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Retrograde   /rˈɛtrəgrˌeɪd/   Listen
Retrograde

verb
(past & past part. retrograded; pres. part. retrograding)
1.
Move backward in an orbit, of celestial bodies.
2.
Move in a direction contrary to the usual one.
3.
Move back.  Synonym: retreat.
4.
Go back over.  Synonyms: hash over, rehash.
5.
Get worse or fall back to a previous condition.  Synonyms: regress, retrogress.



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"Retrograde" Quotes from Famous Books



... as the several objects to which they are to be applied, which arises from, and characterises, the superficial life of the insect creation. This grade of ascension, however, like the former, is accompanied by an apparent retrograde movement. For from this very accession of vital intensity we must account for the absence in the fishes of all the formative, or rather (if our language will permit it) fabricative instincts. How could it be otherwise? These instincts ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... of Great Britain and that of Ireland during the last century—in the one case showing progress and prosperity, advancing, it is not too much to say, by leaps and bounds, and in the other a stagnation which was relatively, if not absolutely, retrograde—is one of the most dismal factors in English politics. Those who would explain it by natural, racial, or religious considerations are probing too deep for an explanation which is in reality much closer at hand. If the external forces in the two countries ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell

... 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 were overcome by what he ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... heretofore altogether unused, have been heard in various quarters, touching the superior advantages of 'strong government,' the speakers, mostly of the higher or wealthier order of life, meaning thereby, the old and retrograde forms of monarchy, or something of that sort. Periods of disaster tend to reveal a latent lack of confidence in the permanency of existing things. Investigations in Sociology impeach the wisdom of our institutions, in common with that of all others that have been tried in the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... they are known throughout the country as the cerillos of Tenon, but nobody suspects their glacial origin; even the geologists of Santiago assign a volcanic origin to them. What is difficult to describe in this history are the successive retrograde steps of the great southern ice-field that, step by step, left larger or smaller tracts of the valley to the north of it free of ice, so that large glacial lakes could be formed, and seem, indeed, always to ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... 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 greaters the excesse. I loath to looke upon a common ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... younger, or at least they think so; and besides, such youths are more easily managed and more subservient. But, still worse, the more these boys usurp the place of men in society, the more boyish and retrograde will the few men become who continue to divide the honors of society with them. When Plato enumerated among the signs of a republic in the last stage of decadence, that the youth imitate and rival old men, and the old men let themselves down to a ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... retrograde movement may be traced, in the relation which the authors themselves have assumed towards their readers. From the lofty address of Bacon: "these are the meditations of Francis of Verulam, which that posterity should be possessed of, he deemed their interest:" or from ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... heard the story of spinning on the Commons, for her own grandmother had told it. But she had an idea that the world would go on rather than retrograde. For now they were turning out cotton cloth and printing calico and making canvas and duck, and it was the boast of the famous Constitution that everything besides her armament ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas

... passing very large bougies. This instrument is made in adult, child, and adolescent (8 mm. by 45 cm.) sizes. Gastroscopes and esophagoscopes of the sizes given above (A) and (B), can be used also as gastroscopes. A small form of C, 5 mm. X 30 cm. is used in infants, and also as a retrograde esophagoscope in patients of any age. E, window plug for ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... alone, who was a biologist like himself, and the founder of a medical school, finds favour in his eyes. He is not, therefore, at home in mathematical matters and his system of Physics can only be regarded as retrograde when we compare it with that of the Academy. He did indeed accept the doctrine of the earth's sphericity, but with that exception his cosmological views must be called reactionary. Where he is really great is in biology, a field of research which was not entirely neglected by the ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... 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 ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... advance in the one was necessarily to perfect the other. Whereas they are, in reality, things not only different, but so opposed, that to advance in the one is, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, to retrograde in the other. This is the point to which I would at present especially ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... 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 own motion, ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... hopes of Italy. He cried peace, peace! but had not a word of blame for the sanguinary acts of the King of Naples, a word of sympathy for the victims of Lombardy. Seizing the moment of dejection in the nation, he put in this retrograde ministry; sanctioned their acts, daily more impudent: let them neutralize the constitution he himself had given; and when the people slew his minister, and assaulted him in his own palace, he yielded anew; he dared not die, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... have lived before, 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 turns ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... our confidence and love, and caused the restoration of the Emperor to become the hope of the nation. In spite of the obstacles experienced by the ministry, in spite of the affronts to which they had been subjected, in spite of the retrograde steps which they had been compelled to take, they still clung to the baneful system which they had fostered; and, bigoted to these plans, they continued to persevere in those errors which recalled Napoleon from his exile, ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... by this retrograde movement on the part of the enemy to make a push for the beach, hoping that Bob would hear the rifle-shots (especially the double report, which I had arranged with him on a former occasion should be a signal of warning ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood

... Contrary to my strict injunctions, the men hauling the rope gave a sudden and violent pull, wrenching the pole from my grasp, and communicating to the plank a motion like that of a pendulum, which sent me flying out into space, with the immediate prospect of being dashed by the retrograde swing against the solid wall of rock. Happily, I preserved my presence of mind, and grasped instantly the only chance of escape. Tilting myself back as far as the rope and the ring on my belt allowed, and stretching out my legs horizontally, I awaited the contact. Half a second later ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... fell on the river, but my retrograde march proved exceedingly toilsome; at every step I was obliged to bend the branches of the underwood to one side and another, or pressing them down under my feet, force my way through by main strength: some short spaces indeed intervened, that admitted ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean

... 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

... area, and in civilization retrograde.] Having thus traced the rapid early spread of Islam to its proper source, I proceed to the remaining topics, namely, the causes which have checked its further extension, and those likewise which have depressed the followers of this religion in the scale of civilization. I shall take ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir

... Rege Constitutione, was famous in its time. Lombroso tells us that "the Jesuits ... who even to-day sustain the divine right of kings, when the kings themselves believe in it no longer, revolted at one time against the princes who were not willing to follow them in their misoneique and retrograde fanaticism and hurled themselves into regicide. Thus three Jesuits were executed in England in 1551 for complicity in a conspiracy against the life of Elizabeth, and two others in 1605 in connection with the powder plot. In France, Pere Guignard was beheaded for high treason against Henry ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... the conduct of play-writers with regard servants. He cannot account for the turn his Clarissa has taken in his favour. Hints at one hopeful cause of it. Now matrimony seems to be in his power, he has some retrograde motions. ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson

... 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 another, and if possible to assign ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich

... gaze, he had another glimpse of the apparitions, when, having merely passed behind the bushes, they came out beyond them, in the direction of the real cave, and were lost once more in shadow. Lysander, engaged in making his retrograde movement, did not notice this very important circumstance; and the corporal was too intently occupied in watching Carl to ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... the world implied considerable acquaintance—how obtained I do not pretend to know—with the characters of men. Discovering that she was in danger of overstepping the limits of my patience, she drew back with a skill which performed the retrograde movement without permitting it ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins

... sixty miles from Ratisbon to positions south of Augsburg, and it needed all his skill to mass them before the Archduke's blows fell. Thanks to Austrian slowness the danger was averted, and a difficult retrograde movement was speedily changed into a triumphant offensive. Five successive days saw as many French victories, the chief of which, at Eckmuehl (April 22nd), forced the Archduke with the Austrian right wing northwards towards Ratisbon, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

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

... to-day is full of scorn for patriotism, which he holds the most retrograde of emotions. He may as usefully declaim against friendship, comradeship, the love of man for woman or of mother for child. The lowest savage regards himself, and cannot but regard himself, as a member of some sort of political aggregation. This feeling is one of the primal ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various

... whereunto in ye late Assembly an Act was made appointing a town in every County, where all Goods imported are to be landed, and all Goods exported to be shipt off. And if this takes effect, as its hoped it may, Virginia will then go forward which of late years hath made a retrograde motion."[985] ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... taught to look for other resources than those which can be derived from order, frugality, and industry. They are generally armed; and they are made to expect much from the use of arms. Nihil non arrogant armis. Besides this, the retrograde order of society has something flattering to the dispositions of mankind. The life of adventurers, gamesters, gypsies, beggars, and robbers is not unpleasant. It requires restraint to keep men from ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... (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, relapse, turning point &c.(reversion) 145. V. recede, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... fir'd, And heaven tormented with thy chafing heat: But thy fires hurt not. Mars, '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 Let all laws yield, sin bears ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... devil, my dear friend Panurge, seeing it is so decreed by the gods, wouldst thou invert the course of the planets, and make them retrograde? Wouldst thou disorder all the celestial spheres, blame the intelligences, blunt the spindles, joint the wherves, slander the spinning quills, reproach the bobbins, revile the clew-bottoms, and finally ravel and untwist all the threads ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... after we occupied Gauley Bridge, all our information showed that General Wise was not likely to attempt the reconquest of the Kanawha valley voluntarily. His rapid retrograde march ended at White Sulphur Springs and he went into camp there. His destruction of bridges and abandonment of stores and munitions of war showed that he intended to take final leave of our region. [Footnote: My report to Rosecrans, Official Records, ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... sheweth, that the sun and other planets move in their own circles; and first alike swift, though they move diversely in divers circles. Also in these circles the manner moving of planets is full wisely found of astronomers, that are called Direct, Stationary, and Retrograde Motion. Forthright moving is in the over part of the circle that is called Epicycle, backward is in the nether part, and stinting and abiding or hoving is ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele

