Quotes About Regret

She was crude, but loyal. He began to understand her even better than before. A pity she was so old; it was too late to try to make a human being of her.

It was only after the war that I found out who had knocked that night. It was an inspector of the Hungarian police, a friend of my father's. Before we entered the ghetto, he had told us, "Don't worry. I'll warn you if there is danger." Had he been able to speak to us that night, we might still have been able to flee … But by the time we succeeded in opening the window, it was too late. There was nobody outside.

Every murder is a suicide.

I shall never forgive myself. Nor shall I ever forgive the world for having pushed me against the wall, for having turned me into a stranger, for having awakened in me the basest, most primitive instincts.

I thought he was talking about my grandmother. I didn't want to see her. I knew she had died - of thirst, maybe - and I was afraid she wouldn't be as I remembered her. I was afraid she wouldn't have the black shawl on her head, nor those burning tears in her eyes, nor that clear, calm expression that could make you forget you were cold.

He was silent. "Let's be evacuated with the others," I said. He didn't answer. He was looking at my foot. "You think you'll be able to walk?" "Yes, I think so." "Let's hope we won't regret it, Eliezer."     AFTER THE WAR, I learned the fate of those who had remained at the infirmary. They were, quite simply, liberated by the Russians, two days after the evacuation.     I

His last word had been my name. He had called out to me and I had not answered. I

And the worst thing about being young is not being able to appreciate that you're young because you aren't old enough to know any better.

Sometimes you regret the things you do, but they're over and done. Regretting the things you didn't do is tougher because they're still out there, haunting you with the what ifs.

Was there ever a death that involved no regret? ... more often than not, what he first heard in their moment of grief was the word 'should.

You may also be angry with yourself that you couldn't stop it from happening.

Mis pacientes moribundos me enseñaron mucho más que lo que es morirse. Me dieron lecciones sobre lo que podrían haber hecho, lo que deberían haber hecho y lo que no hicieron hasta cuando fue demasiado tarde, hasta que estaban demasiado enfermos o débiles, hasta que ya eran viudos o viudas. Contemplaban su vida pasada y me enseñaban las cosas que tenían verdadero sentido, no sobre cómo morir, sino sobre cómo vivir.

Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death.

Say It Before It's Too Late

You know, sometimes marriage is iron. Sometimes it's tissue paper. And I think the times it's tissue paper are when you need to keep things to yourself. Or you can end up making a mistake that you'll regret forever.

She honestly wondered sometimes which fate was worse, death or standing behind a curtain and looking out at the street at all the things you felt you could no longer have.

I've never regretted doing anything in my life as much as I've regretted not doing it. There were a few times when in my heart I knew the right thing to do, but I listened to other people, or I didn't have the guts, or it didn't make sense, or I don't know.… There was some false voice inside posing as logic when it was really just my own fear talking. The times I didn't stay true, didn't stay congruent, I paid the price.

Who doesn't long for one more time of seeing someone they've loved and lost? And yet what would you say, what would you do, if it were possible?

I decided in high school that I wasn't going to get married too soon. I'd forgotten that you can also wait too long, and then the only candies left in the box are the squished ones, rejected for their questionable insides. And if I'm honest, I'd have to count myself among those with questionable insides.

I am so often struck by what we do not do, all of us. And I am also, now, so acutely aware of the quick passage of time, the way that we come suddenly to our own separate closures. It is as though a thing says, I told you. But you thought I was just kidding.

IF YOU COULD LIVE ONE day in your life over again and change the outcome of something that happened that day, what day would it be?

I look in the mirror now, and even if I lost weight, there's just...Theres' nothing I can do. It's over. My bodyness. My attractiveness in my body. I can diet forever but it will never make me like I was.

yearning and grief for lost places.

YOU COULD LIVE ONE day in your life over again and change the outcome of something that happened that day, what day would it be? This is a question many people have difficulty answering. Not Iris Winters. She knows the day, and she knows exactly how she'd change what happened.