Quotes & Sayings About Retrospect

I knew I was going to be composing. It all makes sense in retrospect. But you don't know while you're in the process of improvising your life. — William Bolcom

It is a characteristic of old age to find the progress of time accelerated. The less one accomplishes in a given time, the shorter does the retrospect appear. — Wilhelm Von Humboldt

In retrospect, this seems to summarize all the insanity of that time. Guy is standing on top of a burning building. Helicopter arrives, hovers, drops a rope ladder. Climb up! the man leaning out of the helicopter's door shouts. Guy on top of burning building responds, Give me two weeks to think about it. — Stephen King

It has always struck me as the world's great fortune that the two great superpowers were the United States and the Soviet Union, who managed the Cold War with meticulous care in retrospect. Imagine the European diplomats of 1914 or 1938 armed with nuclear weapons. It is easy to believe they would not have been as cautious. — George Friedman

In retrospect Hank I don't know why I spent four years writing this book when I could have just made a hit sing-a-ma-jig album. — John Green

Destiny is not something that happens all at once-it's something that happens only in retrospect. — John Green

Your past experiences are past indeed; those strains and emotions of sensuous life are gone and what has remained is the temple of your own building, that edifice not built by hands. The reality of you is in the invisible, the intangible. In retrospect your spiritual milestones stand stronger to you in their fixed position than any outward experience. Having arrived at this understanding try now, quietly, gently, without too much effort of self-discipline, to keep to the invisible, train yourself to keep immaterial. Watching and praying are essential. When hard pressed by old habits and you are under the heavy blanketings of times and events, you, as it were, disappear. This is the moment to step back into the invisible, for then the invisible will enfold you and give you great power in the visible world. — Mary Strong

Every syllable that can be struck out is pure profit, and every page that can be economised is a five-per-cent dividend. Nature rebels against this rule; the flesh is weak, and shrinks from the scissors; I groan in retrospect over the weak. — Henry Adams

Post-national, welfare-state, cooperative, pacific Europe was not born of the optimistic, ambitious, forward-looking project imagined in fond retrospect by today's Euro-idealists. It was the insecure child of anxiety. — Tony Judt

The clothes chosen for me as a child had a strong element of the Pre-Raphaelite, muted greens and ivories, dusty rose, what seems in retrospect an eccentric amount of black. — Joan Didion

Experience is retrospect knowledge. — Hosea Ballou

I've never written a book with an outline or a predetermined theme. It's only in retrospect that themes or subjects become identifiable. That's the fun of it: discovering what's next. I'm often surprised by plot developments I would not have dreamed of starting out, but that, in the course of the writing, come to seem inevitable. — Susan Choi

Stupidity is one of the two things we see most clearly in retrospect. The other is missed chances. — Stephen King

Nirvana occurs when you not only look forward to rapture, but also gaze back into the times of anguish and find in them the seeds of your joy. You may not have felt that happiness at the time, but in retrospect it is incontrovertible. — Andrew Solomon

'Pasadena' erred on the side being too dark. That was probably the one thing about it, in retrospect, why it didn't get picked up. — Mark Valley

One of the experiences of prayer is that it seems that nothing happens. But when you start with it and look back over a long period of prayer, you suddenly realize that something has happened. What is most close, most intimate, most present, often cannot be experienced directly but only with a certain distance. When I think that I am only distracted, just wasting my time, something is happening too Immediate for knowing, understanding, and experiencing. Only in retrospect do I realize that something very important has taken place. — Henri Nouwen

So it comes about that the war [World War I] seems, to us, to have been fought less over territory than the way it would be remembered, that the war's true subject is remembrance. Indeed the whole war - which was being remembered even as it was fought, whose fallen were being remembered before they fell - seems not so much to be tinted by retrospect as to have been fought retrospectively. — Geoff Dyer

My father said I should become a doctor and do science in my spare time, which in retrospect might not have been a bad idea, but I wasn't interested in taking care of people's ills. — Sheldon Lee Glashow

I wrote a book on cats. In retrospect, I should have used paper, cause chapter six got hit by a car. — Wynne McLaughlin

He had spent seven years of his life with Tereza, and now he realized that those years were more attractive in retrospect than they were when he was living them. — Milan Kundera

Righteousness is easy in retrospect. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

As a child I was attracted to Tarzan and everything that had to do with jungles. It seemed to me
and this is in retrospect
that there was something primal, something right about it. Tarzan represented a pure being, somehow before the fall. — Jean Liedloff