... (Foreword, Supp. vol. iii.) from 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 and variants. Mr. Alexander ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... in this country by those who speak of Colonial self-government as though the Dominions really enjoyed the same self-government as the people of these islands, and by the parties in Germany whose programme it is, not to make Germany a truly constitutional country, but to assimilate the retrograde Prussian franchise to the broader ...
— Progress and History • Various

... is not safe, uncle Phaeton?" ventured Bruno, as another retrograde gust of air smote their apparently frail conveyance with ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.

... of their migrations, which has been preserved to us mainly by Livy, relates the story of these later retrograde movements as follows.(8) The Gallic confederacy, which was headed then as in the time of Caesar by the canton of the Bituriges (around Bourges), sent forth in the days of king Ambiatus two great hosts led by the two nephews of the king. One of these nephews, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... concerning it. The enormous majority of cases in real life are those of people in that position. Those who deliberately and conscientiously profess what are oddly called advanced views by those others who believe them to be retrograde, are often, and indeed mostly, the last people in the world to engage in unconventional adventures of any kind, not only because they have neither time nor disposition for them, but because the friction set up between the individual and the community by the expression of unusual views of any sort ...
— Overruled • George Bernard Shaw

... same line, might be left to receive not only the answer of his own book to the selfsame talk of the slavers fifty years ago, but also that of the accumulated refutations which America has furnished for the last twenty-five years as to the retrograde tendency so falsely imputed. But, taking it as a serious contention, we find that it involves a suggestion that the according of electoral votes to citizens of a certain complexion would, per se and ipso facto, produce a revulsion and collapse of the entire prevailing organization and ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... clothe the naked, minister unto the 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

... both sides, of course. 'Idaho' Jack, professional gambler, for instance, frankly considered that the whole town was going to unmentionable depths of propriety. The organisation of the League was regarded by him, and by many others, as a sad retrograde towards the bondage of the ancient and dying East; and that he could not get drunk when and where he pleased, 'Idaho,' as he was called, regarded ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor

... John Cautly, our crack county member, declares that if Darrell does not come in, 'tis because the CRISIS is going too far! Harry Bold, our most popular speaker, says, if Darrell stay out, 'tis a sign that the CRISIS is a retrograde movement! In short, without Darrell the CRISIS will be a failure, and the House of Vipont smashed—Lady Montfort—smashed! I sent a telegram (oh, that I should live to see such a word introduced into the English language!—but, as Carr says, what times these ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... power for a while and is then deposed, no more difficult question can be debated. Is it not better to take the law as he leaves it, even though the law has become a law illegally, than encounter all the confusion of retrograde action? Nothing could have been more iniquitous than some of Sulla's laws, but Cicero had opposed their abrogation. But here the question was one not of Caesar's laws, but of decrees subsequently made by Antony and palmed off upon the people as having been found among Caesar's papers. ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... 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

... 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 of the Emperor Joseph, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... revision, also, his 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 to the purification ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... that these excesses should produce other excesses, in a contrary direction. Moved by hatred or fear of revolutionary absolutism, nations seek an asylum in governmental absolutism, or they retrograde towards the middle ages, and consider the mutual bond of protection and dependence of that period as the ideal and the realization of true liberty. History is no longer the organic development of social life, and man, like a soldier that thoughtlessly and capriciously has ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... pleasure, who seems frightened at every object which turns him a moment from his fanatical meditations. Is this virtue? Is a being of this stamp of any use to himself or to others? Would not society be dissolved, and would not men retrograde into barbarism, if each one should be fool enough to wish to ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier

... these Arab maraboutic tendencies as opposed to the saner ideals of the Berber stock; perhaps they think it politic to arabize the older race in this and a few other particulars, though it signifies, almost invariably, a retrograde movement of civilization. ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... 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

