Quotes About Regret

If you have that rage to live, don't do something silly and mess up what you already have because you crave more. There is no amount of "more" that will ever satisfy. Once you are aware of this, once you are cognizant of the rage, then perhaps you can see when it leads you astray, taking over your thoughts, propelling you into a course of action you may regret.

Nothing is more fatal to happiness than the remembrance of happiness.

El recuerdo es una invención desdichada.

What makes something special is not just what you have to gain, but what you feel there is to lose.

What did he think? That time moved forward? No, for the good times it slipped out of your hands like water, but when things went wrong time stopped. It stopped and stared at you and never took its eyes away from what you'd done. I hope they hurt you in there. If you come looking for Susan, you will be sorry.

In that light, across the field, is all I will never have. Next to me is all I will.

Non è che ci sarebbe voluto tutto questo tempo, ma il fatto è che quando hai sbancato i cassetti trovi una quantità di carte vecchie, scordate, alcune delle quali, quasi a forza, vogliono essere lette e tu, inevitabilmente, finisci col precipitare sempre più in fondo al gorgo della memoria e ti tornano in mente macari cose che per anni e anni hai fatto di tutto per scordare. E' un gioco tinto quello dei ricordi, nel quale finisci sempre per perdere.

There'd never been any closure. There hadn't even been good-byes.

I'm not feeling regret. I'm feeling confused and off balance." "And you like being in control." "Not of others, but of myself, yes.

It happens all too often - people regret that their language and culture are being lost but at the same time decide not to saddle their own children with the chore of preserving them.

It is a painful thing To look at your own trouble and know That you yourself and no one else has made it • Sophocles, Ajax

I know I'm out of your life / But the day that I die / I know you are going to cry.

A man he almost stayed with, almost loved, and now he does not even recognize him on the street. Either Less is an asshole, or the heart is a capricious thing. It is not impossible both are true.

Why didn't he say yes? Freddy's voice from the past: You want me to stay here with you forever? Why didn't he say yes?

Arthur Less is the first homosexual ever to grow old. That is, at least, how he feels at times like these. Here, in this tub, he should be twenty-five or thirty, a beautiful young man naked in a bathtub. Enjoying the pleasures of life. How dreadful if someone came upon naked Less today: pink to his middle, gray to his scalp, like those old double erasers for pencil and ink.

Like he has nothing to lose. Like someone who has just learned a foreign language and can use only the present tense and only the second person. Only now, only you. There are some men who have never been kissed like that. There are some men who discover, after Arthur Less, that they never will be again.

Was he testing to see how elastic love could be? Was he simply a man who had gladly given his youth to a man in midlife, and now nearing midlife himself, wanted back the fortune he squandered.

I know I'm out of your life / But the day that I die / I know you are going to cry

A pang of love and regret; the name of an old amour on your cruise ship's passenger list.

His brain sits before its cash register again, charging him for old shames as if he has not paid before.

It is a bad musical, but, like a bad lay, a bad musical can still do its job perfectly well. By the end, Arthur Less is in tears, sobbing in his seat, and he thinks he has been sobbing quietly until the lights come up and the woman seated beside him turns and says, "Honey, I don't know what happened in your life, but I am so so sorry," and gives him a lilac-scented embrace.

Why didn't he say yes?

Arturo says, "There follows, I am sad to say, a very long ride on a very slow road…to your final place of rest." He sighs, for he has spoken the truth for all men.

It's like the last day in a foreign country. You finally figure out where to get coffee, and drinks, and a good steak. And then you have to leave. And you won't ever be back.