All 50 Uses of
recollect
in
David Copperfield
- The caul was won, I recollect, by an old lady with a hand-basket, who, very reluctantly, produced from it the stipulated five shillings, all in halfpence, and twopence halfpenny short — as it took an immense time and a great waste of arithmetic, to endeavour without any effect to prove to her.†
Chpt 1-3
- And I recollect two bursting to the opposite side of the parlour, while she was hugging me.†
Chpt 1-3
- I recollect Peggotty and I peeping out at them from my little window; I recollect how closely they seemed to be examining the sweetbriar between them, as they strolled along; and how, from being in a perfectly angelic temper, Peggotty turned cross in a moment, and brushed my hair the wrong way, excessively hard.†
Chpt 1-3
- I recollect Peggotty and I peeping out at them from my little window; I recollect how closely they seemed to be examining the sweetbriar between them, as they strolled along; and how, from being in a perfectly angelic temper, Peggotty turned cross in a moment, and brushed my hair the wrong way, excessively hard.†
Chpt 1-3
- Nor do I recollect that Mr. Murdstone laughed at all that day, except at the Sheffield joke — and that, by the by, was his own.†
Chpt 1-3
- It touches me nearly now, although I tell it lightly, to recollect how eager I was to leave my happy home; to think how little I suspected what I did leave for ever.†
Chpt 1-3
- I am glad to recollect that when the carrier's cart was at the gate, and my mother stood there kissing me, a grateful fondness for her and for the old place I had never turned my back upon before, made me cry.†
Chpt 1-3
- I am glad to recollect that when the carrier began to move, my mother ran out at the gate, and called to him to stop, that she might kiss me once more.†
Chpt 1-3
- Ham, who had been giving me my first lesson in all-fours, was trying to recollect a scheme of telling fortunes with the dirty cards, and was printing off fishy impressions of his thumb on all the cards he turned.†
Chpt 1-3
- It was quiet enough to reassure me, but I have no doubt if I had seen a moderately large wave come tumbling in, I should have taken to my heels, with an awful recollection of her drowned relations.†
Chpt 1-3
- How well I recollect it, on a cold grey afternoon, with a dull sky, threatening rain!†
Chpt 1-3
- 'Recollect! control yourself, always control yourself!†
Chpt 1-3
- I turned over on my face, I recollect, to hide my trembling lip, which answered her with greater truth.†
Chpt 4-6
- How well I recollect, when I became quiet, what an unnatural stillness seemed to reign through the whole house!†
Chpt 4-6
- The kind soul promised, and we both of us kissed the keyhole with the greatest affection — I patted it with my hand, I recollect, as if it had been her honest face — and parted.†
Chpt 4-6
- If you was writin' to her, p'raps you'd recollect to say that Barkis was willin'; would you?'†
Chpt 4-6
- I recollect being very much surprised by the feint everybody made, then, of not having been to sleep at all, and by the uncommon indignation with which everyone repelled the charge.†
Chpt 4-6
- They begin to close again, and I begin to nod, as the recollection rises fresh upon me.†
Chpt 4-6
- The playground was a bare gravelled yard, open to all the back of the house and the offices; and I knew that the servants read it, and the butcher read it, and the baker read it; that everybody, in a word, who came backwards and forwards to the house, of a morning when I was ordered to walk there, read that I was to be taken care of, for I bit, I recollect that I positively began to have a dread of myself, as a kind of wild boy who did bite.†
Chpt 4-6
- How well I recollect our sitting there, talking in whispers; or their talking, and my respectfully listening, I ought rather to say; the moonlight falling a little way into the room, through the window, painting a pale window on the floor, and the greater part of us in shadow, except when Steerforth dipped a match into a phosphorus-box, when he wanted to look for anything on the board, and shed a blue glare over us that was gone directly!†
Chpt 4-6
- I thought of him very much after I went to bed, and raised myself, I recollect, to look at him where he lay in the moonlight, with his handsome face turned up, and his head reclining easily on his arm.†
Chpt 4-6
- Half the establishment was writhing and crying, before the day's work began; and how much of it had writhed and cried before the day's work was over, I am really afraid to recollect, lest I should seem to exaggerate.†
Chpt 7-9
- 'And do you recollect them?'†
Chpt 7-9
- 'Oh yes,' I replied; I had a good memory, and I believed I recollected them very well.†
Chpt 7-9
- It was a great jest of his, I recollect, to pretend that he couldn't keep his teeth from chattering, whenever mention was made of an Alguazill in connexion with the adventures of Gil Blas; and I remember that when Gil Blas met the captain of the robbers in Madrid, this unlucky joker counterfeited such an ague of terror, that he was overheard by Mr. Creakle, who was prowling about the passage, and handsomely flogged for disorderly conduct in the bedroom.†
Chpt 7-9
- We were left to ourselves now, and looked very blank, I recollect, on one another.†
Chpt 7-9
