We’re so wrapped up with egotistical things, career, family, having enough money, meeting the mortgage, getting a new car, fixing the radiator when it breaks—we’re involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going. So we don’t get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying, Is this all? Is this all I want? Is something missing?

Wise is the one who flavors the future with some salt from the past. Becoming dust is no threat to the phoenix born from the ash.

Perhaps the echoes of people we once loved still linger in the places we frequented with them and that is why we go back… Not so much to remember them as to feel them…

Sometimes I really can't express how much I feel, but I can tell for a fact that some past years have been a victorious rollercoaster ride with God in it. Some days colourful, some days black and white, some days faith bigger than a mustard seed, other days I'm filled with blind doubt about what tomorrow holds. But in all of this, I'm beautifully me and constantly running the race through the father's grace

People will walk in and walk out of your life, but the one whose footstep made a long lasting impression is the one you should never allow to walk out.

Don't spend your life wondering "what if" and worrying over something you have no control. What's done is done. Looking backwards will cause you to miss out on new blessings ahead. Move on.

When you look back at that relationship you didn't think you could live without and realize had you stayed in it, you'd be some comfortable loser, sitting on the couch with another comfortable loser, instead of being the dope motherfucker you are today.

Have you ever felt you were born in the wrong decade, or came just a bit too late and missed out on all the good stuff when it was in its heyday?

The best way to look back at life fondly is to meet it - and those along your journey - warmly, kindly and mindfully

Looking back and wondering if it could have worked eventually hurts more than trying and failing.

Turn to your community and the great earth for sustenance and knowledge.

Taking time to look back, is a foundation on course to build a stable future.

Amazing what more we can see looking back. But God didn't give us eyes in the back of our heads. Our eyes, like our feet, face forward, toward the future.

If you’re always looking back at what you’ve lost, you’ll never discover the treasure that lies just up ahead.

We look back on our life as a thing of broken pieces, because our mistakes and failures are always the first to strike us, and outweigh in our imagination what we have accomplished and attained.

He knew very well that his memory detested him, that it did nothing but slander him; therefore he tried not to believe it and to be more lenient toward his own life. But that didn't help: he took no pleasure in looking back, and he did it as seldom as possible.

Do you think the memory of someone should dictate how we live going forward?' he asks, threading and unthreading his fingers together.'It depends,' I say. 'I think you can probably honor someone's memory, but you can't live for them, because that means living in the past.

Fantasies... who needs fantasies? I have memories.

Remorse is a terrible thing to bear, Pam, one of the worst of all punishments in this life. To wish undone something you have done, to wish you could look back on kindness to someone you love, instead of on unkindness - that is a very terrible thing.

You could climb to the top of the world and jump into the deepest of ravines, but if you don’t have someone to share it with you’ll always be looking back.

I understand true life doesn't happen when I constantly gaze backwards, mulling over all the injustices others have done or I have done to others.

I don't know whether you can look at your past and find, woven like the hidden symbols on a treasure map, the path that will point to your final destination.

Never back, never back!... People don’t like going back, even if they must. I don’t like going back! And I’m not people! But I look back, sometimes, every so often, just to make sure I’m not leaving anything important behind. Like my tail! I can never be sure when I leave my tail behind me by mistake.

In every man’s life there are moments where looking to the past may ruin the future and in those moments walking forward without looking back is the best thing one can ever do!

Those who only look back at the past are certain to miss their future.

You can never really know where exactly people are looking at! At the place they are staring at? Or at their past? Or at their future?

It isn't as important to feel great about all the things we do. But how we feel toward the end when we look back at everything we've done.

Your life is written in indelible ink. There's no going back to erase the past, tweak your mistakes, or fill in missed opportunities. When the moment's over, your fate is sealed. But if look closer, you notice the ink never really dries on any our experiences. They can change their meaning the longer you look at them.Klexos.There are ways of thinking about the past that aren't just nostalgia or regret. A kind of questioning that enriches an experience after the fact. To dwell on the past is to allow fresh context to trickle in over the years, and fill out the picture; to keep the memory alive, and not just as a caricature of itself. So you can look fairly at a painful experience, and call it by its name.Time is the most powerful force in the universe. It can turn a giant into someone utterly human, just trying to make their way through. Or tell you how you really felt about someone, even if you couldn't at the time. It can put your childhood dreams in context with adult burdens or turn a universal consensus into an embarrassing fad. It can expose cracks in a relationship that once seemed perfect. Or keep a friendship going by thoughts alone, even if you'll never see them again. It can flip your greatest shame into the source of your greatest power, or turn a jolt of pride into something petty, done for the wrong reasons, or make what felt like the end of the world look like a natural part of life.The past is still mostly a blank page, so we may be doomed to repeat it. But it's still worth looking into if it brings you closer to the truth.Maybe it's not so bad to dwell in the past, and muddle in the memories, to stem the simplification of time, and put some craft back into it. Maybe we should think of memory itself as an art form, in which the real work begins as soon as the paint hits the canvas. And remember that a work of art is never finished, only abandoned.

