Quotes about regret

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“How is it right to slip free of an old skin and walk away from the scene of the crime? We came, we saw, we took away and we left behind, we must be allowed our anguish and our regrets.”

“It took turns that people couldn’t foresee or even understand, leaving a long trail of regret in its wake. And almost always, those regrets led to the kinds of what if questions that could never be answered.”

“Both she and I have grief enough and trouble enough, but as for regrets – neither of us have any.”

“Oh, how I regret not having worn a bikini for the entire year I was twenty-six. If anyone young is reading this, go, right this minute, put on a bikini, and don’t take it off until you’re thirty-four.”

“And I had no regrets about the way I turned out. Regrets about the journey, maybe, but not about the destination.”

“I lost nothing I regret losing," Witch said softly. "I am what I want to be.”

“Words spoken cannot be recalled, and many a man and many a woman who has spoken a word at once regretted, are far too proud to express that regret.”

“I don't think I could love you so much if you had nothing to complain of and nothing to regret. I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and of little value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.”

“… I begin with songs. They provide a sort of skeleton grammar for me to flesh out. Songs of longing for future tense, songs of regret for past tense, and songs of love for present tense.”

“Out of love,
No regrets--
Though the goodness
Be wasted forever.

Out of love,
No regrets--
Though the return
Be never.”

“He felt a momentary pang of regret that he had not spent more time with his beloved wife. But it passed when he remembered that the reason he’d gone to sea in the first place was that he had never really liked his beloved wife.”

“I want to live my life so that my nights are not full of regrets.”

“The bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late.”

“I'm not a very nostalgic person. I don't really look at the past and summon up regrets, or self-congratulations, it just is not a mechanism that operates very strongly in me. So I neither have regrets nor occasions for self-congratulations.”

“I can say I made a lot of mistakes, but I don't regret things. Because at least I didn't spend a life standing outside, wondering what living would be like.”

“The Suicide, as she is falling,
Illuminated by the moon,
Regrets her act, and finds appalling
The thought she will be dead so soon.”

“I did have regrets these past six months,” he told me quietly. “I found it a curse as much as a blessing, all that time to think. About the things I could have said, that I should have told you  .  .  .”

“Our lives are marked and shaped by our regrets. Things we all want to take back and can’t. In a perfect world, we would never hurt the ones we love or cause hurt to befall them. But the world isn’t perfect and neither are we.”

“What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It's what you can bear. And there it is… It was death. I chose life.”

“I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time…
… why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time, my greatest regret is how much I believed in the future.”

“Having regrets is the only sign that you’ve done anything interesting with your life.”

“Many times in life I've regretted the things I've said without thinking. But I've never regretted the things I said nearly as much as the words I left unspoken.”

“Percy grunted. “Believe me, some days I regret the choice. Oh, you want to turn down our offer? Okay, fine! ZAP! Lose your memory! Go to Tartarus!”

“For the best part of 40 years she had genuinely believed that not doing things would somehow prevent regret, when, of course, the exact opposite was true.”

“Never regret. If it's good, it's wonderful. If it's bad, it's experience.”

“It's regrets that make painful memories. When I was crazy I did everything just right.”

“Dancing was the only activity he enjoyed with a woman, and he regretted that court dancing was no longer in vogue. If you want to bed a woman, do it in the bedroom. If you want to seduce her, do it in the dance.”

“I'm done with those; regrets are an excuse for people who have failed.”

“I don't regret the painful times; I bare my scars as if they were medals.”

“There are two kinds of sorry. There is the sorry imbued with regret. And a pure sorry. The kind that is merely asking for forgiveness, nothing more.”

“For a well-made cup of coffee is the proper beginning to an idle day. Its aroma is beguiling, its taste is sweet; yet it leaves behind only bitterness and regret. In that, it resembles, surely, the pleasures of love.”

“Heartbreak could be lived with if it weren't accompanied by regret.”

“Pack a pillow and blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it.”

“Sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to.”

“What good is regret? It brings back nothing. What we have lost is irretrievable.”

“it is better to act and repent than not to act and regret.”

“… no one who has passed through the storm has ever regretted the journey. No one stands here and wishes to go back to the other side.”

“It is better to believe in men too rashly, and regret, than believe too meanly. Men could be more than they are, if they would try for it. He has shown them that.”

“Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.”

“If there is one regret that I have had in my life, it is that I never fathered any children. There are times, when I look at what Fergus and Beryl have produced, when I consider myself fortunate, but there are also times when it breaks my heart.”

“I love the life you've always made so sweet for me and I'd regret it if I had to die.'
'Do you mean to say that if I left you---'
'I'd die, yes.'
'Then you love me?”

“I did it to get what I want. Maybe I should regret that, but I can’t. Sometimes you do the bad thing and hope for the good result.”

“We are all unkind from time to time. 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.”

“Sacrifice is a part of life. It’s supposed to be. It’s not something to regret. It’s something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices. A mother works so her son can go to school. A daughter moves home to take care of her sick father.”

“The entire time I'm burning in Hell, I'll regret each tear I made you weep. But if Hell were the price for twenty days with you, I'd condemn myself again and again.

- Cian MacKeltar”

“Have regrets. They are fuel. On the page they flare into desire.”

“The past was gone. Nothing could change what had already been. Looking back at it, letting its wounds fester, indulging in regret was just a different, slower way to die. The living moved forward.”

“It's better to regret what you have done than what you haven't.”

“Fear is stupid, so are regrets.”

“But she never looked back with regret. There were so many ways for things to get better.
-Jing-mei”

“Your children make it impossible to regret your past. They're its finest fruits. Sometimes the only ones.”

“I'm not big on regret. It's not on my schedule.”

“You can't regret the life you didn't lead.”

“Although I have been through all that I have, I do not regret the many hardships I met, because it was they who brought me to the place I wished to reach.”

“Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it; it's only good for wallowing in.”

“I regret everything because it has just finished, and already when I was twelve, I lamented the time that had gone by. Even in the best of spirits, it's always been as though I wrestle with the present in a vain effort to stop its becoming the past.”

“This must be what an addict feels like, I think,
trying to fight the pull of one last, quick read. My fingers itch toward the binding, and finally, with a sigh of regret, I just grab the book and open it, hungrily reading the story.”

“Because the rhythm of conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not.”

“Sometimes you just have to regret things and move on.”

“You have to choose your future regrets.”

“My dad used to say that living with regrets was like driving a car that only moved in reverse.”

“I sometimes wake in the early morning & listen to the soft breathing of my child & I think to myself, this is one thing I will never regret & I carry that quiet with me all day long.”

“He who spends time regretting the past loses the present and risks the future.”

“May you get exactly what you want and live long enough to regret it.”

“I have many regrets, and I'm sure everyone does. The stupid things you do, you regret if you have any sense, and if you don't regret them, maybe you're stupid.”

“Not everything's perfect, especially in the beginning. And its all right to have a little bit of regret every once in a while. It's when you feel it all the time and can't do anything about it… that's when you get into trouble”

“You are the only young man that I know of who ignores the fact that the future becomes the present, the present the past and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don't plan for it!”

“I understood finally that the thing I
should have feared most was not loss, but
never loving. The price for safety was the regret
I felt at this moment. And yet I would
have to live with it for the rest of my life”

“I will practice coming back to the present moment… not letting regrets and sorrow drag me back into the past or letting anxieties, fears, or cravings pull me out…”

“I’ve learned that everything happens for a reason,” the yogi Krishnan told him. “Every event has a why and all adversity teaches us a lesson… Never regret your past. Accept it as the teacher that it is.”

“Regrets are the most useless form of guilt. They always arrive too late to do any good.”

“A warrior takes his lot, whatever it may be, and accepts it in ultimate humbleness. He accepts in humbleness what he is, not as a grounds for regret but as a living challenge.”

“She wore a gown the color of storms, shadows, and rain and a necklace of broken promises and regrets.”

“Regrets and apologies are all very well, but there's things that happen in a person's life that are so scorched in the memory and burned into the heart that there's no forgetting them. They're like brands.”

“Never regret trusting someone. It proves you have a heart. But if he turns out to be a lying worm… I'm not going to waste my time crying. Because I am way too fabulous for that.”

“Regrets about the journey, maybe, but not the destination.”

“He bursts out laughing. It's short, as if he regretted allowing me to make him laugh, but the satisfaction's already mine.”

“I regret how much I believed in the future.”

“Regret is useless in life. It's in the past. All we have is now.”

“To regret religion is to regret Western civilization.”

“My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.”

“You’ll never regret being a good friend.”

“.

There are times when I doubt everything. When I regret everything you've taken from me, everything I've given you, and the waste of all the time I've spent on us.”

“You aren’t old enough to have such regrets.”
“Pain doesn’t respect age, my lady.”

“Live your life so that you’ll have no regrets. No matter how hard, no matter how sad, if something is precious to you, protect it with both arms.”

“They're always looking forward to going places they're just coming back from, or regretting doing things they haven't yet done. They say hello when they mean goodbye.”

“When a person sets a thing in motion, there's a feeling of unease, almost regret, until you learn the truth.”

“Patti, did art get us?'
I looked away, not really wanting to think about it. 'I don't know, Robert. I don't know.'
Perhaps it did, but no one could regret that. Only a fool would regret being had by art; or a saint.”

“When I look back on the stuff I used to wear, I wonder why somebody didn't try to stop me. Just a friendly warning, "You may regret this," would have been fine.”

“Only as a warrior can one withstand the path of knowledge. A warrior cannot complain or regret anything. His life is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot possibly be good or bad. Challenges are simply challenges.”

“He tried to name which of the deadly seven might apply, and when he failed he decided to append an eighth, regret.”

“Regret is the most tiresome of companions.”

“That's not a real answer.'
Says who?'
Says me. I mean real fear, like of failure, of death, of regret. Like that. Something that keeps you awake nights, questioning your very existence.'
Clowns.”

“You'll seldom experience regret for anything that you've done. It is what you haven't done that will torment you. The message, therefore, is clear. Do it! Develop an appreciation for the present moment. Seize every second of your life and savor it.”

“He put a dark place in me and I can't forgive him for that. But it's a part of me now and how can I regret what I am - though it often makes me sad.”

“Then kiss me, Claire," he whispered, "And know that you are more to me than life, and I have no regret.”

“I know that grief, like regret, settles into our DNA and remains forever a part of us.”

“A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war: wide-awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance. Going to knowledge or going to war in any other manner is a mistake, and whoever makes it might never live to regret it”

“Bones mend. Regret stays with you forever.”