Retrospection Quotes

It is necessary to monitor your behavior if you wish to change it. Awareness is essential. ~ Akiroq Brost

The fucking angels of memory were out. They had come out of their museums, out of their castles. They'd gone to war against whatever this incoming to-come was. The very facts of retrospection and fate that had various sides fighting were now out themselves, personified or apotheosed and smacking seven bells out of each other directly No longer solely reasons, justifications, teloi, casus belli for others to invoke or believe in: now combatants. The war had just got meta. ~ China Mieville

This was in the white of the year,
That was in the green,
Drifts were as difficult then to think
As daisies now to be seen.
Looking back is best that is left,
Or if it be before,
Retrospection is prospect's half,
Sometimes almost more. ~ Emily Dickinson

We all spend so much time worrying about the future that the present moment slips right out of our hands. And so all we have left is retrospection and anticipation, retrospection and anticipation. In which case what's left to recall but past anticipation? What's left to anticipate but future retrospection? ~ David Leavitt

A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects, those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers. ~ Fred Brooks

Man is a creative retrospection of nature upon itself. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

If you ask yourself 'What's the best thing that happened today?' It actually forces a certain kind of cheerful retrospection that pulls up from the recent past things to write about that you wouldn't otherwise think about. ~ Austin Kleon

The business of life is to go forward; he who sees evil in prospect meets it in his way, and he who catches it by retrospection turns back to find it. That which is feared may sometimes be avoided, but that which is regretted to-day may be regretted again to-morrow. ~ Samuel Johnson

I exist here, now. I'm not much interested in the future. Or, more precisely put, I do not believe in the future. To exaggerate a little, I have no faith that I will still exist tomorrow or the day after. What is more, I absolutely detest retrospection. That dislike is balances only by my desire to make my way back home as quickly as possible. ~ Yohji Yamamoto

On the one hand, this is a culture that privileges only the present and the immediate - the extirpation of the long term extends backwards as well as forwards in time (for example, media stories monopolize attention for a week or so then are instantly forgotten); on the other hand, it is a culture that is excessively nostalgic, given over to retrospection, incapable of generating any authentic novelty. It may be that Jameson's identification and analysis of this temporal antimony is his most important contribution to our understanding of postmodern/post-Fordist culture. ~ Mark Fisher

What day is the day that we know that we hope for or fear for?
Every day is the day we should hear from or hope from.
One moment
Weighs like another. Only in retrospection, selection,
We say, that was the day. The critical moment
That is always now, and here. Even now, in sordid particulars
The eternal design may appear. ~ T. S. Eliot

Martin Luther King's 1963 'I have a dream' speech was a thrilling milestone in the civil rights movement, so enduring that we tend to attribute its searing power to a kind of magic. But Gary Younge's meditative retrospection on its significance reminds us of all the micro-moments of transformation behind the scenes
the thought and preparation, vision and revision
whose currency fed that magnificent lightning bolt in history. ~ Patricia J. Williams

If one undertakes retrospection of the day's events, one must do it regularly at the appointed hour, not fitfully, not doing it today, neglecting to do it tomorrow and the day after and then taking it up again on the fourth day. Such irregular practice is not conducive to the confirmation of the habit of retrospection. ~ Mahavira

Introspection is always retrospection ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

What an unsubstantial, happy, foolish time! Of all the times of mine that Time has in his grip, there is none that in one retrospection I can smile at half so much, and think of half so tenderly. ~ Charles Dickens

Finally, she grew quiet. After that, coherent thought. With this, stalked through her a cold, bloody rage; Hours of this; a period of introspection; a space of retrospection; then a mixture of both. Out of this, an awful calm. ~ Zora Neale Hurston

My father was a very warm, gregarious, sociable person who had many interests. He lived his life very much in the present, full of activities and the next project. He had many hobbies. He was not given to retrospection. ~ Diana Quick

We will not anticipate the past; so mind, young people,-our retrospection will be all to the future. ~ Richard Brinsley Sheridan

We write to lure and enchant and console others. We write to serenade our lovers. We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection... We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it... We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely. ~ Anais Nin

he ill he real he might gotta deal ~ Timothee Chalamet

We took tea, by Boswell's desire; and I eat one bun, I think, that I might not be seen to fast ostentatiously. When I find that so much of my life has stolen unprofitably away, and that I can descry by retrospection scarcely a few single days properly and vigorously employed, why do I yet try to resolve again? I try, because reformation is necessary and despair is criminal. I try, in humble hope of the help of God. ~ Samuel Johnson