Quotes About Regret

A man can spend his whole existence never learning the simple lesson that he has only one life and that if he fails to do what he wants with it, nobody else really cares.

Maybe when I'm dead, I'll be forgiven, but I'm afraid I'll also be forgotten.

A man can spend his whole existence never learning the simple lesson that he has only one life and that if he fails to do what he wants with it, nobody else really cares.--Louis Auchincloss

Polly's embarrassment revealed her regret that she should have given in to the age-old temptation of saying something disagreeable even to her oldest and most useful friend. But she had committed herself now. "I relate it," she replied in a bolder tone, "to my apprehension that you are using your perfectly proper wish to do great and noble things with Eric's money to disguise your equally natural desire to keep it out of the greedy hands of his family.

But I'm afraid you've blotted your copybook fatally with Clara.

Give me some more grog, dear friend; when I talk of the days of my youth my belly yearns for it, and I am not ashamed to beg.

Wat vermodderd was, was vermodderd: het leven, eenmaal vergooid, was niet meer terug te winnen.

Plotseling omhuiverde Lucius de heilige vrees voor Wat Is Geweest. En kwam hem klein voor, zijn eigen leven en leed...

Groote God, wat was het ellendig... dat aftakelen, dat oud worden, dat zich voortslepen van de dagen, de jaren; wat was het ellendig, dat alles wat je kreeg van het leven, je betalen moest met je jonge dagen eerst, en later met je oudere jaren - als was het leven een bank, waarop je wissels trok, - als was je bestaan een kapitaal, waarvan je leefde, en nooit spaarde een cent - zoodat, als je dood zoû zijn, je ook alles en alles verspild had...

Don't fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have.

Don't fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life is: could have, might have, and should have.

Don't fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have

One can't relive one's life. Forgiveness is not what's difficult one's always too ready to forgive. And it does no good, that's obvious.

La jeunesse est un temps merveilleux qui aboutit presque toujours à une trahison de soi-même dont on ignore comment elle s'est faite, et dont le reste de la vie se passe à contempler les conséquences dans un consentement dont on ne s'étonne même plus.

Peut-être les Chapdelaine pensaient-ils à cela et chacun à sa manière ; le père avec l'optimisme invincible d'un homme qui se sait fort et se croit sage ; la mère avec un regret résigné ; et les autres, les jeunes, d'une façon plus vague et sans amertume (...) Maria Chapdelaine, Louis Hémon, éd. Gallimard, coll. littérature québéquoise, p. 40

I'm thinking about the cat dying, Dulcie and her knife against my throat, Mrs Irvin and her St Thomas bone... But never my sister. A brother rarely thinks about his sister.

It's because his wife left him. That's why he's acting funny. She left him the other night. While she was putting her bags into the taxi he was outside on the footpath begging her to stay. On his knees! Why are men so embarrassing? Bev

En als de vliegers weg zijn dan is het droefste in uw leven dat ge zooveel menschen hebt gekend, en dat ge die nooit meer zult horen of zien.

When my death us do part Then shall forgiven and forgiving meet again, Or will it be, as always was, too late?

If only, if only," the woodpecker sighs, "The bark on the tree was as soft as the skies." While the wolf waits below, hungry and lonely, Crying to the moo-oo-oon, "If only, If only.

It was all because of his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing great-great-grandfather!

Goodbye, goodbye! There was so much to love, I could not love it all; I could not love it enough. — Louise Bogan, from "After the Persian," The Blue Estuaries: Poems: 1923-1968 . (Farrar, Straus and Giroux October 31, 1995) Originally published November 1st 1974.

I have been taking stock of my 50 years since I left Wichita. How I have existed fills me with horror for I failed in everything. Spelling, arithmetic, writing, swimming, tennis, golf, dancing, singing, acting, wife, mistress, whore, friend, even cooking. And I do not excuse myself with the usual escape of not trying. I tried with all my heart.

I never gave away anything without wishing I had kept it; nor kept anything without wishing I had given it away.