Quotes about back
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“I look back now and realize that the gift of a true friend is that she sees you not the way you see yourself or the way others see you. A true friend sees you for who you are and who you can become.”

Robin Jones Gunn (1955) American writer

Source: Sisterchicks Say Ooh La La!

Way

“I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain - and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Light, Night

“The polite thing would be to go back inside, give you privacy when you read it. But, I’m just not that mature.'
'It’s nothing. Fine.' Feeling foolish, Laurel opened the envelope.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Savor the Moment

Feeling, Reading

“Chris: I don't know why it is, but every time I reach out for something I want, I have to pull back because other people will suffer.”

Arthur Miller All My Sons

Source: All My Sons

People, Suffering, Time

“You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do is to bring back a new idea, because our world is endangered by the absence of good ideas. Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

LSD - Terence Mckenna - The Purpose Of Psychedelics http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=27759640 <br class="br">Context: My notion of what the psychedelic experience is, for us, that we each must become like fishermen, and go out on to the dark ocean of mind, and let our nets down into that sea. And what you're after is not some behemoth, that will tear through your nets, follow them and drag you in your little boat, you know, into the abyss, nor are what we're looking for a bunch of sardines that can slip through your net and disappear. Ideas like, "Have you ever noticed that your little finger exactly fits your nostril?", and stuff like that. What we are looking for are middle-size ideas, that are not so small that they are trivial, and not so large that they're incomprehensible. Middle-size ideas we can wrestle into our boat and take back to the folks on shore, and have fish dinner. And every one of us when we go into the psychedelic state, this is what we should be looking for. It's not for your elucidation, it's not part of your self-directed psychotherapy. You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do is to bring back a new idea, because our world is in danger by the absence of good ideas. Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness. And so to whatever degree any one of us can bring back a small piece of the picture and contribute it to the building of the new paradigm, then we participate in the redemption of the human spirit, and that after all is what it's really all about.

World, Idea

“Am going to cross Pacific on a wooden raft to support a theory that the South Sea islands were peopled from Peru. Will you come? I guarantee nothing but a free trip to Peru and the South Sea islands and back, but you will find good use for your technical abilities on the voyage. Reply at once.'

Next day the following telegram arrived from Torstein:

COMING. TORSTEIN.”

Thor Heyerdahl (1914–2002) Norwegian anthropologist and adventurer

People, Support, Sea

“Go so far away that you stop being afraid of not coming back.”

Eve Ensler (1953) American playwright, performer, feminist, activist and artist

Source: I am an Emotional Creature

“Well that was the silliest tea party I ever went to! I am never going back there again!”

Lewis Carroll book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Source: Alice in Wonderland

Tea

“Sometimes
when you are trying
not to think about something
it keeps popping back in your head
you can't help it
you think about it
and
think about it
and
think about it
until your brain
feels like
a squashed pea.”

Sharon Creech Love That Dog

Source: Love That Dog

Feeling, Thinking, Help

“He does not always remain bent over the
pages; he often leans back and closes
his eyes over a line he has been reading
again, and its meaning spreads through
his blood.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Reading

“The Shift hasn't happened yet, maybe it never will, but sometimes-just enough times to give me hope-my brain jars back into where it's supposed to be.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

Hope, Time

“Writing is not life, but I think that sometimes it can be a way back to life.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Life, Way, Thinking

“Elections belong to the people. It's their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

People, Decision

“You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.”

Derek Walcott (1930–2017) Saint Lucian–Trinidadian poet and playwright

"Love after Love"
Source: "A Far Cry from Africa" (1962), Collected Poems, 1948-1984 (1986)

Love, Life, Wine, Heart

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”

Terry Pratchett book A Hat Full of Sky

Source: A Hat Full of Sky

People, Color

“Have you ever felt despair? Absolute hopelessness? Have you ever stood in the darkness and known, deep in your heart, in your spirit, that it was never, ever going to get better? That something had been lost, forever, and that it wasn't coming back?”

Jim Butcher book Storm Front

Source: Storm Front

Heart, Despair

“Ask nothing; want nothing in return. Give what you have to give; it will come back to you, but do not think of that now.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Thinking

“I have a perfect horror of words that are not backed up by deeds.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Oyster Bay, NY http://www.trsite.org/content/pages/speaking-loudly (7 July 1915) <br class="br">1910s

Perfection

“I think reading is a gift. It was a gift that was given to me as a child by many people, and now as an adult and a writer, I'm trying to give a little of it back to others. It's one of the greatest pleasures I know.”

