"Look back" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no part in that celebrated march, being so reduced in numbers by the stress of war after two years' arduous campaigning that fresh regiments took their place, yet the Guides look back with the greatest pride to having once served under Lord Roberts, and to having earned the kindly praise of this great Captain. To this day grey-bearded old warriors speak with quiet pride and affection of their fighting days with "Roberts Sahib" at Kabul; and ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... it matter by-and-by Whether my path below was bright, Whether it wound through dark or light, Under a gray or golden sky, When I look back on ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... usual warnings and directions; and did not even wait outside the door for a final look back, but went promptly down, as the creaking stairs testified, and out, as told by the sucking move and gentle ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... before this Mr. Cosin had met with the greatest loss that can befall a man. He had lost his wife. It changed the whole complexion of his future. He was like a traveller who had come to the crest of a ridge from which he could look back on the road he had traversed, and the unknown future was spread before him, sharply separated from all the past. In his case that had been a happy past—a very happy past. But the future, whatever it ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown
... close of a joyous, spring day. How it came back to him; the solemn court of justice, the beautiful face, an open doorway, with the sunshine golden without and a figure that, ere passing into it, had turned to look back! It was but for an instant, yet again his gaze seemed to leap to that luring light, the passing gleam of ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... last we have come to that high and lonely place, where we may look back upon the toilsome, adventurous way we have traveled with the aid of the candle and the compass. Now let us stop a moment to rest and to think. How sweet the air is here! The night is falling. I see the stars in the sky. Just below me is the valley of Eternal Silence. ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... welcome even the shadow of those good old times when sound learning and hearty good fellowship were not, as now, hereditary enemies in Oxford. If my graver companions, from the calm dignity of collegiate office, deign to look back upon the evenings thus spent with two undergraduates in a Christmas vacation, when, unbending from the formal and conventional dulness of term and its duties, they interchanged with us anecdote and jest, and mingled with the sparkling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... 1 hr. over against "Tree climbing," but it was too late now. She had borrowed Aunt Olivia's open-faced gold watch to serve as timekeeper, and promptly at the expiration of the 1 hr. she slid down through the crackling twigs and friendly leaves to the old world below. She did not allow herself to look back, but she could not help the sigh. It was going to be harder to grow up than she had thought ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... Fred uttered a gasp and leaped several feet from the ground, while his companion was hardly a second behind him. Both had heard the well-remembered whir at the same moment, and bounded away several steps before pausing to look back. ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... is the recollection of the distinguished persons who have inhabited the same chambers, and sat in the same halls. The Duke of Wellington is said frequently to have expressed a partiality for Parell, and to look back to the days of his sojourn within its walls with pleasure. Here he reposed after those battles in which he laid the foundation of his future glory, and to which, after long experience, and so many subsequent triumphs as almost to eclipse their splendour, he recurs with peculiar satisfaction. So ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... answered Ruth, with an absent sadness in her voice and manner. Her tears, scarce checked while she spoke, began to fall afresh; and as Sally stood and gazed she saw the babe look back in his mother's face, and his little lip begin to quiver, and his open blue eye to grow over-clouded, as with some mysterious sympathy with the sorrowful face bent over him. Sally took him briskly from his mother's arms; Ruth looked up in grave surprise, for in truth she had forgotten ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... above and beyond the clouds of early days, and discern the many golden gleams and rosy rays, the many halcyon hours of happiness and hope. So, after the spirit has passed through the purifying fires of persecution, it can calmly look back with a triumphant soul song. But these old scenes were in places so remote and inaccessible that I was forced to forego the pleasure of visiting them; but in many other places I found the old familiar landmarks gone, and the transformations of ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... officer, anxious to offer some advice to the Governor, rode smartly to the Government gardens, and on reaching the entrance observed the younger son of the Governor running with all possible speed into the house; who having got to a place of security ventured to look back and then discovered in the old officer a face which he had before seen; when turning back again he exclaimed, 'Upon my word, sir, I was so frightened I took you ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... was fond of tender and minute retrospect, and often indulged himself, in lonely hours, with the meditative pleasures of memory. To look back into the old years was to him like gazing into a misty place, with sudden and bright glimpses, and then the cloud closed in again; but it was not only with his own life that he concerned himself; he liked to trace in fancy his father's eager ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... he did it, but neither of us were inclined to look back to see. We pushed on under the deodars, and I was indulgent to a trot. At the end of it Dora remarked that Mr. Armour naturally could not be expected to know anything about riding, it was very plucky of ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... natural morning. At first it seems only like another hue of the night. Then a pallor strikes through the sky, as though a company of ministering spirits, pale with tedious watching through the night, had turned in their flight upward to look back upon the earth. Then a faint glow of fire, as though on a barren beach a wrecked mariner was kindling a flickering flame. Then chariots and horses of fire