Onwards Quotes

“There's no way out of this, it's stark: live or die. Every given moment a bubble that bursts. Step on, from one to the next, ever onwards, a rainbow of stepping stones, each bursting softly as your foot touches and passes on. Till one step finds only empty air. Till that step, live.”

— Carol Birch

“Write that novel, sail that boat. And if you can't, immerse yourself in the fantasy, be the ultimate dabbler, just enjoy what it is you enjoy. It'll help you get well if you're going to get well, and it'll help you sail that great boat in the sky if that's what's going to happen. Onwards and Upwards. No regrets.”

— Meg Wolfe

“From today onwards, I am going to strive for the greatest purity of soul, that the rays of God's grace may be reflected in all their brilliance.”

— St. Faustina Kowalska

“It is we who move through time, not the reverse. When we walk beyond any one of life's instants, it becomes nothing more than a receding milestone. We can look back, but we cannot retrace our steps. The past remains stationary, while we are doomed to move ever onwards. To do otherwise is against nature.”

— Andrew Levkoff

“My life has been like a battlefield, a war that could never be won unless I had her with me, and the day she died my battlefront stepped down and threw away their shields, allowing the gunshots to slip through the second her heart stopped beating. From that moment onwards I was left wounded, and for those seventeen years without her my wounds bled-wounds no stitch could ever repair.”

— Rebecah McManus

“A man lives his life only when he is marching, i thought, when he keeps marching onwards at any price. When he stops marching onwards, he decays. The joy of life is the joy of the experience that comes from feeling one's own strength.”

— Jan Valtin

“I believe that mathematical reality lies outside us, that our function is to discover or observe it, and that the theorems which we prove, and which we describe grandiloquently as our "creations," are simply our notes of our observations. This view has been held, in one form or another, by many philosophers of high reputation from Plato onwards, and I shall use the language which is natural to a man who holds it.”

— G.H. Hardy

“Lift is created by the onwards rush of life over the curved wing of the soul.”

— Robert Macfarlane

“But don't look over your shoulder, and don't dwell on what we can't change. Keep your eye on the horizon and focus on what we need to do now. Upwards and onwards. Alway.”

— Sherrilyn Kenyon

“The error in this conclusion may be most simply demonstrated by means of an actual example. Let us select for this purpose the monetary history of Austria, which Laughlin also uses as an illustration. From 1859 onwards the Austrian National Bank was released from the obligation to convert its notes on demand into silver, and nobody could tell when the State paper-money issued in 1866 would be redeemed, or even if it would be redeemed at all. It was not until the later 'nineties that the transition to metallic money was completed by the actual resumption of cash payments on the part of the Austro-Hungarian Bank.”

— Ludwig Von Mises

“He would have been horribly compelled to feel this Earth not as the bottom of a universe but as a ball spinning, and rolling onwards, both at delirious speed, and not through emptiness but through some densely inhabited and intricately structured medium.”

— C.S. Lewis

“For, after all, what is man in nature? ... a middle point between all and nothing ... What else can he do, then, but perceive some semblance of the middle of things, eternally hopeless of knowing either their principles or their end? All things have come out of nothingness and are carried onwards to infinity. Who can follow these astonishing processes? The author of these wonders understands them: no one else can.”

— Blaise Pascal

“I used to just daydream all the time about being in movies, from the age of, like, four onwards. I would sit down and watch movies with my father and my grandfather, and always pretended that I was in the stories.”

— Aneurin Barnard

“All the good writers of confessions, from Augustine onwards, are men who are still a little in love with their sins.”

— Anatole France

“I always wanted to be a writer, from being a little kid onwards. My dad and my mum both had phases when that was what they did.”

— Kristin Gore

“When I was a child, it was my dream to be a professional footballer. When I was 14 I visited Milan's San Siro stadium and remember thinking how unbelievable it was. From then onwards I vowed that one day I would be playing there - and I am very proud that I achieved this and also for everything else I have managed to achieve in football.”

— Andriy Shevchenko

“Gay culture is in a coming-out process of its own. From out of the closets in the '60s, the culture moved onto the disco floors of the '70s and through the hospital wards of the '80s and onwards to the streets.”

— Lance Loud

“When wise man quits learning,
he will be more senile onwards.”

— Toba Beta

“From 1970 onwards, our culture told both sexes that individual expression was paramount. And for women, that was defined as the right to choose an interesting a career, a high-status mate, the desirable handbag or vacation, the perfect family size, and a definitionally fruitless quest for 'perfection.'”

— Naomi Wolf

“My Lehman interview was representative not just of my own experience, but of thousands of interviews conducted by a dozen investment banks on several dozen college campuses from about 1981 onwards.”

— Michael Lewis

“Literature, after all, from Homer onwards, is littered with the recounting of deaths and with the fascination for death, and in this it only expresses what we all repeatedly dwell on but do not necessarily or readily voice. So far as death goes, I don't claim any oddity. There is only one sea: I'm in the same boat as everyone else. And that seems, more generally, to be the position that every novelist, unless they are possessed of a peculiar arrogance, should take: I am mortal too, I am human too. I too, like you, share life's joys, pains, confusions. We're all in the same boat.”

— Graham Swift

“ERANNA TO SAPPHO
O You wild adept at throwing!
Like a spear by other things, I'd lain
there beside my next of kin. Your strain
flung me far. To where's beyond my knowing.
None can bring me back again.
Sisters think upon me as they twine,
and the house is full of warm relation.
I alone am out of the design,
and I tremble like a supplication;
for the lovely goddess all creation
bowers in legend lives this life of mine.
SAPPHO TO ERANNA
With unrest I want to inundate you,
want to brandish you, you vine-wreathed stave.
Want, like death itself, to penetrate you
and to pass you onwards like the grave
to the All: to all these things that wait you.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke

“I hear from afar the shouts of that false wisdom which is ever dragging us onwards, counting the present as nothing, and pursuing without pause a future which flies as we pursue, that false wisdom which removes us from our place and never brings us to any other.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“I think there's always been a traditionally apocalyptic side to British science fiction, from H.G. Wells onwards. I mean, most of Wells' stories are potentially apocalyptic in some sense or another.”

— Alan Moore

“The Blues scene now is international. In the '50s it was purely something that you would hear in black clubs, played by black musicians, especially in America. But from the '60s onwards it changed.”

— Mick Taylor

“When I was a young boy, I preferred cats to dogs. From the age of seven or eight onwards I just felt more comfortable with cats. And I felt more comfortable with girls, I didn't really like hanging out with guys. When I was about ten or eleven, I was friendlier with the girls in my school than with the guys.”

— Ian Anderson

“I don't think any particular painters have inspired me, except in a general sense. It was more a matter of corroboration. The visual arts, from Manet onwards, seemed far more open to change and experiment than the novel, though that's only partly the fault of the writers. There's something about the novel that resists innovation.”

— J.G. Ballard

“I think my form dipped after the Six Nations in 2007, from the World Cup onwards.”

— Brian O'Driscoll

“I've obviously used fans - I wouldn't say all my life, because we couldn't afford them when I was young, but from my 20s and onwards we've had to use fans. And I've always loathed them. Everything about them. The way you adjust them, getting them at the angle you want. Carrying them. Cleaning them. The danger of putting your finger in them.”

— James Dyson

“Beasts of England had been abolished. From now onwards it was forbidden to sing it.”

— George Orwell

“From now onwards he must not only think right; he must feel right, dream right. And all the while he must keep his hatred locked up inside him like a ball of matter which was part of himself and yet unconnected with the rest of him, a kind of cyst.”

— George Orwell

“Then Snowball (for it was Snowball who was best at writing) took a brush between the two knuckles of his trotter, painted out MANOR FARM from the top bar of the gate and in its place painted ANIMAL FARM. This was to be the name of the farm from now onwards.”

— George Orwell

“Ever since the Meiji restoration in 1868, Japan has turned its back on Asia in general and China in particular: its pattern of aggression from 1895 onwards and the colonies that resulted were among the consequences.”

