Best 2371 quotes in «regret quotes» category

In times like these I always cheered myself up with a certain story. I forgot just when I first heard it, or who I heard it from... but, back when I was young it would cheer me up when I was feeling depressed. Basically, you think of life in terms of a single 24 hour day. So if you take the average human lifespan, to be around 72 years, then dividing that by 24... that comes to 3 years per hour. Meaning, that if you were 18 it'd only be 6 AM! 6 in the morning is nothing! Schools aren't even open by then! It's only been a couple of hours before sunrise, the day's just begun! So if you're 18, you can still fix you life by then! In fact even if you were 30 year old, that's still only 10 AM! The sun's still high, and there's still 2 hours until noon! You still have the whole afternoon to fix your life! You could still make something of yourself. I've always been thinking that, but... I'm now 45 years old! 45 divided by 3 is 15 meaning, that the time 3PM! Ring Ring Ring! I can hear the clock, ringing in my mind! There's only 2 hours before work is over at 5PM! I can't redo anything, it's almost time to go home already.

In twenty years you could say and do a lot you wish you hadn't. In twenty years you could store up a lot of regrets. And then, when it was too late, when there was no one left to say "I'm sorry" to, "I didn't mean it" to, you could stop sleeping for regret, stop eating, talking, working, for regret. You could stop wanting to live. You could want to die for regret. It was only remembering the good times that kept you from taking the knife from the kitchen drawer and, holding it so, tightly in your fist, on the bed, naked to no purpose except that that was how you came into the world and how your best moments in the world had been spent--holding it so, roll onto the blade, slowly so that it slid like love between your ribs and into that stupidly pumping muscle in your chest that kept you regretting.

I owed the greater apology, but at the same time I knew that was done was done, that no matter what I said now I would never be able to make it right.

I rarely regret my action but I often regret my inaction.

I question the moral integrity of anyone who says they have no regrets.

I realize I should be mortified that Past Hazel was so dramatically inappropriate, but it's not like I'm that much better now, and regret isn't really my speed anyway.

I refuse to suffer the torment of regret that comes with living a “what if” life.

I refuse to live a life of regret. I refuse to hope things will get better in the future when I have complete control over making them the best possible right here and now. We have one life-and none of us knows how long our life will be or what will becomme of it. The possibilities are truly infinite.

I refuse to suffer the torment of regret that comes from living a "what if" life.

I regret exceedingly that the disputes between the protestants and Roman Catholics should be carried to the serious alarming height mentioned in your letters. Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause; and I was not without hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy of the present age would have put an effectual stop to contentions of this kind. [Letter to Sir Edward Newenham, 22 June 1792]

I remembered that once, as a child, I was filled with wonder, that I had marveled at tri-folded science projects, encyclopedias, and road atlases. I left much of that wonder somewhere back in Baltimore. Now I had the privilege of welcoming it back like a long-lost friend, though our reunion was laced with grief; I mourned over all the years that were lost. The mourning continues. Even today, from time to time, I find myself on beaches watching six-year-olds learn to surf, or at colleges listening to sophomores slip from English to Italian, or at cafés seeing young poets flip though "The Waste Land," or listening to the radio where economists explain economic things that I could've explored in my lost years, mourning, hoping that I and all my wonder, my long-lost friend, have not yet run out of time, though I know that we all run out of time, and some of us run out of it faster.

I shouldn’t have gone out so far, fish,” he said. “Neither for you nor for me. I’m sorry, fish.

Is it a rare gift to gain new insight on past events? Or a curse, being forced to rehash things no longer within one's control?

I should probably get a stone. A stone would be good. A stone would save me, would salvage all the damage we had already done, all the things we had given up or lost.

I smoked one too many cigarettes- I heard one too many lies- Gambler on too many bets- And lost it all to this life.

I smoked one too many cigarettes- I heard one too many lies- Gambled on too many bets- And lost it all to this life.

I spent so much time thinking about regret. Regret and its accompanying conviction that there is a perfect, placid life, one's own alternate existence, pristine and simple, existing in a neighboring reality in which certain turns in the road were never set upon. And it isn't true. Any of it. I knew that. I had learned it. But it is an irresistible fantasy, if only because it implies we have some control over our fates.

I spent the past two years fearing the worst, that I chose safe arms to hold me when his arms weren’t the arms I longed to be in, nor were they really safe. I thought it’s what I deserved. I thought I couldn’t belong in the arms I wanted to really hold me.

Is there never any escaping the junkshop of the self?

I stilled. I was sure I'd imagined that all too familiar voice, but there he was. His bright blue eyes saying far more than his words ever could. His iris' held pain and anger and my shame increased tenfold. How foolish I was to think what I'd done would matter to him, or how his reaction would mean so much to me.

I stumbled upon something and someone so magnificent I was truly blind to it.

