Quotes About Regret

All men are more concerned to recover what they lose than to acquire what they lack.

Injuries may be forgiven, but not forgotten

Who acts in haste repents at leisure.

We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified.

exclaimed, O foolish creatures that we are, for the sake of a little pleasure we have destroyed ourselves.

I have brought it all on myself! Why could I not have been contented to labor with my companions, and not wish to be idle all the day like that useless little Lapdog!

Sometimes the course of our lives depends on what we do or don't do in a few seconds, a heartbeat, when we either seize the opportunity, or just miss it. Miss the moment and you never get a chance again.

The afternoons were getting longer again, stretching. I stayed too long at a stoplight because the sunlight was so pretty, sifting through all the leaves on the sycamore trees lining Sierra Bonita, turning each a pale jade green. The jacaranda trees preparing for their burst of true lavender blue come May. Go, said Dad. Sorry, I said.

the loss of love that comes to mean more than the love itself and how explain that? — a still pool in the forest that has ceased to reflect anything except the past from "Listening to Myself

There is a longing for a return to a time without the need for choices, free of the regret at the inevitable loss that all choice (however wonderful) has entailed.

The possibility of an alternative love story is a reminder that the life we are leading is only one of a myriad of possible lives and it is the impossibility of leading them all that plunges us into sadness.

It is, unfortunately, easier to lose a lover than complete In Search of Lost Time.

If we wanted to think about it,' wrote Proust, 'perhaps there is no really loving mother who could not, on her dying day, and often long before, address this reproach to her son. The truth is that as we grow older we kill all those who love us by the cares we give them, by the anxious tenderness we inspire in them and constantly arouse.

I think of literature,' she wrote, 'as a vast country to the far borders of which I am journeying but will never reach. And I have started to late. I will never catch up.

Too late. It was all too late. But she went on, determined as ever and always trying to catch up.

I think of literature - she wrote - as a vast country to the far borders of which I am journeying but cannot possibly reach. And I have started too late. I will never catch up.

Stava anche scoprendo che un libro tira l'altro; ovunque si voltava si aprivano nuove porte e le giornate erano troppo corte per leggere quanto avrebbe voluto. Ma era dispiaciuta, e anche mortificata, al pensiero di tutte le occasioni che si era lasciata sfuggire.

I think of literature,' she wrote, 'as a vast country to the far borders of which I am journeying but will never reach. And I have started too late. I will never catch up.

Considero la literatura (...) como un vasto país hacia las fronteras del cual viajo, pero a las que nunca llegaré. Y he empezado demasiado tarde. Nunca me podré poner al día.

This was life, and if some things were kapu, others weren't; she had to stop regretting the ones that were and start enjoying the ones that were not.

She poked and jabbed until it bled, but felt no pain; it might as well have been someone else's flesh, someone else's body. She looked up at the pali, at the trail she had ascended years before, and cursed herself for a fool. She could have stayed topside, traveled, loved, married, lived! But she came back, damn it. She thought of all she'd given up in that moment, places she couldn't imagine and would never know, and she wept. Night fell on her sorrows.

She would have given anything, any number of days of her life, just to hear Sarah call her "Little Miss Shoe.

You always think you can make it up to somebody—later, you know.' She took a deep breath. 'But now I never can. I never can.

With regret, he realized that despite his intensive studies there was still much about this world and its dominant Larian society that he did not know. And of course he had not been able to bring with him anything of an advanced nature, like a vorec, which would have allowed him to look up the answers to such questions.