racing up and down the heavens; then perfect day: "Who is she that cometh forth as ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... Violet ventured no farther, but stood for a little while gazing at the tumbled rocks. Then, with a quick look back at the house, she asked him to point ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... outweighed the slow, though more solid hopes of self-achieved independence. I certainly was then almost a child, and my vanity, perhaps, of the honour of being useful to two such illustrious personages got the better of every other sentiment. But now when I reflect, I look back with consternation on the many risks I ran, on the many times I stared death in the face with no fear but that of being obstructed in my efforts to serve, even with my life, the interests dearest to my heart—that of implicit obedience to these ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Wightman & Co. They did not graduate from a gambling-house on Broadway. I knew the brother referred to familiarly throughout Rhode Island as "Honest Bill," and a royal old fellow he was. I did business with him in those days, and to any connection I ever had with him I look back with pleasure. He was then conducting a farm in the suburbs of Providence, and in a straightforward, old-fashioned way supplying that city with produce and poultry, and had, to the best of my knowledge, the respect and confidence of all who knew him. I never ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... exclaim, 'What hath God wrought!' When I look back upon the darkness of last winter and reflect how, at one time everything seemed hopeless; when I remember that all my associates in the enterprise of the Telegraph had either deserted me or were discouraged, and one had even turned my enemy, reviler and accuser (and even Mr. ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... had ceased to put on for me the fictitious smiles of courtesy. Faces, houses, doors, and haunts,—where are they now? For me they are as though they had never been. They are among the things which one would fain remember as one remembers a dream. Look back on it as a vision and it is all pleasant; but if you realize your vision and believe your dream to be a fact, all your pleasure is ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... coadjutors turned their gaze almost exclusively on East Africa. It is therefore scarcely appropriate for one of the Belgian panegyrists of the King to proclaim that when Central Africa celebrates its Day of Thanksgiving for the countless blessings of civilisation conferred by that monarch, it will look back on the day of meeting of that Conference (Sept. 12, 1876) as the dawn of the new era of goodwill and prosperity[455]. King Leopold, in opening the Conference, made use of the inspiring words quoted at the head of this chapter, ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... does not look back. If he should, he might be melted to his own soap-grease. The sentry's musket is levelled; he is about to fire, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... without trying to press them further—and we shall find by experience that out of the present conditions thus used to-day, more favourable conditions will grow in a perfectly natural manner to-morrow, and so on, day by day, until, when later on we look back, we shall be surprised to find ourselves expressing all, and more than all, the sort of "being" we had thought of. Then, from this new standpoint of our being, we shall continue to go on in the same way, and so on ad infinitum, ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... Harrow Alley; you remember Defoe's description of the dead-cart waiting out here, and the ghastly procession coming down the alley." He took my arm and led me up the narrow thoroughfare as far as the sharp turn by the "Star and Still" public-house, where we turned to look back. ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... greasewood and then was still. Full in their faces the moon swung clear of the mountains behind San Bonito and hung there, a luminous yellow ball in the deep, star-sprinkled purple. Across the desert it flung a faint, straight pathway in the sand. Rabbit gave a long sigh, turned his head to look back at his master, and then stood motionless again. Far on a hilltop a coyote pointed his nose to the moon and yap-yap-yapped, with a shrill, long-drawn tremolo wail that made the girl catch her breath. Behind them ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... hinder them, they made an immediate start. Tubby was observed to cast a last longing look back toward the humble village inn. No doubt he was deploring the necessity that compelled them to leave such hospitable quarters without waiting for breakfast-time to ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... turned away and rushed from the spot, never daring to look back; but ever as I went, that desolate cry rang ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... rest. It has been too long boasted as the pride of England, that out of a vast multitude of men, confessed to be in evil case, it was possible for individuals, by strenuous effort, and rare good fortune, occasionally to emerge into the light, and look back with self-gratulatory scorn upon the occupations of their parents, and the circumstances of their infancy. Ought we not rather to aim at an ideal of national life, when, of the employments of Englishmen, though each shall ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... "When I look back on the days long fled, The memory grows still dreamier. Oh! what fantastic lives they led, Far ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... it tightly, took his hat from the table and his bag from the floor and swung out of the door. In the doorway she stood looking after him. At the gate he turned, waved his hand, and hurried on. He did not look back again. ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... have no magazines, nor money to form them. We have lived upon expedients until we can live no longer. In a word, the history of the war is a history of false hopes and temporary devices, instead of system and economy. It is in vain, however, to look back, nor is it our business to do so. Our case is not desperate, if virtue exists in the people, and there is wisdom among our rulers. But to suppose that this great revolution can be accomplished by ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... look back upon it is really impossible for me to be much affected by the passing wave of dissatisfaction with Mr. Balfour. Men of first-rate ability and character are rare. Still rarer are men who, having those qualities, also have the knack of compelling the attention and respect even of a hostile ...
— Constructive Imperialism • Viscount Milner
... with what she said, but with the trains of ideas, that, by a single word, she often suggested. Conversing with her, my mind was kept always active, without ever being over-exerted or fatigued. I can look back, and trace the whole progress of my attachment. I began in this way, by finding her conversation most delightful—but soon discovered that she was not only more entertaining and more cultivated, but far more ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... Lavington gently; "at seventeen we think we know a good deal; and at forty we smile as we look back and see what a very little that 'good ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... became familiar to the connoisseur. The works of Guadagnini, Gagliano, Grancino, Santo Serafino, Montagnana, and others whose names it is unnecessary to give, passed from Italy into France and England, until the various schools of Italian Violin manufacture were completely exhausted. When we look back, it is surprising that so much has been achieved in such a brief space of time. The knowledge of Italian works in 1800 was of the slenderest kind, both in France and England; in less than three-quarters of a century those ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... can look back to the time I have spent here as the happiest in my life; and I have earnestly wished that my example and influence in future life, may be useful to those whom, never before my mind was so altered, did I love with so sweet or so great ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous
... to cover the distance between them, and again he shouted when the next view of her showed that he was gaining. This time he was sure she heard; but she did not look back, and she ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... fiddlestick-end!" snapped Miss Belcher. "The man funked it at the last moment—started out promising to tell the whole truth, but refused the fence. Look back at the story, and you can see him losing heart. Just note that when he comes to A. G.—that's the man Aaron Glass, I suppose—he dares not write down the man's name. There has been foul work, and he's afraid of it. That's as plain as ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... will live, I doubt not, to be a happy one. Happiness is not, as we are apt to fancy, entirely dependent on these contingencies. It is the lot of most men to endure what you are now suffering, and they can look back to such conjunctures through the ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... fault. A man has no business to fail; least of all can he expect others to have time to look back upon him or pity him if he sink under the stress of conflict. Those behind will trample over his body; they can't help it; they themselves are borne onwards by ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... ever! Will these men live as the English writers live, think you? Look back a thousand years and see English growing, see how it comes to be the king of languages, destined, if civilisation lasts, to be the one language of the civilised world. There, in the Viking age, the English sweep ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... ten years old the little cur fought everybody, and amused himself with cutting the hens' necks off and ripping up the pigs; in fact, you might say he wallowed in blood. 'He'll be a famous soldier,' said Cambremer, 'he's got the taste of blood.' Now, you see," said the fisherman, "I can look back and remember all that—and Cambremer, too," he added, after a pause. "By the time Jacques Cambremer was fifteen or sixteen years of age he had come to be—what shall I say?—a shark. He amused himself at Guerande, and was after the girls at Savenay. Then he wanted money. He robbed ...
— A Drama on the Seashore • Honore de Balzac
... passions, to regulate even our vices according to the scale (and that no parsimonious one) which what we call "society" allows; we lose the enthusiasm which in some degree excused our follies, with the light-heartedness which made them delightful. Few men among us are they who can look back upon the years gone by, and not feel that, if these may be justly charged with folly, the writing of the accusation that stands against their riper age ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... if I made an effort I could disinter some dozens of such memories, more and more faded until the marginal ones would be featureless and all but altogether effaced. As I look back at it now I am struck by an absurd image; it is as if a fish nibbled at this bait and ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... evening of the nineteenth century, but the starlight is clearer than the morning of its existence. I look back and see in each year improvement and advancement. I see woman gathering up her soul and personality and claiming them as her own against all odds and the world. I see her asking that this personality may be impressed upon her nation. I see her ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... Look back to Chaucer's own lines, and you will see that Mr Horne's variations are all for the worse. How flat and tame "sweet April showers," in comparison with "April with his shoures sote." In Chaucer the month comes boldly on, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... amongst us, O child, art versed in both religion and profit. Advise me wisely, O Vidura. O thou of magnanimous heart, tell me what thou deemest to be beneficial for Ajatasatru and what is productive of good to the Kurus. Apprehending future evils. I look back only on my previous guilt: I ask thee with anxious heart, O learned one, tell me what is exactly in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... like to hear I was arrived -well. I should be happy to hear you are so; but do not torment yourself too soon, nor will I torment you. I have fixed the 26th of August for setting out on my return. These jaunts are too juvenile. I am ashamed to look back and remember in what year of Methuselah I was here first. Rosette Sends her blessing to her daughter. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... see my father and mother, at the same time I was willing to take the last steps of the way more slowly, and enjoy what I had and what I hoped for together, before reality should displace anticipation. This is my understanding of the mood as I look back to it; at the time I did not reason, but only was conscious of being ready to linger and willing to lose nothing of novelty and beauty on my way. However, lingering was not possible. By one conveyance and ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... will not weary you with minute details, but merely say, such was the home of Phillip Lawson. In this abode he could look back to a country home, with which, as the haughty Evelyn Verne said, "you could associate hayseed." But did that fact lesson the reputation ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... Ceylon. The camphor tree grows very well here, but I do not know if the gum has ever been collected. The two boys were highly delighted with their jaunt, and I not less so. Poor things! they are entering on a hard service; and God knows whether the two cousins da Costa may not hereafter look back to this day passed with a stranger, as a bright "spot of ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... wander in the hills. He did not regret the other. In fact, as he cast in review his research in Wild West literature, he perceived that the incidents of his town visits were the proper thing. He would not have had them different—to look back on. They were inspiring—to write home about. He recognised all the types—the miner, the gambler, the saloon-keeper, the bad man, the cowboy, the prospector—just as though they had stepped living from the pages of his classics. ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... renunciation. But she danced away, ever managing to keep well beyond reach, until she disappeared within the narrow path leading to the cabin. He could see her through the vista of branches, pausing to look back ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... dear boy together," he went on slowly, "and groped our way hand in hand through the darkness. How unhappy we were three years ago! Even now it is painful to look back on those days, but, thank God! time and His grace have helped us, and ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... whole this was not an era to which Europe can look back with pride. The empire was a scene of anarchy. One of its wrangling rulers, Charles IV, recognizing that the lack of an established government lay at the root of all the disorder, tried to mend matters by publishing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Futilely in that hell to which one may look back and see that it was not hell but purgatory prior to paradise, futilely there he had sought the reason of his damnation. A few minutes before he had thought that Cassy's story revealed it. In the light of it he had seen himself condemned, as many another has been, ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... at a trot, but the traveller had not yet thought it worth while to look back and see who was coming after him. Presently he came up to the solitary figure, trudging ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... chain-plates were broad as a frigate's; he had but to let himself down carefully and he was in the water without a splash. A dozen strokes took him clear of her, and presently he paused, up-ending and treading water, to look back at her. She stood up over her anchors like a piece of architecture, poising like a tower; the sailor in him paid tribute to the builders who had conceived her beauty. They had devised a ship: it needed Mr. Fant and his colleagues to degrade her into a sea-going prophet and give aptness ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... snuff-box to me as he spoke, as a solemn pledge of his goodwill, and, as I look back at him, there is no moment at which I see him more plainly than that with the old mischievous light dancing once more in his large intolerant eyes, one thumb in the armpit of his vest, and the little shining box held out upon his snow-white palm. ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... he who in his age, exempt From fortune's frowns, and from the troublous strife Of storms that harass still the private life, "Below ambition, and above contempt," Hath gain'd a quiet harbour, where he may Look back on shipwrecks past, without a sigh For busier scenes, and hope's gay dreams gone by! And such a nook of blessedness, they say, Your Sire at length has found; while you, best Child, Content in his contentment, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... fluttered himself upwards; above the square-shaped hospital with its rows of tiny windows. Beyond the polluted air of the city. Up and up, until there was nothing to look back on. Nothing. ...
— The Alternate Plan • Gerry Maddren
... Trust, do not look back. We are tempted to cast away our confidence and to say: What profit shall I have if I pray unto Him? But it is on looking onwards, not ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... I look back, and I think that I have done you wrong. Women like you have something nearly akin to this mood. Some time in your lives you would all be romantic lovers. The commonest of you anticipate a masculine soul that shall harmonize your discontent into ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... potato and slept on the cobbler's floor, "puttin' his feet into the fire to kape thim warrum," but at daylight he rose, and calling the inhabitants of the village, led them out, across the isthmus to a hill near by, and bid them look back. They did so, beholding the castle and promontory separated from the mainland and beginning to subside into the lake. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the castle sank, while the waters rose around, but stood ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... remain at my post. Even then I commonly managed to get out a little into the surrounding country. On some of our tours we were put to no small inconvenience, and we were not strangers to hardship; but we look back to them with much pleasure, and think how much we would like to set out on them again if ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... attempted to do any justice to them, geologically, economically, or historically, only trying to catch some of the salient points of the panorama as it unrolled itself. Will Halifax rise up in judgment against us? We look back upon it with softened memory, and already see it again in the light of history. It stands, indeed, overlooking a gate of the ocean, in a beautiful morning light; and we can hear now the repetition of that profane phrase, used for the misdirection of wayward mortals,—-"Go to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the passage of the bill must have upon American credit. All my letters from abroad, and conversations with people familiar with the English and continental money markets, confirm my convictions on that point. When you look back and find in the archives of your department the proud records of a nation's faith kept inviolate with a most punctilious and chivalrous spirit during a century, amidst all the trials of foreign and civil war which strained the resources of our country to the very verge of ruin, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... newspapers of to-day. 'Nay, it may be,' we learn from that remarkable piece, 'that the benefit of him is not even yet exhausted, even yet entirely become visible. Who knows but, in unborn centuries, Paragueno men will look back to their lean iron Francia, as men do in such cases to the one veracious person, and institute considerations?'[15] Who knows, indeed, if only it prove that their lean iron Francia, in his passion for order and authority, did not stamp out the very life of the nation? Where organic growths ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... Fenwick looked much higher for his son. So there was renewed battle at home, till at last a couple of portrait commissions from a big house near Kendal clinched the matter. A hurried marriage had been followed by the usual parental thunders. And now they had five years to look back upon, years of love and struggle and discontent. By turning his hand to many things, Fenwick had just managed to keep the wolf from the door. He had worked hard, but without much success; and what had been an ordinary good opinion of himself had stiffened into a bitter self-assertion. He knew very ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had retired on our approach, leaving a garrison in the fortified palace of El Retiro; but they surrendered some days afterwards, and we remained there for three months, basking in the sunshine of beauty, harmony, and peace. I shall ever look back to that period as the most pleasing event ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... his body for burial. When I returned the hateful presence had vanished. My eyes went up to a star—love's planet—poised over the dark boughs. Thither and beyond it Nat had travelled. Through those windows he would henceforth look back and down on me; never again through the eyes I had loved as a friend and lived to close. I could weep now, and I wept; not passionately, not selfishly, but in grief that seemed to rise about me like a tide and bear me and all fate ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... little to be proud of, and nothing to bring confidence. Old enough to have lost the first fine careless rapture that showers on the immature 'Stunt imaginary Commissionerships and Stars, and sends him into the collar with coltish earnestness and abandon; too young to be yet able to look back upon the progress he had made, and thank Providence that under the conditions of the day he had come even so far, he stood upon the dead-centre of his career. And when a man stands still he feels the slightest impulse from without. Fortune had ruled that Otis Yeere should be, for the first part ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... imitating its least significant manifestations. But had they been great artists they would not have wished to recapture anything. They would have invented forms for themselves or derived them from their surroundings, just as the mediaeval artists did. Great artists never look back. ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... act of sin, but by a mental instinct look inward to the particular volition from which the sin came. Nor can the mind stop with this particular volition. There is a steady and uniform state of character, which particular volitions cannot explain. The instinct of reason causes us to look back for one common principle and source, which shall give unity to the subject; and, having attained a view both central and simple, it is satisfied. As our mind compels us to refer all properties to a substance ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... a fortunate journey for us both," Dias said, "and I shall always look back to the time we spent ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... and look back upon the past. I had confided this man's tale to you. The secrecy on which he so fondly leaned was at an end. Had I acted culpably ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... He is no scandalous liver, but he would fain stifle all the voices that call for better things. Ay, you look back at yon ballad-monger! Great folk despise the like of him, never guessing at the power there may be in such ribald stuff; while they would fain silence that which might turn men from their evil ways while yet ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... a thread of gold that glitters fair, And sometimes in the pattern shows most sweet Where there are sombre colors. It is true That we have wept. But O! this thread of gold, We would not have it tarnish; let us turn Oft and look back upon the wondrous web, And when it shineth sometimes we shall know That ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... of hearty laughter from the manly-looking lad addressed, as he stood, with his hands clinging and his head twisted round, to look back: for he had spread-eagled himself against a nearly perpendicular scarp of rock which he had begun to climb, so as to reach a patch of ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... appear more commonly in the young than in the old. Call the breeds of pigeons, some of which have bred true for centuries, species; and how exactly parallel is the case with that of the species of the horse genus! For myself, I venture confidently to look back thousands on thousands of generations, and I see an animal striped like a zebra, but perhaps otherwise very differently constructed, the common parent of our domestic horse (whether or not it be descended from one or more wild stocks) of the ass, ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... overlooked. The guides twice reminded her, that she was losing time and that they had far to go, before she could turn from this interesting object, and, even when she again moved onward, she often sent a look back, till only its blue point, brightening in a gleam of sunshine, appeared peeping ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... the union of those who have loved here will in the next world amount to perfect identity, that they will look back on the expressions of affection here as mere meagre strugglings after and approximation to the union which then will ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... sighed as he spoke in this meditative way, and Cuthbert could read between the lines, knowing what a wasted life it must seem to look back upon, with the monotony broken only by scenes of violence, when Indians went upon the warpath or halfbreeds became rebellious, as during the great uprising along the Saskatchewan, when the ugly front of war made this region its ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... was the Kid who gave Calamity his riding orders. "All right, boy," said he. "Nothing in here to beat but a lot of lizards. Never look back and make every post a winning one. He can tow-rope this field ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... proper to entertain your Lordships, and to defend their client, by comparing him with the men who are said to have erected a pyramid of ninety thousand human heads. Now look back, my Lords, to Benares; consider the extent of country laid waste and desolated, and its immense population; and then see whether famine may not destroy as well as the sword, and whether this man is not as well entitled to erect his ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... desirable that we should pause in our career of destruction long enough to look back upon what we have recently accomplished in the total extinction of species, and also note what we have blocked out for the immediate future. Here let us erect a monument to the dead ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... civil war abolished legal rights and left the two races to learn how to live together under other relations than before. The whites have never been converted from the old mores. Those who still survive look back with regret and affection to the old social usages and customary sentiments and feelings. The two races have not yet made new mores. Vain attempts have been made to control the new order by legislation. The only result ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... ask in wonder, "And was then the war to which we have been used to look back with exultation and pride,—was it but a horror and a crime?" No; it was something other and more than that; it had its aspects of moral grandeur and of gain for humanity; it was a field for noble self-sacrifice, ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... two was so cordial that men hurrying by turned to look back at the pleasant faces, and their own ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... initiation of the savage into humanity? However far we look back into history the phenomenon is identical among all people who have shaken off the slavery of the animal state: the love of appearance, the inclination for dress ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... As I look back, there is only one thing we might have noticed at the time. This was the fact that Hutchins, having started the engine, was sitting beside it on the floor of the boat and laughing in the cruelest possible ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... called out gayly at sight of Lucia. She had taken off her flowered kerchief and was waving it excitedly. The wind caught her dark hair and blew it across her face, and her bright skirts in the sunshine made a vivid spot of color against the stone wall. The men turned often to look back at her as they ...
— Lucia Rudini - Somewhere in Italy • Martha Trent
... will be followed till the highest Himalaya is but the ornamental apex or snow-capped gable-tip of some resounding fuliginous corridor. The tunnel differs but in length from other tunnels; you spend half an hour in it. But you whirl out into the blest peninsula, and as you look back seem to see the mighty mass shrug its shoulders over the line, the mere turn of a dreaming giant in his sleep. The tunnel is certainly not a poetic object, out there is no perfection without its beauty; and as you measure the long rugged outline of the pyramid of which it forms the base you accept ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... grounds I am equally delighted. My affection for that most accomplished youth was as strong as is my ungovernable sorrow at his loss. So I shall find it soothing from time to time to gaze upon his statue, to look back upon it, to stand beneath it, and to walk past it. For if the busts of the dead that we set up in our private houses assuage our grief, how much more soothing should be the statues of our dead friends erected in the most frequented spots, which recall ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... planet! If anything were to happen to us, no one on Earth or in the heavens would ever know of it. I had never been homesick, but a very little would have made me Earthsick just then. I did not like the upper end of the projectile because I could not look back at the home planet. I wondered if it was all dark back that way, or if those warning lights had begun to appear. That idea seemed to haunt me. I touched the steering wheel just a little while I kept my eyes on Mars. He moved slightly in the field at once. Then I turned the wheel ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... concluded, "we will close this meeting by singing the national hymn, not only because this day commemorates the signing of the Declaration of Independence, but because, for all years to come, we shall look back upon this day as the one upon which the men of this county signed the petition which calls for liberty, rights, ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... the cart jolted onwards I kept my eyes fixed upon them till, where the road dipped into a valley, they were lost to my view for ever. Felipe walked in silence beside the shafts, but from time to time he would check the mule and seem to look back upon me; and at length drew quite near and laid his hand upon my head. There was such kindness in the touch, and such a simplicity, as of the brutes, that tears broke from me like the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was no escape, and it has accordingly continued to embarrass the successive generations of Englishmen down to the present day. The Norman Conquest occupies, therefore, a very uncertain and equivocal position in English history, the various modern writers who look back to it now being hardly able to determine whether they are to regard it as a mortifying subjugation which their ancestors suffered, or a glorious victory which ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... garden; Yonder the stables and barns; our beautiful line of possessions. But when I look at the dwelling behind, where up in the gable We can distinguish the window that marks my room in the attic; When I look back, and remember how many a night from that window I for the moon have watched; for the sun, how many a morning! When the healthful sleep of a few short hours sufficed me,— Ah, so lonely they seem to me then, ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... life, in fact, she had been of that unchangeable, drab quality in emotional affairs which is characteristic of advanced middle-age, when there are no great joys or sorrows to look back on, and no expectation for the future. She had always had something of the indestructible quality of frail things like thistledown or cottonwool; violence and explosion that would blow strong and distinct organisms to atoms only puffed her a yard or two ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... said, "some day I believe it will be explained. I believe it was nothing more than an extraordinarily strong impulse to write, and that you exaggerate it into the supernatural as you look back upon it. I did not think so when you first told me; you were so dramatic that you carried me off my feet, and I was an actor in the scene. But that is the way I look at it now, and ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... of ten, a drachm of good luck is worth an ounce of good contrivance,—and were it not, dearest Paulina, that you are with us, I would think the risk not heavy. Perhaps, by to-morrow's sunset, we shall all look back from our pleasant seats in the warm refectories of Klosterheim, with something of scorn, upon our present apprehensions.— And see! at this very moment the turn of the road has brought us in view ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Pierre soon sank into a deep reverie. It seemed to him, indeed, as if he had already quitted Rome, as if the city were far away and he could look back on it, and his experiences within it. His book, "New Rome," arose in his mind; and he remembered his first morning on the Janiculum, his view of Rome from the terrace of San Pietro in Montorio, a Rome such as he had dreamt of, so young and ethereal under the pure sky. It was then that he had asked ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... is a long time to look forward to, but it does not seem so long when you look back, and yet when I review the changes that have taken place in the Horticultural Society since I assumed the position of secretary twenty-five years ago the way seems long indeed. In the year 1890 very nearly all of the old members of the society, ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... to make a large stride, and omit a space of nearly seventeen years; during which nothing occurred of any particular consequence with respect to the story we have undertaken to tell. The gap is a wide one; yet if the reader's experience in life enables him to look back on so many years, the space will scarce appear longer in his recollection, than the time consumed ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott |
