"Look back" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that was my plodding age. Sometimes when I am tingling with impatience here I look back in wonder on the dogged drive of those days. Work is an unhappy man's best friend. I have no concealments from you, Lily. You know I never loved my wife—not this way—though I made her happy; I did my duty. She told me when she died that I had made ...
— The Indian On The Trail - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... show Ardea and the small world of Paradise a pattern of business rectitude, of filial devotion, of upright, honorable manhood. As Ardea had said, the example was needed; it should be forthcoming. And perhaps, in the dim and distant future, Ardea herself would look back to the night when her word and her kiss had fashioned a man after her own heart, and be—not sorry (true love was still stronger than prideful Phariseeism here), but a little regretful, it might be, that her love could not have gone where it ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... given, and after beginning by describing in glowing terms the bygone days which he and his contemporaries had seen, and which he stated to be very different to the present, he goes on to say, "I must own, my good old friends, that I look back with pleasure on our young days; at all events the mode of doing things in those days was very superior and better in every way to that of the present.... O happy days! O fortunate times when our fathers and grandfathers, whom may God absolve, were still among us!" As he said this, he ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... old-world city of Rouen, still so old and picturesque to the visitor of to-day, though all new since that time except the churches, is curious and interesting to look back upon. It must have hummed and rustled with life through every street; not only with the English troops, and many a Burgundian man-at-arms, swaggering about, swearing big oaths and filling the air with loud ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... far recesses secret streams that make their way beneath the mountain to the cloven rock on the sunlit slope. Thither then they rode, solemn but steadfast. Once and again they turned upon their tired steeds to look back upon the far-reaching line of cliffs which to them seemed to float in the rising tide of a crimson sea. Forward and ever on until they had reached the hush of the spacious prairies, rolling like the billows ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... can look back the larger part of a century, as I have done, must have heard a number of strange things, and seen a number of strange people and strange sights, unless he has gone through the world with his eyes and ears closed, which I have not," he remarked one day when several ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... towing-path on a beautiful sunny morning, when all was quiet except the nightingales in the Palace hedge, on purpose to admire them. I dare say they are all gone now for evermore; still, it is a pleasure to look back on anything beautiful. What colour is this dandelion? It is not yellow, nor orange, nor gold; put a sovereign on it and see the difference. They say the gipsies call it the Queen's great hairy dog-flower—a number of words to one stalk; and so, to get a colour ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... plain question and therefore I ask it. In the tenth chapter of Jeremiah God says He will pour out His fury upon the families that call not upon His name. O parents! when you are dead and gone, and the moss is covering the inscription of the tombstones will your children look back and think of father and mother at family prayer? Will they take the old family Bible and open it and see the mark of tears of contrition and tears of consoling promise wept by eyes long before gone ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... the architects, who raised so many noble monuments; we know neither their names, nor their social condition, but we can divine from their works that they had strongly established traditions, and that they could look back upon a solid and careful education for their profession. As to whether they formed one of those close corporations in which the secrets of a trade are handed down from generation to generation of their members, or whether they belonged to the sacerdotal caste, we do not know. ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... just a little uneasy over this second interview with Mrs. Morrell. His straightforward nature was inclined to look back on the impression she had made on him at the supper party with a half-guilty sense of some sort of vague disloyalty he could not formulate. Now he felt much satisfied with himself, and quite relieved. ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... look back at eve When eastward darkly going, To gaze upon that light they leave Still faint behind them glowing,— So, when the close of pleasure's day To gloom hath near consign'd us, We turn to catch our fading ray Of ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... but which, though generally to be met with in all societies, are not only lamentable but highly ridiculous in small out-of-the-way colonies. Such divisions, however, must be apprehended even here in progress of time, and the period will come when we shall look back with regret to those days when we were all friends and associates together, and when each sympathized with the fortunes of his neighbour. The kindly feeling which thus held society together, was ever manifested at the death of one ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... Ingleborough, after a good look back, and speaking very drily; "they don't seem to be, but I don't trust them. They mean to run us down; but we'll give them ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... any pretence, the fiscal officers might demand from the people. This wise dereliction of obsolete, vexatious, and unprofitable claims, improved and purified the sources of the public revenue; and the subject who could now look back without despair, might labor with hope and gratitude for himself and for his country. II. In the assessment and collection of taxes, Majorian restored the ordinary jurisdiction of the provincial magistrates; and suppressed the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... being present. Had I known that this was the last time that I should enjoy in this world, the conversation of a friend whom I so much respected, and from whom I derived so much instruction and entertainment, I should have been deeply affected. When I now look back to it, I am vexed that a single ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... a word. He merely stared at her with his bright yellow eyes for a moment; then he yawned, rose slowly and stretched himself, and turning, walked with dignity down the stairs. Hortense followed, but not once did the cat look back at her. ...
— The Cat in Grandfather's House • Carl Henry Grabo
... probation has long since ended, and Alice is my wife. But when I look back upon that trying twelvemonth one of the most vivid incidents that memory recalls is that associated with my visit ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... she, where is she?" she cried, scanning one after another, speaking to those she knew, while, at the same time, looking past them with such an intent gaze that more than one turned to look back at her and remark with the shake of a head, ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... windows, and the sun rises silently and proudly over the plain—with sorrow, like a lover, I send my complaints and my sighs and my tender reproach and vows to her, to my love, to my dream, to my bitter and last sorrow. I wish I could forever remain near her, but here I look back—and black against the fiery frame of the sunset stands my ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... sweeter than that? And there was Bismarck's, in the October number; who can look at that without being purer and stronger and nobler for it? And Thurlow and Weed's picture in the September number; I would not have died without seeing that, no, not for anything this world can give. But look back still further and recall my own likeness as printed in the August number; if I had been in my grave a thousand years when that appeared, I would have got ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... has its advantages. At all events both M and N can look back to more demi-semi happy incidents when the courtship ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... King's brother and the King's personator, in a time of profound outward peace, near a placid, undisturbed country town, under semblance of amity, should wage a desperate war for the person and life of the King. Yet such was the struggle that began now between Zenda and Tarlenheim. When I look back on the time, I seem to myself to have been half mad. Sapt has told me that I suffered no interference and listened to no remonstrances; and if ever a King of Ruritania ruled like a despot, I was, in those days, the man. Look where I ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... years' wandering in the desert of Sinai, I am at length arrived in the Land of Promise—My corrupt human nature has left me—I have cast my slough, and can now with some conscience put my hand to the plough, certain that there is no weakness left in me where-through I may look back. The furrows," he added, bending his brows, while a gloomy fire filled his large eyes, "must be drawn long and deep, and watered by the ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... here, look back on all your past. See from your childhood all smallness, all indirectness that has been yours; look well at it, and in its light do you not see every man your brother? Are you so sinless you have ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner
... regained serenity, as your mother gave me a home long not appreciated, have I wasted! The mainstring of my existence was snapped; I took no note of time. And therefore now, you see, late in life, Nemesis wakes. I look back with regret at powers neglected, opportunities gone. Galvanically I brace up energies half-palsied by disuse; and you see me, rather than rest quiet and good for nothing, talked into what, I dare say, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... We look back on it to-day Through our tears, nor dare to boast,— "Better to have loved and lost!" Broken hearts are hard to mend, Tom Van Arden, ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... nature, he added also many of those which a long indulgence of self-will generates—the least compatible, of all others, with that system of mutual concession and sacrifice by which the balance of domestic peace is maintained. In him they were softened down by good-nature. When we look back, indeed, to the unbridled career, of which this marriage was meant to be the goal—to the rapid and restless course in which his life had run along, like a burning train, through a series of wanderings, adventures, successes, and passions, the ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... tried to serve children, I look back upon having fallen in with Mr. Huxley as one of the many fortunate circumstances of my life. It taught me the importance of making acquaintance with facts, and of studying the laws of them. Under his influence it was that I most of all came to see the practical value of a single eye ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... tokens of his degradation, but time could not restore the freshness to his cheek, nor the light to his eye. Then he returned and sought his bride, who still mourned him with an inconsolable grief. A few months produced a happy change in both. But they cannot look back. Over the past they throw a veil,—the future is theirs, and it is growing brighter and brighter. May its clear ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... Lappo. Called now in God as a good religious should be, Lappentarius, from a sweet saint myself discovered—or invented; need we quibble?—in an ancient manuscript. And it is my merry purpose now, in a time when I, that am no longer merry, look back upon days and hours and weeks and months and years that were very merry indeed, propose to set down something of my own jolly doings and lovings, and incidentally to tell some things about a friend of mine that was never so merry as I was, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... universal material element which confronts every individual soul and surrounds every individual body may not itself be the body of an universal living personality? Is such a question, so presented to us for the last time, as we look back over our long journey, a kind of faint and despairing gesture made by the phantom of "the idea of God," or is it the obscure stirring of such an idea, from beneath the weight of all our argument, as it refuses to remain buried? It seems to me ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... like to look back to this pleasant evening, and wherever they are, their hearts will warm more fondly on account of it to their