Quotes About Regret

The humiliation that Jane had felt turned to something else--grief perhaps, or regret. Regret that she had not known how to act with a boy, regret that she had not been wiser.

Often, the roles I'm offered in England are melancholic women who are filled with regret for the past, regret for their fading beauty.

Guilt at least has a purpose; it tells us we've violated some ethical code. Ditto for remorse. Those feelings are educational; they manufacture wisdom. But regret-regret is useless.

Regret is an odd emotion because it comes only upon reflection. Regret lacks immediacy, and so its power seldom influences events when it could do some good.

Consider the possibility that I made a mistake I regret-and that I'll continue to regret that mistake and try to convince you to give me another chance until the earth stops turning.

It's better to regret something you have done than to regret something you haven't done.

I love the evening star. Does that sound foolish? I used to go into the backyard, after sunset, and wait for it until it shone above the dark gum tree. I used to whisper 'There you are, my darling.' And just in that first moment it seemed to be shining for me alone. It seemed to understand this ... something which is like longing, and yet it is not longing. Or regret - it is more like regret.

The burden of regret can weigh us down heavily on our spiritual journey. The best way to release regret is to forgive ourselves.

There's no reason to regret anything. Regret is a waste.

You will regret many things in life but you will never regret being too kind or too fair.

When you look at life retrospectively you rarely regret anything that you did, but you might regret things that you didn't do.

I can't regret until the end. And I won't regret then, either.

The only things I regret, and the only things I'll ever regret are things I didn't do. In the end, that's what we mourn. The paths we didn't take. The people we didn't touch.

I have always believed that there is no point in having regrets as you learn far more from mistakes than successes. Embrace a mistake and learn from it; don't regret them.

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

With my time in the limelight, I regret that I didnt use it more to push vegetarianism. I support vegetarian options in the school lunch program.

We must repeat the often repeated saying, that it is unworthy a religious man to view an irreligious one either with alarm or aversion, or with any other feeling than regret and hope and brotherly commiseration.

As a member of the New York Senate from 1966 to 1989, I voted 12 times to establish the death penalty in New York... I regret my votes in favor of the death penalty.

We eat pancakes to escape loneliness, yet within moments we want nothing more than our freedom from ever having so much as thought about pancakes. Nothing can prevent us, after eating pancakes, from feeling the most awful regret. After eating pancakes, our great mission in life becomes the repudiation of the pancakes and everything served along with them, the bacon and the syrup and the sausage and coffee and jellies and jams. But these things are beneath mention, compared with the pancakes themselves. It is the pancake--Pancakes! Pancakes!--that we never learn to respect.

It's not my story anymore: whenever I speak about the past now, I feel as if I were talking about something that has nothing to do with me. All that remains in the present are the voice, the presence, and the importance of fulfilling my mission. I don't regret difficulties I experienced; I think they helped me to become the person I am today, I feel the way a warrior must feel after years of training; he doesn't remember the details of everything he learned, but he knows how to strike when the time is right.

Over the last couple of years, the photos of me when I was a kid... well, they've started to give me a little pang or something - not unhappiness, exactly, but some kind of quiet, deep regret... I keep wanting to apologize to the little guy: "I'm sorry, I've let you down. I was the person who was supposed to look after you, but I blew it: I made wrong decisions at bad times, and I turned you into me.

Here I am, safely returned over those peaks from a journey far more beautiful and strange than anything I had hoped for or imagined - how is it that this safe return brings such regret?

I always wanted to be a doctor and go to art school, but I thought Id regret it if I didnt act.

I'm one of those fellas who's got lots of regrets, but I don't regret having regrets.

With FIVE DAYS, Douglas Kennedy has crafted a brilliant meditation on regret, fidelity, family, and second chances that will have you breathlessly turning pages to find out what happened in the past and what will happen next. At once heartbreaking and hopeful, it is a powerful new work of fiction by an internationally acclaimed writer at the height of his powers.

Regret and fear are twin thieves that rob us of today.

Christmas it seems to me is a necessary festival; we require a season when we can regret all the flaws in our human relationships: it is the feast of failure, sad but consoling.

I don't have any regrets, really. What I got out of the sport was more than I ever dreamed was possible. We took some good runs at the Olympics, but the closest we got was third in the Canadian trials. But I can't ever say I regret that, because I loved the career we had. And for me, that was enough.

I regret that there aren't more short stories in other magazines. But in a certain way, I think the disappearance of the short-story template from everyone's head can be freeing. Partly because there's no mass market for stories, the form is up for grabs. It can be many, many things. So the anthology is very much intended for students, but I think we're all in the position of writing students now. Very few people are going around with a day-to-day engagement with the short story.

I don't regret anything. I feel like I've made what I would call mistakes. I picked the wrong movie, or I didn't pursue a character, but everything you do is part of you and you get something from it.

I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him.

Do you lend books and DVDs to people? If so, don't you always regret it? All my life I have forced books on to people who have subsequently forgotten all about it. Meanwhile, on my shelves sit many orphaned books loaned to me over the years by trusting, innocent souls - some as long ago as the Seventies.

We often regret we did not do otherwise, when that very otherwise would, in all probability, have done for us.

It seemed to me the way it must feel to people who cut themselves on purpose. Not pretty, but clean. Not good, but void of regret. I was trying to heal. Trying to get the bad out of my system so I could be good again. To cure me of myself.

Every day brings a chance to live free of regret and with as much joy, fun, and laughter as you can stand.

Any thoughts of guilt, any feelings of regret, had faded. The desert had baked them out.

Doubt, fear and regret are the three villains of success. If you close the door on the first two, you will never have to worry about meeting the third.

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

If a man in the morning hear the right way, he may die in the evening without regret.

One thing I feel clear about is that it's important not to let your life live you. Otherwise, you end up at forty feeling you haven't really lived. What have I learned? Perhaps to live now, so that at fifty I won't look back upon my forties with regret.

Memories are like fireflies darting across the surface of my mind, showing me here and there images so sharp and vivid that I catch my breath in wonder before the vignette disappears, sinking like a pebble into the quicksand of regret and recrimination.

To die is only to be as we were before we were born; yet no one feels any remorse, or regret, or repugnance, in contemplating this last idea.

I find C major to be the key of strength, but also the key of regret. E major is the key of confidence. A-flat major is the key of renunciation.

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

One of the great dreams of man must be to find some place between the extremes of nature and civilization where it is possible to live without regret.

I certainly had qualms about writing my piece in the first place, since I knew I couldn't express my disdain for many of Rev. Falwell's teachings. But I don't regret having written about the sides of Rev. Falwell that had nothing to do with politics or religion - his grandkids, his ministry for ex-alcoholics, his penchant for practical jokes. I think it's important to recognize the humanity in everyone, even those we strongly disagree with.

If you aren't in the moment, you are either looking forward to uncertainty, or back to pain and regret.

you can't kill love. you can't even kill it with hate. you can kill in-love, and loving, and even loveliness. you can kill them all, or numb them into dense, leaden regret, but you can't kill love itself. love is the passionate search for a truth other than your own; and once you feel it, honestly and completely, love is forever. every act of love, every moment of the heart reaching out, is a part of the universal good: it's a part of God, or what we call God, and it can never die.