REGRET QUOTES
quotations about regret
How can you not have any regrets? It's impossible. No regrets? Bulls**t. I don't believe anybody who tells me that.
CHUCK BARRIS
Esquire, January 2003
Hopes and regrets are the sweetest links of existence.
MISS L. E. LANDON
attributed, Day's Collacon
See much and get rid of what is dangerous and be careful in acting on the rest and your causes for regret will be few.
CONFUCIUS
The Analects
Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
AMBROSE BIERCE
The Devil's Dictionary
A ton of regret never makes an ounce of difference.
GRENVILLE KLEISER
Dictionary of Proverbs
O that word REGRET!
There have been nights and morns when we have sighed,
"Let us alone, Regret! We are content
To throw thee all our past, so thou wilt sleep
For aye." But it is patient, and it wakes;
It hath not learned to cry itself to sleep,
But plaineth on the bed that it is hard.
We did amiss when we did wish it gone
And over: sorrows humanize our race;
Tears are the showers that fertilize this world;
And memory of things precious keepeth warm
The heart that once did hold them.
JEAN INGELOW
"Regret"
Something will be gathered from the tablet of the most faultless day for regret.
MRS. SIGOURNEY
attributed, Day's Collacon
The dead, whatever they leave behind them, have nothing to regret. Good Christians are the only creatures in the world that are truly good; and them they will see again, and see them improved: therefore them they regret not. Regret is for the living. What we get, we soon lose; and what we lose, we regret. The most obvious consolation in this case seems to be, that we who regret others, shall quickly become objects of regret ourselves; for mankind are continually passing off in a rapid succession.
WILLIAM COWPER
letter to the Rev. John Newton, January 13, 1787
Regrets for past actions should chasten our future life.
JAMES ELLIS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Remorse is the poison of life.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Jane Eyre
Men become cannibals of their own hearts; remorse, regret, and restless impatience usurp the place of more wholesome feeling: every thing seems better than that which is.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY
Lodore
Regret is ... an unavoidable result of any loss, for in loss we lose the tomorrow that we needed to make right our yesterday or today.
GERALD LAWSON SITTSER
A Grace Disguised
Is it really so difficult to tell a good action from a bad one? I think one usually knows right away or a moment afterward, in a horrid flash of regret.
MARY MCCARTHY
My Confession
We don't have to be defined by the things we did or didn't do in our past. Some people allow themselves to be controlled by regret. Maybe it's a regret, maybe it's not. It's merely something that happened. Get over it.
PITTACUS LORE
I Am Number Four
Love lives in sealed bottles of regret.
SEÁN O'FAOLÁIN
Saturday Evening Post, August 13, 1966
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
Lock and Key
Regret of neglected opportunity is the worst hell that a living soul can inhabit.
RAFAEL SABATINI
Scaramouche
The best evidence of regret for wrong actions in the past, is right ones in the future; it is the best apology we can give to the world and to ourselves.
T. EDWARDS
attributed, Day's Collacon
In history as in human life, regret does not bring back a lost moment and a thousand years will not recover something lost in a single hour.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Stellar Moments in Human History
Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.
SYDNEY J. HARRIS
Sam Horn's Tongue Fu!