... Nature's. He belonged to the traditions yesterday, today he is among those who are seekers, and to-morrow I doubt not he will be among those prone to think that perhaps Christianity is, after all, retrograde. His lips will curl contemptuously to-morrow when he hears the cruelty of the circus denounced by men who would, if they were allowed, relight the bon fires of the Inquisition; ... he is a Protestant, I had forgotten. Gladiators have begun to appear to us less cruel than ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... 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 ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... unprevailing woe; and think of us As of a father: for let the world take note You are the most immediate to our throne; And with no less nobility of love Than that which dearest father bears his son Do I impart toward you. For your intent In going back to school in Wittenberg, It is most retrograde to our desire: And we beseech you bend you to remain Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye, Our chiefest courtier, cousin, ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... council. It was their friends who had contrived this: would not Florentines be moved by the visible association of such cruel ignominy with two venerable men like Bernardo del Nero and Niccolo Ridolfi, who had taken their bias long before the new order of things had come to make Mediceanism retrograde—with two brilliant popular young men like Tornabuoni and Pucci, whose absence would be felt as a haunting vacancy wherever there was a meeting of chief Florentines? It was useless: such pity as could be awakened now was of that hopeless sort which leads not to rescue, but ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... hairs in heaven, but all shall rise in the perfect state of men, we do but outlive those perfections in this world, to be recalled unto them by a greater miracle in the next, and run on here but to be retrograde hereafter. Were there any hopes to outlive vice, or a point to be superannuated from sin, it were worthy our knees to implore the days of Methuselah. But age doth not rectify, but incurvate our natures, turning bad dispositions into worser habits, and (like ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... foreign commerce together have given birth to the principal improvements of agriculture. The manners and customs which the nature of their original government introduced, and which remained after that government was greatly altered, necessarily forced them into this unnatural and retrograde order. ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... arrival in the more southern parts of Europe, found highly ornamented buildings, and, being themselves altogether ignorant of art, were content with copying what already existed; so that their progress in art was in a retrograde direction, from a classical style, to one comparatively barbarous. On the other hand, it is averred, that these reputed savages really imported with them the kind of architecture now generally known by their name; and, in proportion as they improved in wealth, luxury, and refinement, ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... time, I confess myself to be at a loss to see any new position for the sex, or the most imperfect solution of the 'woman's question,' in this step of hers. If a movement at all, it is retrograde, a revival of old virtues! Since the siege of Troy and earlier, we have had princesses binding wounds with their hands; it's strictly the woman's part, and men understand it so, as you will perceive by the general adhesion and approbation ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... retrograde view of his life, he (in the foresaid historical account) observes, that the Lord had given him a body not very strong, and yet not weak; for he could hardly remember himself wearied in reading and studying, although he had continued some seven or eight hours without rising, and also that ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... drive a long way until he could find space in which to turn round. The smarty that had sold the thing to him had turned in a narrow road, but not again that day would Sharon employ the whimsically treacherous gear of the retrograde. ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... of the case and looking upon the catastrophe which has just taken place as a fresh symptom of the retrograde, and it may be said anti-European, tendency from which it is important that the Turkish Government should, in its own interest, be diverted, the Representatives of the Five Great Powers at Constantinople thought that a joint ...
— Correspondence Relating to Executions in Turkey for Apostacy from Islamism • Various

... horses killed or carried away, and the wagons left standing in the road. Nothing daunted, Wayne pushed on. On the twenty-third of October, he wrote to the Secretary of War that, "the safety of the western frontiers, the reputation of the Legion, the dignity and interests of the nation, all forbid a retrograde maneuver, or giving up one inch of ground we now possess, until the enemy are compelled to ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce

... as he spoke, except Dr. Slop.—Confusion! cried my father (getting upon his legs a second time)—not one single thing has gone right this day! had I faith in astrology, brother, (which, by the bye, my father had) I would have sworn some retrograde planet was hanging over this unfortunate house of mine, and turning every individual thing in it out of its place.—Why, I thought Dr. Slop had been above stairs with my wife, and so said you.—What can the fellow be puzzling about in the kitchen!—He ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... even the most accomplished of imitators. It has been said that 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. ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly

... that I reason here like a man whose narrow view does not embrace the vast humanitary horizon, like a retrograde attached to a ridiculous system of morality, a morality already passing to decay, and at the best good only for minds without intelligence, in the infancy of society. There is close at hand the birth of a new gospel, far above the common-places of this conventional wisdom, which hinders ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various

... in the view that the rights of an author are just as much entitled to protection as any other rights in property. I am absolutely opposed to any retrograde movement on the copyright question. I believe that the rights of publishers are inseparably bound up with those of authors, and I regard any attempt to deprive authors of any rights in the property which is the product of their intellectual exertions as "nothing ...
— The Copyright Question - A Letter to the Toronto Board of Trade • George N. Morang

