Only Look Back Quotes

#1. As the American historian John Lewis Gaddis put it, it is like looking in a rearview mirror: if you only look back, you will land in the ditch, but it helps to know where you have come from and who else is on the road.

Margaret MacMillan

#2. I'm not into nostalgia, and I only look back to find lessons.

Ian Schrager

#3. Everyone knows you only want to look at the sinkhole because you love a good disaster. Get back to work, Fuller. I don't pay you for your looks.

Meg Cabot

#4. If you don't look back to self reflect, you're only going to repeat the same mistakes. Those mistakes will continue to show up in your dating lifescape because you haven't learned the lesson they were supposed to teach you.

Jaha Knight

#5. I was up for Michael Corleone in 'The Godfather,' but, as I was only 10 at the time, I think Mr. Coppola made the right choice. The Julia Roberts role in 'Pretty Woman' held a bizarre allure for me. But, it's silly to look back with regret.

Eric Stoltz

#6. As long as you're in motion, your perspective is obscured. Only when you reach the summit and turn to look back, can you be at peace.

Joyce Carol Oates

#7. She shrugged. "She's nice and I think she can't help it." Zara gave me a look of censure and went back to her strawberry ice cream. Something along the lines of: Only a real dickhead would make fun of how someone talks, you idiot.

Raine Miller

#8. If you work hard, good things will happen. I will never be in a situation where if I fail I can look back and say, 'If I'd only worked harder.'

Travis Hafner

#9. of nightmares to reach, to seize. Joy. But where can I seize this holy grail of joy? I look back down to the page. Was this the clue to the quest of all most important? Deep chara joy is found only at the table of the euCHARisteo - the table of thanksgiving.

Ann Voskamp

#10. It's only at first sight,when the mind's a blank slate,that you get the purest look.
So I fold the flap back,and write:
Tumbleweeds.

Alyson Noel

#11. All girls have sex with a stranger fantasies and fantasies played out are healthier than those that have been left to fester and go mouldy. When we look back, we don't regret the things we have done, only the things left undone, the things we wanted to do and never did.

Chloe Thurlow

#12. You're the only girl that I want to be with. The only girl I look forward to seeing walk into a room. When I'm not with you, all I can think about is getting back to you. When you touch me, it's like fire running through my veins.-loc 1725

Nichole Chase

#13. A man advanced in years that thinks fit to look back on his former life, and calls that only life which was passed with satisfaction and enjoyment, excluding all parts which were not pleasant to him, will find himself very young, if not in infancy.

Richard Steele

#14. If he lived through this night, he'd look back on this moment and recall seeing the universe in all its majesty and recognizing he was only a powerless man staring into the vastness of an all-powerful God.

Cindy Woodsmall

#15. One day, you will stand at the summit of a figurative mountain and look back on your life's journey. And, to your utter amazement, you will see how your experiences with depression, dark and painful as they were, only added to the overall beauty of your life.

Seth Adam Smith

#16. Never look back; you may only find what you left or let you go.

Stefanos Livos

#17. Live your life like the novels that you love to read. Only do the things that when you look back, you are proud of what you accomplished, feel good about how you treated others and didn't regret not doing to trying something. Every day is a new chapter, write something.

Taylor Berke

#18. We might feel we have achieved a lot. just take a pause and look back. We will see only darkness ...

Mahesh Shekhar

#19. I used to look back at pictures and cringe but actually I'm quite proud that I've had fun with fashion and don't always look perfect. The only regret I have is when I look at something I wore when I was very young and it obviously looks like it belonged to someone else.

Emma Watson

#20. Rejection is a form of self-assertion. You have only to look back upon yourself as a person who hates this or that to discover what it is that you secretly love.

George Santayana

#21. We're the only ones who care now. The likes of you and me, Ono, when we look back over our lives and see they were flawed, we're the only ones who care now.

Kazuo Ishiguro

#22. When it comes to losing weight, balancing your hormones is absolutely crucial. Not only will it help you lose weight by correcting a sluggish metabolism, but you'll look more rested and vibrant, your mood will improve, and you'll get your libido back!

Suzanne Somers

#23. Be careful how you talk about God. He's the only God we have. If you let him go he won't come back. He won't even look back over his shoulder. And then what will you do?

Harold Pinter

#24. You only have to look back five years to see a different world, and, by extension, tangible proof that culture is ours to shape, if we try. Obviously

Lindy West

#25. The only way forward is to never look back.

William Goldman

#26. Don't look back; look only towards the horizon of your dreams. They await you and you need only make the effort to arrive.

Timothy G. Bax

#27. When I look back at the past and think of all the time I squandered in error and idleness, ... then my heart bleeds. Life is a gift ... every minute could have been an eternity of happiness! If only youth knew! Now my life will change; now I will be reborn.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

#28. What if I can't turn my head? I can look in any direction by turning my wheelchair, and I choose to look back. Rodman to the contrary notwithstanding, that is the only direction we can learn from.

Wallace Stegner

#29. People desire so many things and waste their days in vain... Some yearn for gold, others for power, yet others for glory and a higher station. But when death's moment nears and they look back at their lives, they realize they've been happy only during those moments when they've loved.

Borje Vahamaki

#30. I was happy, I knew that. While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it do we suddenly realize - sometimes with astonishment - how happy we had been.

Nikos Kazantzakis

#31. Don't be afraid to try, because you never look back on life and smile at what you could have attempted. Joy only brightens your countenance over those things you did attempt.

Richelle E. Goodrich

#32. Sometimes the most beautiful moments in our lives are things that hurt badly at the time. We only see them for what they really were when we stand at the very end and look back.

Emily Henry

#33. Films are a very personal experience - just like a martini - so I try to think about what I like, what projects I like to be in, and make sure I feel proud about it because, at the end, I'm the only one that's going to look back and feel proud or not about what I was doing.

Stephanie Sigman

#34. I shouldn't have looked. If I could go back in time, I would have. I had no idea that one look would devastate me. Weeks from now I would regret that one look, for one reason and one reason only. His eyes held my ruin.

Rachel Van Dyken

#35. We do not look back, Chaol. It helps no one and nothing to look back. We can only go on.

Sarah J. Maas

#36. If you walk away from this, from us, my only hope is that you look back twenty years from now and remember that there is no person on earth more deserving to be cherished than you.

Michelle Hughes

#37. Every moment is precious, even the ones behind me that I often reflect upon with a reserved smile. However ... I seldom look back, only forward in anticipation of the next greater now.

Carl Henegan

#38. I am one of the five best parallel parkers in the United States of America. Dead serious. It's to the point now where I look back when pulling into the spot only as a formality.

Willie Geist

#39. Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it; it's only good for wallowing in.

Katherine Mansfield

#40. You talk to me of choices?' said Reinhardt. 'I only know that the choices life makes you take strip away the person we wanted to be. Builds us up into something we never wanted. Until you look back on life, and you see that the track of your life is a scar that hides what might have been.

Luke McCallin

#41. It is only when I dally with what I am about, look back and aside, instead of keeping my eyes straight forward, that I feel these cold sinkings of the heart.

Walter Scott

#42. We can remove poverty from the surface of the earth only if we can redesign our institutions - like the banking institutions, and other institutions; if we redesign our policies, if we look back on our concepts, so that we have a different idea of poor people.

Muhammad Yunus

#43. Because high school only comes around once, and I would hate to look back and think I didn't make the most of every moment because I was scared of what other people thought. Other people never think that much about you anyway. Eleanor Roosevelt said that.

Sarah Strohmeyer

#44. The desert always feels like a complete waste of time. It is only when we are able to look back that our desert experiences make sense.

Andy Stanley

#45. It brings hope and peace of mind knowing that God gave His only begotten Son for us. I'm able to look back and know that on this day Jesus was born and gave us the opportunity to have eternal life.

Adrian Peterson

#46. If you believe that you are bad and unacceptable, you are unable to look back at your past with pleasure or your future with hope. Only bad things happened to you in the past, and only bad things will happen to you in the future.

Dorothy Rowe

#47. Risking our hearts is why we're alive. The last thing you want is to look back on your life and wonder if only.

Margaret Watson

#48. Here's the most mysterious thing to me. I look back at those first plays I did and the first movies I did, and I only have one question, which is, 'What was I so confident about? Where did I get that?

Mike Nichols

#49. I don't look back. I'm like a shark - I only look forward.

Rita Rudner

#50. You can only look forward as far as you can look back.

Raymond Dart

#51. The only person to ever look good in the back of a 4-seater convertible was Adolf Hitler

Jeremy Clarkson

#52. It's only when you look back sometimes and you look at some people in your life and you're like, Oh my god, there was something so pure about that. The thing that kind of bugged me, maybe, is the thing that's so unique.

Todd Haynes

#53. I think sometimes in life we rush and only later look back and say, 'Wow, that was something pretty cool that I did,' and we realize we should have been more aware while it was happening.

Holly Holm

#54. When you live life and you are living the experience, you tend not to appreciate them as you are living them. It's only when you look back and realize how special they were.

Priscilla Presley

#55. I would far rather get to be ninety years old and look back and say, "I tried my damnedest" to succeed, rather than get to be ninety and think, "I wonder what would have happened if only I had done something different.
Katie's character, Julia's Chocolates

Cathy Lamb

#56. I don't repeat myself and I don't look back because everything is hard work and the only way forward is to continue to be creative.

Timbaland

#57. Love changes us and helps us move forward in life. It often helps us become the people we've always wanted to be and move away from the people we were. Love transforms us in the best of ways, allowing us only to look back on a memory of our former self.

Adam Wilde

#58. I'm not ashamed of who you are. And the only time I would look down on you is if I were helping you back up.

Belle Aurora

#59. Sometimes the only way I know how to work through something is by writing a poem. And sometimes I get to the end of the poem and look back and go, 'Oh, that's what this is all about,' and sometimes I get to the end of the poem and haven't solved anything, but at least I have a new poem out of it.

Sarah Kay

#60. You look back on some little decision you made and realize all the things that happened because of it, and you think to yourself "if only I'd known," but, of course, you couldn't have known.

Mary Downing Hahn

#61. We do not look bad, Chaol. It helps no one and nothing to look back. We can only go on.'
'What if we go on only to more pain and despair? What if we go on, only to find a horrible end waiting for us?'
'Then it is not the end.

Sarah J. Maas

#62. I pushed myself back up. He kept staring at me. I realized I wanted to kiss him.

I didn't know why. Maybe it was the way he looked at me like I was the only thing he wanted to look at.

Francesca Zappia

#63. Only those who commit to following their own artistic path can look back and see this issue in clear perspective: the real question about acceptance is not whether your work will be viewed as art, but whether it will be viewed as your art. APPROVAL

David Bayles

#64. She jerked her hand back and shot me what could only be described as a 'bitch' look. Frankly, it was a fucking work of art and I was sort of jealous of that level of mastery.

Jennifer L. Armentrout

#65. There is a purpose to our lives, even if it is sometimes hidden from us, and even if the biggest turning points and heartbreaks only make sense as we look back, rather than as we are experiencing them. So we might as well live life as if - as the poet Rumi put it - everything is rigged in our favor.

Arianna Huffington

#66. It is not given to our weak intellects to understand the steps of Providence as they occur: we comprehend them only as we look back upon them in the far-distant past.

George B. McClellan

#67. Like many musicians, I don't look back much ... only concentrate on what music I'm doing, and occasionally look ahead.

Tony Levin

#68. The only time you should look back in life, is to see how far you have come.

Kevin Hart

#69. Even she hair itself rough and wiry; long black knotty locks springing from she scalp and corkscrewing all the way down she back ...
The only thing soft about Tan-Tan is she big molasses-brown eyes that could look on you, and your heart would beat time ...

Nalo Hopkinson

#70. Never look back. The past is done. The future is a blank canvas. Work on creating a masterpiece. Only you have the power to make your painting beautiful.

Suzy Kassem

#71. Don't think that I did nothing else. It's only that when you look back over a long period of time, certain things seem to swell up till they overshadow everything else.

George Orwell

#72. Suddenly it felt as if there was a whole heck of a lot less oxygen in the room than there'd been only a moment before, which had to explain why she'd melted into him when she hadn't meant to. She tossed back her head to say something defensive, but the look on his face stopped her.

Jill Shalvis

#73. You get what you give, and not only that, the giving is already the getting. So don't hold back. Don't look back or forward too much. Just be there where you are now. You're always only in the day you're in.

Kim Stanley Robinson

#74. If you go through life making every decision based on what is
safest, you will look back one day and discover that you have missed out on the best. Allowing fear to run your life will only rob you of your future.

Tessa Afshar

#75. In the long years to come, not only will the people of this island but of the world, wherever the bird of freedom chirps in human hearts, look back to what we've done, and they will say 'do not despair, do not yield ... march straightforward.

Winston S. Churchill

#76. How many of us would be willing to settle when we're young for what we eventually get? All those plans we make ... what happens to them? It's only a handful of the lucky ones that can look back and say that they even came close.

Moss Hart

#77. Because of the nature of King Arthur and the resonance he has, not only with within the U.K., but right around the world, I have found it a huge honour to play the part. I will look back on it very fondly and be very proud to have been King Arthur when I finally hang up the chain mail!

Bradley James

#78. The only way you approach politics and seek elective office is to move forward. For me to look back in anger or with any rancor would be a mistake.

John McCain

#79. I have found that the only consolation is never regretting anything that you do. Never look back, always look forward and continue moving along with a confidence that everything you're doing and everything you've done is the way it's supposed to be.

Randolph J. Rogers

#80. The music slowed. She pulled away first, slinking back the required four steps. Merik didn't look away from her face, and he only distantly noticed that, as she pulled away, his Windwitchery seemed to settle. Her skirts stopped swishing, her hair fluttered back to her shoulders.

Susan Dennard

#81. When I look in the mirror, I don't see my Dad, I see my grandmother. For a while it was my mother looking back at me. If only it was my Dad.

Colin Firth

#82. People who are overwhelmed with troubles never do look back. They know only too well that misfortune follows in their footsteps.

Victor Hugo

#83. Then she fell on her knees, saying: 'I beg thee!'
'Nay, lady,' he said, and taking her by the hand he raised her. The he kissed her hand, and sprang into the saddle, and rode away, and did not look back; and only those who knew him well and were near to him saw the pain that he bore.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#84. It was only later that I wondered about it and tried to look back. But by then I could only see that there was once a time when we had walked apart; and then a time when we walked together.

Sarah Waters

#85. Nirvana occurs when you not only look forward to rapture, but also gaze back into the times of anguish and find in them the seeds of your joy. You may not have felt that happiness at the time, but in retrospect it is incontrovertible.

Andrew Solomon

#86. I think, head up and shoulders back. Not only does it make you look taller and thinner but it gives you confidence and boosts your self-esteem.

Shelley Long

#87. Look at your neck turning radius. Its designed to look 180 deg forward side only.
Looking back slows you down. Always look forward in life.

Manoj Arora

#88. Her memory was awful after she'd been drinking, like a broken film reel. Whole segments of time were missing, fuzzy, unsalvageable. In fact, her recollection of most her life seemed to be full of taunting gaps, so that she only had a handful of memories to look back on.

Jack Jordan

#89. If I do look back, I'll say that I'm blessed. I'm blessed, and I appreciate God for not only letting me live through everything, but to prosper.

Flavor Flav

#90. What is it about legs? Or what is it about breasts? Or the small of the back? What is it about anything? One day there will be no difference between anything. It'll all be the exact same thing. One day you'll look in the dictionary and there will be only one word and you'll just have to make do.

Jonathan Goldstein

#91. I can only drive slowly."
"That's all right."
"And I can only do left turns."
Rose ran downstairs, grabbed a road atlas, and ran triumphantly back up again. "Wales is left! Look! It's left all the way!

Hilary McKay

#92. When you look back ... on your love affairs ... what you really find out is that the only person you really go to bed with is yourself.

Shirley Maclaine

#93. What a tremendous sin impatience is, he thinks. It blinds us to the moment before us, and it is only when that moment has passed that we look back and see it was full of treasures.

Robert Jackson Bennett

#94. Sometimes when you look back on a situation, you realize it wasn't all you thought it was. A beautiful girl walked into your life. You fell in love. Or did you? Maybe it was only a childish infatuation, or maybe just a brief moment of vanity.

Henry Bromell

#95. The past and the present, might we say, go like this. The future is a maybe. Yet we look back on the darkness that obscures the path that brought us fair, we only come up with another indefinite maybe. The only thing we perceive with any clarity is the present moment, and even that just passes by.

Haruki Murakami

#96. When we come to the last moment of this lifetime and we look back across it, the only thing that's going to matter is 'What is the quality of our love?'

Richard Bach

#97. But you don't know what will happen.'
'No. That is our curse. To know that something will happen, and only after it is over, to look back and say, "oh, that is what that meant. If only i'd known". It can break your heart.

Robin Hobb

#98. Maintaining a close relationship with the Savior is the only goal Paul would set. He wasn't perfect at it, but he singlemindedly pursued it. And he encourages us to do so today. Life is much simpler when we choose to pursue only one thing - the race before us. Don't look back.

Various

#99. I have no desire to look back, I only want to look forward to the things that are still ahead of me.

Dionne Warwick

#100. But only a person in the depths of despair neglected to look beyond winter to the spring that inevitably followed, bringing back color and life and hope.

Mary Balogh