Quotes About Regret

For Allie would suffer for what she had done this night. And he would be the last person on this earth who could comfort her.

The next few days were all she could ever have of him.

I thought my punishment was to be eternal," her mother said. "It is the millstone I have carried about my neck for well nigh forty years. I thought I would carry it to my grave.

She had loved him mindlessly, passionately, for the following five years, until he had told her that he was going away and never coming back. And even beyond that she had loved him, painfully and against her will, until she had finally forced herself to forget. Or to tell herself that she had forgotten.

She had not got over him at all, in fact, and she was disgusted with herself when forced to admit the truth.

And she did not want to be reminded of how Christopher had changed. She wanted to remember him, if at all, as he had been before.

What had Robert said? Would he have sent any message for her? A message of regret, perhaps, like the very last words he had spoken to her? Would he perhaps have sent her a letter?

You don't think you will be sorry, Diana? No, she said. Do you think you will be? Only if I see you unhappy, he said. I will never forgive myself if I make you unhappy.

Had he done the right thing to let her go without a word or a letter? Was he right to leave it so, to disappear from her life?

He had vaulted into the saddle and ridden down the driveway away from the sea and the cliffs, and away from her, without a backward glance. She had watched him, an ache in her heart, until a line of trees finally hid him from view.

But there is a difference between thinking of an absent friend and thinking of someone who used to be a friend and never will be again.

Her feelings for him were purely regrets for a past that might have been. He was not now the sort of man whom she would wish to captivate even if that were possible.

He had not forgiven her and doubted that he ever would or could. And during his own brief visit to her and the meeting at last evening's ball she had shown no sign of wishing forgiveness.

You see now why I cannot marry you? I would never be able to rid myself of the shame of my past. And you would not be able to forget, either.

But it increased the pain tenfold to wonder if he did still retain some of his love for her. It seemed so cruel that they now lived close to each other, meeting with fair frequency, and both free, yet that they could never mean anything to each other.

Good-bye, Elizabeth, he said. I wish things might have been different for you and me.

No one could have convinced her six years before that the day would come when she and Robert would sleep under the same roof, in separate bedrooms, not only strangers to each other, but bitter strangers.

Is it really possible that you can love me enough to forgive me?

And kissing her and holding her with a desperate tenderness and self-loathing when it was all over again.

He should have stayed away. The memories were going to be very sweet, it was true. They were also going to be unbearable.

I cannot now believe that we allowed all those things to happen to us without blazing a trail back to each other. I cannot quite understand why I did not fight my way through hell, though God knows I believed I had done all I could. I was so damned young.

Christina. There was nothing else to say. Just her name and all the pain of its utterance.

Every year I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence which will risk nothing, and which, shirking pain, misses happiness as well.

How long ago did she die, Wyatt? Morgan pressed. Is it nine years now? Eight, Wyatt said, halfway between stubborn and sad. I promised to love her all my life, Morg. I meant to keep my word. That shut Morgan up, but Doc's eyes opened and he gazed at Wyatt for a long time. What? Wyatt asked. That is your ghost life, Wyatt, Doc told him, and closed his eyes again. That is the life you might have had. This is the life you've got.