Top 100 In Retrospect Quotes
#1. Time has a way of reminding us of its perishable nature in the retrospect of our reflections.
Gary Westfal
#2. I think the time in between albums, as much as it was not anticipated, it was much-needed, and very helpful, very useful. I've done nothing but hone my craft, and get better, and learn, and gather information in the process. So I'm grateful for it in retrospect.
Joe Budden
#3. One often sees a call only in retrospect. This too is God's design. God often reinforces our faith after we trust him, not before.
Ravi Zacharias
#4. That's why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. You can't control life, at least you can control your version.
Chuck Palahniuk
#5. There are plenty of dead scientists I admire, but I can't think of any living ones. This is probably because it is only in retrospect that one can see who made the important contributions.
Stephen Hawking
#6. A lot of things in history are timing, and it's very peculiar because in retrospect things [and] people can look more brilliant or necessary than they actually were.
Robert Greene
#7. The road is a strange place. Shuffling along, I looked up and you were there walking across the grass toward my truck on an August day. In retrospect, it seems inevitable - it could not have been any other way
a case of what I call the high probability of the improbable
Robert James Waller
#8. Developmental trauma occurs when "emotional pain cannot find a relational home in which it can be held."1 In retrospect, I can see that this was the case for
Mark Epstein
#9. In retrospect, I am very nearly as sharp as I pretend to be.
Lyndsay Faye
#10. I'm not unintelligent, mind you. But wisdom means more than being intelligent, because it encompasses understanding, empathy, experience, inner peace, and intuition, and in retrospect, I obviously lack many of those traits. Here's
Nicholas Sparks
#11. 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
#12. Everything that happens to us can be looked at as a gift. Although it's quite difficult when you're in the middle of a hard struggle with something, it's hard to see it as a gift, but in retrospect, we can almost always look back and say, "Oh, I see why I had to go through that."
Shakti Gawain
#13. Honestly, in retrospect, I would wish for future generations to have the ability to have a coming out process that was less alcohol-soaked than mine was.
Christopher Rice
#14. 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
#15. This should have been a red flag, I realize in retrospect. Working really hard on anything is, by definition, not cool.
Leila Sales
#16. People always understand everything in retrospect.
Agnes Denes
#17. It is easy in retrospect to see why he'd want to go. There are two women who are furious at him. To make one happy, he must take the subway across town and arrive on her doorstep. To make the other happy, he must wear for some infinitely long period of time a hair shirt woven out of her own hair.
Jenny Offill
#18. Expressions like "the good ole days" implied that life used to be of a higher quality than it is now, but I think everything looks better in retrospect.
Penelope Douglas
#19. You never know in retrospect whether you did or didn't do exactly the right thing, stay-at-home mothers, gone-away mothers, all ofus worry whether we should have done something differently than we did.
Hillary Clinton
#20. We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.
Anais Nin
#21. That was all quite long ago. I see it in retrospect, indulgently, from the point I've reached now. But how else could I see it. We can't really travel to the past, no matter how we try. if we do, it's as tourists.
Margaret Atwood
#22. The present is an age of talkers, and not doers; and the reason is, that the world is growing old. We are so far advanced in the Arts and Sciences, that we live in retrospect, and doat on past achievements.
William Hazlitt
#24. 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
#25. Every age fraught with discord and danger seems to spawn a leader meant only for that age, a political giant whose absence, in retrospect, seems inconceivable when the history of that age is written.
Dan Simmons
#26. Is it easy to see things in retrospect. But I was ignorant then of everything but my own happiness.
Donna Tartt
#27. In retrospect, the Millennium marked only a moment in time. It was the events of September 11 that marked a turning point in history, where we confront the dangers of the future and assess the choices facing humankind.
Tony Blair
#28. 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
#29. I didn't throw the paper away.
Maybe I should have.
Oh, the things you know in retrospect.
Ilsa J. Bick
#30. 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
#31. My first job was in a nursing home - a terrible place in retrospect. It was in an old house, and the residents were so lonely. People rarely visited them. I only stayed there a couple of months, but it made a strong impression on me.
Kim Edwards
#32. No endeavor that is worthwhile is simple in prospect; if it is right, it will be simple in retrospect.
Edward Teller
#33. In retrospect, everything is finite, but prospectively, there are infinite possibilities. I guess that's what makes life hopeful.
Demetri Martin
#34. Having an adventure shows that someone is incompetent, that something has gone wrong. An adventure is interesting enough - in retrospect. Especially to the person who didn't have it.
Vilhjalmur Stefansson
#35. Looking back in retrospect, there were some great moments working with some great people, ... I don't know quite how to put it into words. I don't look at it quite the same way other people do.
Dave Mason
#36. You can imagine anything to be fun in retrospect- look at all those people who long for high school.
Jennifer Close
#38. You can't explain success in retrospect. The moment you leap into the void, that moment is impossible to negate, after success.
Guillermo Del Toro
#39. There will always be women who say, 'She doesn't represent me.' In retrospect, these things are gifts, because it forces me to step up and defend what I'm doing.
Rachel Sklar
#40. 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
#41. In retrospect, I think it's a plus, because now we've been able to go back and spend extra time on each of those episodes and make them better.
David E. Kelley
#42. The current financial crisis in the US is likely to be judged in retrospect as the most wrenching since the end of the Second World War.
Alan Greenspan
#43. '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
#44. In retrospect, perhaps the biggest reason my mother was cared for but not helped for twenty years was the simplest: Her functioning was not that necessary to the world.
Gloria Steinem
#45. In retrospect, each of the steps toward this abyss seemed irrevocable, and yet they had all been so small!
James Blish
#46. 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
#47. I'm Violet," I growl. "I thought I lost something this summer, but I just realized, I never needed it."
Total silence.
Then someone mutters, "Is she talking about her virginity?"
In retrospect, I realize I could have worded that better.
Nicole Christie
#48. But the paradox of pain is that it is only universal in retrospect. In the present, it is fiercely personal.
Glennon Doyle Melton
#49. I have always been much cleverer in retrospect.
Jaida Jones
#50. I wrote a book on cats. In retrospect, I should have used paper, cause chapter six got hit by a car.
Wynne McLaughlin
#51. 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
#52. In retrospect, I now believe this expected donation of ten percent of income to the Fellowship was based on bad exegesis of an old Jewish taxation law that Jesus Himself seemed to completely ignore.
Dylan Morrison
#53. 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
#54. Now they were probably telling one another: Yeah, I knew something wasn't right. Everyone's brilliant in retrospect.
Tess Gerritsen
#55. How wise we all are in retrospect. Unfortunately it was not possible to go back and change the past: one could only move on into a new future.
Freda Lightfoot
#56. It is often interesting, in retrospect, to consider the trifling causes that lead to great events. A chance encounter, a thoughtless remark - and the tortuous chain reaction of coincidence is set in motion, leading with devious inevitability to some resounding climax.
Patricia Moyes
#57. 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
#58. Christian history looks glorious in retrospect; but it is made up of constant hard choices and unattractive tasks, accepted under the pressure of the Will of God.
Evelyn Underhill
#59. In retrospect, I can see that President Brezhnev was quite proud of the limited agreement that he had concluded in Vladivostok; and to have a new American president come in and say, "That is not good enough - let's do much more, and do it quite rapidly," took him by surprise.
Jimmy Carter
#60. It was, I think in retrospect, the most dramatic individual personal act I have ever seen a soldier take. The mighty powers may try to cover up, but the little people can still sometimes win.
Robert Fisk
#61. In retrospect, I have devoted my scientific life mainly to the question to what extent infectious agents contribute to human cancer, trusting that this will contribute to novel modes of cancer prevention, diagnosis and, hopefully, later on, also to cancer therapy.
Harald Zur Hausen
#62. It was weird that most people knew me as someone let go from 'SNL.' I had the best time there, and in retrospect, it was the perfect amount of time. The only thing that matters is what you do with yourself in that moment after. If you decide, 'I'm the girl who was fired from 'SNL,' you're just that.
Michaela Watkins
#63. My ability to notice that kind of thing, the sanctity of the bubble that you create, has not been so good in a way, in that I notice it concurrently with actually doing the thing. I always notice it in retrospect.