- The rest of the half-year is a jumble in my recollection of the daily strife and struggle of our lives; of the waning summer and the changing season; of the frosty mornings when we were rung out of bed, and the cold, cold smell of the dark nights when we were rung into bed again; of the evening schoolroom dimly lighted and indifferently warmed, and the morning schoolroom which was nothing but a great shivering-machine; of the alternation of boiled beef with roast beef, and boiled…†
Chpt 7-9
- When it was asleep again, I crept close to my mother's side according to my old custom, broken now a long time, and sat with my arms embracing her waist, and my little red cheek on her shoulder, and once more felt her beautiful hair drooping over me — like an angel's wing as I used to think, I recollect — and was very happy indeed.†
Chpt 7-9
- The great remembrance by which that time is marked in my mind, seems to have swallowed up all lesser recollections, and to exist alone.†
Chpt 7-9
- How well I recollect the kind of day it was!†
Chpt 7-9
- I only recollect that underneath some white covering on the bed, with a beautiful cleanliness and freshness all around it, there seemed to me to lie embodied the solemn stillness that was in the house; and that when she would have turned the cover gently back, I cried: 'Oh no! oh no!' and held her hand.†
Chpt 7-9
- If the funeral had been yesterday, I could not recollect it better.†
Chpt 7-9
- I can recollect, indeed, to have speculated, at odd times, on the possibility of my not being taught any more, or cared for any more; and growing up to be a shabby, moody man, lounging an idle life away, about the village; as well as on the feasibility of my getting rid of this picture by going away somewhere, like the hero in a story, to seek my fortune: but these were transient visions, daydreams I sat looking at sometimes, as if they were faintly painted or written on the wall of my…†
Chpt 10-12
- I recollect, as the wind and water began to sound fainter in my ears, putting a short clause into my prayers, petitioning that I might grow up to marry little Em'ly, and so dropping lovingly asleep.†
Chpt 10-12
- Little Em'ly consenting, and allowing me to kiss her, I became desperate; informing her, I recollect, that I never could love another, and that I was prepared to shed the blood of anybody who should aspire to her affections.†
Chpt 10-12
- This precious volume, of which I do not recollect one word, I immediately discovered and immediately applied myself to; and I never visited the house afterwards, but I kneeled on a chair, opened the casket where this gem was enshrined, spread my arms over the desk, and fell to devouring the book afresh.†
Chpt 10-12
- I now approach a period of my life, which I can never lose the remembrance of, while I remember anything: and the recollection of which has often, without my invocation, come before me like a ghost, and haunted happier times.†
Chpt 10-12
- But the twins are a great tie; and to me, with my recollections, of papa and mama, these transactions are very painful.†
Chpt 10-12
- The principal gentleman who officiated behind the counter, took a good deal of notice of me; and often got me, I recollect, to decline a Latin noun or adjective, or to conjugate a Latin verb, in his ear, while he transacted my business.†
Chpt 10-12
- I could not forget how my mother had thought that she felt her touch her pretty hair with no ungentle hand; and though it might have been altogether my mother's fancy, and might have had no foundation whatever in fact, I made a little picture, out of it, of my terrible aunt relenting towards the girlish beauty that I recollected so well and loved so much, which softened the whole narrative.†
Chpt 10-12
- I recollect one young fellow — a tinker, I suppose, from his wallet and brazier — who had a woman with him, and who faced about and stared at me thus; and then roared to me in such a tremendous voice to come back, that I halted and looked round.†
Chpt 13-15
- 'Do you recollect the date,' said Mr. Dick, looking earnestly at me, and taking up his pen to note it down, 'when King Charles the First had his head cut off?'†
Chpt 13-15
- That was before he came to me, but the recollection of it is oppressive to him even now.†
Chpt 13-15
- Nor do I recollect its subject.†
Chpt 13-15
- I recollect it was settled by general consent that India was quite a misrepresented country, and had nothing objectionable in it, but a tiger or two, and a little heat in the warm part of the day.†
Chpt 16-18
- 'Do you recollect where you had it last, Annie?' said her mother.†
Chpt 16-18
- Distinctly as I recollect her look, I cannot say of what it was expressive, I cannot even say of what it is expressive to me now, rising again before my older judgement.†
Chpt 16-18
- 'Let me see, I must recollect a bit.†
Chpt 16-18
- I am lost in the recollection of this delicious interview, and the waltz, when she comes to me again, with a plain elderly gentleman who has been playing whist all night, upon her arm, and says: 'Oh! here is my bold friend!†
Chpt 16-18
- I try in vain to recall how I felt about it, and what its circumstances were; but it is not momentous in my recollection.†
Chpt 19-21
Definition:
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(recollect) to remember -- especially experiences from long agoeditor's notes: Synonym Comparison (if you're into word choice):
Relative to its synonyms, recollect brings to mind a leisurely piecing together of distant memories. It may be used in a less formal manner than remember and is almost always less formal than recall.