Top 100 Turns Back Quotes
#1. In the middle of all this, as Sean slips out of his jacket, he looks over his shoulder at me and he smiles at me, just a glancing, faint thing before he turns back to Tommy. I'm quite happy for that smile, because Dad told me once you should be grateful for the gifts that are the rarest.
Maggie Stiefvater
#2. Some often repent, yet never reform; they resemble a man traveling in a dangerous path, who frequently starts and stops, but never turns back.
Bonnell Thornton
#3. The business of life is to go forward; he who sees evil in prospect meets it in his way, and he who catches it by retrospection turns back to find it. That which is feared may sometimes be avoided, but that which is regretted to-day may be regretted again to-morrow.
Samuel Johnson
#4. She gives me the finger and turns back around. "Did you see that?" I flinch at the gesture. "That is completely illegal in here.
Addison Moore
#5. Writers are often alone when they work. Hours pass in silence as one long moment; light fades as day turns back to face the coming night.
Simon Van Booy
#6. Anger can be borne - it can even be satisfying - if it can gather into words and explode in a storm, or a rapier-sharp attack. But without these means of ventilation, it only turns back inward, building and swirling like a head of stream - building to an impotent, murderous rage.
Eva Hoffman
#7. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. We
C.S. Lewis
#8. Therefore the sage desires what (other men) do not desire, and does not prize things difficult to get; he learns what (other men) do not learn, and turns back to what the multitude of men have passed by.
Lao-Tzu
#9. Mum turns back to face the screen, and I realise I'm still nodding. Anxiety Girl in action. She has the power to nod until she makes the connection she so desperately needs, or until her head falls off, whichever comes first.
Kirsty Eagar
#10. The rabbit presses back her ears, Turns back her liquid, anguished eyes And crouches low: then with wild spring Spurts from the terror of his oncoming To be choked back, the wire ring Her frantic effort throttling: Piteous brown ball of quivering fears!
D.H. Lawrence
#11. And just as he who, with exhausted breath,
having escaped from sea to shore, turns back
to watch the dangerous waters he has quit, so did my spirit, still a fugitive,
turn back to look intently at the pass
that never has let any man survive.
Dante Alighieri
#12. He turns back to me, a strong hand swooping down and sculpting hair off my face, familiar looking arms curling back around me and cradling me into a chest harder and hotter than a mountain left baking in the Australian outback.
Poppet
#13. We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.
C.S. Lewis
#14. Resting my head on his shoulder, my gaze turns back to the horizon. "How did you get so smart? Did you, like, eat smart people's brains?"
"Well, if I did, you'd certainly be safe from me.
L.A. Fiore
#15. One turns back and submits to fate, changes one's attitude, and finds peace in perseverance.
Hellmut Wilhelm
#16. As to how you'll help me," he says. "Well, we have met the Answer, have we not?" He turns back to look at us, his eyes glinting. "It's time for them to meet the Ask.
Patrick Ness
#17. He shakes his head miserably. "If only I'd gotten here sooner ... ."
"You got here in plenty of time," I say with a snort. "We're okay."
"But the truck!" he says as he turns back to us. "It was so cherry.
T.J. Klune
#18. He has tears in his eyes now. The sight is more than I can bear. He takes two steps away from me and then turns back like a caged animal. "Do you even love me?" he suddenly asks. He grips both of my shoulders. "I've said it to you before, and I still mean it. But I've never heard it from you.
Marie Lu
#19. In a flurry of sharp brocade coattails and gossamer gowns cut in the Neo-Baroque fashion, the crowd turns back to their conversations, the perfect epitome of what all Aristocrats are like - bored and quickly dissatisfied with the latest trends.
A.L. Davroe
#20. It's a Cinderella story, only at midnight she turns back into a fugitive.
Chuck Palahniuk
#21. Seriously, men." Gina scowls when she turns back to us. "We're royalty when they want to fuck. Thrilled to have as much sex as their anatomy allows, and then we're nothing.
Women need a reason to have sex, men just need a place.
Katy Evans
#22. And thus it happens that the reader, the closer he comes to the novel's end, the more he wishes he were back in the summer with which it begins, and finally, instead of following the hero onto the cliffs of suicide, joyfully turns back to that summer, content to stay there forever.
Franz Kafka
#23. Bitterness leads nowhere. It turns back on itself. It is the eternal cul-de-sac.
Agatha Christie
#24. He closes the door and turns around to face me with his hands behind his back. He studies me intensely, and it makes me squirm. "You know, you're not like I thought you'd be," he says, taking a step forward. "Yet, at the same time
Jessica Sorensen
#25. Love, like energy, never dies. You lose people only in the moment. But time is a long road that circles back. At some point the missing turns into love and returns.
M.J. Rose
#26. One hand traced small circles against my back, and I pressed closer to him, listening to his heartbeat. "I used to think that having nothing to live for made you a better fighter," he murmured. "Turns out I was wrong on a lot of fronts.
Julie Kagawa
#27. Webster, as if he's done it every day of his life, as if he did it just the day before, trails his fingers from the small of Sheila's back to the nape of her neck.
Sheila turns her head, "Go slowly and be careful," she says.
Anita Shreve
#28. As with ships, so with men; he who turns his back to his foe gives him an advantage.
Herman Melville
#29. Shipping has a great oversupply of vessels that came from over-ordering a few years back. We think 2014 may be when it turns around.
Wilbur Ross
#30. I always hated...all sad songs. I thought they made happy people miserable. Now I think I understand them better. Bards write them because they can't hold them back. Sadness has got to flow out or it gets stuck and turns bitter.
Jonathan Renshaw
#31. He turns me inside out, take me apart, and puts me back together - all in the span of one night.
Anna Zaires
#32. One who journeying Along a way he knows not, having crossed A place of drear extent, before him sees A river rushing swiftly toward the deep, And all its tossing current white with foam, And stops and turns, and measures back his way.
Homer
#33. How about if you turn over, baby?" Wolf licked his way up Tristan's back to nibble at the spot between his shoulder blades. "And we can take turns working our way through these condoms my mom brought us.
Rhys Ford
#34. The right moment wears a full head of hair: when it has been missed, you can't get it back; it's bald in the back of the head and never turns around.
Francois Rabelais
#35. Conflicts are fueled by the tendency of the powerful to exploit the power and the anger and frustration of the powerless, which turns into violence. International Solidarity Movement activists are attempting to confront the exploitation of power and to bring back hope to the powerless.
Ghassan Andoni
#36. reflection and his reflection stares back at him. For a moment, he no longer knows which is which. He needs to know. With huge effort he turns his head from the mirror and forces himself to look once more upon
Robert Daws
#37. Describe a circle, stroke its back and it turns vicious.
Eugene Ionesco
#38. Broke my femur on a cruise with my wife in Italy. I'd walked back to my cabin after dinner with half a plate of spaghetti when I leaned in to open the door. Turns out it was already open, so I fell flat on my face like something from the Keystone Kops.
Art Donovan
#39. Standing in the shower, I feel something on the back of my leg that turns out to be my ass.
Mary Karr
#40. And that, my friend, is how the world ends. On the edge of a precipice, with one foot over the edge, it stops, turns and goes back, leaving an empty earth of birds and insects, wind, rain and rusting weapons.
Jack Finney
#41. A girl's gotta get her glam on when the world turns its back on her.
Melissa Landers
#43. Farming is repetitive in a rhythmic, cyclical way that is by turns comforting and frustrating; some people find it invigorating, while others flee to the city and never look back.
Samantha Johnson
#44. It turns out that every person alive today can trace his or her ancestry back to Africa. Everyone's DNA tells a story of a journey from an African homeland to wherever you live.
Spencer Wells
#45. Turns out freedom ain't nothing but missing you ...
Taylor Swift
#47. The rumor is Chu Hing really wanted the 'Green Turtle' to be Chinese American, but the publisher didn't think that would sell. If you read those books, the hero almost always has his back facing the camera so you can't see his face. When he turns around, his face is obscured.
Gene Luen Yang
#48. These woods are second or third growth and sadly lost their leeks long ago. It turns out that when forests around here grow back after agricultural clearing, the trees come back readily but the understory plants do not.
