Quotes About Regret

“He invaded my consciousness in the same way the ocean washes up on the beach, with sweeping tides of longing and regret, and with such power and raw force, I often woke with the taste of salt from my tears clinging to my skin. Joanna about Ben”

— Vicki Pettersson

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

— George Sand

“Regret is just perfectionism plus time.”

— B.J. Novak

“What we take for granted can destroy us. Regret becomes a living thing, digging into your skin, seeping into your veins, until it invades your lungs, cutting off your air supply. It has the power to bring you to your knees and make you beg for death. I beg for release from my existence every second of the day.”

— Alaska Angelini

“No matter what happens i choose to value the memories of the good times, grow from the lessons of the bad times because i don't regret a single moment of it, every detail made me who i am.”

— Tilicia Haridat

“I wanted to say something to him about regret, about how I didn't really believe in the idea of regret because it was always based on what might have happened. People always held up the now, the concrete now, and compared it to what might have been, and that wasn't a fair comparison.”

— Kim Culbertson

“You have been given a second chance to start your life over. You can't throw this opportunity away. If you do you will be a colossal fool. If you get the chance to do something and don't do it then you'll simply live with regret. That's a worse situation than trying something daring and maybe not succeeding. At least you tried. Isn't that what you want to show your kids?”

— Lorena Bathey

“I think all people have things in their past they need forgiveness for. In their present as well. And they need to be extended grace for what they regret.”

— James L. Rubart

“The trick, it seems to me, is to stave off regret. That's what the whole thing is about. And we can't stave it off forever, because it is impossible not to make the mistakes that let regret in, but the best of us manage to limp on into our sixties or seventies before we succumb. Me, I made it to about thirty-seven, and David made it to the same age, and my brother gave up the ghost even before that. And I'm not sure that there is a cure for regret. I suspect not.”

— Nick Hornby

“After wearing and wasting her palpitating heart with every engine of regret that lonely inexperience could devise, common sense had illumined her. She felt that she would do well to be useful again-to taste anew sweet independence at any price. The past was past; whatever it had been, it was no more at hand. Whatever its consequences, time would close over them;”

— Thomas Hardy

“Just behave and don't do anything you'll regret in the morning." Her gaze drifted over my shoulder, and she mustered, "Wouldn't be much."
"Mom!"
Laughing, she gave me a light shove. "I'm old, not dead.”

— Jennifer L. Armentrout

“And you threaten to abandon us to Voldemort if we do not comply with your wishes."
Harry's voice was razor-sharp. "I regret to inform you that you are not the center of the universe. I'm not threatening to walk out on magical Britain. I'm threatening to walk out on you. I am not a meek little Frodo. This is my quest and if you want in you will play by my rules."
Dumbledore's face was still cold. "I am beginning to doubt your suitability as the hero, Mr. Potter."
Harry's return gaze was equally icy. "I am beginning to doubt your suitability as my Gandalf, Mr. Dumbledore. Boromir was at least a plausible mistake. What is this Nazgul doing in my Fellowship?”

— Eliezer Yudkowsky

“We all have things that we regret, thinks we wish we could change, but we can't dwell on them.”

— Julie Kagawa

“I am not going to live with regret for not having tried.”

— Kim Harrison

“Sawyer reached out and twirled a strand of my hair around his finger. "Even if I was wrong to take you without a thought to Beau's feelings, I can't make myself regret it. I've had three amazing years with you, Ash."
I didn't know what to say. I'd had good times too but I did regret choosing the wrong Vincent boy. He gave me one last sad smile then dropped my hair and walked away.”

— Abbi Glines

“I regret the passing of the studio system. I was very appreciative of it because I had no talent.”

— Lucille Ball

“We all get waves of regret
sometimes
but instead of
dwelling
on what you can't change,
start focusing on what you can.”

— Alexandra Elle

“I never talked about architecture with my father, which I regret.”

— Bernard Tschumi

“I'm conflicted about the lyric tattoo thing. I feel like that's a lifetime decision, and I always feel like, 'I hope you don't regret this a couple years from now when you get tired of that song.'”

— Sam Hunt

“Truly there are different kinds of pain. But the most agonizing is the pain of regret, for which there is no lasting relief and no remedy.”

— Richelle E. Goodrich

“No subject is more touched on than love, in the human life stories as well as in the literary corpus they have left us ... No subject, either, is as discussed, as controversial, especially during the final period of human history, when the cyclothymic fluctuations concerning the belief in love became constant and dizzying. In conclusion, no subject seems to have preoccupied man as much; even money, even the satisfaction derived from combat and glory, loses by comparison, its dramatic power in human life stories. Love seems to have been, for humans of the final period, the acme and the impossible, the regret and the grace, the focal point upon which all suffering and joy could be concentrated.”

— Michel Houellebecq

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

— Toba Beta

“Every comedian dreams of hosting 'The Tonight Show' and, for seven months, I got to. I did it my way, with people I love, and I do not regret a second.”

— Conan O'Brien

“I regret those times when I've chosen the dark side. I've wasted enough time not being happy.”

— Jessica Lange

“What's the advantage of fear or the benefit of regret or the bonus of granting misery a foothold even if death is embracing you? My old abbot used to say, "Life is only precious if you wish it to be." I look at it like the last bite of a wonderful meal. Do you enjoy it, or does the knowledge that there is no more to follow make it so bitter that you would ruin the experience? - Myron on facing death”

— Michael J. Sullivan

“I play piano very badly. That's my great regret.”

— Marcello Giordani

“The reality that I had known no longer existed. The places that we have known belong now only to the little world of space on which we map them for our own convenience. None of them was ever more than a thin slice, held between the contiguous impressions that composed our life at that time; remembrance of a particular form is but regret for a particular moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the years.”

— Marcel Proust

“For regret, like desire, seeks not to analyse but to gratify itself. When one begins to love, one spends one's time, not in getting to know what one's love really is, but in arranging for tomorrow's rendezvous.”

— Marcel Proust

“As they were falling asleep, Gillian could have sworn she heard Ben say Fate
as if they were meant to be together from the start and every single thing they'd ever done in their lives had been leading to this moment. If you thought that way, you could fall asleep without regret. You could put your whole life in place, with all the sadness and the sorrow, and still feel that at last you had everything you ever wanted. In spite of the lousy odds and all the wrong turns, you might actually discover that you were the one who'd won.”

— Alice Hoffman

“I think I felt that I was very well known for my figure and needed to keep that up for my work. And I regret all of it. I felt fraudulent and very shameful.”

— Jamie Lee Curtis

“I used to look back at pictures and cringe but actually I'm quite proud that I've had fun with fashion and don't always look perfect. The only regret I have is when I look at something I wore when I was very young and it obviously looks like it belonged to someone else.”

— Emma Watson

“He imagines that when I see him indefatigable I'll regret my decision. Such is his miserable scheme. As though I were short of slaves!”

— Samuel Beckett

“So far, the biggest regret I have in regards to the world of 'Red Queen' is that I didn't get to world-build enough. I don't think I did enough work explaining how the world came to be, and while I'm planning to go more into it, I'm a greedy writer, and I'm always going to wish I had more room to delve into the complexities of a fantasy realm.”

— Victoria Aveyard

“The wolf who wins is the wolf you feed. The evil wolf feeds on anger, guilt, sorrow, lies, and regret. The good wolf needs a diet of love and honesty, spiced up with big spoonfuls of compassion and faith. So if you want the good wolf to win, you're going to have to starve the other one.”

— Deborah Harkness

“I want to flee toward a perpetual dawn with a swiftness and relentlessness that leaves no room for remorse, regret, or repentance. I want to outstrip the inventive man who is a curse to the earth in order to stand once again before an impassable deep which not even the strongest wings will enable me to traverse.”

— Henry Miller

“Isn't it better to regret things you've done, than regret things you've never even tried?”

— Inio Asano

“I can make a case that I regret nothing. After all, most of my mistakes turned out to be things I survived, or turned into funny stories, or, on occasion, even made money from.”

— Nora Ephron

“It isn't your fault. It's nothing you did. You cannot change who you are, any more than you can change black eyes to blue. You can only accept it. If you fight yourself, you will lose, and fighting leaves scars. But you will survive them. I have survived many. You will do good things you will regret, and bad things you won't, but you must keep going”

— Michelle Hodkin

“Why, when the world gets to understand about it I expect that two men or two women, or a man and a woman, will come in here, and say to me, 'We have quarrelled and outraged each other, we have injured our friend, our wife, our husband; we regret, we would forgive, but we cannot, because we remember. Put between us the atonement of forgetfulness, that we may love each other as of old.”

— Edward Bellamy

“The beauty of life is, while we cannot undo what is done, we can see it, understand it, learn from it and change. So that every new moment is spent not in regret, guilt, fear or anger, but in wisdom, understanding and love.”

— Jennifer Edwards

“Love lives in sealed bottles of regret.”

— Sean O Faolain

“My father was a great fan of the horses. His only regret was that I never ran in the Grand National.”

— Steve Ovett

“If you don't set goals, you can't regret not reaching them.”

— Yogi Berra

“'He's the most charming man. He's the Oscar Wilde of our time. I only had one moment with him in that film and it's a great source of regret. I love spending time with him. He's always very open and effusive. His interest in you is genuine.'”

— Russell Crowe

“Dear as remembered kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd On lips that are for others; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; O Death in Life, the days that are no more!”

— Alfred Lord Tennyson

“Regret is something you've got to just live with, you can't drink it away. You can't run away from it. You can't trick yourself out of it. You've just got to own it.”

— Anthony Bourdain

“My best life advice:Take the high road.No matter how much stress, or strain, or consternation you are facing, take the high road.You will never regret it.”

— Tim Gunn

“One of the things I regret about not putting in that book or I think it's there but I didn't really elaborate on it, is contraception. I came across someone who articulated very clearly that one of the things which makes our approach to Buddhist practice in regards to sex different these days than it was in Buddhist times, is the simple existence of reliable contraception, which is a no brainer but I missed really addressing it in the book.”

— Brad Warner

“I must place on record my regret that the human race ever learned to fly.”

— Winston Churchill

“I loathed every day and regret every moment I spent in a school.”

— Woody Allen