Quotes About Regret

I remember thinking: There will never come a time when I will not be thinking of this. And I was right. And I was wrong

If she doesn't speak, she is making a choice. If she doesn't try, she can lose her chance forever. -An-mei

I thought this man had long ago drained everything from my heart. But now something strong and bitter flowed and made me feel another emptiness in a place I didn't know was there. I cursed this man aloud so he could hear. You had dog eyes. You jumped and followed whoever called you. Now you chase your own tail.

The old woman remembered a swan she had bought many years ago in Shanghai for a foolish sum. This bird, boasted the market vendor, was once a duck that stretched its neck in hopes of becoming a goose, and now look!--it is too beautiful to eat.

But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable.

And then I see my mother sitting by the open window, her dark silhouette against the night sky. She turns around in her chair, but I can't see her face. "Fallen down," she says simply. She doesn't apologize. "It doesn't matter," I say, and I start to pick up the broken glass shards. "I knew it would happen." "Then why you don't stop it?" asks my mother. And it's such a simple question.

We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable

I wanted everything for you to be better. I wanted you to have the best circumstances, the best character. I didn't want you to regret anything. And that's why I named you Waverly. It was the name of the street we lived on. And I wanted you to think, this is where I belong. But I also knew if I named you after this street, soon you would grow up, leave this place, and take a piece of me with you.

But my main motivation is fear of regret. I worry that if I didn't go, one day I'd look back and wonder, What if I had?

ethnicity? And I remembered reading an article about baby boomers, how we expect the best and when we get it we worry that maybe we should have expected more, because it's all diminishing returns after a certain age.

Maybe all Americans who suffer from melancholy act as if they have gone mad. But I truly thought he might throw himself in the river, and I don't want his ghost visiting to keep telling me he's sorry.

Those who don't heed the warnings don't live to admit they were stupid not to do so.

But my main motivation is fear of regret.

Her mother looked pleased at the prospect of being vital to her daughter's success. Ruth sighed, relieved yet sad. Why hadn't she ever asked her mother to make drawings before? She should have done it when her mother's hand and mind were still steady. It broke her heart to see her mother trying so hard, being so conscientious, so determined to be valuable. Making her mother happy would have been easy all along. LuLing simply wanted to be essential, as a mother should be.

He was jealous of her future, and she of his past.

I looked at it [revolver] as if it reminded me of a crime I had committed with an irrepressible smile such as rises sometimes to people's lips in the face of great catastrophes which are beyond their grasp, the smile that comes at times on certain women's faces while they are saying they regret the harm they have done. It is the smile of nature quietly and proudly asserting its natural right to kill.

Now, his hair is white and he no longer understands anyone's need to love, for he has lost everything, not to love, but to his games of love; and when you love as a game, you lose everything, as he lost his home and wife, and now he clings to me, afraid of loss, afraid of solitude.

A couple was leaning over the railing, and Lillian could hear the woman say: Even if you don't mean it, just for tonight, say you love me. I won't ever remind you of it; I will not see you again, but just for tonight say you love me, say you love me.

Do you have regrets that we were so overwhelmed? Do you ever wish to live those hours over again and differently, with more confidence.

I don't look back with any pleasure at the sacrifices I made. I consider it time wasted. Whereas I do not think it time wasted to be idle, to dream, to play. Very much the contrary, I think.

J'ai été bon quelquefois. Je ne m'en félicite pas. J'ai été mé- chant souvent; je ne m'en repens pas," writes Gauguin.

You come and the time slips away in a dream. It is only when you go that I realize completely your presence. And then it is too late. You numb me.

Someone recently said to me that it is easier to be clever than it is to be kind, and I think that is very true. So I add to my list of regrets the times I have not been kind, choosing instead to be clever, usually at someone else's expense.

That's the thing about suicide. Try as you might to remember how a person lived his life, you always end up thinking about how he ended it.