Retrospect Quotes

In retrospect, everything is finite, but prospectively, there are infinite possibilities. I guess that's what makes life hopeful.

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

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.

Do we always grind through the present, doomed to throw a gold haze of fond retrospect over the past?

Amory thought how it was only the past that seemed strange and unbelievable.

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.

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.

...stupidity is one of the two things we see most clearly in retrospect. The other is missed chances.

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.

I try not to go back in retrospect and say oh, I shouldn't have done this or shouldn't have done that. You make your decisions and you live by them.

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.

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.

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.

I think in retrospect that all those 'alternative'modes of living were little more than exercises in arrested development.

A lively retrospect summons back to us once more our youth, with vivid reflex of its early joys and unstained pleasures.

Adolescence is a kind of emotional seasickness. Both are funny, but only in retrospect.

Self-righteousness in retrospect is easy--also cheap.

It's always hard for an author to determine his own intentions, especially in retrospect.

The complicated thing about friends is that sometimes they are totally wrong about us and sometimes they are totally right and it's almost always only in retrospect that we know which is which.

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.

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.

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

I didn't know at the time I was writing Because of Winn-Dixie where the story came from, but in retrospect I can see that it was a response to a terribly harsh winter here in Minnesota.

How ungenerously in later life we disclaim the virtuous moods of our youth, living in retrospect long, summer days of unreflecting dissipation.

And there's always retrospect to light a clearer path.

Even a saint may take pleasure, in retrospect, in having been once desired

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.

Frustration and I have become good friends. And like any friend who's a bad influence, frustration sometimes makes me do things that are, in retrospect, stupid. - Sirensong

I'm not saying that McDonald's gift certificates caused the obesity epidemic, but in retrospect, the timing is kind of suspicious.

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.

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

Success is terrifying. Like happiness, it is often appreciated in retrospect. It's only later that you place it in perspective. Years from now, I'll look back and say, ‘God, wasn't it wonderful.’

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.

In retrospect, it seems like everything in my life led to me becoming a writer. I just didn't realise it at the time.

Those of us who have come to years of discretion and more, must often take to retrospect, and seek to appraise the outcome of our lives.

Are there really good wars and bad wars? We thought so during World War II, and in retrospect, we were right. But in Vietnam, and Iraq we were wrong.

When I first heard about Y Combinator, it was one of those ideas that just seemed forehead-slappingly obvious. Good ideas often do, in retrospect.

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

Often continuity is visible only in retrospect.

The thing is I never want to be an observer, it's only in retrospect that I wish I had observed.

There is always a reason. When I look back on things that really upset me at the moment, I can always see why it happened in retrospect.

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.

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.

Strange that, the way happiness only works in retrospect.

In retrospect, I am very nearly as sharp as I pretend to be.

I feel like I am either on the cusp of something great, or standing on the edge of my abyss, discovering something brand new, or uncovering somebody elses lost imagination.

Retrospect: the sweetener of life.

In retrospect we can only be thankful to all the mistakes that we made and to all the lessons that we learned from them!

It's sometimes easier to help others rather than helping yourself. The trick is to listen to your "self" as a friend. This may be the simplest change you ever make in life, with the biggest impact.