Time Retrospect Quotes

#1. At the time there were moments of extreme discomfort; but the adventure, the danger, the exhilaration of doubt and peril are in retrospect something I rather regret having lost.

Elizabeth Peters

#2. Memory has a way of distorting the past, of making certain events seem larger and more significant in retrospect than they ever could have been at the time they occured.

Tom Perrotta

#3. At times of great emotion, good or bad, I find I am gone, somewhere else, watching it happen to me, a different me. I miss a lot of my own life, my own moments, because I step outside myself. I feel it all more in retrospect than in actual time.

Rosie O'Donnell

#4. 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

#5. 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

#6. 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

#7. You're the one who unleashed him. (Savitar) Yeah, well, let's move on from the blame game. I was having suicidal thoughts and it seemed like a good idea at the time. In retrospect, not so much. (Stryker)

Sherrilyn Kenyon

#8. 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

#9. I felt that, in retrospect, there was a time in the late Seventies, after I had a string of hits and successes, as a performer and a recording artist, that I wasn't saying anything.

Boz Scaggs

#10. 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

#11. That was happiness. Not the framed greatest hits, but the moments in between. At the time, I hadn't pegged them as being particularly happy. But now, looking back at those phantom snapshots, I'm struck by my calm, my ease, the evident comfort with my life. I'm happy in retrospect.

Maria Semple

#12. Of course, we wrote the songs accordingly and performed and recorded them that way. At that time, we really thought it was right, but you know, seen in retrospect, it made the album sound forced, and not really great.

Mark McGrath

#13. Innovations seem inevitable in retrospect, but at the time it's an uphill battle.

Jessica Livingston

#14. 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

#15. The passage of time, which transformed the volatile present into that finished, unalterable painting called the past, a canvas man always executed blindly, with erratic brushstrokes that only made sense when one stepped far enough away from it to be able to admire it as a whole. -pg. 19

Felix J. Palma

#16. 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

#17. My main objective with every album is to capture a moment in time, which usually makes the whole process very relaxing. I only discover in retrospect when looking back at the songs how my life is going!

Alanis Morissette

#18. I had repeatedly accepted inappropriate burdens, stepping in to do what needed to be done. In retrospect, I think I carried them well, but the cost was that I was chronically overloaded, weary, and short of time for politicking, smoothing ruffled feathers, and simply resting.

Mary Catherine Bateson

#19. So much of our time is preparation, so much is routine, and so much retrospect, that the path of each man's genius contracts itself to a very few hours.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#20. 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

#21. 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

#22. 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

#23. 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

#24. 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

#25. The Past
the dark unfathomed retrospect! The teeming gulf
the sleepers and the shadows! The past! the infinite greatness of the past! For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past?

Walt Whitman

#26. 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

#27. The power of hope! Even a lack of ambition can, for a time, pay off as a necessary facet, as long as hope outweighs it.

Criss Jami

#28. Time has a way of reminding us of its perishable nature in the retrospect of our reflections.

Gary Westfal

#29. 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

#30. 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

#31. 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

#32. 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

#33. 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

#34. 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

#35. 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