Quotes About Retrospect

Thank God, I'll never have to play the cello again.

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.'

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

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.

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.

In hindsight everything is much clearer.

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

On his childhood] I'm sure mine was happier than I imagine in retrospect. I look back and think, Oh poetic me, but it simply was not true. I was out playing Kick-the-Can along with everyone else.

Basketball is my first love. If my health had permitted me, I would still be playing, but I am glad in retrospect that everything happened the way it did.

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.

History is just the present in retrospect. Times change but people do not.

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.

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

Art is supposed to make you feel something, and I began to realize my appearance was my art. My body, my face, my scars told a story—my story. But I guess that's how life works sometimes—noticing beauty only in retrospect and poetry, in silence.

In the little rural town I grew up in, I missed out on the pop music of the time, the '80s, and now enjoy in retrospect. It's as an adult that I've opened it up to dance, hip-hop, R&B, and even big pop songs.

Reason can be used only when looking critically back.

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

I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn

Yet in retrospect, with the present to vindicate the past, everyone can claim the illusory status of being a seer.

In retrospect little makes sense - perhaps all stories, rather than once-upon-a-time, should start this way.

Experience is retrospect knowledge.

To face this fact is to encounter one of the most demanding challenges in thinking about history: explaining how people in the past could have failed to see what seems so clear to us in retrospect. This is an imperative task but also a delicate and exacting one. On one hand, explanation can shade into excuse, on the other hand, passing judgment on the past can be a form of self-congratulation in the present.

If I win... do you know what I would wish for?" Don't say it, don't say it. Don't say the thing you can't take back. I'd wish we never started any of this." The words echo in my head, in the air.

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.