Andy Richter
#64. 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
#66. I'll not deny I am impressed by your mastery of six warrens, Quick Ben. In retrospect, you should have held back on at least half of what you command." The man made to rise.
"But, Bauchelain," the wizard replied, "I did.
Steven Erikson
#67. Stupidity is one of the two things we see most clearly in retrospect. The other is missed chances.
Stephen King
#68. Destiny is a name often given in retrospect to choices that had dramatic consequences.
J.K. Rowling
#69. 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
#70. Childhood is only the beautiful and happy time in contemplation and retrospect: to the child it is full of deep sorrows, the meaning of which is unknown.
George Eliot
#72. Reporters are not paid to operate in retrospect. Because when news begins to solidify into current events and finally harden intohistory, it is the stories we didn't write, the questions we didn't ask that prove far, far more damaging than the ones we did.
Anna Quindlen
#73. The question is where are business ethics and morality if one of the parties wants to dishonor a binding contract, just because in retrospect it realizes it could perhaps have got a better price!
Anil Ambani
#74. Each of a hundred ships, built by the same men at the same yard to the same plans, will have her own special characteristics--most of them bad, really, but after her crew becomes accustomed to them they are spoken of affectionately, particularly in retrospect.
Tom Clancy
#76. The importance of selecting music and sequencing songs - making one song merge into another song. In retrospect, those are the most important lessons I got from DJs.
Hans-Peter Lindstrom
#77. Nothing happens without God's will, and life doesn't always go according to plan. Man proposes, God disposes. And it is God's will that we need to surrender to. In retrospect it usually all makes sense.
Kristiane Backer
#78. 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
#79. In retrospect, I'm really shocked at how far I put my heart out there on the line with 'Prima Donna'. I seem to have this knack for being able to accomplish that.
Rufus Wainwright
#80. I believe there are visions that come to us only in memory, in retrospect.
Marilynne Robinson
#81. In retrospect, you know all the answers. You know the shadowy throes of your heart.
Leah Raeder
#82. The boring parts don't last forever. In retrospect, they aren't even boring.
Ada Calhoun
#83. In retrospect, it seems like everything in my life led to me becoming a writer. I just didn't realise it at the time.
Kate Morton
#84. I have no desire to suffer twice, in reality and then in retrospect.
Sophocles
#85. It is only in retrospect that the high points of our lives rise up, flaunting banners.
Caroline Pratt
#86. 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
#87. History is lived forwards but it is written in retrospect. We know the end before we consider the beginning and we can never wholly recapture what it was to know the beginning only.
C.V. Wedgwood
#88. They say screwy things, make odd choices which, in retrospect, they feel amazingly foolish for making.
Jim Butcher
#89. I have written in my life many critical poems, but viewed in retrospect, they were merely a human harmless reflection, and not a true likeness of the real society of today.
Kristian Goldmund Aumann
#90. No doubt the foregoing litany of obstacles in the path of success stands out more sharply in retrospect than it did at the time. Hindsight can distort; prophets become prophets only in time.
Fredrik Logevall
#91. In retrospect, I can see I couldn't talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching about. Ha! Like, that sure made sense!
David Byrne
#92. So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person's genius is confined to a very few hours.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#93. In retrospect I realize that the threat was about ego rather than the validity of the music.
David Baker
#94. And then adds with a laugh, 'but in retrospect I think he may have been more sophisticated than we were.'
Dave Van Ronk
#95. Only visible in retrospect, my friend. If I'm successful, people will call me brave. If I fail, I will be called foolish.
Amish Tripathi
#96. 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
#97. I am grateful for all those dark years, even though in retrospect they seem like a long, bitter prayer that was answered finally.
Marilynne Robinson
#98. I wrote 'The Match,' my cricket novel, between 2002 and 2005. In retrospect, almost an age of innocence in cricket and a time when it was rare to find the game deep in fiction.
Romesh Gunesekera
#99. I will say that all it takes is one group of wrong-minded people with a bad idea that, in retrospect, sounded like a good one at the time.
Ernie Lindsey