Ann M. Martin (1955) American writer of children's literature

People, Pleasure, Thinking, Reading

“Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.”

André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist

Toutes choses sont dites déjà; mais comme personne n'écoute, il faut toujours recommencer. <br class="br"> Le Traité du Narcisse https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Le_Trait%C3%A9_du_narcisse (The Treatise of the Narcissus) <br class="br">Nothing is said that has not been said before. -- Terence

“For we think back through our mothers if we are women.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Women, Thinking

“When you give someone your time, you are giving them a portion of your life that you'll never get back. Your time is your life. That is why the greatest gift you can give someone is your time”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

Life, Time

“They done
Wrong
Like ink from a busted pen
Thrown away 'cause of someone else
Used up
But he come back
Dressed in night
Fine as a king
With his queen
The wrong
Made right
So right.”

Kristin Cast book Hunted

Source: Hunted

Night

“No man is rich enough to buy back his past.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Past

“A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”

Walter Benjamin book Theses on the Philosophy of History

Source: Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940), IX

Angels, History, Past, Future

“The best thing to do was to brazen it out, throw your head back, walk with a swagger…”

Sarah Waters (1966) novelist

“She had tricked him. She had made him leave his old self behind and come into her world, and then before he was really at home in it but too late to go back, she had left him stranded there--like an astronaut wandering about on the moon. Alone.”

Katherine Paterson book Bridge to Terabithia

Source: Bridge to Terabithia

Heartbreaking, Sad, Depressing, Heart Touching

“I still didn't look at him. I was afraid if I did that, I would turn around, run back to him, and hurl myself into his arms.”

Kristin Cast book Hunted

Source: Hunted

“Stella:
And when he comes back I cry on his lap like a baby..
[she smiles to herself]
Blanche:
I guess that is what is meant by being in love..”

Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire

Source: A Streetcar Named Desire

Love, Smile, Baby, Cry

“True success is when you reach back and bring somebody along with you.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Success

“I love him wholly and unconditionally and without reservation. I love him enough to sacrifice a friendship. I love him enough to accept my own happiness and use it, in turn, to make him happy back.”

Emily Giffin Something Borrowed

Source: Something Borrowed

Love, Friendship, Happiness

“To get back one's youth one has merely to repeat one's follies.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Youth

“I understand pain. I've lived with pain my entire life. But pain is nothing compared to betrayal. And betrayal is nothing compared to knowing that the javelin in your back was rammed there by the one person in your life you actually trusted.”

Brad Meltzer book The Book of Lies

Source: The Book of Lies

Life, Pain, Understanding, Betrayal

“I'll think of it tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it then. Tomorrow, I'll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day.”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

Way, Thinking

“You just have to go after what you want and if it doesn't want you back then so be it; it doesn't deserve you anyways.”

Nicole Richie (1981) American television personality, musician, actress, and author

“He moved to run a hand through her cornrows, then pulled back remembering the one time he's tried that-Connie had lectured him on the Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not touch thy black girlfriend's hair. Ever.”

Barry Lyga (1971) American writer

Source: I Hunt Killers

Time

“I mean, it's impossible to fake anything if you've already seen the other person in a way they'd never choose for you to. You can't go back from that.”

Sarah Dessen book What Happened to Goodbye

Source: What Happened to Goodbye

Way, Personality

“Don't look back!"
"Why not?"
"Because I just did! Run faster!”

Terry Pratchett book Nation

Source: Nation

“The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

History

“When you look into the abyss, it’s not supposed to wave back.”

Terry Pratchett book Thief of Time

Source: Thief of Time

“No matter how much you hate or how much you suffer, you can't bring the dead back to life”

Nobuhiro Watsuki (1970) Japanese manga artist

Life, Hate, Suffering, Dead

“If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it was, and always will be yours. If it never returns, it was never yours to begin with.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Unleash the Night

Love

“Give me strength, not to be better than my enemies, but to defeat my greatest enemy, the doubts within myself. Give me strength for a straight back and clear eyes, so when life fades, as the setting sun, my spirit may come to you without shame.”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

Life, Sun

“Do you know what happens when you play a country song backwards? You get your wife back, your dog back and your job back.”

