Quotes About Regret

I am not ashamed that I was once a vacuum-cleaner salesman, only that I was a *good* vacuum-cleaner salesman.

When you get to heaven, will you look back on this earth and regret how much treasure you laid up here instead of sending it on ahead to heaven?

It is important to remember that anytime you feel the need to begin a conversation with the words, I probably shouldn't tell you this, but . . . it's almost always a conversation that shouldn't happen at all. So, if you feel the need to say, I probably shouldn't say this . . . then DON'T! Just hush. That little nudge you are feeling is probably the Holy Spirit saying, Don't go there. You're going to regret the words you're about to speak. Or as King David wrote, Muzzle it! I

they always gave good reasons for the things they did, and then when they got old they lost their reasons for doing anything and sat on the bench in front of the harness shop and had words for the reasons other people had but had forgotten what the reasons were.

Oh, Anne, why did you do it?     It was the one question I had never meant to ask.     For a moment she did not answer. Then, without raising her eyes, she said in a low voice, He wasn't like anybody else. Not anybody else I'd ever known. And I love him. I love him, I guess. I guess that is the reason.     I sat there and reckoned I had asked for that one.

I did not understand my complex of feeling. Particularly as she was saying, 'Yes, I'm sorry I ever met you. Ever. If I hadn't I wouldn't have to go through this Awfulness, the awfulest part being that I'll remember you. Always.' — Robert Penn Warren, from "Goodbye," Uncollected Poems 1943-1989, The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren , ed. John Burt (Louisiana State University Press, 1998)

under the sky, and see the cow standing in the water upstream near the single leaning willow. And all at once you feel like crying. But the train is going fast, and almost immediately whatever you felt is taken away from you, too. You bloody fool, do you think that you want to milk a cow? You do not want to milk a cow.

But old Mr. Sandeen, who was the father of one of the dead kids, saw him back in the crowd and while the clods were still bouncing off the coffin lids Mr. Sandeen pushed back to him and grabbed him by the hand and lifted up one arm above his head and said, loud, "Oh, God, I am punished for accepting iniquity and voting against an honest man!

Sometimes one does not learn the value of things until they are lost.

If only I'd thought of the right words I would have held onto your heart. If only I'd thought of the right words I wouldn't be breaking apart, all my pictures of you.

So we stay with what is safe, and opportunities pass us by.

Richard's backing out did not surprise me. It's called buyer's remorse

The greatest losses of all are those from missed opportunities.

The point is, it saddens me to see

Yes, it's beautiful,' said Gilbert, looking steadily down into Anne's uplifted face, 'but wouldn't it have been more beautiful still, Anne, if there had been no separation or misunderstanding . . . if they had come hand in hand all the way through life, with no memories behind them but those which belonged to each other?

The ghosts of things that never happened are worse than the ghosts of things that did.

Isn't it queer that the things we writhe over at night are seldom wicked things? Just humiliating ones.

Well, that is another hope gone. My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.

It seems to me a most dreadful thing to go out of the world and not leave one person behind you who is sorry you are gone,' said Anne, shuddering.

I'm glad and I'm sorry. I'm always sorry when pleasant things end. Something still more pleasant may come after, but you can never be sure. And it's so often the case that it isn't more pleasant.

I feel sorry now myself," admitted Davy, "but the trouble is I never feel sorry for doing things till after I've did them.

Felicity, if I die from the effects of eating sawdust pudding, flavoured with needles, you'll be sorry you ever said such a thing to your poor old uncle, said Uncle Roger reproachfully.

Many people have told me that they regretted Matthew's death in Green Gables. I regret it myself. If I had the book to write over again I would spare Matthew for several years. But when I wrote it I thought he must die, that there might be a necessity for self-sacrifice on Anne's part, so poor Matthew joined the long procession of ghosts that haunt my literary past.

We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us.