Quotes About Regret

Perhaps this is just punishment for those who have been heartless, to understand only when nothing can be undone.

J'aurais dû être plus gentille—I should have been more kind. That is something a person will never regret. You will never say to yourself when you are old, Ah, I wish I was not good to that person. You will never think that.

I opened my mouth, almost said something. Almost. The rest of my life might have turned out differently if I had. But I didn't.

And this is what I want you to understand, that good, real good, was born out of your father's remorse. Sometimes, I thing everything he did, feeding the poor on the streets, building the orphanage, giving money to friends in need, it was all his way of redeeming himself. And that, I believe, is what true redemption is, Amir jan, when guilt leads to good.

She would never leave her mark on Mammy's heart the way her brothers had, because Mammy's heart was like a pallid beach where Laila's footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow that swelled and crashed, swelled and crashed.

He knew I'd seen everything in that alley, that I'd stood there and done nothing. He knew that I'd betrayed him and yet he was rescuing me once again, maybe for the last time.

Love was a damaging mistake and its accomplice,hope, a treacherous illusion.

Regret... when it comes to you, I have oceans of it.

I thought about you all the time. I used to pray that you'd live to be a hundred years old. I didn't know. I didn't know that you were ashamed of me.

What good is regret? It brings back nothing. What we have lost is irretrievable.

After everything he'd built, planned, fought for, fretted over, dreamed of, this was the summation of his life; one disappointing son and two suitcases.

She considers for a minute before saying, I should have been more kind. That is something a person will never regret. You will never say to yourself when you are old, Ah, I wish I was not good to that person. You will never think that. I should have been more kind.

That was a long time ago, but it's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out.

You will never say to yourself when you are old, Ah, I wish I was not good to that person.

And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion.

I pray. I pray that my sins have not caught up with me the way I'd always feared they would.

Mammy's heart was like a pallid beach where Laila's footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow that swelled and crashed

And that, I believe, is what true redemption is, Amir Jan, when guilt leads to good.

She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last.

Time is the most unforgiving of fires.

Maybe this was my punishment, and perhaps justly so. 'It wasn't meant to be', Khala Jamila had said. Or, maybe, it was meant not to be.

Alas, Abdullah and Pari, Baba Ayub's days of happiness came to an end.

Mariam saw now the sacrifices a mother made. Decency was but one...Mariam wished she's been a better daughter to Nana. She wished she's understood then what she understood now about motherhood.

I could wade into this river, let my sins drown to the bottom, let the waters carry me someplace far.