Richard Belzer (1944) American actor and comedian

Dogs, Country

“It didn’t matter what war was fought, coming back home was another battle altogether.”

Michael Connelly book The Crossing

Source: The Crossing

War, Home

“I can forgive you for leaving, but not for coming back.”

Jonathan Safran Foer (1977) Novelist

Forgiveness

“The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Heart

“The abyss doesn't stare back. It winks.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Lothaire

“I could never be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Life

“When you stare into the abyss the abyss stares back at you.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Variant: When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

“Our strength comes from that magic, from the earth and the sky, from the fire and the water. Fly high, swim deep, give back to the earth what she gives you…”

Juliet Marillier book Daughter of the Forest

Source: Daughter of the Forest

Water, Flying

“It is perfectly monstrous,' he said, at last, 'the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

People, Way

“I am looking forward enormously to getting back to the sea again, where the overstimulated psyche can recover in the presence of that infinite peace and spaciousness.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Peace, Sea

“Curiosity killed the cat,” Fesgao remarked, his dark eyes unreadable.
Aly rolled her eyes. Why did everyone say that to her? “People always forget the rest of the saying,” she complained. “‘And satisfaction brought it back.”

Tamora Pierce (1954) American writer of fantasy novels for children

Source: Trickster's Choice

People, Cats, Forgetting

“Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?
Polonius: By the mass, and ‘tis like a camel, indeed.
Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel.
Polonius: It is backed like a weasel.
Hamlet: Or like a whale?
Polonius: Very like a whale.”

William Shakespeare Hamlet

Source: Hamlet

“Then he'd come back home and found out that war didn't cause fear—love did.”

Patricia Briggs book Frost Burned

Source: Frost Burned

Love, War, Fear, Home

“Her affection for him was now the breath and life of Tess's being; it enveloped her as a photosphere, irradiated her into forgetfulness of her past sorrows, keeping back the gloomy spectres that would persist in their attempts to touch her—doubt, fear, moodiness, care, shame. She knew that they were waiting like wolves just outside the circumscribing light, but she had long spells of power to keep them in hungry subjection there.”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

Source: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Life, Fear, Light, Waiting

“It's not bragging if you can back it up.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

“I sank back in the gray, plush seat and closed my eyes. The air of the bell jar wadded round me and I couldn't stir.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

“Oh, yesterdays are over my shoulder,
So I can't look back for too long.
There's just too much to see waiting in front of me,
and I know that I just can't go wrong.”

Jimmy Buffett (1946) American singer–songwriter and businessman

Waiting

“If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Time

“The words in this book are all phooey. When you say them, your lips will make slips and back flips and your tongue may end up in Saint Looey!”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Books

“Read day and night, devour books — these sleeping pills — not to know but to forget! Through books you can retrace your way back to the origins of spleen, discarding history and its illusions.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Source: Tears and Saints (1937)

Books, Way, History, Sleep

“most people come to know only one corner of their room, one spot near the window, one narrow strip on which they keep walking back and forth.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

People

“The greatest miracle that God can do today is to take an unholy man out of an unholy world and make him holy, then put him back into that unholy world and keep him holy in it.”

Leonard Ravenhill (1907–1994) British writer

God, World

“But why do I notice everything? She thought. Why must I think? She did not want to think. She wanted to force her mind to become a blank and lie back, and accept quietly, tolerantly, whatever came.”

Virginia Woolf book The Years

Source: The Years

Lie, Thinking

“If someone falls down, pick them back up. Just because there's not a frickin camera in your face doesn't mean you don't have to look out for each other.”

Green Day

“She comes back
Through blood by blood
She returns
Cut deep now
Like me
Humanity saves her
Will she save me?”

Kristin Cast book Hunted

Source: Hunted

“Don't make love to your problems-- they'll never give you back the satisfaction you give them.”

Robyn Carr American writer

Source: Forbidden Falls

Love, Making love, Problem

“He leaned back a little, not taking his arm from around me, but looking into my eyes.

“You’re changing, Zoey. And I’m not sure what you’re changing into.”

