Top 100 Our Backs Quotes
#1. Worn out by suffering, we lie on our great backs, tossing grass up to heaven - as a distraction, not a prayer. That's not humility you see on our long final journeys: it's procrastination. It hurts my heavy body to lie down. - DAN CHIASSON, The Elephant
Jodi Picoult
#2. The sun that warmed our stooping backs and withered the weed
uprooted-
We shall not feel it again.
We shall die in darkness, and be buried in the rain.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#3. Ben, schizophrenia alone disables more people for a longer time than cancer. Hundreds of thousands of people are confined to hospitals. We can't turn our backs on them or burn them as witches because of a chemical imbalance in the brain." He
Nora Roberts
#4. It is nothing, Marie-Laure. Come now." Marie-Laure backs out. Below her, her great-uncle whispers nursery rhymes to himself. "I can sit with him for a bit, Madame. Maybe we could read some more of our
Anthony Doerr
#5. Retain the vision for space exploration. If we turn our backs on the vision again, we're going to have to live in a secondary position in human space flight for the rest of the century.
Buzz Aldrin
#6. We New Yorkers see more death and violence than most soldiers do, grow a thick chitin on our backs, grimace like a rat and learn to do a disappearing act. Long ago we outgrew the need to be blowhards about our masculinity; we leave that to the Alaskans and Texans, who have more time for it.
Edward Hoagland
#7. Something about lying on our backs staring up at the heavens ... opens the mind.
Dan Brown
#8. We are to turn our backs for a space upon the insistent examination of the thing that is, and face towards the freer air, the ampler spaces of the thing that perhaps might be.
H.G.Wells
#9. I finally understood why so much monkey business happened in the backs of buses. Put us in close proximity, with wheels spinning under us, and nothing to do but wait, we're going to start thinking of lovely uses for our bodies. I don't care who you are.
Laura Anderson Kurk
#10. In my view, one of the major reasons that we have so many people in jail is that we have turned our backs on a lot young people.
Bernie Sanders
#11. A society is judged by the way it cares for its most vulnerable citizens. As an American, I am ashamed that we have turned out backs on millions of our children. I want to do my part to rectify this terrible situation.
Marlo Thomas
#12. If we really want to achieve true prayer, we must turn our backs upon everything temporal, everything external, everything that is not divine.
Johannes Tauler
#13. We want to be on the winning team, but at the risk of turning our backs on the losers, no, it is not worth it. So we fight the long defeat.
Paul Farmer
#14. I think better of our behaviour as individuals than I do when we see ourselves as members of a group. It's when people start forming groups that we have to watch our backs.
John Irving
#15. We cannot keep turning our backs on gay and lesbian Americans. I have fought too hard and too long against discrimination based on race and color not to stand up against discrimination based on sexual orientation.
John E. Lewis
#16. Superheroes allow their capes to hang off their backs; but our Superwomen choose to wrap them around their heads.
Boonaa Mohammed
#17. Let's all commit ourselves to the basic civility of minding our own business. Failing that, let's go back to a time when we were nasty and judgmental, but only behind one another's backs.
Ayelet Waldman
#18. He carried Hell with him, as we all did, like a little load on our backs that we hardly noticed most of the time, or like a huge great hump of suffering that bent us over with its weight.
John Marsden
#19. We give up our backs and allow religious myths to apply the rear naked choke to our minds.
Cameron Conaway
#20. As we turn our backs on the cold night air, I realize that it's moments like this where true freedom lies.
Invisible but palpable, below a sky full of stars, our freedom lies in between a boy who sees a girl, and the girl that feels him.
Truly, deeply, freely.
A.J. Compton
#21. We are dying birds we are sinking ships - the world rocks down against us and we throw out our arms and we throw out our legs like the death kiss of the centipede: but they kindly snap our backs and call our poison politics.
Charles Bukowski
#22. We protect. That's what it means to be a Lucidite. If something happened to one of you, I'd willingly walk through fire and suffer torment to bring you back. We don't leave each other behind and we don't turn our backs when someone needs us most.
