Regret Quotes

You can tell it any way you want but that's the way it is. I should of done it and I didn’t. And some part of me has never quit wishin I could go back. And I cant. I didn’t know you could steal your own life. And I didn’t know that it would bring you no more benefit than about anything else you might steal. I think I done the best with it I knew how but it still wasn’t mine. It never has been.

~ Cormac Mccarthy

Only sometimes when we pick and choose among the rules we discover later that we have set aside something precious in the process.

~ Helen Simonson

It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.She laughed. 'Really?'The machine shrugged and let go of her hand. 'Oh, no. It's just something we tell ourselves.

~ Iain M. Banks

I have stared into the light and you are all my shadows.

~ Mike Carey

I still loved Marc desperately and couldn’t imagine life without him. Jace was…something else. Something I could feel but couldn’t articulate. Something I wanted, and hadn’t been able to resist in my grief-weakened state. He was something that would have to wait.

~ Rachel Vincent

I am fifty years old and I have never known what it is to love. I can write those words, know them to be true, but feel only the regret that a tone-deaf man must feel because he can't appreicate music, a regret less keen because it is for something never known, not for something lost.

~ P.d. James

Oh my God, what if you wake up some day, and you're 65, or 75, and you never got your memoir or novel written, or you didn't go swimming in those warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It's going to break your heart. Don't let this happen.

~ Anne Lamott

One can't reason away regret-it's a bit like falling in love, falling into regret.

~ Graham Greene

But you know all about that, being sorry and having no words to say something when you know you should but you just can't

~ Heather Gudenkauf

And it was pointless...to think how those years could have been put to better use, for he could hardly have put them to worse. There was no recovering them now. You could grieve endlessly for the loss of time and for the damage done therein. For the dead, and for your own lost self. But what the wisdom of the ages says is that we do well not to grieve on and on. And those old ones knew a thing or two and had some truth to tell...for you can grieve your heart out and in the end you are still where you were. All your grief hasn't changed a thing. What you have lost will not be returned to you. It will always be lost. You're left with only your scars to mark the void. All you can choose to do is to go on or not. But if you go on, it's knowing you carry your scars with you.

~ Charles Frazier

Being safe doesn't mean you won't be sorry.

~ Katerina Stoykova Klemer

Huizi would say, never look back to the past. Never regret. Even if there is emptiness ahead, never look back.

~ Xiaolu Guo

More than any of us, she had written her own story; yet she could not wash it out with all her tears, return to her victims what she had torn from them, and by so doing, save herself...

~ Sandra Worth

I don't buy 'regret' idea. I need life's good lesson.

~ Toba Beta

Some of our children are our justifications and some are but our regrets.

~ Kahlil Gibran

Its better to regrets what you did, than regret what you didn't do.

~ William Nolan

Those silly girls had no idea what they were really celebrating. They had no idea what it took to bring Agatha and her friends together seventy-five years ago. The Women's Society Club had been about supporting one another, about banding together to protect one another because no one else would. But it had turned into an ugly beast, a means by which rich ladies would congratulate themselves by giving money to the poor. And Agatha had let it happen. All her life, it seemed, she was making up for things she let happen.

~ Sarah Addison Allen

That morning, he was afraid of becoming old, and it was a very specific kind of old age he feared, one which had nothing to do with the number of years since your birth. He feared the premature old age of missed opportunities.

~ Daniel Alarcón

Jesus, Dolores, you've got to get yourself together. You've got responsibilities. Think about those sometimes - okay? - and get your fucking head right.Those were the last words his wife heard from him. He'd closed the door and walked down the stairs, paused on the last step. He thought of going back. He thought of going back up the stairs and into the apartment and somehow making it right. Or, if not right, at least softer.Softer. That would have been nice.

~ Dennis Lehane

Something he knew he had missed: the flower of life. But he thought of it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined would have been like despairing because one had not drawn the first prize in a lottery.

~ Edith Wharton

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.

~ Beverly Cleary

The critical question about regret is whether experience led to growth and new learning. Some people seem to keep on making the same mistakes, while others at least make new ones. Regret and remorse can be either paralyzing or inspiring. [p. 199]

~ Mary Catherine Bateson

I'd never understood the injunction not to regret anything, couldn't see how that wasn't cowardice...

~ China Miéville

To be now a sensible man, by and by a fool, and presently abeast!

~ William Shakespeare

Opportunities are rare in this life, and fairness, rarer still. So, when you discover a fair opportunity, go after as if it were your last because it very well might be.

~ Joel T. Mcgrath

I wish my life were a movie and I could take it into the editing room and totally cut this part out. And some other parts. Some other parts definitely need to be cut.

~ Susane Colasanti

Purification and redemption are such recurrent themes in ritual because there is a clear and ubiquitous need for them: we all do regrettable things as a result of our own circumstances, and new rituals are frequently invented in response to new circumstances.

~ Susan Cain

My handling of the situation with Jake proved that I was the same girl from eight years ago. I'd just gained a stone and lost my love for Shayne Ward.

~ Lynsey James

Careful, Sandi. You're about to let your bulldog mouth overload your bird-dog bite.

~ Peggy Webb

When I was young, I spent my days and nights trying to impress future generations. I spent them. They’re gone. All because I was deathly afraid of being forgotten. And then came the regret. The worst things of all worst things.

~ Miguel Syjuco

I don’t regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. There was no pleasure I did not experience.

~ Oscar Wilde

The tragedy of Dionysus: Wear a black robe at night, and white you’ll wear by morning; but wear a purple robe to the midnight feast, and when you wake you’ll dress in black to mourn your soul deceased.

~ Roman Payne

There is supercomputer somewhere in the Nevada desert whose sole function is to count the number of times that I have said the following, because it is unquantifiable by human minds at this point, but this time it’s really true: I should have stayed home.

~ David Rakoff

I hate New Year's Eve. One more chance to remember that you haven't yet done what you wanted. And to pretend it doesn't matter.

~ Gregory Maguire

It was like trying to bail out an ocean of water with a teaspoon.

~ Jodi Picoult

Love yourself, you won’t regret it ever.

~ M.f. Moonzajer

At the crossroad in my life, I didn't know which way to go. I just mindlessly choose a random direction... then, after regretting my decision I tried to retrace my steps. However, without even realizing it the sun had already set.

~ Nobuyuki Fukumoto

A woman once held a Canary in the palm of her hand and stroked her and whispered a careful warning. The canary, seeking some freedom to fly, went into the mine while the woman watched in worry. The mine was filled with toxic gases and the Canary began to sing. She flew into danger, realized the threats around her, and wished to return to a place of refuge.

~ Donna Lynn Hope

Don Bradman will bat no more against England, and two contrary feelings dispute within us: relief, that our bowlers will no longer be oppressed by this phenomenon; regret, that a miracle has been removed from among us. So must ancient Italy have felt when she heard of the death of Hannibal.

~ R.c. Robertson-Glasgow

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

~ Stephen King