father's cottage, nestled in the valley, and they will be in less danger of forgetting the lessons of love and ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... Calagurris (Calahorra, on the upper Ebro), into which Sertorius had thrown himself, they both suffered severe losses. Nevertheless, when they went into winter-quarters—Pompeius to Gaul, Metellus to his own province—they were able to look back on considerable results; a great portion of the insurgents had submitted or had been subdued ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... then, of this interior hall He and Pilate stood face to face—He in the prisoner's lonely place, Pilate in the place of power. Yet how strangely, as we now look back at the scene, are the places reversed! It is Pilate who is going to be tried—Pilate and Rome, which he represented. All that morning Pilate was being judged and exposed; and ever since he has stood in the pillory of history with the centuries gazing at him.[6] In the old pictures of the Child Christ ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... now, she glanced down at the sheet thus boldly thrust before her, and recognising the O and the B of a well-known signature, she flashed a look back at Sweetwater in which he read a confusion of emotions for which he was ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... blessed Lord and Master, engage in the duties of active benevolence. On her declining, therefore, the Lady Superior dismissed her in a stern manner, reminding her that those who put their hands to the plough, and look back, are not worthy ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... a fall among the rocks, before I had advanced more than a few yards, partly restored my self-possession. Still, I dared not look back to see if Mannion was following me, so long as the precipice behind him was ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... by the little nation to which it now belonged. Whether earlier help by the British might or might not have altered the course of history we cannot tell. Perhaps it was not soon enough realized how important it was to keep the Hun invader from the sacred soil. At all events we do not look back on the British Expedition in aid of Antwerp in 1914 with any satisfaction, because the assistance rendered was either not ample enough or else it was belated, or both. So that Our Lady of Antwerp has still to bewail the ruthless ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... look back on Scotland as it stood in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, we see a country in which the old feudal organisation continued, so far as it generally affected the people, more vigorous than in any other part of civilised ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... not having even a desire to take vengeance on my enemies. I left the house, and came to where I had left my mule, which I caused to be saddled. Then without a word of farewell to any one I rode out of the city, and never turned my head to look back at it again. ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... stronghold of the generals. Pugasceff was the first to scale the wall, standard in hand, upon which the generals took refuge in the citadel. Larionoff fled, and on his flight to Nijni Novgorod did not once look back. ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... people, mindful of their dependence on the bounty of Divine Providence, should seek fitting occasion to testify gratitude and ascribe praise to Him who is the author of their many blessings. It behooves us, then, to look back with thankful hearts over the past year and bless God for His infinite mercy in vouchsafing to our land enduring peace, to our people freedom from pestilence and famine, to our husbandmen abundant harvests, and to them that labor a recompense of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... through the courses of thy manhood. Wit sat at thy table, and Genius was thy comrade. Beauty was thy handmaid; and Frivolity played around thee,—a buffoon that thou didst ridicule, and ridiculing enjoy! Who among us can look back to thy brilliant era, and not sigh to think that the wonderful men who surrounded thee, and amidst whom thou wert a centre and a nucleus, are for him but the things of history, and the phantoms of a bodiless tradition? ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Christian! look back on your checkered path. How wondrously has He threaded you through the mazy way—disappointing your fears, realizing your hopes! Are evils looming through the mists of the future? Do not anticipate the trials of to-morrow, to aggravate those of to-day. ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... thickest brooklime, blue flowered, and serrated water-parsnips, lost like many a mighty river for awhile among a forest of leaves. Higher up masses of bramble and projecting thorn stopped the explorer, who must wind round the grassy mound. Pausing to look back a moment there were meads under the hill with the shortest and greenest herbage, perpetually watered, and without one single buttercup, a strip of pure green among yellow flowers and yellowing corn. A few hollow oaks on whose boughs the cuckoos stayed to call, two or three ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... will find it as sweet to look back upon as you have to look forward to," said La Masque, derisively. "If you are wise for yourself, Mr. Ormiston, you will pause here, and give me ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... to us now only in the pages of its poets, or strangely shadowed forth to the traveller in the illimitable desolation of Versailles. That it has gone so utterly is no doubt, on the whole, a cause for rejoicing; but, as we look back upon it, we may still feel something of the old enchantment, and feel it, perhaps, the more keenly for its strangeness—its dissimilarity to the experiences of our own days. We shall catch glimpses of a world of pomp and brilliance, of ceremony ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... hope for such celerity and sure handling upon this side of the water. Nor is this the subject we have just now in view. The approaching advent of the census-taker has led us to look back at the labor of his predecessor, and the careless turning over of its pages has set us to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... of a wisdom that only years of deep and living experience, no mere intelligence, however brilliant, could hope to assemble. He was thirty-four. There was no possible question that at fifty-eight, if he lived sanely, and his intellectual faculties had progressed unimpaired, he would look back upon thirty-four as the nonage of life—when the future was a misty abyss of wisdom whose brink he had barely trod. She herself was an abyss of wisdom. How in God's name could he ever cross it? Her body might be young again, but never her mind. Never her ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... character in history. We are going to see the chateau where he lived. We shall see the room where his daughter wrote Corinne. I wish you to observe carefully all that you see, and remember it. Hereafter, when you come to read the history of France and the writings of Madame de Stael, you will look back with great pleasure to the visit you made when a boy to the chateau of ...
— Rollo in Geneva • Jacob Abbott
... vanished out of life. Hope, if any hope we had, fled with every hour; the worst was now certain for my father, the worst was to be dreaded for his defenceless family. Without weakness, with a desperate calm at which I marvel when I look back upon it, the widow and the orphan awaited the event. On the last day of the third week we rose in the morning to find ourselves alone in the house, alone, so far as we searched, on the estate; all our attendants, with one accord, had fled, and as we knew them to be gratefully devoted, we drew the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... must you annoy me with repetition of all that I did?" cried the secretary, with asperity. "Is it not enough that I am already wretched, as I look back to the terrible scenes of the morning? I cannot banish the image of that unhappy Gunther from my mind. I felt at one time as if I must confess ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... 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 very plainly increased ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... space too great to span; and how he said within himself "If she try again and fail, I too shall deem my task hopeless;" but the ninth time the attempt was made and did not fail, and I need not pursue the story further, or tell you how Scotsmen look back, through more than five centuries, on the resolve then taken by Bruce with feelings of gratitude and pride which can never fade and die. But there are other cases of men who had become famous for ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... Eurydice. She having died from the bite of a serpent, the sweet musician followed her into the infernal regions. He begged of Pluto that his wife might return with him to the earth, but his prayer was granted only upon condition that he should not look back upon her until both had safely passed the gates between Hades and the upper world. The poet tells the rest ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... get drunk enough to tell my troubles, thank God! The fellers think I'm sore over bein' sheeped out. Well, after I'd punished enough booze to start an Injun uprisin', and played the faro bank for my wad, I went to sleep; and when I woke up it seemed a lo-ong time ago and I could look back and see jest how foolish I'd been. I could see how she'd jollied me up and got me comin', playin' me off against Bill Lightfoot; and then I could see how she'd tantalized me, like that mouse the cat had when you was down in Bender; and then I could ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... hands already pulling eagerly at the canteens, despite their older comrades' warning. And still the advance went relentlessly on. They were climbing a rugged, stony ravine now, with bare shoulders of bluff overhanging in places, and presently, from a projecting ledge, Stannard was able to look back over the rude landscape of the lowlands. There to the west, stretching north and south, was the long, pine-crested bulwark of the Mazatzal, the deep, ragged rift of Dead Man's Canon toward the upper end. ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... they had, traveling slowly and hesitantly, gone more than a hundred feet from their plane. They kept it in sight by constantly turning to look back. It was now several feet above them. No telling what might happen to them at any moment, and the plane was an ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks
... of summer To the time of buds look back?— Does the river moan regretful For the brooklet's mountain-track? Does the ripened sheaf of summer, Heavy with precious grain, Ask for its hour of blossom, And the breath of ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... the emotion; but she could only smile, clasp his hand, and that of Emily, and weep the more. He felt the tender enthusiasm stealing upon himself in a degree that became almost painful; his features assumed a serious air, and he could not forbear secretly sighing—'Perhaps I shall some time look back to these moments, as to the summit of my happiness, with hopeless regret. But let me not misuse them by useless anticipation; let me hope I shall not live to mourn the loss of those who are dearer to me ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... with his own happiness, with the joy of having Jessie once more beside him, and chanced to look back into the valley as he left it forever, he would certainly have received enlightenment. But he never knew what had been done for him, he never knew the subtle ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... we look back for these Seven or Eight Hundred years, the more we shall find Honour and Religion ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... in the midst of my medical schooldays and in the unrestraint of Adirondack holidays twenty years ago that I first met Dr. Janeway. As I look back at this first memory I can see a vigorous, well-built man a little way on in the fifties, dressed for a mountain climb or a game of golf. His fine, firm-featured face would have struck one as rather ...
— Some Personal Recollections of Dr. Janeway • James Bayard Clark
... look back upon the weeks that followed the interview with Cousin Sarah I see that Richard was never the same after he received Mr. Darling's letter. I felt a nameless difference. It was not only that I saw him less frequently, but that he gave me less of himself when I did see ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... risked her principles of non-interference so far as to say: "It's part of our feminine lack of development that we're always inclined to look back on the elemental with pity, and even with regret. The woman was never born who didn't have in her something ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... our Anglo-Saxon wreckage. Beowulf itself consists of one first-rate story and one second-rate but not despicable tale, hitched together more or less anyhow. The second, with good points, is, for us, negligible: the first is a "yarn" of the primest character. One may look back to the Odyssey itself without finding anything so good, except the adventures of the Golden Ass which had all the story-work of two mightiest literatures behind them. As literature on the other hand, Beowulf may be overpraised: it has been so frequently. ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... to his work, I endured some great soul-conflicts. In them I suffered inexpressibly. I almost despaired at times, but I look back upon those things now as being the things that made me understand the human heart, that gave me a broader sympathy, and that have since enabled me to enter into the sorrows and needs of others and to minister comfort and help as I could not otherwise have done. Those early sufferings ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... crossed the railway line, where Jimbo detained them for a moment's general explanation, and passed the shadow of the sentinel poplar. The cluster of spring leaves rustled faintly on its crest. The village lay behind them now. They turned a moment to look back upon the stretch of vines and fields that spread towards the lake. From the pool of shadow where the houses nestled rose the spire of the church, a strong dark line against the fading sunset. Thin columns ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... ordered into the field. At one time I was threatened with dismissal from the service for my persistency, but that did not deter me, for though I had no yearning for martyrdom, I was determined if possible to put my regiment into battle, at whatever cost to myself. As I look back upon the matter after twenty-one years, I see no reason to regret my action, unless it be that I was not even more persistent in claiming for these men ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... boy, reeking from a dunghill, to sit next to the sons of peers,—or much worse still, next to the sons of big tradesmen who made their ten thousand a year? The indignities I endured are not to be described. As I look back it seems to me that all hands were turned against me,—those of masters as well as boys. I was allowed to join in no plays. Nor did I learn anything,—for I was taught nothing. The only expense, except that of books, to which a house-boarder was then subject, ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... original plan," he advised her; and then, with thinly-veiled taunt, "It's funny to look back on the old days, when you were miserable if twelve hours passed without our meeting. D'you remember when you used to say how much you ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... "I look back," he wrote, "and with unmingled pleasure, to every link which each ensuing week has added to the chain of our attachment. It shall go hard I hope ere anything but death impairs the toughness of a bond ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... enemy's entry into Scotland, gives serious warning to the rulers, to take heed of snares from that party and that the rather, because men ordinarily are so taken with the sense of danger, as not to look back to that which is behind them, &c. How often have we sentenced ourselves unto wrath and consumption if we shall fall into this sin again? All these and the like, are endeavoured to be taken off, by saying that our engagements in this point ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... tones; but Mrs. Sowler had seen him look back at the lady and gentleman in the corner, and was listening attentively to catch the first words that ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... look back at his playmates. It was already a public scandal that he could not stay out as late as other boys, and he could imagine his standing now that he had been again dragged off by his mother in sight of the whole world. He was a profoundly ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... serious matter and he was so preoccupied with it that a huge black bear, springing up almost at his feet, passed unnoticed. The bear lumbered away, splashing mud and water, stopping once to look back fearfully at the strange creature that had disturbed it, but Henry went on, caring nothing for bears or any ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the cold logic of her position.] Listen. I look back on that night as one looks back on ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... the invitation to stay longer, Captain Hopkins' consent, the undisguised pleasure and the repressed delight of Clara at this arrangement, and I will pass over the next two days, only saying that the memory of them haunts me yet; and that though at the time they seemed short enough, yet when I look back upon them, it is hard to realize they were not months instead of days, so much of heart experience did I acquire in the time. I found Clara to be every thing which the most exacting wife-hunter could wish—beautiful as a dream. Believe me, boys, I do not now speak with the enthusiasm ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... straight up the winding lane, to the border of the woods. When she had reached the first trees, a fine group of oak and chestnut, lifting stately limbs, long uncut, far into the summer air, she turned and paused to look back. From this point she could see far, and the whole of her family's possessions lay before her, outspread in all the beauty of June at its bonniest. Impulsively she ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... chair, then on the table, snapping and barking, while the monkey was trying to hit him with the empty dipper, when the kitchen door unexpectedly opened and in the doorway stood Miss Belinda. Without a second's thought Zip jumped past her and ran for dear life toward home, never stopping to look back even once until he was safe in his own barnyard, standing beside the watering trough preparatory to jumping in and washing the eggs off ...
