Quotes about regret

My one regret in life is that I'm not someone else.

— Woody Allen

I regret the passing of the studio system. I was very appreciative of it because I had no talent.

— Lucille Ball

I have no regrets, I wouldn't have lived my life the way I did if I was going to worry about what people were going to say.

— Ingrid Bergman

Regret for time wasted can become a power for good in the time that remains, if we will only stop the waste and the idle, useless regretting.

— Arthur Brisbane

I believe that he was really sorry that people would not believe he was sorry that he was not more sorry.

— Samuel Butler

One doesn't recognize the really important moments in one's life until it's too late.

— Agatha Christie

Remorse, the fatal egg that pleasure laid.

— William Cowper

It's the things I might have said that fester.

— Clemence Dane

Regrets are the natural property of gray hairs.

— Charles Dickens

You'll seldom experience regret for anything that you've done. It is what you haven't done that will torment you. The message, therefore, is clear. Do it! Develop an appreciation for the present moment. Seize every second of your life and savor it. Value your present moments. Using them up in any self-defeating ways means you've lost them forever.

— Wayne Dyer

People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent.

— Bob Dylan

Footfalls echo in the memory down the passage which we did not take towards the door we never opened into the rose-garden.

— T. S. Eliot

A great source of calamity lies in regret and anticipation; therefore a person is wise who thinks of the present alone, regardless of the past or future.

— Oliver Goldsmith

Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it.

— George Halas

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.

— Sidney J. Harris

I have many regrets, and I'm sure everyone does. The stupid things you do, you regret if you have any sense, and if you don't regret them, maybe you're stupid.

— Katharine Hepburn

I have no regrets because I know I did my best -- all I could do.

— Midori Ito

We rarely repent of having eaten too little.

— Thomas Jefferson

The only things I regret... are the things I didn't do.

— Joe Karbo

It's not what your are, it's what you don't become that hurts.

— Oscar Levant

Nostalgia: When you find the present tense and past perfect.

— The Lion

Go to the effort. Invest the time. Write the letter. Make the apology. Take the trip. Purchase the gift. Do it. The seized opportunity renders joy. The neglected brings regret.

— Max L. Lucado

Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it; it's only good for wallowing in.

— Katherine Mansfield

Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it; it's only good for wallowing in.

— Katherine Mansfield

There is no man, however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way the consciousness of which is so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory.

— Marcel Proust

Let's not burden our remembrance with a heaviness that's gone.

— William Shakespeare

People have to face regrets. Becoming mature means learning to accept what you cannot change, facing unresolved sorrows and learning to love life as it really happens, not as you would have it happen. When someone attaches unkindness to criticism, she's angry. Angry people need to criticize as an outlet for their anger. That's why you must reject unkind criticism. Unkind criticism is never part of a meaningful critique of you. Its purpose is not to teach or to help, its purpose is to punish. Life isn't supposed to be an all or nothing battle between misery and bliss. Life isn't supposed to be a battle at all. And when it comes to happiness, well, sometimes life is just okay, sometimes it's comfortable, sometimes wonderful, sometimes boring, sometimes unpleasant. When your day's not perfect, it's not a failure or a terrible loss. It's just another day.

— Barbara Sher

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.

— Harriet Beecher Stowe

To regret deeply is to live afresh.

— Henry David Thoreau

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it come to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

— Henry David Thoreau

The worst thing that one can do is not try, to be aware of what one wants and not give in to it, to spend years in silent hurt wondering if something could have materialized -- and never knowing.

— David Viscott

For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: It might have been!

— John Greenleaf Whittier

Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.

— Billy Wilder

Only in your imagination can you revise.

— Fay Wray

If your going to do something tonight that you'll be sorry for in the morning, sleep late.

— Henny Youngman

Some choices we live not only once but a thousand times over, remembering them for the rest of our lives.

— Richard Bach

Good things come to those who are patient and still hope, even though they’ve been let down and disappointed, to those who still believe even though they’ve failed at something, to those who still love even though they’ve been hurt before. So never regret anything that has happened in the past; it cannot be changed, undone or forgotten. Take it all as lessons learned and move on with grace.

— Mervyn Parangan Bana

Rarely do you regret what you have done nearly as much as what you have failed to do.

— Jeffrey Fry

We regret, repent and remorse only when we have lost exhaustively.

— Mak Kazeronnie

There are two regrets in life : You get what you don't want. Or you don't get what you want.

— Mak Kazeronnie

The infatuation love is caused the entire life with regrets.

— Mak Kazeronnie

Such two speeches cannot wait : I LOVE YOU and I AM SORRY. Elsewise, you may live with regrets to the end.

— Mak Kazeronnie

It hurts to love someone and not to be loved in return. But the most regret is to love someone and never have the title to let the one to know how deep my love is to.......

— Mak Kazeronnie

A divinely brilliant life has no regret when DEATH comes along. And you say," Yes, I'm well prepared ! "

— Mak Kazeronnie

Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.

— Arthur Miller