Dear God. When did language and meaning divorce each other and decide to go their separate ways? - Kate Atkinson

...but one cannot look backward, only forward. What has passed has passed forever.

What a good husband you are,' Nancy said afterward, 'always taking your wife's side rather than your mother's.' 'It's the side of reason I am on,' Teddy said. 'It just so happens that that's where you're always to be found and my mother rarely.

Most people muddled through events and only in retrospect realized their significance.