Sarah Noffke
#23. our backs
tell stories
no books have
the spine to
carry
Rupi Kaur
#24. When we get government off the backs of our job creators, small businesses have a better chance of thriving. And when small businesses thrive, so does our economy.
Ann Wagner
#25. Most things fail with age. Our hands and backs stiffen. Our eyes dim. Skin roughens and our beauty fades. The only exception is the voice. Properly cared for, a voice does nothing but grow sweeter with age and constant use.
Patrick Rothfuss
#26. Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally . Leadership means that 'the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership.
Barack Obama
#27. I believe God put that itchy spot on our backs just exactly where we can't reach it in order to encourage us be nice to each other.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden
#28. How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends, that we might go and meet their ideal cousins.
Henry David Thoreau
#29. The Skeptic's mistake lies in thinking that we should tie our hands behind our backs just because we will not be able to reach rock-hard conclusions.
Frederick Mosteller
#30. When our backs are against the wall, we must turn around and march forward.
John Major
#31. So it is, out here on this island, where we dwell with our faces to the sea and our backs to the wilderness. Like Adam's family after the fall, we all have things to do.
Geraldine Brooks
#32. Every one has his faults: but we do not see the wallet on our own backs.
Catullus
#33. Great achievement often happens when our backs are up against the wall. Pressure can actually enhance your performance.
Robin Sharma
#34. And for so long I have wanted to escape into the Dream, to fold my country over my head like a blanket. But this has never been an option because the Dream rests on our backs, the bedding made from our bodies.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
#35. If people really liked to work, we'd still be plowing the land with sticks and transporting goods on our backs.
William Feather
#36. To feel ambition and to act upon it is to embrace the unique calling of our souls. Not to act upon that ambition is to turn our backs on ourselves and on the reason for our existence.
Steven Pressfield
#37. Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#38. Only out of stir and change is born new salvation. To deny that is to deny belief in man, to turn our backs on courage!
John Galsworthy
#39. Can we expect peace and prosperity, harmony and goodwill, when we turn our backs on the Source of our strength?
Gordon B. Hinckley
#40. There's a post-it note stuck on one of the padded arms. I snatch it up and skim Wes's familiar chicken-scratch scrawl. Dude at the store said this one will be better for our backs. Ten different massage settings. We should use it on our balls and see if it doubles as a sex toy. Fingers crossed.
Sarina Bowen
#41. We, the artists, make the stuff they sell and they're like ticks on our backs, sucking the life out of us.
Malcolm Wilson
#42. We were sleeping on the same bed with our backs to each other trying to imagine a new life.
Kalyani Rao
#43. But I can't pretend I don't know how little the goodwill of even the best surgeon can accomplish against the workings of fate. A man's hands are rooted firmly in the earth, Angela. God, if he exists, is behind our backs.
Margaret Mazzantini
#44. We are exploring together. We are cultivating a garden together, backs to the sun. The question is a hoe in our hands and we are digging beneath the hard and crusty surface to the rich humus of our lives.
Parker J. Palmer
#45. It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened.
Mark Twain
#46. We feel good about our running backs as we have them right now, and we will continue to see how they progress.
Jerry Jones
#47. Century after century, we have prosecuted our insane conflicts from atop their backs, resting on their sturdy necks when we grew weary, eating their flesh when we were starving, disemboweling them and crawling inside their bodies when we were freezing.
John Jeremiah Sullivan
#48. We value apology in the abstract, but turn our backs on it in practice.
John Kador
#49. I don't feel there is any spiritual or metaphysical justification for turning our backs on human suffering.
Marianne Williamson
#50. Ambition, I have come to believe, is the most primal and sacred fundament of our being. To feel ambition and to act upon it is to embrace the unique calling of our souls. Not to act upon that ambition is to turn our backs on ourselves and on the reason for our existence. Those
Steven Pressfield
#51. All socialists have bad backs because we slouch - except when we're watching the news when we sit on the edge of our seats, shout, and wave our arms. Generally we sit hunched, arms crossed in a judgemental way, the whole of our bodies pulled into a frown.
