"Look backward" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... better off than I deserve. You will wonder at my better scholarship; but when I was abroad, I had the best teachers, and I worked hard, because my progress pleased him. He is kind, Jeanie, only he has much to distress him, especially when he looks backward. When I look backward myself, I have always a ray of comfort: it is in the generous conduct of a sister, who forsook me not when I was forsaken by every one. You have had your reward. You live happy in the esteem and love of all who know you, and I drag on the life of a miserable impostor, indebted for the ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... quickened." There is not any thing will more commend unto a Christian the grace of God towards him, nor(192) to look abroad round about him, and take a view of the whole world lying in wickedness, and then to look backward to what himself once was, and compare it with what the free grace of God hath made him. O what a soul ravishing contemplation is that, 1 John v. 19, "And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness." How doth this heighten ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... imperfectly endowed. They look about them at the waves that lap the beach on which they stand, and look backward o'er the sands of Time, but send never a glance forward over the great ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... By heraldry prov'd valiant or discreet. With what a decent pride he throws his eyes Above the man by three descents less wise! If virtues at his noble hands you crave, You bid him raise his fathers from the grave. Men should press forward in fame's glorious chase; Nobles look backward, and so lose the race. Let high birth triumph! What can be more great? Nothing—but merit in a low estate. To virtue's humblest son let none prefer Vice, though descended from the conqueror. Shall men, like figures, pass for high, or base, Slight, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... under official ruling, to return to Akpap in April 1906, and she was now reminded of the fact. She was in great distress, and inclined to be mutinous. "There is an impelling power behind me, and I dare not look backward," she said. "Even if it cost me my connection with the Church of my heart's love, I feel I must go forward." And again, "I am not enthusiastic over Church methods. I would not mind cutting the rope and going adrift with my bairns, ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... how lonely! is the snowy peak Thy feet have reached, and mine have climbed so near! Close on thy footsteps 'mid the landscape drear I stretch my hand thine answering grasp to seek, Warm with the love no rippling rhymes can speak! Look backward! From thy lofty height survey Thy years of toil, of peaceful victories won, Of dreams made real, largest hopes outrun! Look forward! Brighter than earth's morning ray Streams the pure light of Heaven's unsetting sun, The unclouded dawn of life's ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... now less swift Rod was able to turn again and again and look backward. Hanky Panky was doing the same, though his machine did wabble more or less, and he had to be exceedingly careful not to land in the ditch alongside the ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... his last look backward at the blue lake from the northern end, Maren and Dupre were making their last camp before the Big Bend on ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... slowly away, half teased, half elated. At the last moment he cast a final look backward, and Daphne Jane, lagging behind the old couple, tossed ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... thinking of days when he believed he had discovered the secret of life—a woman whose life was beautiful; diffusing beauty, contentment, inspiration and peace. She did not know that his look was the wistful look backward, with no look forward; and that alone. She was living a life where new faculties of her nature were being exercised or brought into active being; she was absorbed by it all; it was part of her scheme for restoring herself, for getting surcease of anguish; but here, all ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a single fleeting look backward, and saw many brown figures speeding through the forest. He knew their tactics. The fan would develop into a half curve, and pursue with all the fleetness and tenacity with which the Indian—above all the Wyandot—was capable. If he varied but a single yard ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... losing any of its poetic individuality. It is the city of the Hohenstaufens, the last stand of medievalism against the encroachment of a new civilization. The echoes from Gotz von Berlichingen are at once apparent to the reader. But Arnim's city of the sixteenth century does not look backward only; the conflicts in it point forward also. Its abbess is not the traditional pious, fat old lady, but a tall, thin, practical and active woman. Its Faust is a figure of aggressive naturalism, a charlatan and quack who practises blood-transfusion on the hero and who lies drunk ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... that horrible night of the accident. He called it always the accident, I noticed, and never the murder. That gave me fresh hope. Could I really after all have fired unintentionally? But no; when I came to look inward,—to look backward on my past state,—I was conscious all the time of some strong and fierce resentment smouldering deep in my heart at the exact moment of firing. However it might have happened, I was angry with the man with the long white beard: I fired at him hastily, it is true, but ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... President Jackson, by far the most numerous category of bills will be found to deal with internal improvements, particularly railroads and canals. Money, however, was needed for these things, and Illinois, like all new countries, had to look backward to older communities for capital. President Jackson had but lately made his final assault upon the National Bank, the principal dispenser of capital, by the removal of the deposits, and public opinion was much divided on his course, when Douglas opened his law office and began to discuss public ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... the post, I looked back. They were still standing just as we had left them watching us. Taking out my handkerchief I waved it over my head. Instantly the shawls and kerchiefs flew out as they waved a response, and with this parting look backward to our wilderness friends we turned our ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... eternal; not they die, but we, when we think them dead. And no man who does not know them, and knowing, worship and love, is able to be a member of the body of Man. Thus it is that the sign of a step forward is a look backward; and Greece stands eternally at the threshold of the new life. Forget her, and you sink back, if not to the brute, to the insect. Consider the ant, and beware of her! She is there for a warning. In universal Anthood there are no ants. From that ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... relief of light. Nature has suffered no violence; the power of the body has been exhausted in good service, and the tired spirit is set free from the encasement that can no longer serve it. A fond look backward, a hopeful look forward, and the portals ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... hand To spread destruction o'er my native land? What! shall I not, e'en to my latest breath, In the full face of danger and of death, 250 Exert that little strength which Nature gave, And boldly stem, or perish in the wave? L. When I look backward for some fifty years, And see protesting patriots turn'd to peers; Hear men, most loose, for decency declaim, And talk of character, without a name; See infidels assert the cause of God, And meek divines wield Persecution's ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... his school-days was now a man of forty-four. He awakened in Scorrier the uncertain wonder with which men look backward at their uncomplicated teens; and staggering up and down the decks in the long Atlantic roll, he would steal glances at his companion, as if he expected to find out from them something about himself. Pippin had still "King" Pippin's bright, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a one but the motion of a ship upon the waves; they leave no trace, no sign behind them. All kindness descend as showers of rain or rivers of fresh water falling into the main sea; the sea swallows them all, but is not all changed or sweetened by them. If you look backward and trace him up to his original, you will find that he was born so; and if you look forward enough, it is a thousand to one ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern |
