Quotes & Sayings About Not Looking Backwards

To me, photography is 90% a retrospective experience. There's the part of pursuing the image, and exposing the film, but once you make the exposure, you're always looking backwards in time. I like that aspect of photography. — John Sexton

Tolkien, who created this marvellous vehicle, doesn't go anywhere in it. He just sits where he is. What I mean by that is that he always seems to be looking backwards, to a greater and more golden past; and what's more he doesn't allow girls or women any important part in the story at all. Life is bigger and more interesting than The Lord of the Rings thinks it is. — Philip Pullman

Cary Taylor. Loving you isn't a character defect."
"Well, it's not very smart. I was such an asshole to him," he muttered, looking disgruntled. "He could do so much better."
"That isn't your decision to make for him."
"Someone needs to make it."
"And you're volunteering because you love him, too." My mouth curved. "Don't you think that sounds ass-backwards? — Sylvia Day

Maybe I just have everything backwards. Maybe it's a problem of perspective. In this Post-Modern Age perhaps it is the digital experiences we ought to cheer as "genuine " and not those troublesome and inconvenient analog ones.
Looking at it all fucking backwards. — Caitlin R. Kiernan

You never look at the backside of a mirror because when you do, it'll affect your future because you're looking at yourself backwards. No, you're looking at your inner self and you don't recognize it because you've never seen it before. — Gus Van Sant

I've always thought you have to live life looking forwards, not backwards. I've had no interest at all in who my ancestors are. — Jeremy Paxman

I'm looking forward, that's all, I'm not looking backwards. — Robbie Lawler

You can be okay here, Tash. If you're getting tangled up in history, then you need to turn around, babe. You're looking backwards." He bent down, bringing his mouth to hers, leaving nothing but a few molecules between them. "Turn around, babe. See me. — Susan Fanetti

I have no intention of retaliating or looking backwards. We are going to forget the past and look forward to the future. — Jomo Kenyatta

Then the challenge is, once you left brain it and build it, then when you're on stage you have to know it so well that you can get lost in it. I don't want to be onstage looking like a robot, I want to be at the end of the day very emotional and what feels like someone being up there rather than reciting things. That's always the challenge, to analyze and then somehow lose yourself in something you absolutely know backwards and forwards. And nothing's going to surprise you, but you have to be surprised by it and let it surprise you. — Bo Burnham

I've always been very forward-looking, and it was actually kind of difficult to turn my gaze backwards to look at comics history. — Scott McCloud

After my early days of being a passionate young Elvis fan, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, etc. I got interested in Ray Charles and Ella Fitzgerald. Then I got turned on to the blues. I realized how important it was to our music in England at the time. Everyone was into the blues. Then you start looking at the different kinds of blues, and you follow the journey backwards from Chicago to earlier times back down to the Delta to the Memphis Blues. — Ian Gillan

aware that Allison's eyes were on him, stepped backwards and began instead to swivel his lower body in an oddly lascivious and adult-looking little dance. — Donna Tartt

Don't walk into the future looking backwards — Stevanne Auerbach

And keep looking forward. Don't look backwards. — Michelle DeRusha

It is quite true what Philosophy says: that Life must be understood backwards. But that makes one forget the other saying: that it must be lived - forwards. The more one ponders this, the more it comes to mean that life in the temporal existence never becomes quite intelligible, precisely because at no moment can I find complete quiet to take the backward- looking position. — Soren Kierkegaard

Winning a rowing race is not like winning anything else. Here's my theory: you're facing backwards, so you're looking at the people you're beating
and there's something exquisite about that. — Hugh Laurie

It is hard to focus on going forwards when you are looking backwards. — Gillian Duce

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. — Steve Jobs

As Steve Jobs said in his now legendary commencement address at Stanford, "You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life." There — Arianna Huffington

You can't move forward looking backwards. — Delores Thornton

Dear girl, it will be a very long road if you spend more time looking backwards than forward. — Soman Chainani

The people setting out on these walks weren't seeking to conquer peaks or test themselves against maps and miles. They were looking for a mystical communion with the land; they walked backwards in time to an imagined past suffused with magical, native glamour: — Helen Macdonald

Wilhelm's smile reminded Harry of his father's sad, resigned smile, the smile of a man looking backwards because that's where the things that made him smile were. — Jo Nesbo

Your irritation is important to us," Cassie droned, looking at me upside down with her head tipped backwards over her headrest, "and will be exacerbated in rotation. Thank you for holding. — Tana French

I have learned that you're not perfect, and that sometimes the one you love can burn you. But it's just the fool that's looking backwards: a bitter heart turns the love we made to ashes. — Ben Rector

At that moment, when the world around him melted away, when he stood alone like a star in the heavens, he was overwhelmed by a feeling of icy despair, but he was more firmly himself than ever. That was the last shudder of his awakening, the last pains of birth. Immediately he moved on again and began to walk quickly and impatiently, no longer homewards, no longer to his father, no longer looking backwards. — Hermann Hesse

When tadpole was born, I spent a sleepless night on the maternity ward gazing intently into her inky, newborn eyes, grappling to come to terms with the indisputable fact that this was an actual person looking back at me, not just a version of Mr Frog, or me, or both, in miniature. From the outset she seemed to know what she wanted, and I realised I could have no inkling of the paths she would choose to follow. But if I watch her life unfold carefully enough, perhaps I will see clear signposts pointing to who or what she will become.
Because when I look backwards, ransacking my own past for clues with the clarity that only hindsight can bring, several defining moments do stand out. Moments charged with significance; snapshots of myself which, if I were to join the dots together, lead me unswervingly to where I stand today. — Catherine Sanderson

I raised my hand to wave in case he looked back; but he did not. He rode straight backed, looking forward. He rode like a Howard. We never look back. We have no time for regrets or second thoughts. If a plan goes awry we make another, if one weapon breaks in our hands, we find a second. If the steps fall down before us we overleap them and go up. It is always onwards and upwards for the Howards; and my father was on his way back to court and to the company of the King without a backwards glance for me. — Philippa Gregory

Sometimes I feel like seeing if I can track down anybody from the old days, but then I think, what would I talk to them about now? They wouldn't even recognize Megan the happily married suburbanite. In any case, I can't risk looking backwards, it's always a bad idea. — Paula Hawkins

What are you doing?" He asks looking intimidating.
I shrug, "I want pancakes."
"I'll make you pancakes."
I laugh and turn around to walk backwards, "I don't want your pancakes. I want normal pancakes. Not head game pancakes. Not maybe I'll make you happy or maybe I'll scare the shit out of you pancakes. You know? — Tara Brown

Looking backwards
Has never been my endeavor
Lost passions ... bruised emotions
Never distressed me. — Balroop Singh

Sometimes the solutions to our problems come from looking backwards, not forwards. — Jane V. Blanchard

This society believed it was looking towards a new future, yet we consistently find ourselves being dragged backwards. — David Ervine

It is, from my perspective, less important today looking backwards as to why these militants decided they did it than to find them and bring them to justice, and then maybe we'll figure out what was going on in the meantime. — Hillary Clinton

The historian is a prophet looking backwards. — Friedrich Von Schlegel

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. — Steve Jobs

If you keep looking backwards, you don't go anywhere. — Jeff Ross

I understand true life doesn't happen when I constantly gaze backwards, mulling over all the injustices others have done or I have done to others. — Mary E. DeMuth

Looking backwards, I look at my resume and I look at the things I've accomplished, but quite honestly there's just that word, 'Mother', I just saw it on the paper, and I that's the one that means the most to me. — Michele Bachmann

The past is gone and the future is still to happen. Only the present moment is real. I believe we all know this very well. As for me, I have been practising the art of being in the here and now for three decades. I have used many techniques aimed at focusing the attention on the present, while releasing attachment to past and future. There are also many courses and workshops on the topic. And I can provide details, if you are interested. Yet, I warn you, learning to be in the present requires lots of hard work, time and money. Yet there is one circumstance when results are immediate, with no effort and also free of charge. This is when both looking ahead or backwards is so painful and horrible, that the only option is looking straight into the present. Hence, if it is the case for you now, rejoice, this may be your greatest chance, and you are in good company! — Franco Santoro

If you see the light at the end
of the tunnel, you're looking
through binoculars the wrong
way — Josh Stern

I'm just always looking forwards. I spend very little time, looking backwards. — Gary Vaynerchuk

Clues. Sometimes we get involved with things that have both advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes the bad points outweigh (or outwit) the good, and we choose to ignore the negatives. Our subconscious won't let us get away with that. Remember, the mind will lie, the body cannot! * * * Getting Better by Getting It Together As we've see, your state of health depends on many constantly changing conditions. When you experience an illness or accident, it is usually because an imbalance between your inner and outer worlds has triggered a body problem. So you must work backwards: begin by looking at the body problem for clues to the cause of the imbalance, then take the steps necessary to restore your inner alignment. — Rochelle Gordon

[Reason tells me of the] extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capability of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist. — Charles Darwin

He was looking backwards, and that was an entirely different thing. Looking backwards was
important, even when you were standing still. He had to see what was there. There was something
back there, and even if everybody else didn't see it, he had to. — Aelius Blythe

You don't realize that if you stop looking backwards craving the love and acceptance which you didn't receive from your parents, then you might open your eyes to what is available for you now. But you won't let go. If only you could see that looking back into an incomplete and imperfect past, with regret, blame, guilt or resentment is keeping you from the treasures that await you here now. The past has gone. You cannot rectify something that is no longer with you. — Leonard Jacobson