Jeremy Hardy
#52. Things are set in stone. Things are well ordered. Reds at the bottom, everyone else standing on our backs. Now you're looking at me and you're realizing that we don't bloodydamn like it down there. Red is rising, Mickey.
Pierce Brown
#53. When we turn our backs on feelings we should deal with, they fester and grow and ultimately consume us. Silence is denial. Silence is anxiety.
Susan L. Taylor
#54. What we call debt is a hump on our backs; it is an awkward load that crushes one; and loads are carried only by stupid animals, by camels, mules, and donkeys; the back of an intelligent person is flat!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#55. A raft or a scow, you know; and maybe you could hear a fiddle or a song coming over from one of them crafts. It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them,
Mark Twain
#56. Isn't it strange, Dez, that we never see certain parts of ourselves? Our backs, our lungs, our hearts. We never know what it really is to sit across from ourselves.
Maryanne O'Hara
#57. Purple puts us in touch with the part of ourselves that is regal. Purple is the queen in all women; it helps us keep our backs straight and heads held high.
Byllye Avery
#58. I'll be explaining that Britain will be leaving the European Union, but I want that process to be as constructive as possible. And I hope the outcome can be as constructive as possible because of course while we're leaving the European Union, we mustn't be turning our backs on Europe.
David Cameron
#59. Too often, people forget the basic fact of life: all those good things we enjoy come from the ache in [our] backs and the willingness to shoulder great personals risks.
Ronald Reagan
#60. The ancient house is our chrysalis, trapping us until our metamorphosis is complete: our chic city wings plucked from our backs and we'll emerge as fat, white farm larvae. Like the ones living in the corral cow pies.
Mix Hart
#61. The sun does not stop shining because we curse or turn our backs to it.
Matshona Dhliwayo
#62. Peeta and Finnick and I position ourselves in a triangle, a few yards apart, our backs to one another. My
Suzanne Collins
#63. I'd lost all faith in everything, except for the certainty that there's always someone behind our backs waiting to deceive us.
Umberto Eco
#64. We turn our backs on Latin America, always comparing ourselves instead to Europe.
Isabel Allende
#66. To date, every American citizen has nearly $27,000 in public debt riding on our backs.
Paul Gillmor
#67. So, fuck 'em, we say. Fuck the mundane of Mainstream, the elitists of Literature. We're GENRE FICTION and proud of it, proud to wear that brand painted on the backs of our biker's jackets.
Hal Duncan
#68. Directly or indirectly, we owe these kids the responsibility of letting
them know that they are loved, and that despite the barrage of
challenges they face in a world that is constantly changing, we will
never turn our backs on them.
Oche Otorkpa
#69. I squeeze my eyes shut tighter, trying to imagine another world again. A world where we're happy, where we're together, where we're away from all of this.
A world without a target on our backs.
A world where Naz comes home.
A world where we can live in peace.
A world that's just ours.
J.M. Darhower
#70. Life is so complete that even when we are knocked on our backs, we have the best view of the stars.
Laura Teresa Marquez
#71. The first thing I learned in boxing is to not get hit. That's the art of boxing. Execute your opponent without getting hit. In sports school, we were putting our hands behind our backs and having to defend ourselves with our shoulders, by rolling, by moving round the ring, moving out feet.
Wladimir Klitschko
#72. I don't hold with abroad and think that foreigners speak English when our backs are turned.
Quentin Crisp
#73. As any mother knows, we just want our babies to feel better quickly, and we all do whatever we have to do to help them - no matter how much it inconveniences us or hurts our backs!
Constance Marie
#74. The EPA, the Gestapo of government, pure and simply has been one of the major claw-hooks that the government maintains on the backs of our constituents.
Tom DeLay
#75. I thought we'd die there, quarrels in our backs, you for what you did and me for bearing witness.
