Retrospection Quotes & Sayings

Retrospect: the sweetener of life. — Kamand Kojouri

If one undertakes retrospection of the day's events, one must do it regularly at the appointed hour, not fitfully, not doing it today, neglecting to do it tomorrow and the day after and then taking it up again on the fourth day. Such irregular practice is not conducive to the confirmation of the habit of retrospection. — Mahavira

This was in the white of the year,
That was in the green,
Drifts were as difficult then to think
As daisies now to be seen.
Looking back is best that is left,
Or if it be before,
Retrospection is prospect's half,
Sometimes almost more. — Emily Dickinson

I exist here, now. I'm not much interested in the future. Or, more precisely put, I do not believe in the future. To exaggerate a little, I have no faith that I will still exist tomorrow or the day after. What is more, I absolutely detest retrospection. That dislike is balances only by my desire to make my way back home as quickly as possible. — Yohji Yamamoto

Mistakes are like bad loves, the more you learn from, the more you wish they'd never happened. — Gregory David Roberts

What an unsubstantial, happy, foolish time! Of all the times of mine that Time has in his grip, there is none that in one retrospection I can smile at half so much, and think of half so tenderly. — Charles Dickens

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

We ... write to heighten our own awareness of life ... We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it ... to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth ... to expand our world, when we feel strangled, constricted, lonely ... When I don't write I feel my world shrinking. I feel I lose my fire, my color. — Anais Nin

Introspection is always retrospection — Jean-Paul Sartre

Holmes," I asked as we stepped into the street, "I realise the question sounds sophomoric, but do you find that there are aspects of yourself with which you feel most comfortable? I only ask out of curiosity; you needn't feel obliged to answer." He offered me his arm and, formally, I took it. "'Who am I?' you mean." He smiled at the question and gave what was at first glance a most oblique answer. "Do you know what a fugue is?" "Are you changing the subject?" "No." I thought in silence for some distance before his answer arranged itself sensibly in my mind. "I see. Two discrete sections of a fugue may not appear related, unless the listener has received the entire work, at which time the music's internal logic makes clear the relationship. — Laurie R. King

Martin Luther King's 1963 'I have a dream' speech was a thrilling milestone in the civil rights movement, so enduring that we tend to attribute its searing power to a kind of magic. But Gary Younge's meditative retrospection on its significance reminds us of all the micro-moments of transformation behind the scenes
the thought and preparation, vision and revision
whose currency fed that magnificent lightning bolt in history. — Patricia J. Williams

A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects, those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers. — Fred Brooks

It was so gorgeous it almost felt like sadness. — Banana Yoshimoto

The fucking angels of memory were out. They had come out of their museums, out of their castles. They'd gone to war against whatever this incoming to-come was. The very facts of retrospection and fate that had various sides fighting were now out themselves, personified or apotheosed and smacking seven bells out of each other directly No longer solely reasons, justifications, teloi, casus belli for others to invoke or believe in: now combatants. The war had just got meta. — China Mieville

What day is the day that we know that we hope for or fear for?
Every day is the day we should hear from or hope from.
One moment
Weighs like another. Only in retrospection, selection,
We say, that was the day. The critical moment
That is always now, and here. Even now, in sordid particulars
The eternal design may appear. — T. S. Eliot

History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves — Jared Diamond

As a historical novelist, there are few jobs more retrospective. — Sara Sheridan

So do extremes meet; and such is sometimes the all-embracing capacity of the approval of a fool! — Wilkie Collins

The length and shape of the poemetto, like the greater Romantic lyric of English poetry, lends itself to retrospection and commentary. — Susan Stewart

The business of life is to go forward; he who sees evil in prospect meets it in his way, and he who catches it by retrospection turns back to find it. That which is feared may sometimes be avoided, but that which is regretted to-day may be regretted again to-morrow. — Samuel Johnson

The Sufis say, "This is not a religion; it is religion — Idries Shah

We took tea, by Boswell's desire; and I eat one bun, I think, that I might not be seen to fast ostentatiously. When I find that so much of my life has stolen unprofitably away, and that I can descry by retrospection scarcely a few single days properly and vigorously employed, why do I yet try to resolve again? I try, because reformation is necessary and despair is criminal. I try, in humble hope of the help of God. — Samuel Johnson

We all spend so much time worrying about the future that the present moment slips right out of our hands. And so all we have left is retrospection and anticipation, retrospection and anticipation. In which case what's left to recall but past anticipation? What's left to anticipate but future retrospection? — David Leavitt

Finally, she grew quiet. After that, coherent thought. With this, stalked through her a cold, bloody rage; Hours of this; a period of introspection; a space of retrospection; then a mixture of both. Out of this, an awful calm. — Zora Neale Hurston

Most times, your blessings are also your curses. And for me, I have this ability to express myself so clearly with pen and paper, but when it comes to expressing myself verbally, I put up a big wall. — Alicia Keys

Maybe he'd been mistaken, trying so hard to make his wife and young children happy. Maybe it's always a mistake, trying to assure the happiness of others. — Joyce Carol Oates

The beautiful thing about such moments in life is that there is so much clarity, You know what you live for and what matters. — Angelina Jolie

Man is a creative retrospection of nature upon itself. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

You carry the message you've been seeking, but realization of it is found in healthy retrospection, not among the wilderness of chaotic noise. — T.F. Hodge

We write to taste life twice," Anais Nin wrote, "in the moment and in retrospection. — Sue Monk Kidd

No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks. — Mary Shelley

We will not anticipate the past; so mind, young people,-our retrospection will be all to the future. — Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Quite often governments are one way and the people are another. — Henry Rollins

If you ask yourself 'What's the best thing that happened today?' It actually forces a certain kind of cheerful retrospection that pulls up from the recent past things to write about that you wouldn't otherwise think about. — Austin Kleon

As everybody in the Andes knows, when the devil comes to work his evil on earth he sometimes takes the shape of a limping gringo stranger. And — Mario Vargas-Llosa

My father was a very warm, gregarious, sociable person who had many interests. He lived his life very much in the present, full of activities and the next project. He had many hobbies. He was not given to retrospection. — Diana Quick