P. C. Cast book Chosen

Source: Chosen

Change

“Our fantastic civilization has fallen out of touch with many aspects of nature, and with none more completely than with night. Primitive folk, gathered at a cave mouth round a fire, do not fear night; they fear, rather, the energies and creatures to whom night gives power; we of the age of the machines, having delivered ourselves of nocturnal enemies, now have a dislike of night itself. With lights and ever more lights, we drive the holiness and beauty of night back to the forests and the sea; the little villages, the crossroads even, will have none of it. Are modern folk, perhaps, afraid of night? Do they fear that vast serenity, the mystery of infinite space, the austerity of stars? Having made themselves at home in a civilization obsessed with power, which explains its whole world in terms of energy, do they fear at night for their dull acquiescence and the pattern of their beliefs? Be the answer what it will, to-day's civilization is full of people who have not the slightest notion of the character or the poetry of night, who have never even seen night. Yet to live thus, to know only artificial night, is as absurd and evil as to know only artificial day.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

People, Age, World, Fear

“Even you are not rich enough, Sir Robert, to buy back your past. No man is.”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Mrs Cheveley, Act I
Usually quoted as: No man is rich enough to buy back his own past.
Source: An Ideal Husband (1895)

Past

“May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Children, Way

“I must apologize for calling so late," said he, "and I must further beg you to be so unconventional as to allow me to leave your house presently by scrambling over your back garden wall.”

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish physician and author

Source: Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, Volume I

Housing

“When there's a moon the shadows in the house grow larger;
invisible hands draw back the curtains,
a pallid finger writes forgotten words on dust
of the piano…”

Yiannis Ritsos (1909–1990) Greek poet

Source: The Fourth Dimension

Drawing, Housing

“You don't write because someone sets assignments! You write because you need to write, or because you hope someone will listen or because writing will mend something broken inside you or bring something back to life.”

Joanne Harris book Blackberry Wine

Source: Blackberry Wine

Life, Hope

“It's a damn good story. If you have any comments, write them on the back of a check.”

Erle Stanley Gardner (1889–1970) Lawyer, novelist, travel writer

“Would you like to see the menu?" he said, "or would you like meet the Dish of the Day?"

…

“Good evening,” it lowed and sat back heavily on its haunches, “I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my body?”

Douglas Adams book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Source: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Parting

“Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.”

Lenny Bruce (1925–1966) comedian and social critic

Variant: Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.

God, People

“The thought, when written down, becomes less oppressive, but some thoughts are like a cancerous tumor: you express is, you excise it, and it grows back worse than before.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Invitation to a Beheading

Source: Invitation to a Beheading

“She gazed up at him. "Just don't forget our new motto, Leo. 'We can always murder them later, but we can't bring them back.'"
"My wise and clever Bride.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Lothaire

Forgetting

“There's a safety in thinking in a diner. You can have your coffee or your milkshake, and you can go off into strange dark areas, and always come back to the safety of the diner.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

Coffee, Thinking

“You won't even know you've crossed the line until it's way back in your rearview mirror.”

Barry Lyga (1971) American writer

Source: I Hunt Killers

Way

“I try to be good but sometimes
a person just has to break out and
act like the wild and springy thing
one used to be. It's impossible not
to remember wild an want it back.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Personality

“When in the end, the day came on which I was going away, I learned the strange learning that things can happen which we ourselves cannot possibly imagine, either beforehand, or at the time when they are taking place, or afterwards when we look back on them.”

Karen Blixen (1885–1962) Danish writer

Source: Out of Africa / Shadows on the Grass

Imagination, Learning, Time

“No mistake about it. Ice is cold; roses are red; I'm in love. And this love is about to carry me off somewhere. The current's too overpowering; I don't have any choice. It may very well be a special place, some place I've never seen before. Danger may be lurking there, something that may end up wounding me deeply, fatally. I might end up losing everything. But there's no turning back. I can only go with the flow. Even if it means I'll be burned up, gone forever.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

Love

“The path to our destination is not always a straight one. We go down the wrong road, we get lost, we turn back. Maybe it doesn't matter which road we embark on. Maybe what matters is that we embark.”

Barbara Hall (1946) Canadian politician

“You don't look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Water, Time

“More than anything, it was the blue dolphins that took me back home.”

Scott O'Dell book Island of the Blue Dolphins

Source: Island of the Blue Dolphins

Home

“The person who fights monsters should make sure that in the process, he does not become a monster himself. Because when you stare down at an abyss, the abyss stares back at you.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Variant: Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Fight, Personality