Janet Morris
#76. It's amazing how quickly nature consumes human places after we turn our backs on them. Life is a hungry thing.
Scott Westerfeld
#77. After the threat of war is gone, we should not turn our backs on the men and women who eliminated that threat. We should embrace them and keep our promises we made to them.
Charles B. Rangel
#78. This is life. Our bodies change. Our minds change. Our hearts change. Things are always evolving. I hope we can be supportive of each other and try to really have each other's backs, especially when we don't know the whole story.
Emma Stone
#79. When the history of our times is written, will we be remembered as the generation that turned our backs in a moment of global crisis or will it be recorded that we did the right thing?
Nelson Mandela
#80. A darkness lies behind us, and we have turned our backs upon it, and we do not desire to return thither even in thought. Westwards our hearts have been turned, and we believe that there we shall find Light.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#81. When we are flat on our backs there is no way to look but up.
Roger Babson
#83. I find the female tragedy of insecurity to be hilarious. We get obsessed over issues like the tiny skin tags on our backs or that we're fat. You read one line in a magazine and it sends you into a tailspin.
Lake Bell
#84. We stand on the backs of our forefathers, and live with what they have left us. That doesn't mean we have to repeat the past but we must listen to it.
Erik Mercer
#85. Many of us spend our early years in unconscious flight from our true purpose, only to run smack into it at last, like a fleeing movie heroine who backs around a corner - we know what comes next - and turns abruptly to find herself face to face with her nemesis, or, more often, her deliverance.
Carey Harrison
#86. God is the God of the people who are at their wits end, who are right up against it with their backs to the wall, and He delights to come to our help when we need Him most.
James Salter
#88. Johnny Depp is like a brother to me. We have matching tattoos on our backs - Charles Baudelaire, the flowers of evil, this giant skeleton thing. It's kind of a secret. People say to us, 'Why did you get that?' And we say, 'No reason.'
Marilyn Manson
#89. Being from Boston, I think we have to get the 'Good Will Hunting' poster tattooed on our backs when we're like 16 or 17; it's just a rite of passage. That movie is so, so, so huge.
John Krasinski
#90. No achievement can be higher than that of working in harmony with other nations so that the lash of war may be lifted from our backs and a peace of lasting friendship descend upon us.
Cordell Hull
#91. My father used to claim that inanimate objects hate us and plot our downfall behind our backs. He was probably right.
Michael Marshall Smith
#92. When I went to school, it was right after the '60s and before this general wave of practical purposefulness had set in ... The idealistic wind of the '60s was still at our backs, though, and most of the people I know who are my age have that engrained in them forever.
Steve Jobs
#93. We will never-and I mean never-turn our backs on our employees.
Howard Schultz
#94. That was six years ago. We can't keep turning our backs on chances to live or...at least stop denying ourselves pleasure.
Ally Fleming
#95. Placid, adj.
Sometimes I love it when we just lie on our backs, gaze off, stay still.
David Levithan
#96. Never leave yourself open to regret Grace. We can only make a decision when we know the choices we are faced with. If we shy away, turn our backs and hide, we will simply never know. And that is when you end up old and wondering and regretting. Live a life of hope. Don't live a life of regret.
Hazel Gaynor
#97. If we do nothing ... and turn our backs now, in future generations, when rank corruption masquerades as libery, it will be upon our shoulders. True patriots will then ask why we who were there to witness our nation at the crossroads did nothing.
David Liss
#98. The Republican agenda is a radical vision in which Medicaid is slashed to the bone - in which we start to balance the budget on the backs of, literally, our most vulnerable citizens.
Al Franken
#99. The people I hung out with in my early twenties were middle-class and, at least to our minds, artistic. We'd all turned our backs on privilege, but comfortably, the way you can when you still have access to it.
David Sedaris
#100. Our binges on each other were constructing something behind our backs: the stubborn stains of intimacy marked our hands.
Stephanie Danler