Robin Wall Kimmerer
#49. I have a boundary problem ... I need to know when to give and when to back up. I'll help someone across the street and then into their homes and they'll start telling me all their problems ... and it turns out they're insane and want to kill me. I've got to know when to stop!
Nicole Holofcener
#50. Error is to truth as sleep is to waking. I have observed that one turns, as if refreshed, from error back to truth.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#51. I thought you could beat, pummel, and thrash an idea into existence. Under such treatment, of course, any decent idea folds up its paws, turns on its back, fixes its eyes on eternity, and dies.
Ray Bradbury
#52. We don't turn back. We leave no one behind. We pull each other up.
Barack Obama
#53. When you live in the dark for so long, you begin to love it. And it loves you back, and isn't that the point? You think, the face turns to the shadows, and just as well. It accepts, it heals, it allows. But it also devours.
Raymond Carver
#54. I can never turn my back on a city that made me.
Eminem
#55. Even if the whole world turns their back on you, you will always have yourself.
Lady Gaga
#56. I wanted to follow the path of music and feel that power, and I couldn't turn back.
Cameron Crowe
#57. We watch the way the water pulls back and turns over and beats against the sand, trying to wear the earth away. And even though it doesn't succeed, it pulls back and pounds the shore again and again, as if there were no last time and there is no next time and this time is the time that counts.
Nicola Yoon
#58. It is my turn now; and if I come back, it is yours.
Horatio Nelson
#59. The ocean turns cold, dark, pressing around me, but the deeper I go the more the iron inside of me twists and pulls and I know that I'm tethered to the boat, that even now the men pull the rope tighter and drag me back to the surface.
Kendall Kulper
#60. The one who turns his back on the world and its comforts and, sets out on the path that leads to the Beloved has to face countless difficulties. But he brakes them all for the sake of the Beloved.
Dada Vaswani
#61. The euphoric lust cloud is gone and once the smoke begins to clear, like in all good fairytales, the princess turns into nothing more than a common farm girl while the prince goes back to being a regular frog.
Tali Alexander
#62. Hi," I whisper.
He peels off my hands and turns toward the aisle. "Please don't make this any harder than it already is," he whispers back.
Stephanie Perkins
#63. Everyone says buying your first apartment makes you feel like an adult. What no one mentions is that selling it turns you right back into a child.
Anderson Cooper
#64. But 'tis common proof, that lowliness is young ambition's ladder, whereto the climber-upward turns his face; but when he once attains the upmost round, he then turns his back, looks in the clouds, scorning the vase defrees by which he did ascend.
William Shakespeare
#65. When my way is too rough for my feet, or too steep for my strength, I get off it to some smooth velvet path which fancy has scattered over with rosebuds of delights; and, having taken a few turns in it, come back strengthened and refreshed.
Laurence Sterne
#66. If you turn your back on a customer, you turn your back on success.
Ron Kaufman
#67. And all that we built, and all that we breathed And all that we spilled or pulled up like weeds Is piled up in back and it burns irrevocably And we spoke up in turns 'til the silence crept over me.
Joanna Newsom
#68. A star can never die. It just turns into a smile and melts back into the cosmic music, the dance of life.
Michael Jackson
#69. Fletch is back from Austin, and turns out what sounded great on paper didn't match up to reality. He says its so hot down there, I'd spontaneously combust the second I stepped off the plane. Plus with humidity turning the air as thick as oatmeal, my hair would always be a disaster. So, Austin's out.
Jen Lancaster
#70. It's all very well going round with two fingers stuck up at the world, but what happens when the world turns round and sticks them back up at you?
The world's a lot bigger than I am.
Liz Kessler
#71. The artist's business is to take sorrow when it comes. The depth and capacity of his reception is the measure of his art; and when he turns his back on his own suffering, he denies the very laws of his being and closes the door on everything that can ever make him great.
Freya Stark
#72. To seek greatness outside yourself is turn your back on the treasure within.
Alan Cohen
#73. It is very hard to stay alive just for your own sake. It is very hard to stare into day after day without another familiar face staring back. It turns your heart into a purposeless muscle.
David Levithan
#74. You're right. And so was my snake."
Snake?"
He pulled my arm out to expose my bracelet. "When I carved this my thoughts were on you, love. Your life is like this snake's coils. No matter how many turns it makes, you'll end up back where you belong. With me.
