“Regret for the things we have done will be tempered by time. It is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.”
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Sydney J. Harris 44
American journalist 1917–1986Related quotes
“I'd rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done.”
Variant: I'd rather regret the things that I have done than the things that I have not.
Variant: Id rather regret the things that I have done than the things that I have not done.
“It is not the things we do in life that we regret on our death bed. It is the things we do not.”
CMU Graduation speech (2008)
Context: It is not the things we do in life that we regret on our death bed. It is the things we do not. I assure you I've done a lot of really stupid things, and none of them bother me. All the mistakes, and all the dopey things, and all the times I was embarrassed — they don't matter. What matters is that I can kind of look back and say: Pretty much any time I got chance to do something cool I tried to grab for it — and that's where my solace comes from.
“One thing I can tell you for sure is this: we only regret what we don't do in life.”
Source: Firefly Lane
The grand old man of American psychiatry on what he has learnt about life (and death) in his still-flourishing career, The Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/irvin-d-yalom-interview-the-grand-old-man-of-american-psychiatry-on-what-he-has-learnt-about-life-10134092.html
“There's no regret more painful than the regret of things that never were.”
Ibid., p. 111
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Ah, não há saudades mais dolorosas do que as das coisas que nunca foram!
Variant: We all do things we desperately wish we could undo. Those regrets just become part of who we are, along with everything else. To spend time trying to change that, well, it's like chasing clouds.
Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty