Regret Quotes

The only victories which leave no regret are those which are gained over ignorance.

~ Napoléon Bonaparte

Not all the relationships deserve loving and all the lies worth to regret.

~ M.f. Moonzajer

There was no echo, no reverberation. If anything the room ate sound. It swallowed her voice, her words, and her eternal, inadequate apology. But not her memories. She would never be rid of those.

~ Laini Taylor

There is a point where the universe can deliver you from the verge of regret. I know your love for me will take you there.

~ Lawren Leo

I think that's the hardest part about mistakes: Sometimes the consequences aren't physical. Sometimes they simply chip away at the essence of who you are.

~ Tammy L. Gray

A crowd of drunken lovers. Newspaper hats, new couples falling from couches and love- seats—the pleasure remembered, never the regret.

~ Kelli Russell Agodon

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

~ Laura Kasischke

And what if Miriam and I were never to be reconciled?

~ Mordecai Richler

And I watched the first man I ever kissed walk away from me forever. My heart full of nothing but regret, my brain full of nothing but reassurance that I was making the right choice, and my voice, completely void of any will to call him back.

~ Molli Fields

A thorough inspection of someone you believed to be loveable will send you back into your shell if all you saw in their life was all bullshit.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

All along, I was less concerned about walking a path of integrity and more caught up in a compass calibrated by greed. And with a compass such as this, how is it that I’m having a hard time understanding why I am where I am?

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

People always say in the end you only regret the choices you didn't make but I really think you also regret the choices you were foolish enough to make.

~ Melizena

More often, one decision can change the entire course of a life.

~ Marcia Lynn Mcclure

«And in the end» said the witch to the drowning prince «You've been the one choosing the thornless path in spite of knowing where it could lead. The one who afraid of the pricking roses, plunged himself into an abyss without petals

~ Nur Bedeir

I guess that's the lesson in all of this-not to be eighty years old, looking back on your life, wondering if you made the right choice or how your life might have been different if you'd done one thing and not another.

~ Mary Simses

Regrets are the last words you speak to your loved ones when you die and the one thing we all fear when we live. I'd rather regret the things I've done and said than regret the things I haven't done or said. It is all the experiences and people you missed out on in life that you will feel the most regretful for in the end. God will forgive you of your mistakes, but there is nothing to forgive if you have never even tried, done or said anything that made a difference in your life or others.

~ Shannon L. Alder

Ladies tell their nurses things in a sudden burst of confidence, and then, afterwards, they feel uncomfortable about it and wish they hadn't! It's only human nature.

~ Agatha Christie

Plain speaking is necessary in any discussion of religion, for if the freethinker attacks the religious dogmas with hesitation, the orthodox believer assumes that it is with regret that the freethinker would remove the crutch that supports the orthodox. And all religious beliefs are 'crutches' hindering the free locomotive efforts of an advancing humanity. There are no problems related to human progress and happiness in this age which any theology can solve, and which the teachings of freethought cannot do better and without the aid of encumbrances.

~ David Marshall Brooks

For it falls outThat what we have we prize not to the worthWhiles we enjoy it, but being lacked and lost,Why, then we rack the value, then we findThe virtue that possession would not show usWhile it was ours.

~ William Shakespeare

Anything great will only be appreciated if I am given the opportunity to feel the absence of it, or experience the reversal of it. It is only then that I can even begin to understand its majesty and cherish it in the manner I should have all along.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I'm thirty-five and remember all that I've done wrong.

~ Ada Limon

One can repent of a sin and have done with it, but the wages of foolishness is the eternal recalling of it.

~ Jetta Carleton

Hesitating, I stood in the doorway to the room holding the proof of my sin.

~ A.b. Shepherd

Don't live in a world of 'I never should have'. Regret is a terrible burden to carry through life. It stoops your shoulders and keeps you looking down at the ground rather than up at the stars.

~ Mary Alice Kruesi

A part of me knew... from the moment I saw her,her death would have been one wound too many that day.

~ Dean Koontz

We carry the world. They did. All those young men did. They carried the world, and it was heavy, and they didn't know what to do with it. Was this the rest? Was this the war? Things had already spun out of control and they weren't always as black and white or as right or wrong as Nick liked to think.

~ Matthew J. Hefti

Love, is a Bloody Razor BladeLove came like fire from aboveand disappeared like a wet dream,underneath a leaky kitchen sinkFor weeks it went drip, drip, drip…until it could be, eventually fixedIt took a long time to depreciateall the things I never had to sayBut there are only so many things that make sense at the endThe rest is merely X-Acto knife love, andLove, is a bloody razor blade

~ Phil Volatile

Never believe you're so great or important, so right or proud, that you cannot kneel at the feet of someone you hurt and offer a humble, sincere apology.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Gratitude can't grow love higher than regret.

~ Shannon L. Alder

I expected to be happy, but let me tell you something. Anticipating happiness and being happy are two entirely different things. I told myself that all I wanted to do was go to the mall. I wanted to look at the pretty girls, ogle the Victoria's Secret billboards, and hit on girls at the Sam Goody record store. I wanted to sit in the food court and gorge on junk food. I wanted to go to Bath and Body Works, stand in the middle of the store, and breathe. I wanted to stand there with my eyes closed and just smell, man. I wanted to lose myself in the total capitalism and consumerism of it all, the pure greediness, the pure indulgence, the pure American-ness of it all. I never made it that far. I didn't even make it out of the airport in Baltimore with all its Cinnabons, Starbucks, Brooks Brothers, and Brookstones before realizing that after where we'd been, after what we'd seen, home would never be home again.

~ Matthew J. Hefti

...I've returned and I look around me and think, I've missed my life. While I was off and alone, it went on here, without me, and I'm forever doomed to be a stranger in my own home.

~ Robin Hobb

Act with though awareness and love in the present moment then you will never need to worry about the thought of regret.

~ Matthew Donnelly

Holy shadows of the dead, I am not to blame for your cruel and bitter fate, but the accursed rivalry which brought sister nations and brother people to fight one another. I do not feel happy for this victory of mine. On the contrary, I would be glad, brothers, if I had all of you standing here next to me, since we are united by the same language, the same blood and the same vi

~ Alexander The Great

He felt weighted down by guilt and regret for what might have been his last words to all of them.

~ Karen Ann Wirtz

O youth! youth! you have no concerns, you possess, as it were, all the treasures of the universe, even grief is a comfort to you, even sadness suits your looks, you are self-assured and bold, you say: 'Look, I'm the only one alive!' while the very days of your life run away and vanish without a trace and without number and everything in you disappears like wax, like snow in the hear of the sun... And perhaps the entire et of your charm consists not in the possibility of doing everything, but in the possibility of thinking perhaps it consists precisely in the fact that you want only to scatter on the wind energies that you wouldn't know how to use for anything else, perhaps it consists in the fact that each one of us seriously regards himself as a spendthrift and seriously considers that he has the right to say: 'Oh, the things I could have done if only I hadn't wasted my time!

~ Ivan Turgenev

O youth! youth! you have no concerns, you possess, as it were, all the treasures of the universe, even grief is a comfort to you, even sadness suits your looks, you are self-assured and bold, you say: 'Look, I'm the only one alive!' while the very days of your life run away and vanish without a trace and without number and everything in you disappears like wax, like snow in the heat of the sun... And perhaps the entire secret of your charm consists not in the possibility of doing everything, but in the possibility of thinking you can do everything, perhaps it consists precisely in the fact that you want only to scatter on the wind energies that you wouldn't know how to use for anything else, perhaps it consists in the fact that each one of us seriously regards himself as a spendthrift and seriously considers that he has the right to say: 'Oh, the things I could have done if only I hadn't wasted my time!

~ Ivan Turgenev

There are things that money can't buy, things like fresh youth to replace the one you've hardly been aware of, things like lost opportunities which might conceivably have led to nothing, but which on the other hand might have led to fulfillment and serenity and new lives and passionate involvement. (Along, of course, with disinheritance!) And human nature being what it is this is the version you'll unquestionably believe.

~ Stephen Benatar

When there are no expectations affecting a choice, it should be taken immediately. Overthinking such a choice will only lead to headaches and missed opportunities. Moreover, when this choice is taken, all alternatives should be eliminated immediately to avoid the pitfalls of groundless regrets.

~ Charbel Tadros

I am grateful for all those dark years, even though in retrospect they seem like a long, bitter prayer that was answered finally.

~ Marilynne Robinson

A wise man will know what game to play to-day, and play it. We must not be governed by rigid rules, as by the almanac, but let the season rule us. The moods and thoughts of man are revolving just as steadily and incessantly as nature's. Nothing must be postponed. Take time by the forelock. Now or never! You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this, or the like of this. Where the good husbandman is, there is the good soil. Take any other course, and life will be a succession of regrets. Let us see vessels sailing prosperously before the wind, and not simply stranded barks. There is no world for the penitent and regretful.

~ Henry David Thoreau