Retrospect Quotes

Travel is glamorous only in retrospect. (Paul Theroux)
I believe that no endeavor that is worthwhile is simple in prospect; if it is right, it will be simple in retrospect. View quote
Edward Teller
The mark of a good action is that it appears inevitable in retrospect. View quote
Robert Louis Stevenson
I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn. View quote
Robert Frost
I used to work at NASA in Virginia. It was nothing glamorous; I was just tasked with making code compile for obscure projects, and I wasn't very good at it. Now I spend most of my time drawing pictures and looking at funny things on the Internet, which in retrospect is largely what I did at my old job, too. View quote
Randall Munroe
Sure, I've been a victim, but in retrospect, most of it has been of my own making. I allowed it to happen. View quote
Wayne Newton
Evil is obvious only in retrospect. View quote
Gloria Steinem
In retrospect, each of the steps toward this abyss seemed irrevocable, and yet they had all been so small! View quote
James Blish
When you have committed an action that you cannot bear to think about, that causes you to writhe in retrospect, do not seek to evade the memory: make yourself relive it, confront it repeatedly over and over, till finally, you will discover, through sheer repetition it loses its power to pain you. It works, I guarantee you, this sure-fire guilt-eradicator, like a homeopathic medicine - like in small doses applied to like. It works, but I am not sure that it is a good thing. View quote
Mary McCarthy
Everything is funnier in retrospect, funnier and prettier and cooler. You can laugh at anything from far enough away. View quote
Chuck Palahniuk
In retrospect I would say from Donald Duck I have learned more about life than from all the schools I ever attended. (Gottfried Helnwein)
... stupidity is one of the two things we see most clearly in retrospect. The other is missed chances. View quote
Stephen King
I find that I'm extremely unattracted to anything that's humorless. There is writing that is entirely serious, and it doesn't ring true to me, because I think, oftentimes, life is very, very funny. Even the worst, most humiliating, savage disappointments in retrospect have elements of bleak humor. View quote
Owen King
I am not good at noticing when I'm happy, except in retrospect. View quote
Tana French
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) View quote
Sherrilyn Kenyon
I always had a sense that I would fall in love with Tokyo. In retrospect I guess it's not that surprising. I was of the generation that had grown up in the '80s when Japan was ascendant (born aloft by a bubble whose burst crippled its economy for decades), and I'd fed on a steady diet of anime and samurai films. View quote
Junot Diaz
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. View quote
Kim Edwards
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. View quote
Boz Scaggs
I might say that in retrospect, looking at where the community college system is today, I think we may have gone too far. The community college system is so big, so broad, so consuming of tax money. View quote
Daniel J. Evans
Asked at the hearing why she hadn't pressed the FBI more closely about what it knew, or didn't know, about domestic terrorist threats, Rice acted as though the question was an odd one: it wasn't her job. Well, in retrospect, it was and now certainly is. View quote
Howard Fineman
Obviously, I try to make the films work for an audience. That's the main point of making a film, and in retrospect, one can see that certain films, let's say Leaving Las Vegas, demonstrated its own success. (Mike Figgis)
How ungenerously in later life we disclaim the virtuous moods of our youth, living in retrospect long, summer days of unreflecting dissipation. There is no candour in a story of early manhood which leaves out of account the home-sickness for nursery morality, the regrets and resolutions of amendment, the black hours which, like zero on the roulette table, turn up with roughly calculable regularity. View quote
Evelyn Waugh
Our swollen budgets constantly have been misrepresented to the public. Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real. View quote
Douglas MacArthur
One sign of a good action is that in retrospect it appears inevitable. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
It really is strange the way I work for success but when I get there cannot appreciate it. I enjoy the road to success and the struggle - even when it gets hard. But when I achieve my goal, I feel suddenly and totally stressed. Only in retrospect can I begin to enjoy the moment and admit just how great it was. View quote
Sarah Brightman