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regret quotes

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“Things without all remedy should be without regard: what's done is done.” William Shakespeare, Macbeth
“Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, 'It might have been.'” Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle
“The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.” Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
“I had considered how the things that never happen, are often as much realities to us, in their effects, as those that are accomplished.” Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
“It was a long and gloomy night that gathered on me, haunted by the ghosts of many hopes, of many dear remembrances, many errors, many unavailing sorrows and regrets.” Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
“Droll thing life is—that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself—that comes too late—a crop of unextinguishable regrets.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“There was a long hard time when I kept far from me the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth. But since my duty has not been incompatible with the admission of that remembrance, I have given it a place in my...” Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
“To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.” Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
“no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused!” Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
“I regret nothing. There have been things I missed, but I ask no questions, because I have loved it, such as it has been, even the moments of emptiness, even the unanswered—and that I loved it, that is the unanswered in my life.” Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
“If one good deed in all my life I did, I do repent it from my very soul.” William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus
“If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can't know better until knowing better is useless.” John Green, Looking for Alaska
“And once we decided to do something, we should never look back, never regret it.” Richard Branson, Screw It, Let's Do It
“You are the only young man that I know of who ignores the fact that the future becomes the present, the present the past, and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don’t plan for it!” Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
“The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd: the longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not...” Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
“Alas, how easily things go wrong! A sigh too much, or a kiss too long, And there follows a mist and a weeping rain, And life is never the same again.” George MacDonald, Phantastes
“I’ve lived out my melancholy youth. I don’t give a fuck any more what’s behind me, or what’s ahead of me. I’m healthy. Incurably healthy. No sorrows, no regrets. No past, no future. The present is enough for me. Day by day. Today!” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

Related topics

emptiness past life answer sadness time reality experience future good action memory meaning present forgetting self-knowledge failure opportunity worth consequences

Related authors

Charles Dickens (4)
William Shakespeare (2)
Oscar Wilde (2)
Kurt Vonnegut (1)
Tennessee Williams (1)
John Green (1)
Ayn Rand (1)
Joseph Conrad (1)
Richard Branson (1)
Henry Miller (1)
George MacDonald (1)
Fernando Pessoa (1)

Related sources

The Glass Menagerie (1)
David Copperfield (2)
Great Expectations (1)
Macbeth (1)
A Christmas Carol (1)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1)
The Fountainhead (1)
Tropic of Cancer (1)
Heart of Darkness (1)
Looking for Alaska (1)
De Profundis (1)
Titus Andronicus (1)
Phantastes (1)
The Book of Disquiet (1)
Screw It, Let's Do It (1)
Cat's Cradle (1)