Our lives can only be interpreted in retrospect, yet must be lived from day to day, blindly. What folly, the human condition! — Joyce Carol Oates

Republicans are already on seriously thin ice, having presided over an era of unprecedented spending and consistently failing to articulate conservative principles on a wide variety of issues. But what Obama has in store will make President Bush appear, in retrospect, like a libertarian. — David Limbaugh

Everything, in retrospect, is obvious. But if everything were obvious, authors of histories of financial folly would be rich ... — Michael Lewis

Decisions are never made in retrospect, hence there is no point regretting them, ever. — David Darson

Most people muddled through events and only in retrospect realized their significance. — Kate Atkinson

Now they were probably telling one another: Yeah, I knew something wasn't right. Everyone's brilliant in retrospect. — Tess Gerritsen

Our stories may not always be pleasant as they're being lived. They can in fact be just the opposite, acquiring a warm hue only in retrospect. "I think this boils down to a philosophical question rather than a psychological one," Tom Gilovich, a professor of psychology at Cornell, tells me. "Should you value moment-to-moment happiness more than retrospective evaluations of your life?" He says he has no answer for this, but the example he offers suggests a bias. — Jennifer Senior

I do think stories are one of the best tools for communicating across any number of cultures. But I also think there are wildly successful leaders who are introverted, disciplined, lead via spreadsheets and goals, and might not "appear" to be a great leader ... but in retrospect, made a massive impact. — David Livermore

I moved to Chicago in 1992 to study improv and it was everything I wanted it to be. It was like a cult. People ate, slept, and definitely drank improv. They worked at crappy day jobs just to hand over their money for improv classes. Eager young people in khakis and polo shirts were willing to do whatever teachers like Del Close and Martin de Maat told them to. In retrospect, it may actually have been a cult. — Tina Fey

None of us knows what we want to do when we're his age. When we're your age, when you're my age," said Diane, "any age, I guess. We think we do, and sometimes we're right, but only ever in retrospect." Her — Joseph Fink

It is easy to see in retrospect that what I longed for was not a boyfriend but a version of me without my defects
a man in whom I could see myself as flawless, a man whose jokes always caused riotous laughter instead of sometimes falling flat, whose German was fluent instead of passable, who actually knew everything instead of pretending to and then Googling it when he got home. — Joel Derfner

The Eagles ended on a rather abrupt note, although in retrospect I realize now that it had been ending for quite some time. — Don Henley

I did all the stuff that people do - film, performance, photography, pictures and words, words and pictures. In retrospect, I was trying to find some way to put things - meaning images and forms - together that highlighted some idea of what was underneath the surface of an image, what determined how something was seen. — David Salle

I can see that in retrospect but I guess I've always had such an identity crisis when it comes to other people's understanding of me. — Jamie Lidell

Self-righteousness in retrospect is easy
also cheap, — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

I am not good at noticing when I'm happy, except in retrospect. — Tana French

The magus said thoughtfully, "That lying little monster complained about everything: the food, the horses, the blankets, the company. He even found fault with the stories I told by the fire but I cannot recall that he ever once complained about the climbing."
"So many things are obvious in retrospect, aren't they?" I said. — Megan Whalen Turner

Never look back unless you are planning to go that way. — Henry David Thoreau

In retrospect, the highlight of dating him had been free coffee and a particularly compelling discussion on the fall of the Roman Empire. — Richelle Mead

The fear, as I analyze it in retrospect, was of being overwhelmed, of disintegrating under a pressure of reality greater than a mind, accustomed to living most of the time in a cosy world of symbols, could possibly bear. — Aldous Huxley

Working at the scene of the action, I have adopted Robert Capa's saying: 'If your photographs aren't good enough, you're not close enough.' But in retrospect I add a corollary: if you're too close to events, you lose perspective. — Micha Bar-Am

Our Navy was very largely sunk. And we were at war in no time at all. I share, in retrospect, the distress we all share at the internment of the Japanese American citizens of the United States. It was not our finest hour. But the Supreme Court had it before it at the time, and justified it and upheld it. — William A. Rusher

But the paradox of pain is that it is only universal in retrospect. In the present, it is fiercely personal. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Perhaps, in retrospect, there would be little motivation even for malevolent extraterrestrials to attack the Earth; perhaps, after a preliminary survey, they might decide it is more expedient just to be patient for a little while and wait for us to self-destruct. — Carl Sagan

