Quotes About Regret

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.

At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child, or a parent.

But there's no way to avoid regret. Don't let anybody tell you different. Regret is just life's aftertaste. No matter what you choose, you're gonna wonder if you shoulda done things different. I didn't necessarily choose wrong. I just chose. And I lived with my choice, aftertaste and all.

I never regret anything and I don't believe in regret. I think it's just a big time-waster.

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.

In life you don't regret the things you do, you regret the things you don't do.

I think I don't regret a single 'excess' of my responsive youth - I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn't embrace.

People in Russia say that those who do not regret the collapse of the Soviet Union have no heart, and those that do regret it have no brain.

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 don't regret any past. I am not there. I am not sorry not to make pictures, because I know one day I will do it. I intend to live 150 years.

Regret is such a pointless emotion, don't you agree?

It's not something that's at the forefront of my mind, but I think I'd regret it if I didn't have children.

A certain critic -- for such men, I regret to say, do exist -- made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained 'all the old Wodehouse characters under different names.' He has probably by now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha: but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer Lightning. With my superior intelligence, I have out-generalled the man this time by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy.

I'd rather look forward and dream, than look backward and regret.

I regret that I didn’t realize that actually they’ve got no power over you at school — it’s all just a trick to indoctrinate you into being a conditioned, tame, placid citizen. Rebel, children, I urge you, fight the turgid slick of conformity with which they seek to smother your glory.

Anyone who doesn't regret the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart. Anyone who wants it restored has no brains.

My world of human beings had perished. I was utterly alone in the world and for friends I had the streets, and the streets spoke to me in that sad, bitter language compounded of human misery, yearning, regret, failure, wasted effort

She was all he wanted. He would give everything for her. Without thought. Without regret.

The advance of regret can be so gradual that it is impossible to say "yesterday I was happy, today I am not.

Neil [Simon] was considered our greatest [living playwright] at the time [of their marriage]. Maybe he still is; I don't know. But anyway, he was hugely successful, and I just kind of got folded into that. And in some ways, he protected me, but in other ways, I wasn't fully able to step out, you know? He didn't want me to go away so much. The work that we did together was great, and I don't regret it, but what I am saying is that I didn't get an opportunity to explore some other areas that were offered to me early on. I took what I might call a U-turn.

My attitude is born out of necessity. I've made mistakes. I've made decisions I regretted. I know what it's like to live with regret. I live with it everyday. But if I let it take over, I'd never get out of bed in the morning.

The words you'll most regret Are the ones that are left unsaid.

A truly good book attracts very little favor to itself. It is so true that it teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down and commence living on its hint. When I read an indifferent book, it seems the best thing I can do, but the inspiring volume hardly leaves me leisure to finish its latter pages. It is slipping out of my fingers while I read. It creates no atmosphere in which it may be perused, but one in which its teachings may be practiced. It confers on me such wealth that I lay it down with regret. What I began by reading I must finish by acting.

There is no justice. There are occasional acts of vengeance, or regret, but there's no real justice. In the natural scheme of things, it is not possible.

Maybe one small regret is that I never got to play with Paul Scholes - but I was never going to leave Barcelona and he was never going to leave Manchester United.

she wonders if we feel more regret for the things we do or for the things we didn't do

Regret for a sinful past will remain until we truly believe that for us in Christ that sinful past no longer exists.

I regret the ending of our friendship and hope one day before we die, we'll make peace with each other . . . No rush.

Mistakes are a drag, because you get in the area of regret and self-pity.

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.

As for Ellai, she told her sister what had passed, and Nitid wept, and her tears fell to earth and became chimaera, children of regret.

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

I looked at it [revolver] as if it reminded me of a crime I had committed with an irrepressible smile such as rises sometimes to people’s lips in the face of great catastrophes which are beyond their grasp, the smile that comes at times on certain women’s faces while they are saying they regret the harm they have done. It is the smile of nature quietly and proudly asserting its natural right to kill.

Why do I regret Chelsea? I'm the boss of the richest club in the world. I have not had much time to adjust myself, but I've found a great restaurant! That is the first thing I did when I arrived!

People expect those in authority to take on big problems and to solve them. We had an opportunity to reform Social Security in a way that would have protected people's benefits and created a solvent system. Younger workers would be confident that the money they were putting into the system would be available to them when they retired. It was a missed opportunity. I regret that.

There was a golden period that I look back upon with great regret, in which the cheapest of experimental animals were medical students. Graduate students were even better. In the old days, if you offered a graduate student a thiamine-deficient diet, he gladly went on it, for that was the only way he could eat. Science is getting to be more and more difficult.

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.

Every song has a piece of you in it, because just general regret, love. You have to basically zero in on the truth of those particular emotions.

I'm really glad that our young people missed the Depression and missed the great big war. But I do regret that they missed the leaders that I knew, leaders who told us when things were tough and that we'd have to sacrifice, and that these difficulties might last awhile. They didn't tell us things were hard for us because we were different, or isolated, or special interests. They brought us together and they gave us a sense of national purpose.

Do not brood over your past mistakes and failures as this will only fill your mind with grief, regret and depression. Do not repeat them in the future.

The truth is, my dad was a great driver. I mean, he could handle an automobile. He loved speed. He used to joke that his one regret was he didn't join the volunteer fire service so he could drive the ambulance.

As there are some faults that have been termed faults on the right side, so there are some errors that might be denominated errors on the safe side. Thus we seldom regret having been too mild, too cautious, or too humble; but we often repent having been too violent, too precipitate, or too proud.

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

In a world of regret, sacrifice and hardship, laughter and music are medicine.

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.

We are not helpless...Many times in our lives we’ve been powerless, but not this night. Right now we have the power to choose the manner in which we die. If you have been a master of nothing else in all your days, you are now a master of this moment. And I for one am going to give such an answer to this insult that others will dearly regret not being by my side to see it!

Do not regret what you have done

None has more frequent conversations with a disagreeable self than the man of pleasure; his enthusiasms are but few and transient; his appetites, like angry creditors, are continually making fruitless demands for what he is unable to pay; and the greater his former pleasures, the more strong his regret, the more impatient his expectations. A life of pleasure is, therefore, the most unpleasing life.