— Zip, the Adventures of a Frisky Fox Terrier • Frances Trego Montgomery
... sep'rate ways, ez they most likely will in time, it'll be a pleasure to 'em to look back to the time when ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... though none deplore us, We, who go reaping that we sowed; Cities at cock-crow wake before us— Hey, for the lilt of the London road! One look back, and a rousing ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... these oddities - and even they had, for me at least, a humour of their own - there was much in this mode of travelling which I heartily enjoyed at the time, and look back upon with great pleasure. Even the running up, bare-necked, at five o'clock in the morning, from the tainted cabin to the dirty deck; scooping up the icy water, plunging one's head into it, and drawing it out, all fresh ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... which she shows how her sympathies went out to the people of every nation and tongue who are oppressed, she compares the influences of education in New England with a country without schoolhouses, saying: "Look at Spain at this hour and look back at New England at the time of which I write, and compare the Spanish peasantry with the yeomen of New England. If Spain had had not a single cathedral, if her Murillos had all been sunk in the sea, and if she had had, for ...
— American Missionary, Volume 50, No. 8, August, 1896 • Various
... out the ugly devils that beset you. You would not have planned the thing you are so ashamed of now. Together we could have protected Hetty and she would not be your accuser now. You began nobly. I am sorry you have the other part of it to look back upon. But you may rest assured of one thing: you and Miss Castleton have nothing to fear. We will keep the secret, if needs be, but if it should come to the worst no harm would result to her through the law. ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... is set in England, is certain to descend. This is a text for a perpetual sermon on care in setting fashions. When you find a fashion low down, look back for the time (it will never be far off) when it was the fashion high up. This is the text for a perpetual sermon on social justice. From imitations of Ethiopian Serenaders, to imitations of Prince's coats and waistcoats, you will find the original model in St. James's Parish. ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... naturalist on the revolutions of an ant-hill, or of a leaf. What is the Earth to Infinity,—what its duration to the Eternal? Oh, how much greater is the soul of one man than the vicissitudes of the whole globe! Child of heaven, and heir of immortality, how from some star hereafter wilt thou look back on the ant-hill and its commotions, from Clovis to Robespierre, from Noah to the Final Fire. The spirit that can contemplate, that lives only in the intellect, can ascend to its star, even from the midst of the burial-ground called Earth, and while the sarcophagus called Life ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... like one caught in the tow of some swift tide, always fighting to get back, yet eternally being drawn away. The tide still flows out, for the tide of human life is the only tide which never returns, but I have ceased to struggle. I no longer look back. It is not that God has forgiven me (I have never been able to think of God as otherwise than forgiving), it is that I ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... my experience with pedagogues and teachers of the piano. Having passed through it (and in passing having tried various so-called and unnamed methods) I feel I have reached a vantage ground upon which I can stand and look back over the course. The desire to know the experience of the great artists of the keyboard is as strong within me as ever. What did they not have to go through to master their instrument? And having mastered it, what do they consider the vital essentials of piano technic and piano playing? Surely they ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... white and blue as if the world were breaking up silently in a whirl, and her foot at the next step were bound to find the void. She reached the gate all right, got out, and, once on the road, discovered that she had not the courage to look back. The rest of that day she spent with the Fyne girls who gave her to understand that she was a slow and unprofitable person. Long after tea, nearly at dusk, Captain Anthony (the son of the poet) appeared suddenly before her in the little garden in front of the cottage. They were alone ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... laid bare the conditions of living and of home life in the past as to reveal to us the fact that the home, as we know it and love it, did not exist prior to our own day. In all former periods, even tho glorious to look back upon, some of them, golden days as they were of the world's upward struggle, we search in vain for our kind of a home. The home of the American workman to-day is provided with more comforts and conveniences, has in it more of the elements ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... about half an hour; by that time they had reached Ljunger Point, where they left the ice and waded to shore. They were still terribly frightened, even though they were on firm land. They did not stop to look back at the lake—where the waves were pitching the ice-floes faster and faster—but ran on. When they had gone a short distance along the ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... the solemn stroke of one from a tower, she broke off suddenly without even a second look back, dodging under the very arms of the crowd as ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... seemed to meet. There was a pause. It was as if the girl's head had furtively turned to look back ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... single exception—one star shining in the blackness. And my career has been so bleak that, although it ended in deeper sadness than I had known before, I look back to the episode with gratitude. The bank of clouds which shut out this sole light of my life quickened its brilliancy ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... because of the scandal about Falier's wife. Yet after all, though the gondoliers are not the gondoliers of imaginative literature, they have qualities which recommended them to my liking, and I look back upon my acquaintance with two or three of them in a very friendly spirit. Compared with the truculent hackmen, who prey upon the traveling public in all other cities of the civilized world, they are eminently intelligent and amiable. Rogues they are, of course, for small ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... very good at that; but there's an unmatrimonial son of mine, Val the Vulture, there, and d—me, when I look back upon my life, and compare it with his, it's enough to make me repent of my humanity, to think of the opportunities I ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the rebound of the weapon before he realized that Patrick was no more between his vision and the sun's last rays. Patrick was legging it down the Valley with all the strength he had left, and taking no time to look back. Billy had presence of mind to let off another volley before he rose to investigate; but there was nothing left of Pat but a ruffled path in the undergrowth and a waving branch or two he had turned aside in his ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... Copleston, now Bishop of Colombo, Mr. Humphry Ward, and Mr. Nolan, a great athlete, who died early. There have been good periodicals since; many amusing things occur in the Echoes from the Oxford Magazine, but the Spectator was the flower of academic journals. "When I look back to my own experience," says the Spectator, "I find one scene, of all Oxford, most deeply engraved upon 'the mindful tablets of my soul.' And yet not a scene, but a fairy compound of smell and sound, and sight and ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... him! How must they have longed to say what they must not say before the postilions, in whose eyes Count Fersen must be a driver, and nothing more! He met his coachman and chariot on the north road, and got safely away. It must have given him satisfaction all the rest of his life to look back on this adventure, in which his part was so admirably performed. Perhaps, if he had been of the party for another day or two, things might have gone better with the ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... nothing of it! The world is very foolish, very blind, very ignorant; it can penetrate no secrets but those which amuse it and serve its malice: noble things, great things, it puts its hand before its eyes to avoid seeing. But, as I look back, it seems to me that I had an attitude and aspect of indignant innocence, with movements of pride, which a great painter would have recognized. I must have enlivened many a ball with my tempests of anger and disdain. Lost poesy! such sublime poems are only made in the glowing indignation ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... body was this Continental Congress. For the vicissitudes through which it passed, there is perhaps no other revolutionary body, save the Long Parliament, which can be compared with it. For its origin we must look back to the committees of correspondence devised by Jonathan Mayhew, Samuel Adams, and Dabney Carr. First assembled in 1774 to meet an emergency which was generally believed to be only temporary, it continued to sit for nearly ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... If we look back through the vista of ages to the dawn of civilized life in the countries known as the old world, we find this number SEVEN among the Asiatic nations as well as in Egypt and Mayab. Effectively, in Babylon, the celebrated ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... As I look back, I hardly know how we lived through that sorrowful day. The doctor came, and did nothing but shake his head in the ominous way which doctors have when they feel a case is beyond their power. I think Polly had so little hope herself that she did not care to ask him ...
