A Quote by Robert Louis Stevenson

The mark of a good action is that it appears inevitable in retrospect.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Quote Topics

Action Appears Good Good Action Inevitable Mark Retrospect

Quote Author

Robert Louis Stevenson
Scottish - Novelist
November 13, 1850 - December 3, 1894

It is the mark of a good action that it appears inevitable in retrospect.

Robert Louis Stevenson

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

Jessica Livingston

[Action's] a Western thing. We think of the hero going into battle, rebelling against a government or an oppressor, but [in KUNDUN] action is nonaction or what appears to be nonaction. That's a hard concept for Western audiences. . . . We wanted to show a kind of moral action, a spiritual action, an emotional action. Some people will pick up on it; some won't.

Martin Scorsese

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

To be secure everywhere is the mark of sophistication, to be unshakable is the mark of courage, to be permanently in love with every person is the mark of masculinity or femininity, to forgive is the mark of strength, to govern our senses and passions is the mark of freedom.

Eknath Easwaran

Theodore Roosevelt is among the most captivating of presidents in our time, but his administration is often underestimated. Roosevelt's successes in domestic and international affairs are so wide-ranging as to appear obvious or inevitable in retrospect.

James M Strock

The mark of a good conversationalist is not that you can talk a lot. The mark is that you can get others to talk a lot. Thus, good schmoozer's are good listeners, not good talkers.

Guy Kawasaki

I like Mark Hunt and I've always said good things about Mark Hunt. He goes a little bit off the rails every now and again, but I've never done anything but respect Mark Hunt.

Dana White

In retrospect, all revolutions seem inevitable. Beforehand, all revolutions seem impossible.

Michael McFaul

History is full of times when the inevitable front-runner is inevitable right up until he or she is no longer inevitable.

Martin O'Malley

After all, if you do not resist the apparently inevitable, you will never know how inevitable the inevitable was.

Terry Eagleton

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

I've never written a book with an outline or a predetermined theme. It's only in retrospect that themes or subjects become identifiable. That's the fun of it: discovering what's next. I'm often surprised by plot developments I would not have dreamed of starting out, but that, in the course of the writing, come to seem inevitable.

Susan Choi

If Margaret Thatcher took climate change seriously and believed that we should take action to reduce global greenhouse emissions, then taking action and supporting and accepting the science can hardly be the mark of incipient Bolshevism.

Malcolm Turnbull

A wise man ought always to follow the paths beaten by great men, and to imitate those who have been supreme, so that if his ability does not equal theirs, at least it will savor of it. Let him act like the clever archers who, designing to hit the mark which yet appears too far distant, and knowing the limits to which the strength of their bow attains, take aim much higher than the mark, not to reach by their strength or arrow to so great a height, but to be able with the aid of so high an aim to hit the mark they wish to reach.