Quotes About Regret

My life was a wreck. I had nothing, no material possessions, unless debts counts. Fourteen pairs of shoes that were too small for me was all I had to show after a lifetime of profligate spending. I hadn't a job. I hadn't any qualifications. I'd achieved nothing with my life. I'd never been happy. I had no husband or boyfriend.

Im sorry, I thought it would be better that way. Less painful, to just let it all fade away.

La corrente della vita mi spingeva in avanti, ma io resistevo. Preferivo il passato, non ancora convinta che con Shay fosse davvero finita. Quando lo avevo salutato sul traghetto non sapevo che sarebbero trascorsi quindici anni prima di rivederlo.

Goodness and happiness were gone for ever and nothing could be retrieved. This was going to end; and end terribly. The last three years had been spent trying to dodge their fate, but it was rushing up to meet them.

If it was that beautiful, why did I leave you

Had any one dared to say this truth to me then, I should have bade him go and preach nonsense to children,—but now,—when I recall those white leaves of days that were unrolled before me fresh and blank with every sunrise, and with which I did nothing save scrawl my own Ego in a foul smudge across each one, I tremble, and inwardly pray that I may never be forced to send back my self-written record!

even if I could go back in time to her as me, the age I am now she would never come into my arms without believing that I wanted something.

Why would you want to go look for that wicked girl?" she asked. "Because I never thanked her," Lillian said, but she was really hoping for forgiveness.

I think hope is the worst thing in the world. I really do. It makes a fool of you while it lasts. And then when it's gone, it's like there's nothing left of you at all . . . except what you can't be rid of.

You never know when you might be seeing someone for the last time.

People who feel any sort of regret where you are concerned will suppose you are angry, and they will see anger in what you do, even if you're just quietly going about a life of your own choosing. They will make you doubt yourself, which, depending on cases, can be a severe distraction and a waste of time. This is a thing I wish I had understood much earlier than I did.

My point in mentioning this is only to say that people who feel any sort of regret where you are concerned will suppose you are angry, and they will see anger in what you do, even if you're just quietly going about a life of your own choosing. They make you doubt yourself, which, depending on cases, can be a severe distraction and a waste of time. This is a thing I wish I had understood much earlier than I did.

And old Boughton, if he could stand up out of his chair, out of his decrepitude and crankiness and sorrow and limitation, would abandon all those handsome children of his, mild and confident as they are, and follow after that one son whom he has never known, whom he has favored as one does a wound, and he would protect him as a father cannot, defend him with a strength he does not have, sustain him with a bounty beyond any resource he could ever dream of having.

Remembering my youth makes me aware that I never really had enough of it, it was over before I was done with it.

good fortune is not only good fortune, and over the years things happened in that family that caused some terrible regret. Still, for years it all seemed to me to be blindingly beautiful. And it was.

Chimerical grief — now guilt, now blame, now the thought that it could all have been otherwise. ~ Glory

An intensely lonely man for whom life had not gone well - I believe this was your language.

An intensely lonely man for whom life has not gone well - I believe this was your language.

Well, but how deeply I regret any sadness you have suffered and how grateful I am in anticipation of any good you have enjoyed. That is to say, I pray for you. And there's an intimacy in it. That's the truth.

I should leave, she told herself once or twice, to savor the thought of their surprise, their regret. What a childish idea. Then Jack would leave, no doubt, so that should would come back, as she would have to do, and her father would be plunged in sorrow of which she was directly the cause, and which would not end in this life.

It was a shock to her, a need she only discovered when it was satisfied, for those few minutes. In those days she had all the needs she could stand already, and here was another one. So she said something mean to him. That's how she was used to be and how she might be again someday, if she was ever just barely getting by and somebody seemed to be about to make it harder just by making it different.

We human beings do real harm. History could make a stone weep.

It was an experience I might have missed. Now I only fear I will not have time enough to fully enjoy the thought of it.

She had followed her father's thoughts back to that old bitterness, and the bitterness simmered in his half-closed eyes as he reflected on the inevitability of his disappointment.