“Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.”
Variant: One of the great secrets of life. Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense and discover too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
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Oscar Wilde 812
Irish writer and poet 1854–1900Related quotes
“Outstanding people have one thing in common: an absolute sense of mission.”
As quoted in Created for Excellence : 12 keys to Godly Success (1996) by Kevin Baerg, p. 25
Robert Fripp: From King Crimson to Guitar Craft (Eric Tamm)
Source: Galileo's Dream (2009), Ch. 20, p. 513–514
“My only regret is to die four pages too soon.”
Final television interview with Melvyn Bragg (5 April 1994)
Dawkins has stated on many occasions that this passage will be read at his funeral.
Unweaving the Rainbow (1998)
Context: We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?
"Stairway to Heaven," Thinking in Pictures (1995), p. 202.
Source: Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism
Context: Most people don't realize that the slaughter plant is much gentler than nature. Animals in the wild die from starvation, predators, or exposure. If I had a choice, I would rather go through a slaughter system than have my guts ripped out by coyotes or lions while I was still conscious. Unfortunately, most people never observe the natural cycle of birth and death. They do not realize that for one living thing to survive, another living thing must die.