— Christie, the King's Servant • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... face that he draws back, startled. The bird's cry is caught up and echoed round the empty spaces, till it seems as if the place must be full of mocking spirits. With a frown he turns and retraces his steps, never pausing to look back till he has gained the steps on Donaghmore. A dark cloud has obscured the sun, and the whole pile ...
— Only an Irish Girl • Mrs. Hungerford
... said Myra, earnestly, "nor for you, weighted by me. We should never get round that eddying whirlpool. It would merely mean that we should both be drowned. But you can easily do it alone. Oh, go at once! Go quickly! And—don't look back. I shall be all right. I shall just sit down against the cliff, and wait. I have always been fond ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... and on, now clambering over wild rocks, now proceeding along a narrow valley, now climbing its steep sides till we reached a height whence we could look back upon our settlement. "Hark!" said Lisele, "what cries are those?" We listened; the Indian girl's quick ear had detected sounds which neither Maud nor ...
— Mary Liddiard - The Missionary's Daughter • W.H.G. Kingston
... and Hilarius, for the pull of his heart- strings, must needs run hot-foot down the broad forest road and along the highway, without daring to look back, and so out into ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... snatched off his straw hat, and gave his head a vicious rub, before having another good look back at the ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... didn't go through the village, but turned off the main road into a lane that cut off a part of the distance. I was a little ahead of Polly Jane, for she would carry the basket, and we had just got into the lane when she said to me, 'Look back, Dimpey; here comes one of your beaux!' I turned around, and saw Ned Hassel on one of his fast horses. He pulled up at the corner and called out—his voice was a little too loud and confident ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... us another minute or two to part after this; and when I had ridden away I turned to look back, and there was Valeria gazing after me. "Positively," I reflected, "I am over head and ears in love with the girl, and I believe she is with me. I ought to have nipped my feelings in the bud when she told ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... a fortnight and it was strange to me, in the days of stress and excitement that followed, to look back to that fortnight and remember that we had, so many of us, been restless and discontented at the quiet of it. Oddly enough, of all the many backgrounds that were, during the next months, to follow in procession behind me, there only remain to me with enduring vitality: this school-house ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... did not. I spoke to you," answered the young man coolly, "I have as much right to speak to you, as you have to speak to me, or to be silent—if you choose. You say the Church is a system of moral government. Well, look back on the past, and see what it has done in the way of governing. In the very earliest days of Christianity, when men were simple and sincere, when their faith in the power of the Divine things was strong and pure, the Church ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... you whatever happens. I simply won't. We both know what your place in the University means; I perhaps better than you, because I've seen my father's experience. I don't often get bitter, but I come very near it when I look back and think how my mother had to plan and scrimp. I feel like condemning the whole University to the bottomless pit. I suppose Margery Randall would resent it if I told her so, but honestly I pity her; the more so because I've always envied her in a way. She's ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... she fancied) of misanthropy, as that which darkened my countenance in those moments of apparent public triumph, no matter how trivial the occasion, and amidst an uproar of friendly felicitation. I look back to that state of mind as almost a criminal reproach to myself, if it were not for the facts of the case. But, in excuse for myself, this fact, above all others, ought to be mentioned—that, over and above the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... little, what was the matter with the darned things, wandering off like that by themselves, and with no possible excuse that he could see. For some time he was not uneasy; he expected to overtake them within the next five or ten minutes. They would stop to feed, surely, or to look back and listen—in a strange country like this it was against horse-nature that they should wander far away at night unless they were thirsty and on the scent of water. These horses had drunk their fill at the little pool below the spring. They should ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... I was taking any risk," she said. "I won't do it again. I will say good-bye to you right here and now so I needn't look back." ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... enough; but I will see that their murderers are hanged. I gave Chester Wilcox warning, so that when I blew his house in he and his folk were in hiding. There was many a crime that I could not stop; but if you look back and think how often your man came home the other road, or was down in town when you went for him, or stayed indoors when you thought he would come out, you'll ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... this problem of yours—and a harder problem few men have ever had to solve—but my fixed and settled conviction is that during this last conversation of yours with Miss Raleigh you bore yourself like a man; you did your duty; you put your hand to the plough. You are not going to look back now, are you?" ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... the water, and, pushing his raft before him, was gone like a wraith. He did not look back, knowing that for the present he must watch in front if he made the perilous passage. The boats belonging to the army were ranged toward the shore, but he was soon beyond them. Then he turned toward the bank, intending to keep deep in ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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 manner. ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart |
