REGRET QUOTES II
quotations about regret
We all do things we desperately wish we could undo. Those regrets just become part of who we are, along with everything else. To spend time trying to change that, well, it's like chasing clouds.
LIBBA BRAY
A Great and Terrible Beauty
It is human nature to want to go back and fix things or change things that we regret.
JOHN GRAY
Mars and Venus on a Date
There is a haunting phantom called Regret,
A shadowy creature robed somewhat like woe,
But fairer in the face, whom all men know
By her said mien, and eyes forever wet.
No heart would seek her; but once having met
All take her by the hand, and to and fro
They wander through those paths of long ago--
Those hallowed ways 'twere wiser to forget.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"Regret"
Don't cry over spilt milk.
AESOP
"The Milkmaid and Her Pail", Aesop's Fables
A regret is a kind of punishment to us. A lifelong regret is a lifetime punishment to us. There is no severer punishment in this world than this. It is because when we miss the right moment in which we should act faithfully and look back upon it, we are to pound our hearts.
KYE-HYONG PAK
A Life
Regret, which is guilt without the neurosis, enables us ... to move forward instead of back.
JANE ADAMS
When Our Grown Kids Disappoint Us
Oh sure, I have regrets, but that's the nice thing about age. Regrets fade. And eventually, you die.
LEWIS BLACK
I'm Dreaming of a Black Christmas
The most frequent cause of regret for what we have done is because its effects interfere with what we would do.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love--
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret.
Oh death in life, the days that are no more!
ALFRED TENNYSON
The Princess
Regret ... when it comes to you, I have oceans of it.
KHALED HOSSEINI
A Thousand Splendid Suns
We must know, as much as possible, in our beautiful art ... what we are talking about -- and the only way to know is to have lived and loved and cursed and floundered and enjoyed and suffered. I think I don't regret a single "excess" of my responsive youth -- I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn't embrace.
HENRY JAMES
letter to Hugh Walpole, August 21, 1913
Morning pry the windows open
Let in what's so terrifying
Summer is as faded as a lone cicada call
Memories so bright I gotta squint just to recall
Regret the words I've bitten more than the ones I ever said
ST. VINCENT
"Regret"
'Member when we argued on the concept of regret?
You were an expert even then but not me, not yet
Now all you gotta do's remind me that we met
And there you got me, that's how you got me, you taught me to regret
FIONA APPLE
"Regret"
Here is a sovereign talisman against regret: never do that which might engender it.
DAVID MAMET
Faustus
A wrong act, followed by just regret, and thoughtful caution to avoid like errors, makes a man better than he should have been if he had never fallen.
HORATIO SEYMOUR
attributed, Day's Collacon
Take another case -- a settled melancholy usurps the throne of reason, a regret tinges the whole complexion of the mind, but regret for what? Aye, here is the peculiarity; it takes the shape of any object which has recently interested the feelings, or engaged the thoughts; in this point of view it would seem to be a reality, yet a doubt arises on this point as to whether it be itself or a phantom, or so exquisitely real that it informs what would otherwise have slumbered, and makes it stand forth palpably embodied to the senses. Thus may this unhappy state of mind be correctly termed regret for a fancied good or pleasure, since we fancy that the latter is the proximate cause of our suffering, which it is not, being only a vapour, formed by the restless melancholy that roves up and down throughout the breast.
J. HILL
Essays on a Few Subjects of General Interest: To Which are Added Scraps and Recollections
Regret is useful and virtuous when it tends to the amendment of life.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
attributed, Day's Collacon
I've got a bad case of the 3:00 am guilts -- you know, when you lie in bed awake and replay all those things you didn't do right? Because, as we all know, nothing solves insomnia like a nice warm glass of regret, depression and self-loathing.
D. D. BARANT
Dying Bites
Who has not sometimes regretted that age when laughter was ever on the lips, and when the heart was ever at peace?
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Emile: Or, On Education
I have no regrets. If you regret things, you're sort of stepping backwards. I'm a believer in going forwards.
KATE WINSLET
The Clive James Show, 1998