... you succeeded in undermining the basis of society?" asked Kolosoff, ironically quoting an expression used by a retrograde newspaper in attacking trial by jury. "Acquitted the culprits and ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... Sabbath,—a day I never pass pleasantly, but at Cambridge; and, even there, the organ is a sad remembrancer. Things are stagnant enough in town,—as long as they don't retrograde, 'tis all very well. H * * writes and writes and writes, and is an author. I do nothing but eschew tobacco. I wish parliament were assembled, that I may hear, and perhaps some day be heard;—but on this point I am not very sanguine. I have many plans;—sometimes I think of the East again, and ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... Civil War Archbishop Spaulding, then in charge of the diocese, saw the opportunity and the challenge of the church to meet the many needs of the freedmen who without spiritual guidance might morally retrograde. He therefore called for other workers to offer their lives as a sacrifice to a noble cause. In Italy at this time there was Father Barroti, who after having equipped himself for missionary work prepared to carry the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... with Pro-Re-Nata of Washington, D. C., in expressing an emphatic protest against this retrograde movement; that we earnestly hope that better counsels will prevail; that, at a time when so conservative an institution as the British Medical Association has voted to open its doors to women, the stigma of retrogression will not be allowed to rest upon the foremost ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various

... 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

... next generation witnessed two retrograde movements in the interpretation of myths. F. Max Mueller, dazzled by the wealth of Sanskrit mythological material, revived the solar theory, with a peculiar appendage;[1526] the defects of his theory must not blind us to the great service he performed in arousing interest ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... their prey. Neither is it, in general, much easier to escape pursuit at the isles of Polynesia. Those of them which have felt a civilizing influence present the same difficulty to the runaway with the Peruvian ports, the advanced natives being quite as mercenary and keen of knife and scent as the retrograde Spaniards; while, owing to the bad odor in which all Europeans lie, in the minds of aboriginal savages who have chanced to hear aught of them, to desert the ship among primitive Polynesians, is, in ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... operation is a gentle hint that the time has come for certain people to turn in. The room looks dark now that the great sun under the ceiling is extinguished; the two lamps that are now alight are good enough, but one seems, nevertheless, to have made a retrograde step towards the days ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... a virtuoso? You are not even a composer or learned contrapuntist. A teacher of music wins much greater consideration, if he himself plays concertos and composes pretty things, and if he can calculate and give vent to his genius in double and triple fugues, and in inverse and retrograde canons. You cannot even accompany your pupils with the violin or flute, which is certainly very useful ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck

... only the monastic life to enter as a profession. They could become full members of a number of the York trade-guilds. The social position of women in the retrograde fifteenth century fully agrees with the absence of women from among those who achieved notability in ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson

... greater if it is left alone to pursue its natural course under a system that brought us out of commercial bondage into a freer air over fifty years ago. That system has been the secret of much of our success, and once we embark on the retrograde course of protection then that will be the beginning of our mercantile decadence. Is the heritage not too magnificent, too sacred, to have ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman

... centipedes, worms, and snails, but also a kind of salamander 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, while others ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various

... reader's indulgence while accompanying us in a retrograde necessary to the connection of our narrative. When we left Mr. M'Fadden at the crossing, more than two years ago, he was labouring under the excitement of a wound he greatly feared would close the account of ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... hostility of the parliaments to the Jesuits was caused by the harshness with which the system of confessional tickets was at this time being carried out. Finally, the once powerful house of Austria, the protector of all retrograde interests, was now weakened by the Seven Years' War; and was unable to bring effective influence to bear on Lewis XV. At last he gave his consent to the destruction of the order. The commercial bankruptcy of one of their missions was the immediate occasion of their ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... despite its early triumphs, the Giottesque style, by its inherent nature, forbade any progress; it reached its limits at once, and the followers of Giotto look almost as if they were his predecessors, for the simple reason that, being unable to advance, they were forced to retrograde. The limited amount of artistic realization required to present to the mind of the spectator a situation or an allegory had been obtained by Giotto himself, and bequeathed by him to his followers, who, finding it more than sufficient for their purposes, and having no incentive to further ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... to this apparently retrograde movement are still involved in considerable obscurity. The commercial prosperity of the age produced a class who travelled abroad and cultivated the fine arts, with the result that they desired to see erected in England buildings such as they had seen in Rome, Florence, Genoa and Padua. ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath

... the baronet resumed his sarcastic tone, in a rapid recapitulation of Robert's retrograde request. Algernon again took up the cause of his brother, and, with his usual tact, gained the victory, by the dexterous gayety with which he pleaded for the young noviciate in all the matters for which he was to be sent so far afield to learn. At last the conference ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... wings of the air-ship, the axis of inclination—the pivot on which they turn—is horizontal, creating vertical movement. Were there but one pair of screws, acting upon one set of inclined wings, a slight retrograde horizontal movement would be produced in addition to the vertical movement, as the current of blast from the screw would react upon the screw itself with a force greater than that with which it would impinge upon the wings, where a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various

