It is the mark of a good action that it appears inevitable in retrospect.
Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.
No endeavor that is worthwhile is simple in prospect; if it is right, it will be simple in retrospect.
When we recall the past, we usually find that it is the simplest things - not the great occasions - that in retrospect give off the greatest glow of happiness.
One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.
I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn.
Evil is obvious only in retrospect.
Destiny is a name often given in retrospect to choices that had dramatic consequences.
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.
Righteousness is easy in retrospect.
In retrospect, all these exercises in self-gratification seem pure fantasy, what Pascal called, licking the earth.
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.
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.
Everything is funnier in retrospect, funnier and prettier and cooler. You can laugh at anything from far enough away.
Travel is only glamorous in retrospect.
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.
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.
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.
Revolutions are something you see only in retrospect.
The Eagles ended on a rather abrupt note, although in retrospect I realize now that it had been ending for quite some time.
or simply: