Top 310 Retrospect Quotes & Sayings - Page 3

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.

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.

I think there's something about going on a hike and looking at a city view or looking at the ocean that brings you back to earth and kind of reminds you that your problems are quite small in retrospect.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Like, in retrospect, this whole Mini-Album is about itself, and the process of letting go of the fear of what people will think about the music or of me or whatever and just putting it out there. But none of that was intentional at all.

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.

Like so many women, I was living out the unlived life of my mother, so I wouldn't be her. But the price I paid was that I distanced myself internally. I wasn't as close to her then as I nowadays, in retrospect, wish I had been.

In retrospect, I think maybe Audrey Hepburn was going to talk to me about doing something for UNICEF. I was so overwhelmed to just even be in her presence and I was very young, but it was really special and unforgettable.

I enjoyed mathematics from a very young age. At the beginning of college, I had this illusion, which was kind of silly in retrospect, that if I just understood math and physics and philosophy, I could figure out everything else from first principles.

In retrospect I wrote things about my life and my family's existence, I realized that it was a frighteningly harsh way to make a living. And I used to say that they were slowly dying trying to make a living.

In retrospect, the pace of change in the arts and industry in the nineteenth century seems pretty glacial. Painting, music, the novel, architecture were all evolving, but at a pretty observable pace.

Everything, in retrospect, is obvious. But if everything were obvious, authors of histories of financial folly would be rich . . .

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.

In retrospect, I'm grateful for the break-up of my marriage because it forced me to deal with all the buried issues I probably wouldn't have otherwise faced. I'm a better, kinder, happier person today because of the spiritual and emotional growth I've experienced.

My ability to notice that kind of thing, the sanctity of the bubble that you create, has not been so good in a way, in that I notice it concurrently with actually doing the thing. I always notice it in retrospect.

Playing in my early bands, working as a studio musician, producing and going to art school was, in retrospect, my apprenticeship. I was learning and creating a solid foundation of ideas, but I wasn't really playing music.

The best early-stage venture capital investments appear obvious in retrospect; however, very few of them are actually obvious when you make them.

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

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!

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.

In retrospect, I can see I couldn't talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching about. Ha! Like, that sure made sense!

In retrospect, I do think it's fair to say that we were overly idealistic and focused on more of the good parts of what connecting people and giving people a voice can bring.

One often sees a call only in retrospect. This too is God's design. God often reinforces our faith after we trust him, not before.

That's why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. You can't control life, at least you can control your version.

I think, a lot of times in Hollywood, the right idea comes along at the right time, and it becomes in retrospect, 'Wow, why didn't I think of that?'

In retrospect, I went to Jane Fonda for literally everything. During Mermaids, we were staying in the same building, so she was right upstairs from me. I was in my first relationship, so I got all sorts of advice. She became famous in her late teens.

I reflected a lot, I thought a lot on my 50th birthday. It has been one of the most important birthdays in my life, not in terms of celebration but in terms of retrospect.

I wanted to learn Latin and Greek and become a poet and acquire power over language. I only understand this clearly in retrospect, that my ability to study came from a hunger to learn all the resources of articulation.

In retrospect, I've become wise in playing my roles in terms of acting techniques. But looking at my old performances when I was young like what I did in 'My Lovely Sam Soon' or 'Secret Garden,' there is something fresh and daring that I want to emulate now.

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?

When I was in my early twenties, I used to grow all sorts of very weird beards. All of them awful in retrospect. I had Civil War beards for a while, then Mennonite beards.

Harlem exists in retrospect, in the memory of grandparents or elderly cousins, those 'old-timers' ever ready with their geysers of remembered scenes. The legends of 'Black Mecca' are preserved in the glossy musicals of Times Square and in texts of virtually every kind.

The last of Summer is Delight - Deterred by Retrospect. 'Tis Ecstasy's revealed Review - Enchantment's Syndicate. To meet it - nameless as it is - Without celestial Mail - Audacious as without a Knock To walk within the Veil.

The first song that I remember writing in its entirety was when I was 9 years old. I wrote it on a bus, on a field trip. It was called 'Mystery Man,' and in retrospect, it was the beginning of my exploration of what it was like to have a man in your life, because I didn't.

Reporters are not paid to operate in retrospect. Because when news begins to solidify into current events and finally harden intohistory, it is the stories we didn't write, the questions we didn't ask that prove far, far more damaging than the ones we did.

In retrospect I can see that my desire to create abstractions has become more and more radical. Art should not be delivering a report on reality, but should be looking at what's behind something.

As a child I was attracted to Tarzan and everything that had to do with jungles. It seemed to me -- and this is in retrospect -- that there was something primal, something right about it. Tarzan represented a pure being, somehow before the fall.

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

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.

In retrospect, our triumphs could as easily have happened to someone else; but our defeats are uniquely our own.

Only in retrospect can I find clues to my father's gayness. Sometimes the dull detritus of our pasts become glaring strands once you realize they form a pattern, a lighted path to the present.

In our business, it's hard to look at anything in retrospect and look at your accomplishments because you're so busy thinking about the next week. What we do is 52 weeks a year.

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.

Honestly, in retrospect, when I referred to the actors from 'Prince' as non-actors or non-professionals, it was actually a great disservice to them. The fact is that they are all actors and should be viewed that way by the industry. It was our casting process that was non-professional.

I fell in love when I was 21, after returning from Australia. It lasted for about two years before she dumped me. It was, in retrospect, a really wonderful thing because it made me very poetic and melancholic.

I'll not deny I am impressed by your mastery of six warrens, Quick Ben. In retrospect, you should have held back on at least half of what you command." The man made to rise. "But, Bauchelain," the wizard replied, "I did.

I know that when you are experiencing failure, it's pretty damn painful. It is easy in retrospect to wax poetic about it. But in the moment, you don't think you will survive, let alone have the time to reflect on how valuable those lessons will be for you in the future.

It is often interesting, in retrospect, to consider the trifling causes that lead to great events. A chance encounter, a thoughtless remark - and the tortuous chain reaction of coincidence is set in motion, leading with devious inevitability to some resounding climax.

To be candid, I think, in retrospect, it was a mistake to work at AOL when I did. I think I had rose-colored glasses about the opportunity to reinvent AOL.

You can't explain success in retrospect. The moment you leap into the void, that moment is impossible to negate, after success.

I have never heard anyone say This is it. I know right now is the high point of my life. It will never get any better. Only in retrospect do we recognize the best times and of course then it is too late.

There will always be women who say, 'She doesn't represent me.' In retrospect, these things are gifts, because it forces me to step up and defend what I'm doing.

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.

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.

I'm fascinated with acting now. In retrospect, I was only beginning to chip off the tip of the iceberg with how far I can go or what I was exploring inside of me that I hadn't touched in a while as far as emotional headspaces.

I tried four times to get into the Central School of Speech and Drama before I got accepted. I started when I was 17, which was too young, in retrospect, and finally went when I was 21. I just kept plugging away. Determined? Yeah, I think I was.