“A man is a fool who sits looking backward from himself in the past.”

— Henry Ward Beecher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 566
Context: A man is a fool who sits looking backward from himself in the past. Ah! what shallow, vain conceit there is in man! Forget the things that are behind. That is not where you live. Your roots are not there. They are in the present; and you should reach up into the other life.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A man is a fool who sits looking backward from himself in the past." by Henry Ward Beecher?

Henry Ward Beecher75

American clergyman and activist 1813–1887

Related quotes

“Sit not, like the figure on our silver coin, looking ever backward.”

Wendell Phillips (1811–1884) American abolitionist, advocate for Native Americans, orator and lawyer

1880s, The Scholar in a Republic (1881)

“Nor is he the wisest man who never proved himself a fool.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate

Stanza 124
Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886)

“A man who does not fool himself seldom cares much about fooling others. But the man who claims to have seen a ghost wants everybody else to believe in ghosts.”

E. W. Howe (1853–1937) Novelist, magazine and newspaper editor

Ventures in Common Sense (1919), p87.

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

Jomo Kenyatta (1893–1978) First prime minister and first president of Kenya

“The man of action is not the headstrong fool who rushes into danger with no thought for himself, but the man who puts into practice the things he knows.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

“…in general, the traditionalists are backward-looking, conservative; pessimists about the future and optimists about the past.”

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic

Often quoted as "Traditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past.", e.g, Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1979) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 112.
Faith for Living (1940)