I've never looked forward before. I've always looked back. I think about the past way too much and I think about what I should have done and everything I did wrong and I've never once looked forward in my life.

I hurt myself deeply, though at the time I had no idea how deeply. I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity demanded, I could become completely self-centred, even cruel. I was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse, inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal.

If I had done this, if I had said that, in the end you are always more tormented by what you didn't do than what you did, actions already performed can always be rationalized in time, the neglected deed might have changed the world.

All those practice fights when it was just us, two children pretending to be soldiers. Or two soldiers pretending to be children.

I assumed that looking back reminded older guys of what they had shot at and missed, the what-ifs, the good memories, the bad, the people left behind, the people who moved on.

Some memories were all right, but others were dangerous.

Whether beautiful or terrible, the past is always a ruin.

Stories about lives remembered bring us backward while allowing us to move forward.

It's funny. Looking back, none of it seems to matter now, those moments of yearning, craving to belong with people I thought mattered. No more fragments of glass, pieces of a broken mirror you can't put back together and wouldn't want to even if you could.

But you are still you I'm still meAnd we are still we

Looking back, I have come to realize that the gang lifestyle back then—the fame, the respect, and the recognition—was stronger and powerful than any drug. We were serious with what we were dealing with. It was like a do or die situation. Shelton ‘Apples’ Burrows reform gang leader

when you get to the peak, remember the valley exists

They say to never look back.But sometimes I do. It’s gratifying to see how far I’ve come.

Mattie was a grown woman in love, and they had to let her go, with their blessing, enduring what could not be helped. And there was no use in thinking of that fluid, glistening instant that always seems, in looking back, to have come between what might have happened and what happened, when one might have made some little choice that would have changed forever the course of things.

The trouble with ‘if only’ is that it doesn’t change anything. It keeps the person facing the wrong way – backward instead of forward. It wastes time. In the end, if you let it become a habit, it can become a real roadblock – an excuse for not trying anymore.

Reading all my old love letters was disorienting. You remember thinking the thoughts and writing the words but, man, you can't TOUCH those feelings. Its like they belonged to someone else. Someone you don't even know. I'm aware, in an intellectual way. That I felt all those things about him, but this emotions are far away now.What's so strange to me is that I can't even force my heart back to that place where I felt that all consuming passion. That makes me feel distant from myself. Who WAS I then? Will I ever be able to get back to that place? Reading the letters again made me wonder: Which is the real me? The one who saw the world in that emotionally saturated way, or the me who sees it the way I do now?

To reach your target quicker, don’t lose your time by looking back!

The thing is that it could never again feel natural to talk to her

VIEW FROM A HILLI am not yet quite over it.I am lying down on top of it.Surveying behind me a wastelandOf dried-up promise.While the lights below twinkleWith dull mocking uncertainty.There isn't much left to look forward to,And the looking forward of the past has been belied.

You will never see me surrender, never see me cry, but you will often see me walk away. Turn around and just leave, without looking back.

...do you ever know a moment is important as it's happening, or is it only when you look back that you can see your life is changed?

Every moment is precious, even the ones behind me that I often reflect upon with a reserved smile. However…I seldom look back, only forward in anticipation of the next greater now.

You can't look back. Nothing you can do to change it. Only forward.

When the minds of men slip from realities to fantasies without thinking of the future consequences, then we must ponder. When the hearts of men are entangled with what though might seem great but yet, specious ambitions without pondering over the resulting footprints, then we ought to take precautions. When the hands of men unwittingly and for the sake of self-gratification find the right weapons and dexterity for the wrong purpose, then massacre and cruelties leave indelible footprints of sorrow and bitterness in the hearts of men. We shall always look back to the footprints of yesterday to say had we know if we don’t take a critical look at today’s footsteps. There is always an alternative that is better than good