere leaf in the blast—toward the writing-table from which her innocent and voluminous correspondence habitually flowed. She had a letter to write now—much shorter but more difficult than any ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... consulted an eminent man of science, who is thoroughly conversant with the present stage attained by this branch of pathology, to which he has himself rendered important service. I asked Doctor Georges Dumas, Professor at the Sorbonne, whether sufficient material exists for science to make a retrospective diagnosis of Jeanne's case. He replied to my inquiry in a letter which appears as the first ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, criticisms. The foregoing generations beheld God and Nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... the Woman's Club gave a large reception in their honor at the Brown Palace Hotel, attended by over 1,200 women. The News, in its account, said: "The scene marked, to the retrospective mind, the enormous change that has taken place in the status of the sex within the lifetime of one woman. It hardly seemed possible, as the spectator beheld Miss Anthony surrounded by the richest and most conservative women of Denver, to believe that in ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Bolivia saw fit to impose a tax of 10 centavos (41/2 pence) per quintal (152 pounds) on all nitrates. Chili remonstrated; but Bolivia insisted, and declared, in addition, that the tax was meant to be retrospective, and that unless all dues were paid before February 14, 1879, the nitrates in the hands of the exporters would be seized and sold by auction. As the day which had been fixed for the seizure drew near, a Chilian squadron, under Rear-Admiral ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... hung low on his neck; his chin was very long and ended in a point; his nose was broad, with sensitive nostrils that marked every breath he drew. As for his eyes, which instantly attracted attention, they were brown and gentle as a girl's but had that retrospective expression that suggests far-away thoughts or an utter lack of interest in one's surroundings. They never looked at but through one. The effect of Carg's eyes ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... painter, and poet throng back, imaged in that retrospective mirror which reflects a vista of the past, rich in ideal creation. Beautiful forms emerge from the marble; pictorial scenes glow from the canvas; song and story and happy, historic days are in the very air. To Italy, land of romance and song, all ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... of those instances of placability and pliableness with which his life abounded. We have seen, too, from the manner in which he mentions the circumstance in one of his note-books, that the reconcilement was of that generously retrospective kind, in which not only the feeling of hostility is renounced in future, but a strong regret expressed that ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... the evening they again talked and read alternately. Their conversation was now retrospective; each revived memories of what she had endured in one or the other house of bondage. Never had it been their lot to serve 'really nice' people—this phrase of theirs was anything but meaningless. They had lived with more or less well-to-do families in the lower ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... the Managers of the Statue, in consequence of the inconvenience which the public sustained from the innumerable quantity of edicts of the Statue at present in force, had last night consolidated them all into this single act, which, to render its operation still more simple, was gifted with a retrospective power for the last ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... and civil officers rewarded or favoured by Napoleon the First will not only be discarded, but disgraced, and perhaps punished, by a Louis XVIII. Any person who would be imprudent enough to attempt to prove the impossibility, as well as the absurdity, of these impolitic and retrospective measures, would be instantly taken up and shot as an emissary ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the trip, Crayme made no trouble for himself or Fred; under the friendly shelter of night, the two men had a two-hour chat, which was alternately humorous, business-like, and retrospective, and then Crayme fell asleep. The next day was reasonably pleasant out of doors, so the captain wrapped himself in a blanket and sat in an extension-chair on the guards, where with solemn face he received some condolences which went far to keep him in good humor after ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... his last on earth. His surroundings seemed incongruous and unreal, and his mind ran in a vein of whimsical speculation. It is strange to think, but it is a fact, all the same, that certain temperaments, when face to face with death, allow their thoughts to take an oddly critical and retrospective view of things in general. The fear of death does not affect them, although, at the same time, they are fully conscious of the momentous issues of ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... the Great was divided, at his death, among his generals; but, before relating their history, it is necessary to take a brief retrospective glance at the affairs of Greece. Three years after Alexander had quitted Europe the Spartans made a vigorous effort to throw off the Macedonian yoke. They were joined by most of the Peloponnesian states; but though they met with some success ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... memory bears many blurred and hazy impressions on its surface, but now and again some special dramatic happening remains fixed there in a series of sharply-etched pictures in which every line has its retrospective ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... site, the other having been thrown down and broken by human violence. Similar but smaller propylaea succeed to this court, of which they form the inner side." This is the spot which I have selected for a retrospective view of the Great Hall, the obelisk still standing, but the propylaea in the fore-ground a mass of utter ruin. Still following the intricate plan of the great temple through the ruined propylaea in the fore-ground, we reach another court with two obelisks of larger ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... various intervals a retrospective view of life, and of the characters they have met with, seems to be a natural feeling of human nature; and every one is disposed at times to recall to memory many circumstances and many individuals which suggest abundant subjects for reflection. ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... career had been run outside the verge of chronicles. Its early stages left few direct records. They have to be pieced together by retrospective allusions proceeding from himself or others, after he had already risen. The difficulties of his biographers are not at an end when he has mounted into the full blaze of publicity. His name thenceforth was in a multitude of mouths; yet much in his character, position, and ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... from the trifling cause to the tragical event, is set in an orderly series before us. Few are the partisans of departed tyranny; and to be a Whig on the business of an hundred years ago, is very consistent with every advantage of present servility. This retrospective wisdom, and historical patriotism, are things of wonderful convenience, and serve admirably to reconcile the old quarrel between speculation and practice. Many a stern republican, after gorging himself with a full feast of admiration ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... would guess its mystery— For often I can trace A fellow dreamer's history Whene'er it haunts the face; Your fancy's running riot In a retrospective race! ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... her, and, his father being slightly ill, he became convinced he was going to die. A month or so later he moved from Baltimore, which had been his home, and began employment with the government in Washington. He had more emissions and immediately developed hysterical heart trouble, and from his retrospective account also had ideas of people influencing him. A year later (June 1905) a frank psychosis with considerable manic flavor developed. Secretary of State Hay had died, and peace negotiations between Russia and Japan ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... idea developed in my mind that the true solution of my problems lay in a working back upon my life's tracks. My thoughts wandered insistently to the northern half of the coast of New South Wales. Even now I could hardly say just how much of my retrospective vision was genuine recollection, and how much the glamour of youth. I tried to recall without sentiment the effects produced upon me, for example, by the climate of that undoubtedly favoured region. But I am not ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... eye, by sorrow shaded, Drops the solitary tear, O'er remember'd joys, now faded, To young love and rapture dear. E'en the retrospective feeling, Leaves a momentary thrill; All the wounds of sorrow healing, For my hopes are ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various
... The ultimate result of that dissatisfaction was the metrical experiments of Coleridge and the rich harvest of varied rhythms and melody with which Shelley and Tennyson and Swinburne enriched the nineteenth century. And all this movement had also, of course, a retrospective effect. It may be true that, as Mr. Bridges says, "there are very few persons indeed who take such a natural delight in rhythm for its own sake that they can follow with pleasure a learned rhythm which is very rich ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... the earth-moon evolution must from this point forward cease to be retrospective. Having begun at that critical moment when the month and day were first equal, we have traced the progress of events to the present hour. What we have now to say is therefore a forecast of events yet to come. ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... Mrs. Stowe was wholly possessed by her theme, rapt away like a prophet in a vision, and that, in her feeling at the time, it was written through her quite as much as by her. This idea grew upon her mind in the retrospective light of the tremendous stir the story made in the world, so that in her later years she came to regard herself as a providential instrument, and frankly to declare that she did not write the book; "God wrote it." In her own account, when she reached ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... These retrospective visions of Sue only made Jude the more miserable that he was unable to woo her, and he left the cottage of his aunt that day with a heavy heart. He would fain have glanced into the school to see the room in which Sue's little figure had so glorified itself; but ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... experience, in his own nursery. It is an appeal to conditions to which he is accustomed and for which no exercise of the imagination is needed, unless we take the effect of memory to be, according to Queyrat, retrospective imagination. ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... In his second book (and for the answer to What Next? we shall not, I imagine, have long to wait) he will amend certain little faults, not the least of which is a tendency to give us the most significant events in the form of retrospective narrative instead of letting us see them as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... and harsh; his features stern and terrible. His cruel and criminal character we already know. Yet it is but just here to recall that much of the horror and odium which has accumulated on his memory is posthumous and retrospective. Some of his cotemporaries were no better in their private lives than he was; but then they had no part in bringing in the Normans. Talents both for peace and war he certainly had, and there was still a feeling of attachment, or at least of regret, cherished towards him among ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... examining those enquiries, would most respectfully take a retrospective view of the object for which the Convention was first associated, and the causes ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... closed his eyes, pale with retrospective terror, and for one moment he hesitated... This landscape of polar cataclysm, cold, gloomy, yawning with gulfs... those laments of the old hut-man still weeping in his ears... Outre! what will they make me do?.. Then, suddenly, he thought of the folk at Tarascon, of the banner to be ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... of one of our gunboats," said the President in telling the story, "I saw an elderly darky, with a very philosophical and retrospective cast of countenance, squatted upon his bundle, toasting his shins against the chimney, and apparently plunged into a state of ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... brain and saw it everywhere. For to-day it was not the leading topic of the neighborhood, and Miss S.'s observation had been only by the way. The engagement was the topic, and only Neeld (or perhaps Mina Zabriska too, at Blent), insisted on digging up a hypothetical past and repeating, in retrospective rumination, that Harry Tristram might have been the lucky man. As for such an idea—well, Miss S. happened to know that there had never been anything in it; Janie Iver herself had told her so, she said. The question between Janie and Miss S., which this assertion ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... usefulness. You would judge him to be from twenty-five to thirty years of age; you would note that his face was browned from exposure, that it was rather set and expressionless but in no way repulsive. His eyes, dark and retrospective, were his most redeeming feature, yet betrayed little of their owner's character. Mr. Judkins could make nothing of the fellow, beyond the fact that he was doubtless a "tramp" and on that account most unwelcome in ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... meetin' woke ter sech a pint o' holiness. The saints jes rampaged around till it fairly sounded like the cavortin's o' the ungodly," a retrospective voice ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... us take a retrospective view of this our noble theme, and our interest will be the more strengthened thereon. All the world knows that a convent stood in this neighbourhood, and the present market was the garden, unde Convent Garden; would that all etymologists were as distinct. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... retrospective view which the narrative required, I now turn to speak of the alarm caused by the young King's march into England. Though Cromwell was personally in Scotland, he continued to govern in London through his agents, and they urged the approach of the Royalists as a pretence for resorting ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... difficulty of conveying letters to you, make it proper at times to take a retrospective view of what has passed, and by that means of supplying in part such despatches as ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... Never Land. Barrie proved himself a genius when he created Peter Pan, for Peter symbolises man's highest wish—to become a little child and never grow up. "Genius," he says, "is the power of being a boy again at will." It is true in his case. Yet this kind of genius is retrospective; it is a regression. The genius who will help man to look forward instead of backward must not return to boyhood; he must go forward to superman. To put it psychologically, Barrie's genius comes from the unconscious, but what the world needs is a man whose genius will come from ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... may inform himself, from Captain King's relation of the several voyages, of the opportunities that were afforded me in forming my collections of plants, still it appears necessary, in this place, to take a general retrospective view of those parts of the coasts under examination, whereon my researches were made, adverting, at the same time, to the prevalent unfavourable seasons for flowering plants, during which it should seem the survey of the North-west Coast could ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... know how to vary the means of improvement conformably with the manners, habits, and the position of every island. In preparing the way for the accomplishment of this task, which ought to embrace a great part of the archipelago of the West Indies, it may be useful to cast a retrospective glance on the events by which the freedom of a considerable part of the human race was obtained in Europe in the middle ages. In order to ameliorate without commotion new institutions must be made, as it were, to rise out of those which the barbarism of centuries has consecrated. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... appear, had much pleased him—for it was long before his smile of retrospective pleasure faded from his pleasant mobile face. Morris's trust and confidence in him had been extraordinarily pleasant to him: and modest and unassuming as he was, he could not help a secret gratification at the ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... drowning Caesar to "Help me, Cassius, or I sink," he had answered: "Sink!" That answer he had no wish to reconsider. That he might not reconsider he had sought to escape. It was his experience that a sixty-horse-power racing-machine is a jealous mistress. For retrospective, sentimental, or philanthropic thoughts she grants no leave of absence. But he had not escaped. Jimmie had halted him, tripped him by the heels, and set him again to thinking. Within the half-hour that ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... which he may well have borrowed many strokes for the picture of Muggleton, that town of sturdy Kentish cricket. Sometimes he would walk across the marshes to Gravesend, and returning through the village of Chalk, would pause for a retrospective glance at the house where his honeymoon was spent and a good part of Pickwick planned. In the latter end of the year, when he could take a short cut through the stubble fields from Higham to the marshes ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... preserved the exquisite form of youth; as they touched the gentle little hand impregnated with perfumes, which a Pharaoh perhaps had kissed; as they fingered the hair, more durable than empire, more solid than granite monuments. At the sight of the lovely dead girl, the young nobleman felt the retrospective desire often inspired by the sight of a statue or a painting representing a woman of past days famous for her beauty. It seemed to him that he would have loved, had he lived three thousand years earlier, that beauty which nothingness had refused to destroy; ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... virtuoso in love. And so it certainly looks, albeit the difference might perhaps appear a little less conspicuous if he had lived to a ripe old age and dressed up his recollections of youth in an autobiographical romance. He did not lack the data of experience, but without the charm of the retrospective poetic treatment his early love-affairs are not profoundly interesting. In the midst of his troubles it came over him that marriage might be the right thing for him; and so, one day in June, 1784, he offered himself to Frau von Wolzogen for a son-in-law. Nothing came of the suggestion; it was only ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... no division among us. Go you to the stream, O Nimrod of the waters, since you alone have the prestige of success. We will wander quietly in the woods, build a fire, fry the potatoes, and await your return with the fish." They go to the woods. I hang my prospective trout on my retrospective cod, and march river-ward. Halicarnassus, according to the old saw, "leaves this world, and climbs a tree," and, with jackknife, cord, and perseverance, manufactures a fishing-rod, which he courteously offers to me, which I succinctly ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... of the regular parish-churches;—and yet scarcely any of these interesting monuments have survived their reckless doom to ruin and neglect; not even a spiry fragment sufficiently large or romantic to form a pleasing subject for the pencil, invite the mind to contemplation, or aid the poet's retrospective muse. ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... exclaimed Avice, whose attention had wandered somewhat from his retrospective discourse. She was looking from the window towards the cliffs, where, upon the open ground quite near at hand, a slender female form was seen rambling along. 'She is out for a walk,' Avice continued. 'I wonder if she is going to call here this ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... conscience, methinks, ought to be a 'Janus bifrons',—a Gospel-face retrospective, and smiling through penitent tears on the sins of the past, and a Moses-face looking forward in frown and menace, frightening the harlot will into a holy abortion of sins conceived but not yet born, perchance ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... burning—her whole body was burning—with retrospective jealousy, and as she looked at him the flame seemed to be fanned, to give out more heat, to scorch her, sear her, more terribly. A man like this, an Eastern, utterly untrammelled, with no public opinion—and at this moment England, in her thought of it, seemed full of public opinion; Puritan ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... bloom, and the windows of ivy. Oldport is the only place in New England where either ivy or traditions will grow; there were, to be sure, no legends about this house that I could hear of, for the ghosts in those parts were feeble-minded and retrospective by reason of age, and perhaps scorned a mansion where nobody had ever lived; but the ivy clustered round the projecting windows as densely as if it had the sins of a ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... days we peered into the forest for travellers but none appeared, and Dan became retrospective. "We might have guessed this 'ud happen," he said, declaring it was a "judgment on the missus" for chucking good tea away just because a fly got into it. "Luck's cleared right out because of it, missus," he said; "and ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... now, my dear Henry, removed from my fond care and instruction; and young as you are, you have entered upon the vast theatre of the world. Some years hence, when time shall have matured your ideas, and enabled you to take a clear, retrospective view of your steps in life, you will be able to enter into my feelings, and to judge of the anxiety which at this moment ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... this must be to the thoughts of men, how fascinating to their retrospective and aspiring reveries, it should be needless to repeat. How baseless it is as a philosophical theory demanding sober belief, it should be equally superfluous ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... lacking and a peace for which there was no precedent. It was Germany who had taken advantage of the weakness of international law and done most to prevent its growth; and it was fitting that Germany should pay a corresponding penalty. There is a wholesome prejudice against retrospective legislation, but the benefit cannot be claimed by those who obstructed the legislation because they wanted to pursue the conduct which it would have made criminal. Occasions arise which imperatively require the creation of precedents, and the time had ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... long-waited, all-embracing Now. I could willingly have died then and there, for I knew that all life could bring but one such moment. My heart spoke truly. A change passed over the countenance of Blanche,—an expression of unutterable grief, like Eve's retrospective look at Eden. Quivering with strange tremor, again she stood before me, with clasped hands and tearful eyes, in the very attitude of that memorable apparition, and again fell upon my ears the mysterious plaint and the uncompleted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... it were again refused, the recusant was guilty of high treason. A prospective law, however severe, framed to exclude Catholics from the liberal professions, would have been mercy itself compared with this odious act. It is a retrospective statute; it is a retrospective penal statute; it is a retrospective penal statute against a large class. We will not positively affirm that a law of this description must always, and under all circumstances, be ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... this period must not be judged harshly by a standard established from a retrospective view of the circumstances surrounding him. It is more just to consider the situation as it appeared to his own observation when his eyes were turned to the future. He no doubt looked buoyantly forward, according to his temperament, trusting always to the healing influences of time and ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... it may be permitted to journalists, taking note of this period in the life of so important a contemporary personage, to express their continued good wishes for his health and happiness, and to indulge in a few retrospective ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... she said. Should she tell him that they were not true? That he was building up a retrospective passion which had never existed? That what he supposed to have been renunciation and self-control and chivalry had in reality been a rather tactfully steered uninflammable affection? Why his voice now was far more broken up and moved than ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... household much civility; and here, with capital fare, over a fire of wood,—never use anthracite in a close room,—will find, if he has been as observant as he ought, much to amuse and gratify him in a retrospective glance over a journey of some hundred miles, performed with little fatigue or inconvenience, between the chief cities of quaker Pennsylvania and ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... A retrospective view down the vista of centuries reveals by contrast the complexity with which artificial light is woven into human activities of the present time. Written history fails long before the primitive races are reached, but it is safe to trust the imagination to penetrate the ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... principal morning journal of that period, came out with a leading article the next morning, in which every party concerned and every institution was knocked about. The disgrace of the peerage, the ruin of the monarchy (with a retrospective view of the well-known case of Gyges and Candaules), the monstrosity of the crime, and the absurdity of the tribunal and the punishment, were all set forth in the terrible leading ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray |
