Quotes About Regret

She was convinced that she could have been happy with him, when it was no longer likely they should meet.

Indeed, I am very sorry to be right in this instance. I would much rather have been merry than wise.

You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own, than when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago.

There could have never been two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement.

Badly done, Emma!

You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight and a half years ago. Dare not say that a man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant.

I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you.

My object then, replied Darcy, was to show you, by every civility in my power, that I was not so mean as to resent the past; and I hoped to obtain your forgiveness, to lessen your ill opinion, by letting you see that your reproofs had been attended to. How soon any other wishes introduced themselves I can hardly tell, but I believe in about half an hour after I had seen you.

She mediated, by turns, on broken promises and broken arches, phaetons and false hangings, Tilneys and trap-doors.

Vanity, not love, has been my folly.

My dear Alicia, of what a mistake were you guilty in marrying a man of his age! Just old enough to be formal, ungovernable, and to have the gout; too old to be agreeable, too young to die.

told herself likewise not to hope. But it was too late. Hope had already entered…

There, he had seen every thing to exalt in his estimation the woman he had lost, and there begun to deplore the pride, the folly, the madness of resentment, which had kept him from trying to regain her when thrown in his way.

Such squeamish youths as cannot bear to be connected with a little absurdity are not worth a regret.

Cold-hearted Elinor! Oh! Worse than cold-hearted! Ashamed of being otherwise.

When the evening was over, Anne could not be amused…nor could she help fearing, on more serious reflection, that, like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination.

They gave themselves up wholly to their sorrow, seeking increase of wretchedness in every reflection that could afford it, and resolved against ever admitting consolation in future.

It was for the sake of what had been, rather than what was.

She wished such words unsaid with all her heart

Nay, cried Bingley, this is too much, to remember at night all the foolish things that were said in the morning.

This was a lucky recollection -- it saved her from something like regret.

She hated herself more than she could express.

Here I am once more in this scene of dissipation and vice, and I begin already to find my morals corrupted. -- Jane Austen's Letters August 1796

Well, my comfort is, I am sure Jane will die of a broken heart, and then he will be sorry for what he has done.