Quotes About Regret

Diverting a river is easier than facing the truth; Cyrus did not want to acknowledge the fact that his horse would not have drowned if he had not forced it to try and cross the river.

Remember how long thou hast already put off these things, and how often a certain day and hour as it were, having been set unto thee by the gods, thou hast neglected it.

There is a limit circumscribed to your time - if you do not use it to clear away your clouds, it will be gone, and you will be gone, and the opportunity will not return.

Don't die bitterly, regretful of all the things you haven't yet learned, all the books you haven't yet read. Die serenely and content, with a heart full of gratitude.

10. Remorse is annoyance at yourself for having passed up something that's to your benefit. But if it's to your benefit it must be good—something a truly good person would be concerned about. But no truly good person would feel remorse at passing up pleasure. So it cannot be to your benefit, or good.

There is a limit to the time assigned to you, and if you don't use it to free yourself it will be gone and will never return.

Antes de llevar a cabo cualquier acto, pregúntate: ¿para qué me servirá? ¿Me arrepentiré? Dentro de poco ya no existiré, todo habrá desaparecido para mí. ¿Qué puedo esperar más, si mi acto presente es digno de un ser inteligente, sociable y sometido a la misma ley de Dios?

Repentance is a sort of self-reproach at some useful thing passed by; but the good must needs be a useful thing, and ever to be cultivated by the true good man; but the true good man would never regret having passed a pleasure by. Pleasure therefore is neither a useful thing nor a good.

In every action ask thyself, How does it affect me? Shall I regret it? But

El arrepentimiento es cierto reproche de si mismo, por haber omitido hacer algo provechoso, dado que el bien es necesariamente una cosa útil y acreedora a que el hombre honesto la ambicione. Por otro lado jamás un hombre recto se arrepentirá de haber desdeñado algún placer, ya que el placer ni es cosa útil ni es bien alguno.

By my twenty-second birthday, you know, I had killed eight men. Eight that I was certain of, eight that I could plainly count. That information was stuffed deep within my gut, and if anyone ever asked if I killed someone during the war, particularly if a child ever asked, I vowed I'd shake my head no, that information was never coming out.--SHIFTY'S WAR

A mental stain can neither be blotted out by the passage of time nor washed away by any waters.

Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It's loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.

He doesn't know which is worse, a past he can't regain or a present that will destroy him if he looks at it too clearly. Then there's the future. Sheer vertigo.

This is what I miss, Cordelia: not something that's gone, but something that will never happen. Two old women giggling over their tea.

I am afraid of falling into hopeless despair, over my wasted life, and I am still not sure how it happened.

I wish I didn't have to think about you. You wanted to impress me; well, I'm not impressed, I'm disgusted...You wanted to make damn good and sure I'd never be able to turn over in bed again without feeling that body beside me, not there but tangible, like a leg that's been cut off. Gone but the place still hurts.

The picture is of happiness, the story not. Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It's loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.

You know I love you. You're the only one. She isn't the first woman he's ever said that to. He shouldn't have used it up so much earlier in his life, he shouldn't have treated it like a tool, a wedge, a key to open women. By the time he got around to meaning it, the words sounded fraudulent to him and he'd been ashamed to pronounce them.

How can I have behaved so badly, so cruelly, so stupidly? you will ask. You yourself would never have done such things! But you yourself will never have had to.

Snowman wakes before dawn.

What could he have done or said differently? What change would have altered the course of events? In the big picture, nothing. In the small picture, so much.

That kind of love comes and goes and is hard to remember afterwards, like pain. You would look at the man one day and you would think, I loved you, and the tense would be past, and you would be filled with a sense of wonder, because it was such an amazing and precarious and dumb thing to have done; and you would know too why your friends had been evasive about it, at the time. There is a good deal of comfort, now, in remembering this.

But unshed tears can turn rancid. So can memory. So can biting your tongue. My bad nights were beginning. I couldn't sleep.