Retrospect Quotes - Page 2

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

  Robert Frost

  Book, Reflection, Order

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• That's the past. I don't agree with retrospect.

  Steve Carlton

  Past, Agree

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• Travel is only glamorous in retrospect.

  Paul Theroux

  Travel, Memorable, Glamorous

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• The Eagles ended on a rather abrupt note, although in retrospect I realize now that it had been ending for quite some time.

  Don Henley

  Eagles, Realizing, Notes

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Our ideas are the offspring of our senses; we are not more able to create the form of a being we have not seen, without retrospect to one we know, than we are able to create a new sense. He whose fancy has conceived an idea of the most beautiful form must have composed it from actual existence.

  Henry Fuseli

  Beautiful, Philosophy, Ideas

  James Barry, John Opie, Henry Fuseli (1848). “Lectures on Painting”, p.358

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• History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody understands at the time--and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Thinking, Las Vegas, Long

  Hunter S. Thompson (2012). “Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream”, p.120, Pan Macmillan

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• In retrospect, each of the steps toward this abyss seemed irrevocable, and yet they had all been so small!

  James Blish

  Steps, Abyss, Irrevocable

  "A Case of Conscience". Book by James Blish, Chapter 13 (p. 158), 1958.

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• Christian history looks glorious in retrospect; but it is made up of constant hard choices and unattractive tasks, accepted under the pressure of the Will of God.

  Evelyn Underhill

  Christian, Choices, Tasks

  Evelyn Underhill (1940). “Abba: Meditations Based on the Lord's Prayer”

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• It is almost impossible to describe happiness, because at the time it feels entirely natural, as if all the rest of your life has been the aberration; only in retrospect does it swim into focus as the rare and precious thing it is. When it is present, it seems to be eternal, abiding forever, and there is no need to examine it or clutch it. Later, when it has evaporated, you stare in dismay at your empty palm, where only a little of the perfume lingers to prove that once it was there, and now is flown.

  Margaret George

  Focus, Forever, Swim

  Margaret George (2011). “The Memoirs of Cleopatra”, p.683, Pan Macmillan

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• Everything that happens to us can be looked at as a gift. Although it's quite difficult when you're in the middle of a hard struggle with something, it's hard to see it as a gift, but in retrospect, we can almost always look back and say, "Oh, I see why I had to go through that."

  Shakti Gawain

  Struggle, Looks, Middle

  "An interview with Shakti Gawain about transformation locally and globally". Lotus Guide interview, lotusguide.com. June 6, 2012.

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• Every age fraught with discord and danger seems to spawn a leader meant only for that age, a political giant whose absence, in retrospect, seems inconceivable when the history of that age is written.

  Dan Simmons

  Leadership, Political, Age

  Dan Simmons (2014). “The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle: Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, The Rise of Endymion”, p.607, Spectra

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

  Will Self

  Exercise, Thinking, Littles

  1991 The QuantityTheory of Insanity and Five Supporting Propositions,'The QuantityTheory of Insanity'.

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• 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.

  Boz Scaggs

  Artist, Strings, Late

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• In retrospect, all these exercises in self-gratification seem pure fantasy, what Pascal called, licking the earth.

  Malcolm Muggeridge

  Selfish, Exercise, Earth

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1978). “A twentieth century testimony”, Thomas Nelson Publishers

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• 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.

  Daniel J. Evans

  College, Thinking, Community

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• A bottle of good wine, like a good act, shines ever in the retrospect.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Wine, Shining, Bottles

  Robert Louis Stevenson (2015). “Collected Memoirs, Travel Sketches and Island Literature of Robert Louis Stevenson: Autobiographical Writings and Essays by the prolific Scottish novelist, poet and travel writer, author of Treasure Island, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Kidnapped & Catriona”, p.473, e-artnow

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• Each person’s life is dominated by a central event, which shapes and distorts everything that comes after it and, in retrospect, everything that came before.

  Suketu Mehta

  Events, Shapes, Life Is

  Suketu Mehta (2009). “Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found”, p.6, Vintage

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

  Michael McFaul

  Revolution, Impossible, Inevitable

  Twitter post from Jan 1, 2018

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• 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

  Jenna Black

  Stupid, Good Friend, Frustration

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• 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.

  Douglas MacArthur

  Change, Military, Real

  Douglas MacArthur's address to the Annual Stockholders Sperry Rand Corporation in New York (July 30, 1957) as quoted in "General MacArthur Speeches and Reports 1908-1964" edited by Edward T. Imparato (p. 206), June 14, 2000.

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• 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.

  Junot Diaz

  Falling In Love, Anime, Japan

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• 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

  Vegas, Leaving, Trying

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• I really tend to write in retrospect.

  Randy Houser

  Writing

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

  Sylvia Plath

  Inspirational, Past, Gold

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.195, Anchor

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• 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?

  Walt Whitman

  Time, Dark, Past

  1871 Passage to India, opening verse.

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