I suppose we faulty creatures can never feel so much for the irreproachable as for those who are bruised in the struggle with their own faults. It is a very ancient story, that of the lost sheep--but it comes up afresh every day." "That is a way of speaking--it is not acted upon, it is not real," said Gwendolen, bitterly. "You admire Miss Lapidoth because you think her blameless, perfect. And you know you would despise a woman who had done something you thought very wrong." "That would depend entirely upon her own view of what she had done," said Deronda. "You would be satisfied if she were very wretched, I suppose," said Gwendolen, impetuously. "No, not satisfied--full of sorrow for her. It was not a mere way of speaking. I did not mean to say that the finer nature is not more adorable; I meant that those who would be comparatively uninteresting beforehand may become worthier of sympathy when they do something that awakens in them a keen remorse. Lives are enlarged in different ways. I dare say some would never get their eyes opened if it were not for a violent shock from the consequences of their own actions. And when they are suffering in that way one must care for them more than, for the comfortably self-satisfied.

I tap my pen against the Edith Piaf record, thinking of how to express my future sentiments when my journey comes to an end. Either in the arms of the girl I love, or buried in a box of memories, this note will be the last. 'Ma femme, Je ne regrette rien, because I found everything. I love you.

It could have been avoided. This couch misery spiral, this … loss … I could’ve avoided the bulk of it simply by doing more. I could’ve given a shit...

It does no good to regret the past... yet regret remains just the same.

I think about all the people I wish could die instead of you.

I thought of all the hardships and people that I had lost in the past few days alone, but, most of all, I thought of how I didn't regret any of it.

It had taken thirty years for me to understand that regrets do not dissipate, they do not abate into sadness—they harden until they have formed into a small fist that often rests quietly in the pit of your stomach but that can suddenly, and without warning, land a punch so powerful you are left doubled over in pain, gasping for breath.

I think we’re already dead, dude. Not everyone, just Deckers. The whole Death-Cast thing seems too fantasy to be true. Knowing when our last day is going down so we can live it right? Straight-up fantasy. The first afterlife kicks off when Death-Cast tells us to live out our day knowing it’s our last; that way we’ll take full advantage of it, thinking we’re still alive. Then we enter the next and final afterlife without any regrets

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.

It is a crushing moment when you realize that your life has either been a series of huge mistakes, or worse; it hasn’t.

It hurt her to stir up these feelings, but yet she knew that that was the best part of her soul, and that that part of her soul would quickly be smothered in the life she was leading.

It is not the jumps you made in your life but mostly the jumps you haven’t made are the real source of regrets in your life!

It is foolish to regret anything form one's past.

It is regret for the absence of his loved one which causes a mourner to grieve: yet it is clear that this in itself is bearable enough; for we do not weep at their being absent or intending to be absent during their lifetime, although when they leave our sight we have no more pleasure in them. What tortures us, therefore, is an idea.

It is said that when a person is experiencing death, and when shards of life begins to disintegrate from his mortal body, he starts getting a flashback of his entire life right in front of his eyes, like a reverie – a dream, or sometimes even a nightmare. When a person is dying, he can get a brief look of all the significant milestones of his life right in front of his eyes, as if time doesn’t exist and he is still right there, in that moment, where everything is possible; where he can get a piece of forever, while living in that uninvited flashback, and dying in his life, both at the same time.

It is well for the unfortunate to be resigned, but for the guilty there is no peace. The agonies of remorse poison the luxury there is otherwise sometimes found in indulging the excess of grief.

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

I touched curiosity, I kissed sin, I felt regret, And I was forgiven. But life won't let me forget.

It’s easy to point out someone else’s mistake, harder to recognize your own. Especially because most people—except the lucky few like ourselves—are forced to live with their mistakes. So they learn to justify their mistakes, build on them, until they can look back and convince themselves that their mistake was inevitable all along, a good choice, in fact. An unwed teenage mother can look back at her unexpected pregnancy fondly six years down the road once the child’s out of her hair and in school all day. She wouldn’t dare go back and fix that mistake because it’s become part of her life.

It seems there is no shortage of regret among the young -- but then, they are young, they make mistakes. They have time to correct them and the courage to admit their failings aloud.

It seems to me that our lives are consumed by countless wasting years, but only a few shining moments. I missed mine. Yes is what I should have said. Of course I should have said yes.

It made him wonder if all things taken from their home too soon lost some of their bloom.

It seemed like you had the world at your fingertips, but I guess what I missed was how you bit your lip at every question.

It seemed to Rosa Lublin that the whole peninsula of Florida was weighted down with regret. Everyone had left behind a real life. Here they had nothing. They were all scarecrows, blown about under the murdering sunball with empty ribcages.

It's important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse. That bungled goodbye hurts me to this day.

It’s my life and I’m not afraid to LIVE it! I would rather experience the ups and downs of a life I have chosen, than to suffer the regret of a life I have settled for.

It’s not that we have to quit this life one day, but it’s how many things we have to quit all at once: music, laughter, the physics of falling leaves, automobiles, holding hands, the scent of rain, the concept of subway trains... if only one could leave this life slowly!

It’s not just other people we need to forgive, Mitch,” he finally whispered. We also need to forgive ourselves.” Ourselves? “Yes. For all the things we didn’t do. All the things we should have done. You can’t get stuck on the regrets of what should have happened. That doesn’t help you when you get to where I am.

It’s not the spirits that call to us,' he murmured. “It is our own failures and regrets we see.