... prone forms lay hidden under the scrub. And only the flash of rifle, and the biting echoes of its report, told of the epic defence that was being put up. But for all the effort the movement of the defenders, before the closing ring, was retrograde, always retrograde towards ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... evening, since we are told that they rejoiced when they saw the star again. It was probably a comet travelling southwards; and, as the wise men had travelled from the east, it had very likely been first seen in the west as an evening star, wherefore its course was retrograde—that is, supposing it was a comet.[39] It may possibly have been an apparition of Halley's comet, following a course somewhat similar to that which it followed in the year 1835, when the perihelion ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... madame. 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), after ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... 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 ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)

... theory, tried the same backward method which 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 ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various

... spots nearer the place of my separation from them. I left the camp in deep dejection, with the purpose of following the trail of the party to the Madison. Carefully inspecting the faint traces left of their course of travel, I became satisfied that from some cause they had made a retrograde movement from this camp, and departed from the lake at a point further down stream. Taking this as an indication that there were obstructions above, I commenced retracing my steps along the beach. An hour of sunshine in the afternoon ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts

... result in a mere grimace; and as we approach the transitional age before the greatest period of sculpture, we often find a reaction against any such exaggeration of expression in a severity and dignity that may have a certain grace of their own, but that are in some sense a retrograde movement so far as the expression of ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner

... 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 had ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... 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 ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... follows:—"If the ratio of recession had never exceeded fifty yards in forty years, it must have required nearly ten thousand years for the excavation of the whole ravine; but no probable conjecture can be offered as to the quantity of time consumed in such an operation, because the retrograde movement may have been much more rapid when the whole current was confined within a space not exceeding a fourth or fifth of that which the Falls now occupy." In the eighth edition of the same work, however, published in 1850, after he had examined the Falls, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... my genius, be not retrograde; But boldly nominate a spade a spade. What, shall thy lubrical and glibbery muse Live, as she were defunct, like punk in stews? Alas! that were no modern consequence, To have cothurnal buskins frighted hence. ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis

... serves as an example to his inferiors? Whom does he emulate? Who carries him along that he may ascend? If all need to be drawn upwards in order to climb, who is to draw him who stands above all? This time the question is out of place. In his case, the impulse will be retrograde. Here we have the thrice happy type of him who competes with his inferiors! This makes me think of a description given by Voisin of a competition arranged by one of the idiots in his asylum. This boy, who was very tall, ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... Adeline, who probably presumed That Juan had enough of maintenance, Or separate maintenance, in case 't was doom'd— As on the whole it is an even chance That bridegrooms, after they are fairly groom'd, May retrograde a little in the dance Of marriage (which might form a painter's fame, Like Holbein's 'Dance of ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... 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, which the people ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor

... flight? He did. Several times. And then she bethought herself of the Piccadilly tube; she got in at Brompton road and got out at Down Street and then got in again and went to South Kensington and he darted in and out of adjacent carriages and got into lifts by curious retrograde movements, being apparently under the erroneous impression that his back was less characteristic than ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... 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 parts of ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren

... Becoming uneasy by these bold attacks of the rebels, frequently driving his foraging parties within sight of his camp, Cornwallis, when he heard of the defeat of Ferguson at King's Mountain, concentrated his army, and, on the 14th of October, commenced his retrograde march towards Winnsboro, S.C. During this march, the British army halted for the night at Wilson's plantation, near Steele Creek. Cornwallis and Tarleton occupied the house of Mrs. Wilson, requiring her to prepare a meal for them as though they had been her friends. ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter

... intended attack to General 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 any manner of ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson

... of a limited Deity then, i.e. a Being really circumscribed in power, and not verbally only by a confinement to necessary truth, is at variance with our fundamental idea of a God; to depart from which is to retrograde from modern thought to ancient, and to go from Christianity back again to Paganism. The God of ancient religion was either not a personal Being or not an omnipotent Being; the God of modern religion is both. For, indeed, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... world, to be amongst the races of all the earth what Hildebrand dreamed the Normans might be amongst the nations of Europe, is not this a task exalted enough to quicken the most sluggish zeal, the most retrograde "patriotism"? For without such mediation, misunderstanding, envy, hate, mistrust still erect barriers between the races of mankind more impassable than continents or seas or the great wall of Ch'in Chi. This is a part not ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... for church, and her bridemaids and friends drove up, events were taking place to deal with which I must retrograde a step. ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... the invertebrate branches we find representatives which interest us chiefly because they appear to have reached their present condition by retrograde evolution. Barnacles are really crustacea, but they have lost their eyes as well as some other structures that are most useful in animals with a free existence, because they have adopted a fixed mode of life, which has also brought about the loss of the original freely jointed character ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... sold sand for sugar. Luther, {726} in fact, did no more than give a flag to those discontented with the existing political and industrial life. Strange to say, Bax found even the most radical party, that of the communistic Anabaptists, retrograde, with its program of return to a golden age of gild and ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... groan over Man—you write like a metamorphosed (in retrograde direction) naturalist, and you the author of the best paper that ever appeared in the Anthropological Review! Eheu! Eheu! ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... for a while, again pauses, and then resumes his ordinary onward progress. Copernicus showed clearly how this effect was produced by the real motion of the earth, combined with the real motion of Mars. When the earth comes directly between Mars and the sun, the retrograde movement of Mars is at its highest. Mars and the earth are then advancing in the same direction. We, on the earth, however, being unconscious of our own motion, attribute, by the principle I have already explained, an equal and opposite motion to Mars. The visible effect upon the planet ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... the vitality of the monarchical principle, as well as in its value, he contended that it is an error to suppose that a constitutional monarchy, in proportion as it becomes more liberal, tends towards republicanism; and further, that if such tendency existed it would be retrograde rather than progressive. ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... inherited both sacred and profane learning; she has perpetuated and dispensed the traditions of Moses and David in the supernatural order, and of Homer and Aristotle in the natural. To separate those distinct teachings, human and divine, which meet in Rome, is to retrograde; it is to rebuild the Jewish Temple and to plant anew the groves ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... from me to foster expectations which I feel I cannot gratify. Two years ago I came to Richmond totally ignorant of classical and mathematical literature. Out of that time, during three months and two long vacations I have made but a retrograde course. If I enter into competition for university honors I shall kill myself. Could I twine, to gratify my friends, a laurel with the cypress I would not repine; but to sacrifice the little inward peace which the wreck of passion has left behind, and relinquish every ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... perceived that old King of the Forest, the largest and most vicious of the lions, was meditating mischief, and called to the Signor to come out of the cage. The Signor, keeping his eye steadily fixed on the brute, began a retrograde movement from the den. He had the door open, and was swiftly backing through, when, with a roar that seemed to shake the very earth, old King sprang upon him from the opposite side of the cage, dashing him to the ground like a ninepin, and rushed ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent

... the tour of the gulf of Mexico and reach Tortoise Shoals opposite the port of the Havannah, while forty or fifty days might be sufficient to carry it from the straits of Florida to the bank of Newfoundland. It would be difficult to fix the rapidity of the retrograde current from this bank to the shores of Africa; estimating the mean velocity of the waters at seven or eight miles in twenty-four hours, we may allow ten or eleven months for this last distance. Such are the effects of the slow but regular motion which agitates the waters of the Atlantic. Those ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... 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 angel ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... specifically 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 ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... moving, and I may say that mankind progress from east to west. Within a few years we have witnessed the phenomenon of a southeastward migration, in the settlement of Australia; but this affects us as a retrograde movement, and, judging from the moral and physical character of the first generation of Australians, has not yet proved a successful experiment. The eastern Tartars think that there is nothing west beyond Thibet. "The world ends there," say they; "beyond there is nothing but a shoreless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... as of our manufactures, we ship off one-third more than we did twenty years ago; and he adds, that we have now more than double the number of merchants and shipping that we had twenty years ago. He mentions a circumstance, which seems to indicate a retrograde motion of commerce, viz., that when he wrote most payments were in ready money; whereas, formerly, there were credit payments at three, six, nine, twelve, and even eighteen months. From another part of his work, it appears that ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... of contrivances that are impracticable, and improvements that are retrograde; forming, altogether, a whimsical instance of the confusion of arrangement, the delay of expedition, the incommodiousness of accommodation, and the infernal trouble of endeavouring to save it—he has now a score or two of workmen about him, and intends pulling down ...
— Speed the Plough - A Comedy, In Five Acts; As Performed At The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden • Thomas Morton

... by a parallel road, farther west. Buell left garrisons at Nashville and other important places, and sought to preserve his communications with Louisville, his base. Weakened by detachments, as well as by the necessity of a retrograde movement, Bragg should have brought him to action before he reached Louisville. Defeated, the Federals would have been driven north of the Ohio to reorganize, and Bragg could have wintered his army in the fertile and powerful State of Kentucky, isolating the ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor

... This is what I proposed to do before the attack at Dresden, when the arrival of Napoleon was known. I represented the necessity of moving toward Dippoldiswalde to choose a favorable battle-field. It was supposed to be a retreat that I was proposing; and a mistaken idea of honor prevented a retrograde movement without fighting, which would have been the means of avoiding the catastrophe of the next ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... consequence of that want of discipline, which is incident to the savage state, the remark applies with equal justice, whether he fought singly or in a body. He was easily panic-struck, because the impulse of the forward movement was necessary to keep him strung to effort; and the retrograde immediately became a rout, because daring, without constancy, collapses ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... French retirement had been, the British retirement followed it fully twenty hours after. It was not until daylight of Monday, the 24th, that all the organizations for this retirement were completed, the plans drawn up, and the first retrograde movements made. ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc

... they be my own countrymen; and be assured, Piercie Shafton will measure his length, being five feet ten inches, on the ground as he stands, rather than give two yards in retreat, according to the usual motion in which we retrograde." ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... that no regulations have ever been gazetted prescribing the duties of Child Welfare Officers. The provisions for them under the Act are merely permissive, and we think it would be a retrograde step to gazette any. The duties of the Superintendent are adequately defined in the Act, and, as in other parts of the Public Service, he delegates such of those powers as he thinks fit to his subordinates. The ...
— Report of the Juvenile Delinquency Committee • Ronald Macmillan Algie

... about noon, a party of natives were observed on the beach, and Capt. Owen determined on paying them a visit, ordering a boat to be lowered for the purpose. Unfortunately, however, it being necessary, while in the act of lowering, to make a few retrograde strokes of the paddle, the boat was drawn into the vortex on the right hand, and nearly cut in two. By this accident, one of the seamen who were in it, was thrown within the paddle, but, miraculously, taken out unhurt; another ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman

... Christian Science there is never a retrograde step, 74:30 never a return to positions outgrown. The so-called dead and living cannot commune together, for they are in separate states of existence, ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... and his family have been carried off, (the continuance of this pretended enlevement of the king excited loud murmurs,) but your representatives will triumph over all these obstacles. France wishes to be free, and she shall be; the Revolution will not retrograde. We have saved the law by resolving that our decrees shall be the law. We have saved the nation by sending to the army reinforcements of 300,000 men. We have saved public peace by placing it under the safeguard of the zeal and ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... sponging me well, he one morning played the part of a retrograde lover; informing me that his affections had undergone a change; he had fallen in love at first sight with a smart sailor, who had just stepped ashore quite flush from ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... to be backed for a certain distance, until it was safe for me to descend and take my postponed bath. I had but time to bow and murmur more inane thanks, to receive another bow and polite murmur in return (both murmurs being drowned by the sea) when the retrograde movement of the bathing-machine parted me and my living life-preserver. He stood in the water looking after us long enough to see that there would be no further incidents, then took a ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... will be denied by no one who familiarizes himself with the local legislative, official and newspaper literature of the time. An apparently well-informed contributor to Blackwood's Magazine for September, 1829, in an article headed "Colonial Discontent," comments on this retrograde system in the following terms:—"A system of espionage assumes that there is something which ought to be watched and to be prevented; and as the existence of such a system probably did exist in Upper Canada during the administration ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... and, for the first time, I heard murmurs against the government. So far, perhaps, no Executive had ever such cordial and unanimous support of the people as President Davis. I knew the motive of the evacuation, and prepared a short editorial for one of the papers, suggesting good reasons for the retrograde movement; and instancing the fact that when Napoleon's capital was surrounded and taken, he had nearly 200,000 men in garrison in the countries he had conquered, which would have been ample for the defense of France. This I carried to the Secretary at his ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... were now undergoing the severest trial of faith. They were hunted, seized, tortured, shot, hanged, destroyed, in the most infernal manner. They were shown neither mercy nor justice. But the most crushing distress was the reproach heaped upon them by retrograde Covenanters. By these they were defamed as dangerous men, disloyal to their country and a disgrace to religion. All the ministers, through fear or with scorn, had forsaken them. This was harder to endure than ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters

... 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 rather be to keep up improvements of the soil, and its productive power ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... and Japhet, peopled the globe. One family may become a nation; unfortunately, a nation may become one family. To prove this we need only search back through our ancestors and see their accumulation, which time increases into a retrograde geometric progression, which multiplies of itself; reminding us of the calculation of the wise man who, being told to choose a reward from the king of Persia for inventing chess, asked for one ear of wheat ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac

... constitution. But it is further to be observed, that the present constitution is no less inconsistent with the scriptural and covenanted constitution of the church of Scotland, in regard that the retrograde constitution, to which the church fled back, and on which she was settled at the revolution, was but an infant state of the church, lately after her first reformation from Popery, far inferior to her advanced state betwixt ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery



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



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