“If there was any justice in this world, I would have been a dead man at least two times over. By this, I mean simply that many times in my life the statistical probabilities of a fatal outcome have been overwhelming – thanks to my sins of excess and poor judgment and my inability to say no to anything that sounded as if it might have been fun. … [When I die], I will decidedly not be regretting missed opportunities for a good time. My regrets will be more along the lines of a sad list of people hurt, people let down, assets wasted and advantages squandered.”

Source: Skulduggery Pleasant

Source: The Fountainhead

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

cue Python sketch: "Upper Class Twit of the Year"
From PBS series Monty Python's Personal Best: John Cleese's Personal Best (2006), playing role of senile old man.

Last will (1809), as quoted in The Fortnightly Review https://books.google.com/books?id=PtlBAQAAMAAJ&amp;pg=PA398&amp;lpg=PA398&amp;dq=%22Let+me+have+none+of+your+Popish+stuff%22&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=XKTgMyyfOF&amp;sig=N-KTteQDfZyKQaQA0yyMGyHkBvU&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwiBhM3xmcrLAhXonIMKHSBLCcoQ6AEIIjAD#v=onepage&amp;q=%22Let%20me%20have%20none%20of%20your%20Popish%20stuff%22&amp;f=false, Volume 31, pp. 398&amp;ndash;399 <br class="br">1800s

in Great Figures of Islam – Imam Fakhruddin ar-Razi https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=fakhr+al+din+ar-razi

Source: The Truth About Forever

Address at Bennington College (30 October 1984) as published in "Reflections of a Writer: Long Work, Short Life" in The New York Times (20 March 1988)
Context: I have written almost all my life. My writing has drawn, out of a reluctant soul, a measure of astonishment at the nature of life. And the more I wrote well, the better I felt I had to write.
In writing I had to say what had happened to me, yet present it as though it had been magically revealed. I began to write seriously when I had taught myself the discipline necessary to achieve what I wanted. When I touched that time, my words announced themselves to me. I have given my life to writing without regret, except when I consider what in my work I might have done better. I wanted my writing to be as good as it must be, and on the whole I think it is. I would write a book, or a short story, at least three times — once to understand it, the second time to improve the prose, and a third to compel it to say what it still must say.
Somewhere I put it this way: first drafts are for learning what one's fiction wants him to say. Revision works with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to re-form it. Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing: The men and things of today are wont to lie fairer and truer in tomorrow's meadow, Henry Thoreau said.
I don't regret the years I put into my work. Perhaps I regret the fact that I was not two men, one who could live a full life apart from writing; and one who lived in art, exploring all he had to experience and know how to make his work right; yet not regretting that he had put his life into the art of perfecting the work.