Maria V. Snyder
#75. Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. It is reached when a person deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost
Thomas Merton
#76. The clearsighted eye turns the light back to see its own Original Nature ...
Frederick Franck
#77. The president is the cuticle of the nail bed of America: one would think pushing back makes him stronger, yet it turns out the opposite is true.
Warren G. Harding
#78. Even when the world throws it worst and then turns in its back, there is still always hope
Pittacus Lore
#79. No man is beaten until his hope is annihilated, his confidence gone, As long as a man faces life hopefully, confidently, triumphantly, he is not a failure; he is not beaten until he turns his back on life.
Orison Swett Marden
#80. Sex exists in the now without past or future. If, for a single second, your minds drifts back to the past or forwards into the unknown, the moment withers like a dead plant and the passage of pleasure turns to a road of dust.
Chloe Thurlow
#81. No one will remember that President Obama supported the Arab Spring if it eventually fails and the region collapses back into the political Dark Ages. If we actively engage these movements with advice, with money, and, when necessary, with military force, then we get a vote in how it all turns out.
Sebastian Junger
#82. No one starts as a self-hater. But rack up all of your mistakes and take a large enough number of wrong turns in life and soon you stop trying to forgive yourself. Everywhere you look you find shame or failure staring back.
Andre Aciman
#83. There's just no accounting for happiness, or the way it turns up like a prodigal who comes back to the dust at your feet having squandered a fortune far away.
Jane Kenyon
#84. Back in the day, I had this plan for the off chance that I was around for the whole end-of-the-world thing. It involved climbing up on my roof and blasting R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" as loud as humanly possible, but real life rarely turns out that cool.
Jennifer L. Armentrout
#85. In the university library, we know when a book has been used in a class or put on reserve ... or while it was out, did somebody call it back in. It turns out to be a pretty good indicator of how relevant the work is at that time.
David Weinberger
#86. Distress that drives us to God does that. It turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that kind of pain. But those who let distress drive them away from God are full of regrets, end up on a deathbed of regrets.
Eugene H. Peterson
#87. I figured my wife was about to start law school. If that whole baseball pitching thing didn't work out, I had something to fall back on. I figure I'd put a ring on her finger. Turns out she was the smart one. Turns out she was the gold digger, not me.
Tim Hudson
#88. Life changes you, even if you don't realize it while it's happening, and it turns out you can't take back the years that have passed by.
Kristin Harmel
#89. In the beginning of Roomba, we all took turns answering the support line. Once, a woman called and explained that her robot had a defective motor. I said, 'Send it back. We'll send you a new one.' She said, 'No - I'm not sending you Rosie.'
Colin Angle
#90. Now that I look back, I don't know why I was so stressed about it all this time. Funny how sometimes you worry a lot about something and it turns out to be nothing.
R.J. Palacio
#91. Wrong turns just added more to who you are. I didn't know that they also add to the toll you must pay to go back.
Vikki Wakefield
#92. When a gay person turns his back on you, it is anything but an insult; it's an invitation.
Rush Limbaugh
#93. When your back is against the wall, there is only one thing to do, and that is turn around and fight.
John Major
#94. For a moment, he looks back at me, and his farewell is in his smile. Then he turns to the stars.
And he is gone.
Beth Revis
#95. A father is always making his baby into a little woman. And when she is a woman he turns her back again.
Enid Bagnold
#96. Whenever a nation turns its back on God or beings to live as if He does not exist, it begins to show up in its citizens' disregard for human life.
Tim LaHaye
#97. It turns out that she's the only one I can trust to watch my back.
Susan Ee
#98. When the world turns its back on you, for God's sake, don't get discouraged.
Veronika Carnaby
#99. Also there's two sides of it, I mean, a band like us, at our level and the way we have to promote ourselves and usually radio just completely turns their back on us, at the same time I think Mp3s help promote us somewhat, spreading the word about the album and stuff.
Kenny Hickey
#100. Being grateful is the bridge between the world of nightmares and the world where we are free to say no. It's the bridge between the world of delusions and the world of creativity.
It's the power that brings death back to life, the power that turns poverty to wealth and anger to compassion.
James Altucher