— Martin Jacques

“The sea was washing me crosswise and the speed of my strokes pushed me forward, but at a slower pace than the sideways wash. The float that I had tied around my chest was more of a hindrance as it was caught in the tide and floated sideways on the current, it should have been strung out behind me as I swam onwards. This extra effort was making huge demands on my oxygen requirement, I breathed harder and had to avoid intakes of seawater.”

— Stephen Richards

“The giant's blue left arm uncoiled from the Bloody-Nine's body, his blue hand seized hold of the Bloody-Nine's wrist, but there could be no stopping it. When the sapling seed finds a crack in the mountain, over long years its deep roots will burst the very rock apart. So the Bloody-Nine strained with every muscle and let the slow time pass, hissing out his hatred into the Feared's twitching mouth. The blade crept onwards, slowly, slowly, and its very point bit into painted flesh, just below the giant's bottom rib.”

— Joe Abercrombie

“I think people are often quite unaware of their inner selves, their other selves, their imaginative selves, the selves that aren't on show in the world. It's something you grow out of from childhood onwards, losing possession of yourself, really. I think literature is one of the best ways back into that. You are hypnotized as soon as you get into a book that particularly works for you, whether it's fiction or a poem. You find that your defenses drop, and as soon as that happens, an imaginative reality can take over because you are no longer censoring your own perceptions, your own awareness of the world.”

— Jeanette Winterson

“That which once united man Now drives him apart.We are not helpless Creatures crashing onwards irresistibly to doom. There is time for everything and time to choose For everything.We are that time, that choice. Everybody gets what he deserves.”

— Alan Bold

“I receive your love and I give you mine. Not the love of a man for a woman, not the love of a father for a child, not the love of God for his creatures. But a love with no name and no explanation like a river that cannot explain why it follows a particular course, but simply flows onwards. A love that asks for nothing and gives nothing in return; it is simply there. I will never be yours and you will never be mine; nevertheless, I can honestly say: I love you”

— Paulo Coelho

“Arkardy went on,with the air of a man who has got into a bog,feels that he is sinking further and further in every step, and yet hurries onwards in the hope of crossing it as soon as possible”

— Ivan Turgenev

“The universe is not in a steady state; there's an ongoing creative principle in nature, which is driving things onwards.”

— Rupert Sheldrake

“HH Beard has perfected ... 3 excellent (urine) cancer tests, all of proven accuracy of 95% or better ... in 1942 and onwards.”

— Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet

“Year after year, we have had to explain from mid-year onwards why the global growth rate has been lower than predicted as little as two quarters back. This pattern of disappointment and downward revision sets up the first, and the basic, challenge on the list of issues policymakers face in moving ahead: restoring growth, if that is possible.”

— Stanley Fischer

“There is that within a man that drives him ever onwards, just as the power of the seasons drives the roots of flowers into the hard earth; and so he decided, against his better judgment, to open his eyes and find out what was going to happen to him next.”

— Tom Holt

“A man really and practically looking onwards to an immortal life, on whatever grounds, exhibits to us the human soul in an enobled attitude.”

— William Whewell

“O, the mulberry-tree is of trees the queen! Bare long after the rest are green; But as time steals onwards, while none perceives Slowly she clothes herself with leaves.”

— Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

“Youth should be kept strangers to all that is bad, and especially to things which suggest vice or hate. When the five years have passed away, during the two following years they must look on at the pursuits which they are hereafter to learn. There are two periods of life with reference to which education has to be divided, from seven to the age of puberty, and onwards to the age of one and twenty.”

— Aristotle

“I have some art, but I am a hobbyist. I would not consider myself an expert but in the course of writing this novel I became very familiar with the various movements in American Modern Art from 1900 onwards.”

— Nicholas. Sparks

“He [Gandhi] was not one of those saints who are marked out by their phenomenal piety from childhood onwards, nor one of the other kind who forsake the world after sensational debaucheries.”

— George Orwell

“I was Computer Shopper's linux columnist for more than half a decade, from the late 90s onwards. Yes, I know about Linux. (My first review of a Linux distro in the press was published in late 1996.)”

— Charles Stross

“How can we be scrupulous In a life which, from birth onwards, is so determined To wring us dry of any serenity at all?”

— Christopher Fry