Regret Quotes

When one door closes, another one opens, but sometimes we wait too long looking at the closed door, and never realize that another door has been opened.

For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, 'It might have been'.

A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.

Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.

The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.

The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd - The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world's existence. All these half-tones of the soul's consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.

When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.

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

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.

People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent.

All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry - all forms of fear - are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.

I sometimes wake in the early morning & listen to the soft breathing of my children & I think to myself, this is one thing I will never regret & I carry that quiet with me all day long.

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.

I'd rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done.

I don't do regrets. Regrets are pointless. It's too late for regrets. You've already done it, haven't you? You've lived your life. No point wishing you could change it.

We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment.

Suddenly she realized that what she was regretting was not the lost past but the lost future, not what had not been but what would never be.

J’aurais dû être plus gentille—I should have been more kind. That is something a person will never regret. You will never say to yourself when you are old, Ah, I wish I was not good to that person. You will never think that.

Dead people receive more flowers than the living ones because the regret is stronger than gratitude.

A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.

The lovely flowers embarrass me. They make me regret I am not a bee...

In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is no time for regrets or doubts. There is only time for decisions.

We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.

Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if possible, sincerely.

Our biggest regrets are not for the things we have done but for the things we haven't done.

I have many regrets, and I'm sure everyone does. The stupid things you do, you regret... if you have any sense, and if you don't regret them, maybe you're stupid.

I believe life is constantly testing us for our level of commitment, and life's greatest rewards are reserved for those who demonstrate a never-ending commitment to act until they achieve. This level of resolve can move mountains, but it must be constant and consistent. As simplistic as this may sound, it is still the common denominator separating those who live their dreams from those who live in regret.

To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.

I never regret anything. Because every little detail of your life is what made you into who you are in the end.

We need to forgive ourselves. 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.

One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead.

I have made a lot of mistakes falling in love, and regretted most of them, but never the potatoes that went with them.

It is better to look ahead and prepare than to look back and regret.

It isn't the great big pleasures that count the most; it's making a great deal out of the little ones—I've discovered the true secret of happiness, Daddy, and that is to live in the now. Not to be for ever regretting the past, or anticipating the future; but to get the most that you can out of this very instant.

Humans — who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals — have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and 'animals' is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them — without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer. The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions specious. They are just too much like us.

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.

You'd think, 'What if I make a mistake today, I'll regret it'. I don’t believe in regret, I feel everything leads us to where we are and we have to just jump forward, mean well, commit and just see what happens.

Regret is useless in life. It's in the past. All we have is now.

Oh, how I regret not having worn a bikini for the entire year I was twenty-six. If anyone young is reading this, go, right this minute, put on a bikini, and don't take it off until you're thirty-four.

The more anger towards the past you carry in your heart, the less capable you are of loving in the present.

Forget regret, or life is yours to miss.

To sum it all up, I must say that I regret nothing.

I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.

Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true.

Your children make it impossible to regret your past. They're its finest fruits. Sometimes the only ones.

Only as a warrior can one withstand the path of knowledge. A warrior cannot complain or regret anything. His life is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot possibly be good or bad. Challenges are simply challenges.

Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow. Delay may give clearer light as to what is best to be done.

And though I came to forget or regret all I have ever done, yet would I remember that once I saw the dragons aloft on the wind at sunset above the western isles; and I would be content.

You have to live in these moments, not for them. If you look too hard, they blow right by you. If you do not live enough, you will regret every breath.

I have no regrets. I wouldn't have lived my life the way I did if I was going to worry about what people were going to say.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.

Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.

It's not what you are, it's what you don't become that hurts.

Life will throw everything but the kitchen sink in your path, and then it will throw the kitchen sink. It's your job to avoid the obstacles. If you let them stop you or distract you, you're not doing your job, and failing to do your job will cause regrets that paralyze you more than a bad back.

You'll never regret eating blueberries or working up a sweat.

Neighborhoods built up all at once change little physically over the years as a rule...[Residents] regret that the neighborhood has changed. Yet the fact is, physically it has changed remarkably little. People's feelings about it, rather, have changed. The neighborhood shows a strange inability to update itself, enliven itself, repair itself, or to be sought after, out of choice, by a new generation. It is dead. Actually it was dead from birth, but nobody noticed this much until the corpse began to smell.

We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us.

I don't regret anything I ever do or say. I don't like to live my life being censored. I like to say what I feel, and I think people respect that because you're honest.

Never regret anything you have done with a sincere affection; nothing is lost that is born of the heart.

I'd rather regret doing something than not doing something.

I have discovered in my long life that there are many words and phrases which have more power than any spell of magick. The most well-known of these is, of course, I love you. But by far the most deadly is, if only. For these two words can strip a man's strength, his courage and his confidence. They become the father of regret and anguish and pain.

Only a fool wants war, but once a war starts then it cannot be fought half-heartedly. It cannot even be fought with regret, but must be waged with a savage joy in defeating the enemy, and it is that savage joy that inspires our bards to write their greatest songs about love and war.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Neither look forward where there is doubt nor backward where there is regret. Look inward and ask not if there is anything outside you want, but whether there is anything inside that you have not yet unpacked.

I think we should all live on the precipe of life, as fully and as dangerously as possible. Everyone should make the assumption that they're going through life only once. Tomorrow we die. Why not take chances, extend yourself? How awful it is when a person comes to the end of life full of regret.

Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves - regret for the past and fear of the future.

I love forms beyond my own, and regret the borders between us

In my flowery dreams there's always you. I do not regret it one bit.

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.

MY REGRETS ARE ABOUT THE PEOPLE I COULDN’T SAVE—Marines, soldiers, my buddies. I still feel their loss. I still ache for my failure to protect them.

I would rather regret the things that I have done than the things that I have not.

Never regret yesterday. Life is in you today and you make your tomorrow.

We all lose sometimes. We fail to get what we want. Friends and loved ones leave. We make a decision we regret. We try our hardest and come up short. It's not the losing that defines us. It's how we lose. It's what we do afterward.

September: it was the most beautiful of words, he’d always felt, evoking orange-flowers, swallows, and regret.

In looking back, I see nothing to regret and little to correct.

I am, now as before, of the opinion that I did the best that I could do for my nation. I therefore do not regret my conduct and will bear the consequences that result from my conduct.

It is better to believe in men too rashly, and regret, than believe too meanly. Men could be more than they are, if they would try for it. He has shown them that.

The bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late.

Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle, Old Age a regret.

But to deny fate is arrogance, to declare that we are the sole shapers of our existence is madness;if you deny fate life becomes the series of missed opportunities, a regret for what never was and could have been, a remorse of what was not done and could have been done, and the present is wasted, twisted into another missed oppurtunity.

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

Once my heart was captured, reason was shown the door, deliberately and with a sort of frantic joy. I accepted everything, I believed everything, without struggle, without suffering, without regret, without false shame. How can one blush for what one adores?

Regret for time wasted can become a power for good in the time that remains, if we will only stop the waste and the idle, useless regretting.

Regrets are as personal as fingerprints.

In the end there is nothing to be done but to state clearly what has been done, without shame or regret, and say: Here I am, and this is what I am. Now deal with me as you see fit. That is your right. Mine is to stand by the act, and pay the price. You do what you must do, and pay for it. So in the end all things are simple.

I have no regrets. If you regret things, you're sort of stepping backwards. I'm a believer in going forwards.

If you love somebody; You better let it out; Don't hold it back; While you're trying to figure it out; Cause the only real pain a heart can ever know; Is the sorrow of regret; When you don't let your feelings show. So, did you say it, Did you mean it?

I often regret that I have spoken; never that I have been silent.

One of the great dreams of man must be to find some place between the extremes of nature and civilization where it is possible to live without regret.

I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, "˜OK, I'm looking back on my life. I want to minimise the number of regrets I have.' And I knew that when I was 80, I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed, I wouldn't regret that. But I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that that would haunt me every day.

And I never started to plow in my life That some one did not stop in the road And take me away to a dance or picnic. I ended up with forty acres; I ended up with a broken fiddle— And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories, And not a single regret.

It took me less than half a lifetime to realize that regret is one of the few guaranteed certainties. Sooner or later everything is touched by it, despite our naive and senseless hope that just this time we will be spared its cold hand on our heart.

The urge is always with me to retouch yesterday's canvas with today's paintbrush and cover the things that fill me with regret,

A great source of calamity lies in regret and anticipation; therefore a person is wise who thinks of the present alone, regardless of the past or future.

Apologizes are pointless, regrets come too late. What matters is you can move, on you can grow.

In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness; we are each the uncompanioned hermit and recluse of an hour or a day; we understand our fellows of the cell to whatever age of history they may belong.

There were times when I thought I got a bit more punishment than was coming to me, but I don't regret a minute of it now. Each of us must be tempered in some fire. Nobody had more to do with choosing the fire that tempered me than myself, and instead of finding fault with the fire I give thanks that I had the metal to take the temper and hold it.

We all have to learn to live with our losses, and to use our regrets to spur us on in the future.

You won't regret the men you never killed, but you will regret the women you passed up.