Quotes About Regret

I have never visited any city in the world where I was not told that I just missed the golden age. I seem never to be on time. Cyrus Sitema

I am afraid that as people grow old there is a tendency for them to believe that what the past *ought* to have been it was.

I'm afraid that I've always been jealous of those I care about, and since they are so very few, one's apt to become ridiculously jealous. Sooner or later, I always blame myself. I always try to forgive. And I think I do. Only Ã¢â'¬Â¦Ã¢â'¬Â The mouth was suddenly compressed to a straight line. "I never forget.

And at some length Dr. Bogart spoke of a period in which skies were bluer, water purer, potatoes better-grained than now. I know the speech. It is the tirade of the old.

Christmas it seems to me is a necessary festival; we require a season when we can regret all the flaws in our human relationships: it is the feast of failure, sad but consoling.

And when we love our sin then we are damned indeed.

There is a point of no return, unremarked at the time, in most lives.

It seemed to Scobie that life was immeasurably long. Couldn't the test of man have been carried out in fewer years? Couldn't we have committed our first major sin at seven, have ruined ourselves for love or hate at ten, have clutched at redemption on a fifteen-year-old deathbed?

One can't reason away regret-it's a bit like falling in love, falling into regret.

In her view when a thing was done, it was done: remorse died with the act.

The pouches under his eyes were like purses that contained the smuggled memories of a disappointing life.

What I've done is far worse than murder - that's an act, a blow, a stab, a shot: it's over and done, but I'm carrying my corruption around with me. It's the coating of my stomach.' He threw her wrists aside like seeds towards the stony floor. 'Never pretend I haven't shown my love.

Regret your own actions, if you like that kind of wallowing in self-pity, but never, never despise. Never presume yours is a better morality.

All right. All right.' He thought: am I taking to drink too? It seemed to him that he had no shape left, nothing you could touch and say: this is Scobie.

My second wife - I was still young then - she left me, and I made the mistake of winning her back. It took me years to lose her again after that. She was a good woman. It is not easy to lose a good woman. If one must marry it is better to marry a bad woman.

Ten years ago he would have followed her, but middle-age is the period of sad caution.

All, Pyle? Wait until you're afraid of living ten years alone with no companion and a nursing home at the end of it. THen you'll start running in any direction, even away from that girl in the red dressing-gown, to find someone, anyone, who last until you are through.

It was like hate on a deathbed.

Whew,' he said, 'I'm glad that's over, Thomas. I've been feeling awfully bad about it.' It was only too evident that he no longer did.

Time has its revenges, but revenge seems so often sour.

Once for five minutes seven years ago they had been lovers—if you could give that name to a relationship in which she had never used his baptismal name: to her it was just an incident, a scratch which heals completely in the healthy flesh: she was even proud of having been the priest's woman. He alone carried a wound, as though a whole world had died.

He watched her go out of the dark office like fifteen wasted years.

Why don't you go back to your wife, then? ' ' It's not easy to live with someone you've injured.

You sacrificed both of us once to bring me back to life, but what sort of a life is this without you.