Quotes About Regret

How much of what passes for grief in the world is really nothing more than regret?

The measure of her bitterness was the measure of her failure.

Ferranti's thoughts had been his. As before he had understood his remorse so now he understood the mental chains that had imprisoned him. The poor wretch could not move. Misery had become apathy and apathy had brought the inevitable paralysis of the will.

What in the world was she saying? Not what she ought to be saying. She was repeating the verse of some old Elizabethan poet whom she had read in the days when she had been a cultured young woman of the world who had prided herself upon her cosmopolitan reading. Yes, she had been young once, young and beautiful—and warm. And now

I should have been more frightened; that came later.

She would always be living her life backwards, she realized, trying to regain something perfect that she'd lost.

Forgiveness, she was thinking, was in some terrible, overeager way, a lack of curiosity. It was a big, powerful hose that washed everything away. She had, in effect, turned the hose on herself. "Of course I forgive you." As eager to reconcile as she has been in the schoolyard and in her first marriage too. Only to think that now she should not have been so hasty. Forgiveness was the premature end to the story. She had skipped to the last page instead of reading the book through.

You run over a part of yourself when you run over something that has such a place in your heart.

The worst things were cowardly acts of betrayal. Betraying a friend and in the process betraying yourself. He knew all about that.

I might not have behaved the way I did. I might not have gotten drunk every night, slept around, done drugs, woken up in strange houses wondering where I was and what I'd done the night before.

She can't quite bring herself to say more than that. And even when Jim had been alive and well, despite being happy and settled and everything else that came with a twenty-year marriage, it had been Aiden she'd thought about before falling asleep, Aiden she'd fantasised about when the mood took her.

It's hard to say you miss someone who you never really knew

Smile that gorgeous smile for me one more time before I know that it will never be completely for me.

There is a broken song that plays over in my head each time I hear someone say his name.

I was once beautiful you know, I ran with feet that knew nothing of falling, and wished hopeless wishes on shooting stars that I knew would never come true.

It's sad to say, but I think she's right for you. More right than I would have ever been.

Why?" he whispered as he leaned over her, supported on one arm. "Why must ye be the one that haunts me dreams? I've seen ye weepin' night after bloody night since the day I sent ye from me palace with yer dress half undone. If I had it to do over again, I'd cut me own right hand off rather than hurt ye so. Will ye never be able to forgive me, Silence love?" "I already have," she replied, cradling his cheek in her hand. "Long, long ago.

You are the closest I will ever come to heaven, either here on Earth or in the afterlife, and I will not regret it, not even at the cost of your tears. So I go to my grave an unrepentant sinner, I'm afraid. There is no use in mourning one such as I, dearest... -Simon to Lucy in a letter before the last duel.

It's better to oversleep and miss the boat than get up early and sink.

The effort of trying to turn grief into regret, to live entirely on past nourishment, even to keep the sharper parts of nostalgia credible (he found himself beginning to doubt and struggle with the intricacies of the smaller memories), and, most of all, the fearful absence of anything that could begin to take their place, had worn him down.

I heard a wisp of regret in Dad's voice and pictured him angled against the stove in the

Save the contrition for the confessional. Regret isn't worth a damn to anyone.

I guess I should have said that you're a tragic loss because your brains were yours and yours alone. You were the one who could pull the sword out of the stone. And you gave it all up.

Too many memories, each one sharper and more painful than the last.