Quotes About Regret

Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge.

Perhaps she had seen what Jack would look like as an older boy, or a grown man, and what she saw in him riveted her with longing and desperation. (Or with fear and degradation, Jack Burns would one day conclude, because this same older girl suddenly looked away.)

Jack wouldn't have wanted to be buried there. If you were lying in that graveyard, facing south, you would be looking at an ugly seventeen-story high-rise for the rest of your death.

As Jack would discover, it's remarkable how you can miss people you barely knew—even those people you never especially liked.

Don't you see, Johnny? If he could, he would cut off his hands for you—that's how it makes him feel, to have touched that baseball bat, to have swung that bat with those results. It's how we all feel—you and me and Owen. We've lost a part of ourselves.

My father was not a brave or an honorable man; but he had once tried to be brave and honorable. He had been afraid, but he had dared—in his fashion—to pray for Owen Meany; he had done that pretty well.

Then I got up and went to the bathroom door and asked her if there was anything I could get her. "Thank you," she whispered. "Just go out and get me yesterday and most of today," she said. "I want them back." "Is that all?" I said. "Just yesterday and today?" "That's all," she said. "Thank you.

May you be spared such a moment of recognition as this—namely, the conviction that most of your happiness lies behind you, and the lion's share of your loneliness looms ahead.

I remember when you kissed me, he wrote to Dr. Larch. I wasn't really asleep. Yes, thought Dr. Larch, I remember that, too. He rested in the dispensary. Why didn't I kiss him more-why not all the time?

Has anything bad ever happened in YOUR life? Anything bad that could have been stopped, if only someone had been paying better attention?...And you, Kanan? Is there something bad that could have been prevented, if someone had been watching over you?...EVERYBODY'S got something like that.

face still had the power to torture him. But

I had a dove and the sweet dove died; And I have thought it died of grieving: O, what could it grieve for? Its feet were tied, With a silken thread of my own hand's weaving.

I sit, and moan, Like one who once had wings.

And for her eyes: what could such eyes do there But weep, and weep, that they were born so fair?

Everything that reminds me of her goes through me like a spear.

I was alone for a couple of days while Brown went gadding over the country with his ancient knapsack. Now I like his society as well as any Man's, yet regretted his return—it broke in upon me like a Thunderbolt. I had got in a dream among my Books—really luxuriating in a solitude and silence you alone should have disturb'd.

There's a blush for won't, and a blush for shan't, And a blush for having done it: There's a blush for thought and a blush for naught, And a blush for just begun it.

Ignatius, all at once you're your horrible old self. All at once I think I'm making a very big mistake.

Suddenly Mrs. Reilly remembered the horrible night that she and Mr. Reilly had gone to Prytania to see Clark Gable and Jean Harlow in 'Red Dust.' In the heat and confusion that had followed their return home, nice Mr. Reilly had tried one of his indirect approaches, and Ignatius was conceived. Poor Mr. Reilly. He had never gone to another movie as long as he lived.

I did not cry then or ever about Finney. I did not cry even when I stood watching him being lowered into his family's straightlaced burial ground outside of Boston. I could not escape a feeling that this was my own funeral, and you do not cry in that case.

If only I had truly taken advantage of the situation, seized and held and prized the multitudes of advantages the summer offered me; if only I had.

I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence.

I wasn't saying whatever they're saying I was saying. I'm sorry I said it really. I never meant it to be a lousy anti-religious thing. I apologize if that will make you happy. I still don't know quite what I've done. I've tried to tell you what I did do but if you want me to apologize, if that will make you happy, then OK, I'm sorry.

I regret profoundly that I was not an American and not born in Greenwich Village. It might be dying, and there might be a lot of dirt in the air you breathe, but this is where it's happening.