Regret Quotes

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

~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

What cannot be repaired is not to be regretted.

~ Samuel Johnson

Instead of blaming yourself for something you cannot undo, let it define you.

~ Shaun Hick

Mistakes and regret, desease and death...ain't recognized by mind that capable on changing them into otherwise.

~ Toba Beta

The only mistake you can make is not asking for help.

~ Sandeep Jauhar

There’s a difference between a mistake and a regret. Everything up to this moment has made this moment. If you can change a mistake, then go out and do what you can to change it. If you can’t change it, there’s no use regretting it because it will just make you miserable. Live right now, even if that involves dealing with the consequences of your actions. Time travel always ends badly.

~ Rebecca Mckinsey

Maybe he was going to hell. Except, he could’ve sworn that was where he’d been the past ten years.

~ Kelly Moran

Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, It might have been.

~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

If I'm sincere today, what does it matter if I regret it tomorrow?

~ José Saramago

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

~ Sarah Dessen

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.

~ Boris Pasternak

They were involved in that awkward procedure of getting to unknow each other.

~ John Irving

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.

~ Nick Hornby

Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.

~ Arthur Miller

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.

~ Katherine Mansfield

There are two kinds of guilt: the kind that drowns you until you’re useless, and the kind that fires your soul to purpose.

~ Sabaa Tahir

We were never lovers, and we never will be, now. I do not regret that, however. I regret the conversations we never had, the time we did not spend together. I regret that I never told him that he made me happy, when I was in his company. The world was the better for his being in it. These things alone do I now regret: things left unsaid. And he is gone, and I am old.

~ Neil Gaiman

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.

~ Jude Watson

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

~ Jodi Picoult

Don't let yesterday take up too much of today.

~ John Wooden

The expression in her eyes was bitter as nightshade. 'You ask me about regret? Let me tell you a few things about regret, my darling. There is no end to it. You cannot find the beginning of the chain that brought us from there to here. Should you regret the whole chain, and the air between, or each link separately, as if you could uncouple them? Do you regret the beginning which ended so badly, or just the ending itself? I've given more thought to this question than you can begin to imagine.

~ Janet Fitch

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...

~ Laini Taylor

My jealousy is a living thing. Shifting, changing, growing. Like my rage and my mother's regret.

~ Katja Millay

I just wish I’d asked you sooner. We could’ve had ages . . . months . . . years maybe. . . .

~ J.k. Rowling

And at that moment Jude thought something that he would never forgive himself for.He wished that he had never met any of them.

~ Melina Marchetta

Speak when you're angry, and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret.

~ Lawrence J. Peters

Man, don't ever be sorry you don't want to kill someone.

~ Michael Grant

Do you still believe that if you truly want something enough it can happen? I ask. I think of all the times I wanted to stop the world from spinning, all the times I wanted to go back and start over again. All the things I've wanted to undo or take back. Did I not want them enough?

~ Carrie Ryan

Sorry I painted the word 'twat' on your garage door.

~ David Shrigley

The first week of August hangs at the very top of the summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after.

~ Natalie Babbitt

In that moment I understood that the cruelest words in the universe are if only.

~ Lisa See

She had been wrong to think it wouldn't matter that much to him, yes, he took her for granted, of course he did , but he took her for granted - not like an old coat in the corner of a dark cupboard, as she'd put it to herself , but like the very air that he breathed .

~ Ahdaf Soueif

Name me no names for my disease,With uninforming breath;I tell you I am none of these,But homesick unto death —Homesick for hills that I had known,For brooks that I had crossed,...Before I met this flesh and boneAnd followed and was lost… .And though they break my heart at last,Yet name no name of ills.Say only, Here is where he passed,Seeking again those hills.

~ Witter Bynner

I wouldn't waste a day, not an hour, not a moment. Take what you want and damn caution. Live, enjoy. Feed ravenously. Or the biggest regret you'll have at the end of your life is wasted time.

~ Nora Roberts

That night as I lay in bed, I thought of several things I could have said and mourned the fact that my wit usually bloomed late, peaking when it no longer mattered, during the solitary hours close to midnight.

~ Siri Hustvedt

I stepped closer to him and lowered my voice. 'If you could change one thing, what would it be?'He pulled the sheep pendant from his pocket. A question filled his eyes. I held out my hand. Riley placed it in my palm and I curled my finger around the necklace, pressing the metal into my skin.

~ Maria V. Snyder

I thought of the things that had happened to me over the years, and of how little I had made happen.

~ Julian Barnes

Four things do not come back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity.

~ Ted Chiang

We should have taken our chances back then, when we were young and beautiful and didn't even know it.

~ Lois Mcmaster Bujold

Already she could feel the stunning weight of a lifetime of regret for letting him go, and she knew that it was enought to bury her alive.

~ Anna Godbersen