Look Forward Not Backward Quotes & Sayings

It's like we're strands of wire intertwined in a great cable that runs through a slot ... Most people lead two-dimensional lives. All they can see is the face of the slot, a cross section, so that the wires look like a mass of separate little circles looking bigger or smaller according to how close you are. They don't
they can't see that these 'circles' are just cross sections of wires that run backward and forward infinitely and that there is a great surge through the whole cable and that anybody who is truly into the full bare essence of the thing ... — Tom Wolfe

I had drunk our great cultural Kool-Aid about regret, which is that lamenting things that occurred in the past is an absolute waste of time, that we should always look forward and not backward, and that one of the noblest and best things we can do is strive to live a life free of regrets. — Kathryn Schulz

The early Christians made it a part of their religion to look for his return. They looked backward to the cross and the atonement for sin, and rejoiced in Christ crucified. They looked upward to Christ at the right hand of God, and rejoiced in Christ interceding. They looked forward to the promised return of their Master, and rejoiced in the thought that they would see him again. And we ought to do the same — J.C. Ryle

Memories and loneliness look backward, fear looks around, but faith always looks forward. — E. Lynn Harris

We look backward too much and we look forward too much; thus we miss the only eternity of which we can be absolutely sure - the eternal present, for it is always now. — M. William Phelps

When searching for help, look for the one that will push, not the one that will pull! Your machinery needs a pusher; just avoid every puller and you'll keep going forward! — Israelmore Ayivor

What but education has advanced us beyond the condition of our indigenous neighbors? And what chains them to their present state of barbarism and wretchedness but a bigoted veneration for the supposed superlative wisdom of their fathers and the preposterous idea that they are to look backward for better things and not forward, longing, as it should seem, to return to the days of eating acorns and roots rather than indulge in the degeneracies of civilization? — Thomas Jefferson

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see. — Winston Churchill

The real strategic differentiation is to create true value, look forward, not backward, and present the advanced uniqueness to shine through. — Pearl Zhu

Don't keep your head turned backwards. Look ahead and move on. You are trying to walk forward with your head turned backward. This is why you feel miserable. Just let go! — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

I once thought that The Bridges Ablaze would be that masterpiece. I'm not so sure it matters much anymore. You must learn this while you are still young. Live in the crux of the present. And write to explain the world to yourself and to others. Look forward only to the summer of your first convertible. Look forward only if what's in front of you is a mirror. Because one day you'll be so busy looking backward, and everything will feel like winter. If you still don't get it, pare, let me make it abundantly clear. Just write and write justly. Ezra Pound be damned. Poets lie though beautifully. Don't make things new, make them whole. — Miguel Syjuco

Like the watermen who advance forward while they look backward. — Michel De Montaigne

Bitterness is one of the deadliest emotions we ever feel. You can't look forward when you're bitter, only backward - thinking about what you've lost, stuck in the past, despairing because it's gone. In the end, it devours all hope. — Lynn Austin

We all know what we should have done as we look backward. Yet looking backward further still, we may say that all goes as the Wild Magic wills. And we must look forward if we are to live long enough to look backward. — Mercedes Lackey

So different are the colours of life, as we look forward to the future, or backward to the past; and so different the opinions and sentiments which this contrariety of appearance naturally produces, that the conversation of the old and young ends generally with contempt or pity on either side. — Victor Hugo

When you have a hard day or when I see you slipping backward, I'm desperate to stop it, to make you see how amazing you are, to help you know that you have so much to look forward to. The things that happened to you won't haunt you forever."
"But I'll remember them forever." I know there's no forgetting and I'm still not sure what to do with that.
He sucks in a breath. "But they'll hurt less."
I don't have to look at him to know there are tears on his face. — Jolene Perry

Octave staggered to his feet, his stick swinging back to point toward Nicholas. He felt a wave of heat and saw spellfire crackle along the length of polished wood, preparing itself for another explosive burst. Crack was moving toward Octave, but Madeline shouted, "Get back!"
Nicholas ducked, as a shot exploded behind him. Octave fell backward on the carpet and the blue lightning flared once and vanished with a sharp crackle.
Nicholas looked at Madeline. She stepped forward, holding a small double-action revolver carefully and frowning down at the corpse. He said, "I wondered what you were waiting for."
"You were in my line of fire, dear," she said, preoccupied. "But look. — Martha Wells

The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius ... They look backward and not forward. But genius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates. Whatever talents may be, if the man create not, the pure efflux of the Deity is not his; - cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet flame. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A holiday gives one a chance to look backward and forward; to reset oneself by an inner compass. — May Sarton

You can look forward with love or backward with hate, and people have to make that choice for themselves. But holding on to bitterness is like drinking poison and waiting for someone else to die, and she by God wasn't going to waste her time like that. — Abigail Strom

Neither look forward where there is doubt nor backward where there is regret. Look inward and ask not if there is anything outside you want, but whether there is anything inside that you have not yet unpacked. — Quentin Crisp

I like to think that my finest hour is still ahead of me, so I can look forward rather than look backward. — Jim Coleman

Every age must look for its sanction to its poetry and philosophy, for in these the human mind, as it looks backward or forward, attains to an eternal state. — James Joyce

I find it hard to focus looking forward. So I look backward. — Iggy Pop

Yet,'said Maturin, pursuing his own thought, 'there is a quality in dogs, I must confess, rarely to be seen elsewhere and that is affection: I do not mean the violent possessive protective love for their owner but rather that mild, steady attachment to their friends that we see quite often in the best sort of dog. And when you consider the rarity of plain disinterested affection among our own kind, once we are adult, alas - when you consider how immensely it enhances daily life and how it enriches a man's past and future, so that he can look backward and forward with complacency - why, it is a pleasure to find it in brute creation. — Patrick O'Brian

Men should press forward, in fame's glorious chase; Nobles look backward, and so lose the race. — Edward Young

A good soldier, whether he leads a platoon or an army, is expected to look backward as well as forward; but he must think only forward. — Douglas MacArthur

The streak of bleach in my hair is as obvious as ever. Am I really going out in public like this? I push my hair backward and forward a few times - but I can't hide it. Maybe I could walk along with my hand carelessly positioned at my head, as if I'm thinking hard. I attempt a few casual, pensive poses in the mirror.
"Is your head all right?"
I swivel round in shock to see Nathaniel at the open door, wearing a plaid shirt and jeans.
"Er ... fine," I say, my hand still glued to my head. "I was just ... "
Oh, there's no point. I bring my hand down from my hair and Nathaniel regards the streak for a moment.
"It looks nice," he says. "Like a badger."
"A badger?" I say, affronted. "I don't look like a badger."
"Badgers are beautiful creatures," says Nathaniel with a shrug. "I'd rather look like a badger than a stoat. — Sophie Kinsella

Spare the stress on your neck muscles ... Looking backward takes more energy; it's more painful than looking forward! Go ahead! — Israelmore Ayivor

I'd rather look forward and dream, than look backward and regret. — James Van Praagh

The Snork Maiden looked around her. Then she leaned forward and whispered in the Fillyjonk's outstretched ear: "First you must turn seven times around yourself, mumbling a little and stamping your feet. Then you go backward to a well, and turn around, and look down in it. And then, down in the water, you'll see the person you're going to marry!" "And how do you get him up from there?" asked the Fillyjonk excitedly. — Tove Jansson

Paradoxical as it may seem, to believe in youth is to look backward; to look forward we must believe in age. — Dorothy L. Sayers

You know, I try not to look back, because looking forward is so much better than looking backward. — Jim Bakker

It is out of fashion in these days to look backward rather than forward. About the only American given to it is some unreconstructed Southerner, who persists in his regard for a certain terrain, a certain history, and a certain inherited way of living. — John Crowe Ransom

Small wonder that President Obama advises us to look forward, not backward - a convenient doctrine for those who hold the clubs. Those who are beaten by them tend to see the world differently, much to our annoyance. — Noam Chomsky

Life, too, is like that. You live it forward, but understand it backward. It is only when you stop and look to the rear that you see the corpse caught under your wheel. — Abraham Verghese

To look backward for a while is to refresh the eye, to restore it, and to render it the more fit for its prime function of looking forward. — Margaret Barber

And nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope. — Robert Frost

Studios look backward. Filmmakers look forward. — Guillermo Del Toro

But one cannot look backward, only forward. What has passed has passed forever. — Kate Atkinson

Look not back. No, not even if you see the dearest and nearest cry. Look not back, but forward. We cannot stop. If we stop we die. We have either to go forward or to go backward. We have either to progress or to degenerate. — Swami Vivekananda

People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors. — Edmund Burke

You can't look forward and backward ... — Coleman Young

I'm not sure this will make sense to you but I felt as though I'd turned around to look in a different direction so that I no longer faced backward toward the past but forward toward the future. And now the question confronting me was this: What would the future be — Arthur Golden

The aspirant who frequently measures how far he has advanced, or retrograded, upon this path, or how long he has stood still, is seeking something to be gained for himself, is looking all the time at himself. He is measuring the ego instead of trying to transcend it altogether. He is clinging to self, instead of obeying Jesus' injunction to deny it. Looking at the ego, he unwittingly stands with his back to the Overself. If he is ever to become enlightened, he must turn round, cease this endless self-measurement, stop fussing over little steps forward or backward, let all thoughts about his own backwardness or greatness cease, and look directly at the goal itself. — Paul Brunton

After all, what is it?- this indescribable something which men will persist in terming "genius"? I agree with Buffon- with Hogarth- it is but diligence after all.
Look at me!- how I labored- how I toiled- how I wrote! Ye Gods, did I not write? I knew not the word "ease." By day I adhered to my desk, and at night, a pale student, I consumed the midnight oil. You should have seen me- you should. I leaned to the right. I leaned to the left. I sat forward. I sat backward. I sat tete baissee (as they have it in the Kickapoo), bowing my head close to the alabaster page. And, through all, I- wrote. Through joy and through sorrow, I-wrote. Through hunger and through thirst, I-wrote. Through good report and through ill report- I wrote. Through sunshine and through moonshine, I-wrote. What I wrote it is unnecessary to say. The style!- that was the thing. I caught it from Fatquack- whizz!- fizz!- and I am giving you a specimen of it now. — Edgar Allan Poe

Few tips,
Don't Stop, don't look backward, what has happen has already happen and try again. — Deyth Banger

Dorothy viewed my mother's propensity toward madness not as something to be afraid of, but rather as something to look forward to, like a movie or a newly released color of nail polish.
'Your mother is just expressing herself,' Dorothy would tell me when my mother stopped sleeping, started smoking the filters of her cigarettes and began writing backward with a glitter pen.
No, she's not,' I would say. 'She's going insane again.'
Don't be so mundane,' she would yawn, passing my mother a shoebox filled with cat vertebrae. 'She is a brilliant artist. If you want Hamburger Helper, go find some other mother. — Augusten Burroughs

You can't look forward and backward at the same time. — Coleman Young

Faith begins with a backward look at the cross, but it lives with a forward look at the promises — John Piper