When you're sixteen and struggling to forge an identity out of a morass of hormones and daydreams, remarks like that cut a deep groove in the brain. I trace the ongoing, victorious-feeling semi-starvation of my twenties directly back to adolescence - as a way of showing those assholes that I could control my appetites ... Which is so sad, in retrospect, because of course no one cared. — Kate Christensen

The powers in charge keep us in a perpetual state of fear keep us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real. — Douglas MacArthur

In retrospect, though many were guilty, none was innocent. — A.J.P. Taylor

Youth gives a sense of new days dawning bright, going on for ever, and a kind of tamped-down excitement which keeps breaking through even the worst days of poverty, depression and loneliness. But then youth is something which only exists in retrospect; you are barely conscious of it while you have it. — Fay Weldon

In retrospect, I'm grateful for the break-up of my marriage because it forced me to deal with all the buried issues I probably wouldn't have otherwise faced. I'm a better, kinder, happier person today because of the spiritual and emotional growth I've experienced. — Alana Stewart

People steal into one's consciousness and occupy what seems, in retrospect, to have been their place all along. — Paula Fox

Generational change within a genre is hard to parse while it's happening. Only in retrospect can the passing of the baton from ancestors to progeny be clearly discerned. — Paul Di Filippo

In retrospect, I didn't really want to be a slut. What I wanted and needed was a therapist who would consent to fucking me, but I doubted my parents' insurance would have covered that. I had a lot to figure out for myself and I did that by making poor decisions that summer. If some wise, authoritative adult could simply have explained why I wanted to do these things and then done some with me, I think I would have refrained from most of my sexual misadventures... — Valentine Glass

One of the most intriguing ideas in the developmental sciences over the past decades is the phenomenon of the "J-shaped curve."19 While observing children learning to master new skills in dozens of domains (math, writing, the arts), psychologists noticed a surprising pattern: as a learner struggles to master difficult new challenges, there is often an initial decline in skill. Errors are made on tasks that previously seemed easy, and the learner feels more "stupid" than ever before. This is the dip that forms the middle part of the "J." But it turns out that the "stupid mistakes," in retrospect, were nothing more than growth errors. Once the learner gets past the dip, performance rises rapidly to new heights. — William Damon

Maybe a deal was possible earlier. And maybe, in retrospect, looking back, you could say this was a moment you could have jumped on. If so, shame on us. I tend to think not. — Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr.

When I started writing fiction it always seemed in retrospect (I didn't realise at the time) that it was always caused by environments rather than by incidents and characters. — Jonathan Meades

I've had a number of near misses during my travels that in retrospect seem of greater concern than they did at the time. I guess that is what happens with age. — John Prendergast

A long decade ago economic growth was the reigning fashion of political economy. It was simultaneously the hottest subject of economic theory and research, a slogan eagerly claimed by politicians of all stripes, and a serious objective of the policies of governments. The climate of opinion has changed dramatically. Disillusioned critics indict both economic science and economic policy for blind obeisance to aggregate material "progress," and for neglect of its costly side effects. Growth, it is charged, distorts national priorities, worsens the distribution of income, and irreparably damages the environment. Paul Erlich speaks for a multitude when he says, "We must acquire a life style which has as its goal maximum freedom and happiness for the individual, not a maximum Gross National Product." [in Nordhaus, William D. and James Tobin., "Is growth obsolete?" Economic Research: Retrospect and Prospect Vol 5: Economic Growth. Nber, 1972. 1-80] — James Tobin

Time has a way of reminding us of its perishable nature in the retrospect of our reflections. — Gary Westfal

It is almost impossible to describe happiness, because at the time it feels entirely natural, as if all the rest of your life has been the aberration; only in retrospect does it swim into focus as the rare and precious thing it is. When it is present, it seems to be eternal, abiding forever, and there is no need to examine it or clutch it. Later, when it has evaporated, you stare in dismay at your empty palm, where only a little of the perfume lingers to prove that once it was there, and now is flown. — Margaret George

I tell you this because books for young readers are so often written about that very moment: the moment of the fork. The moment the old man cannot return to. — Virginia Euwer Wolff

My mother would never let me in the kitchen. I always wanted to cook, but I was never allowed to. Her view of the world was, 'Cooking is my job, and studying is your job.' I think, in retrospect, she didn't like the chaos. She was very orderly. It had to be her way. — Ina Garten

We think we have some kind of privileged access to our own motives and intentions. In fact we have no clear insight into what moves us to live as we do. The stories we tell ourselves are like the messages that appear on Ouija boards. If we are authors of our lives, it is only in retrospect. — John N. Gray

If that had indeed been ecstasy, I would have to agree. I would also have to say that either we had taken far too much, or it was a very powerful drug. I could nearly blush myself when I remembered what I had said and done. Trying to become a little more human was one thing - but this had been far over the edge into the sludge of dumb, yammer-headed personhood. Perhaps the stuff should be called excess-tasy. In retrospect, I was very glad there was a drug to blame. I did not like to think of myself as behaving like a cartoon. — Jeff Lindsay

The Naga laughed softly, 'There's a thin line that separates courage from stupidity.'
'And that line is only visible in retrospect, my friend. If I'm successful, people will call me brave. If I fail, I will be called foolish. Let ,me do what I think is right. I'll leave the verdict to the future. — Amish Tripathi

The techno-medical model of maternity care, unlike the midwifery model, is comparatively new on the world scene, having existed for barely two centuries. This male-derived framework for care is a product of the industrial revolution. As anthropologist Robbie Davis-Floyd has described in detail, underlying the technocratic mode of care of our own time is an assumption that the human body is a machine and that the female body in particular is a machine full of shortcomings and defects. Pregnancy and labor are seen as illnesses, which, in order not to be harmful to mother or baby, must be treated with drugs and medical equipment. Within the techno-medical model of birth, some medical intervention is considered necessary for every birth, and birth is safe only in retrospect. — Ina May Gaskin

Also, the movie had the first breasts I had ever seen, although they were not what I had been led to believe that breasts looked like. They were like cow udders, and one of them was bigger than the other. (In retrospect, this may have been responsible for my complete lack of sexual development, which we've already talked about, I guess at least I wasn't going around saying things like, 'The best thing about your two boobs is that they are the same size. — Jesse Andrews

In retrospect, the political and cultural climate in the early '60s seems both a time of innocence and also like a sultry, still summer day in the Midwest: an unsettling calm before a ferocious storm over Vietnam, which was not yet an American war. — Tom Brokaw

Vietnam was a palpable failure. And of course, in retrospect, it was even more clearly a disaster and a failure than maybe people understood at the time. — Robert Dallek

The learned must educate the ignorant. Because, according to society, ignorance is never bliss. Except in retrospect. I look back upon my ignorance with the knowledge that I was much happier then than now. Consider this: children know precious little, but the profound ignorance comes from profound innocence. People really mean to say that innocence is bliss. And bliss is short-lived. — Nick Sagan

When you can see your life in retrospect, the romanticism of how good things once were gives way to the reality that positives and negatives comprise every day and every decade. (235) — Victoria Moran

In retrospect I must confess that I do not know, or no longer know, what I wanted to achieve with my words. I only know that without this testimony, my life as a writer - or my life, period - would not have become what it is: that of a witness who believes he has a moral obligation to try to prevent the enemy from enjoying one last victory by allowing his crimes to be erased from human memory. — Elie Wiesel

It wasn't that Helga and I were crazy about Nazis. I can't say, on the other hand, that we hated them. They were a big enthusiastic part of our audience, important people in the society in which we lived.
They were people.
Only in retrospect can I think of them as trailing slime behind. — Kurt Vonnegut

In retrospect, Euler's unintended message is very simple: Graphs or networks have properties, hidden in their construction, that limit or enhance our ability to do things with them. For more than two centuries the layout of Konigsberg's graph limited its citizens' ability to solve their coffeehouse problem. But a change in the layout, the addition of only one extra link, suddenly removed this constraint. — Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

What is fate but coincidences in retrospect? — Ken Liu

The problem is that we cannot recognize that what we say about out thoughts and actions is, at best, incoherent; we can and do recognize this after the fact. But once having admitted to ourselves our own subterfuges we are confronted by newer forms, which again we only recognize after the fact. We can never at the moment itself be honest with ourselves, never really understand when we are acting out what we are truly all about. It is only in retrospect that we can explain ourselves, and this retrospective view is hardly reassuring because it does so little to alter our behavior in the future — Israel Rosenfield

Love is in prospect or retrospect, the present is ecstasy. — Nicholas Mosley

We had been everywhere. We had really seen nothing. And I catch myself thinking today that our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country that by then, in retrospect, was no more to us than a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour books, old tires, and her sobs in the night - every night, every night - the moment I feigned sleep. — Vladimir Nabokov

Marvelously clear-fretted in the unsmoked air, the Abbey rose, silver-grey. It stood detached by the serenity of age from the ephemeral growths around it. It was solid on a foundation of centuries, destined, perhaps, for centuries yet to preserve within it the monuments to those whose work was now all destroyed. I did not loiter there. In years to come I expect some will go o look at the old Abbey with romantic melancholy. But romance of that kind is an alloy of tragedy with retrospect. I was too close. — John Wyndham

Persistence is a pretty important part of making it in this business, which, in retrospect, is the easy part. Maintaining a profile is the difficult part of the job. Somehow or another, I muddled through that system and somehow am around to still enjoy playing for people. — Chris Squire

I have had . . . easier days. Although in retrospect, this one is not atypical. — Robin Furth

Of no day can the retrospect cause pain to a good man. — Martial

You know, 'Peepshow,' in retrospect that seems like a good fit for me, but in the beginning, I'm sure you remember, nobody was sure if the show was going to last. Everybody was like, 'What are you doing? You can't sing, and you can't dance. What are you doing in this show?' — Holly Madison

History is just the present in retrospect. Times change but people do not. — Jeanne C. Stein

Well, she managed to - Barbara was capable of doing practically anything if she set her mind to it. In retrospect, I'm not surprised that Barbara managed to get collect calls through. — Ted Olson

It is only in retrospect that the high points of our lives rise up, flaunting banners. — Caroline Pratt

Memory is not a storage place but a story we tell ourselves in retrospect. As such, it is made of storytelling materials: embroidery and forgery, perplexity and urgency, revelation and darkness. — Noam Shpancer

Which in retrospect just goes to show that a pretty face can inspire even a bodiless spirit of intellect to dizzying heights of idiocy. — Jim Butcher

Inflation is continuous and eternal, with big bangs happening all the time, with universes sprouting from other universes. In this picture, universes can "bud" off into other universes, creating a "multiverse." In this theory, spontaneous breaking may occur anywhere within our universe, allowing an entire universe to bud off our universe. It also means that our own universe might have budded from a previous universe. In the chaotic inflationary model, the multiverse is eternal, even if individual universes are not. Some universes may have a very large Omega, in which case they immediately vanish into a big crunch after their big bang. Some universes only have a tiny Omega and expand forever. Eventually, the multiverse becomes dominated by those universes that inflate by a huge amount.
In retrospect, the idea of parallel universes is forced upon us. — Michio Kaku

Life was good, and already she understood that to be aware of happiness when you were actually feeling it, and not just in retrospect, was to be happy indeed. — Alison Weir

The act of sending a letter is an act of generosity, even if, in retrospect, it might seem reckless. Why regret one's generosity? Why regret one's impulsiveness, one's misjudgment of others? The inevitable discovery that someone is selling letters you'd written in trust is simply to discover an obvious human truth: there are those who don't cherish us as we'd cherished them, and had wished to be cherished by them. — Joyce Carol Oates

You can hear the profile of a sound, in retrospect, so much more clearly than you did at the time. And I think one of the things that's going to be nauseatingly characteristic about so much music of now is its glossy production values and its griddedness, the tightness of the way everything is locked together. — Brian Eno

In retrospect I am beginning to think of him as an Atlas who lacked muscle tone but who God damn well decided he was going to hold up the world anyway. — Thomas Kunkel

Freedom ... refer[s] to a social relationship among people-namely, the absence of force as a prospective instrument of decision making. Freedom is reduced whenever a decision is made under threat of force, whether or not force actually materializes or is evident in retrospect. — Thomas Sowell

Vic didn't have a car and probably spent a hundred and sixty hours a week at home. The house smelled of piss-soaked diapers and engine parts, and the sink was always full.
In retrospect Vic was only surprised she didn't go crazy sooner. She was surprised that more young mothers didn't lose it. When your tits had become canteens and the soundtrack to your life was hysterical tears and mad laughter, how could anyone expect you to remain sane? — Joe Hill

We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect. — Anais Nin

In retrospect, I think maybe Audrey Hepburn was going to talk to me about doing something for UNICEF. I was so overwhelmed to just even be in her presence and I was very young, but it was really special and unforgettable. — Winona Ryder

I didn't throw the paper away.
Maybe I should have.
Oh, the things you know in retrospect. — Ilsa J. Bick

The struggle hurts now but will be sweet in times of retrospect. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe