Regret Remorse Quotes

Holy shadows of the dead, I am not to blame for your cruel and bitter fate, but the accursed rivalry which brought sister nations and brother people to fight one another. I do not feel happy for this victory of mine. On the contrary, I would be glad, brothers, if I had all of you standing here next to me, since we are united by the same language, the same blood and the same visions.
[Addressing the dead Hellenes of the Battle of Chaeronea] ~ Alexander The Great

...I am a person who believes in form, in the harmony of order. Where we can, we must give things a meaningful shape. [...] It is important in life to conclude things properly. Only then you can let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse..."
~Life of Pi, chapter 94 ~ Yann Martel

The theatre is a tragic place, full of endings and partings and heartbreak. You dedicate yourself passionately to something, to a project, to people, to a family, you think of nothing else for weeks and months, then suddenly it's over, it's perpetual destruction, perpetual divorce, perpetual adieu. It's like éternel retour, it's a koan. It's like falling in love and being smashed over and over again.'
'You do, then, fall in love.'
'Only with fictions, I love players, but actors are so ephemeral. And then there's waiting for the perfect part, and being offered it the day after you've committed yourself to something utterly rotten. The remorse, and the envy and the jealousy. An old actor told me if I wanted to stay in the trade I had better kill off envy and jealousy at the start. ~ Iris Murdoch

When the bonfire of love still smolders in the wake of emotional convulsions, seeds of regret and remorse may endlessly linger about on the path of life. ("Taken for a ride) ~ Erik Pevernagie

After each dream, Frankie woke with a start, soaked in tears. But she found no relief in the peaceful silence of her room, because there everything was real. And the guilt was too immense to bear. Each time she opened her eyes, she'd quickly shut them. And wish that she had woken up for the very last time. ~ Lisi Harrison

To spend my days regretting what I'm not is to rob me of the energy I need to celebrate who I am. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I wonder what life would have been like if I would have taken all that time I spent wondering what life would have been like, and instead used that time to make it what I wanted it to be like. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Reflection offers a retrospective exploration, a way to figure out how everything fits and connects now on your journey- and being done so without regret or remorse. Reflection is the birthplace of discernment, an insightful and awakening place that grants you to keep what you need and smartly sift away the rest. ~ Christine Evangelou

Wiersbe suggests that a distinction can be made between regret, remorse and repentance. Regret is that activity of the mind (intellect) that causes us to say, "Why did I do that?" Remorse touches us a little deeper causing us to feel disgust and pain (involving both the intellect and the heart), but not causing us to change our ways. True repentance brings in the third aspect of our minds – our will. To truly repent one must have a change of will. "Godly sorrow" is the catalyst that brings us to true repentance. [Warren Wiersbe, Be Reverent, p. 149.]
By Carey Dillinger
From Expository Files 11.6; June 2004 ~ Warren W. Wiersbe

And so, for the first time, I began to feel a more general remorse - a feeling somewhere between self-pity and self-hatred - about my whole life. ~ Julian Barnes

Regret and remorse" is a dialectic issue about what has been done, about what should have been done and about what should not have been done. ( "Island of regret. Island of remorse" ) ~ Erik Pevernagie

The past may or may not be a foreign country. It may morph or lie still, but its capital is always Regret, and what flushes through it is the grand canal of unfledged desires that feed into an archipelago of tiny might-have-beens that never really happened but aren't unreal for not happening and might still happen though we fear they never will. And I thought of Ole Brit holding back so much, as we all do when we look back to see that the roads we've left behind or not taken have all but vanished. Regret is how we hope to back into our real lives once we find the will, the blind drive and courage, to trade in the life we're given for the life that bears our name and ours only. Regret is how we look forward to things we've long lost yet never really had. Regret is hope without conviction, I said. We're torn between regret, which is the price to pay for things not done, and remorse, which is the cost for having done them. Between one and the other, time plays all its cozy little tricks. ~ Andre Aciman

I wander cowboy sidewalks of wood, wearing a too-small hat, filled with remorse for the many lives I failed to lead. ~ George Saunders

It is the bungled crime that brings remorse. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Today is non-refundable. Therefore, I'd better live it in a manner that a refund is unnecessary. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

There are many types of teachable moments in life. Contentment is not always the most fertile ground to garner self-knowledge. At times, bitter memories can force us to change and teach us to avoid duplicating past conduct that led to regret and remorse. The greater the degree of anxiety that we assign to periods of uncertainty and distress the less likely we will resort to duplicating these problematic experiences in the future. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

A life premised upon honest effort and questing for love is bound to generate regret and remorse. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

It is well for the unfortunate to be resigned, but for the guilty there is no peace. The agonies of remorse poison the luxury there is otherwise sometimes found in indulging the excess of grief. ~ Mary Shelley

He was a stranger here. The people who might remember him would certainly not welcome him. His old gang had cast him out, along with all of the former friends and parents. The suburban landscape of hypocrisy, so hated in his youth, beheld again and with it, old feelings that motivated him through life more than he would ever admit. Every turning point in life, already decided by all the events here ~ Jaime Allison Parker

I regret my choice of words which do not accurately reflect the process of the James committee, with which I have been closely involved and totally support. ~ Howard Flight

Obligations, hatreds, injuries; what did I expect my memories to be? I was forgetting remorse. Now I have a complete past. ~ Jean Anouilh

I don't regret doing any of my films. All of them have been great learning experiences, and they have contributed to making me what I am today. ~ Randeep Hooda

And heaved and heaved, still unrestingly heaved the black sea, as if its vast tides were a conscience; and the great mundane soul were in anguish and remorse for the long sin and suffering it had bred. ~ Herman Melville

I cannot show remorse because I do not believe I am guilty. ~ Lyn Nofziger

We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Regret is the only wound from which the soul never recovers ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach

«And in the end» said the witch to the drowning prince «You've been the one choosing the thornless path in spite of knowing where it could lead. The one who afraid of the pricking roses, plunged himself into an abyss without petals ~ Nur Bedeir

Gods, my gods! How sad the earth is at eventide! How mysterious are the mists over the swamps. Anyone who has wandered in these mists, who has suffered a great deal before death, or flown above the earth, bearing a burden beyond his strength knows this. Someone who is exhausted knows this. And without regret he forsakes the mists of the earth, its swamps and rivers, and sinks into the arms of death with a light heart knowing that death alone . . . ~ Mikhail Bulgakov

It took me less than half a lifetime to realize that regret is one of the few guaranteed certainties. Sooner or later everything is touched by it, despite our naive and senseless hope that just this time we will be spared its cold hand on our heart. ~ Jonathan Carroll

Only a fool wants war, but once a war starts then it cannot be fought half-heartedly. It cannot even be fought with regret, but must be waged with a savage joy in defeating the enemy, and it is that savage joy that inspires our bards to write their greatest songs about love and war. ~ Bernard Cornwell

The one regret I have about my own abortions is that they cost money that might otherwise have been spent on something more pleasurable, like taking the kids to movies and theme parks. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

Decisions were permanent, and although we could regret some of them, we couldn't call them back. I had made some poor ones. Neil had too. I guess the best we could hope for, was to love each other as honestly as possible on each day we had left together. And hope for many, many long years of those days in the future. ~ Raine Miller

Too often I am jealous and my jealousy leads me to say things-things-that I regret. ~ Kate Mosse

Remorse is eating his soul like a caterpillar in a cabbage. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

I loved him not; and yet, now he is gone,
I feel I am alone.
I check'd him while he spoke; yet, could he speak,
Alas! I would not check.
For reasons not to love him once I sought,
And wearied all my thought
To vex myself and him: I now would give
My love could he but live
Who lately lived for me, and, when he found
'Twas vain, in holy ground
He hid his face amid the shades of death.
I waste for him my breath
Who wasted his for me! but mine returns,
And this lorn bosom burns
With stifling heat, heaving it up in sleep,
And waking me to weep
Tears that had melted his soft heart: for years
Wept he as bitter tears.
Merciful God! such was his latest prayer,
These may she never share.
Quieter is his breath, his breast more cold,
Than daisies in the mould,
Where children spell, athwart the churchyard gate,
His name and life's brief date.
Pray for him, gentle souls, whoe'er you be,
And oh! pray too for me! ~ Walter Savage Landor

The effort of trying to turn grief into regret, to live entirely on past nourishment, even to keep the sharper parts of nostalgia credible (he found himself beginning to doubt and struggle with the intricacies of the smaller memories), and, most of all, the fearful absence of anything that could begin to take their place, had worn him down. ~ Elizabeth Jane Howard

I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

I quit the Knicks so I know what quitting is, I did. I quit. And it's something I regret to this day. I live with it every day and I regret it. And I let my emotions come into it. And I was just emotionally spent. I made a bad decision and I quit. ~ Jeff Van Gundy

Do not regret the passing if the camel and the caravan. The Sahara has changed, but it remains a desert without compromise, the world in its extreme. There is no place as dry and hot and hostile. ~ William Langewiesche

Want to know one of the most rewarding and holistic ways to heal & make significant life choices that will fully align? Learning to slow down, breath, think, journal, talk, and process before reacting. Knowing you have worked through the issue, be it mentally, emotionally or spiritually, before taking action lets you write the script of your life how you want. Which in turn gives you the best chance of achieving your dreams ~ Natasha Potter

I inherited a sick economy and passed on a sound one. But one abiding regret for me is that, in between, I did not have the resources to put in place the educational and social changes about which I cared to much; I made only a beginning, and it was not enough. ~ John Major

The Dark Angel had seen much over the course of the past millennia, the passing of hundreds of thousands of mortal lives. He felt neither remorse nor mercy for the enemies he had felled in the course of wars and battles. He did what he had to do and believed that the people of Earth did not deserve all the good things they had received. For him, most people were harmful parasites who, in the process of their brief mortal lives, tried to get ahead by climbing over each other and destroying their own homes. He looked down on them and their love of material things. He believed that the star of humankind was waning, and that its brief stay on Earth would serve, at most, to swell the ranks of slaves in the underworld, where eventually darkness would eat them away. ~ A.O. Esther

Usurious rates of return are deceitful sirens that sing but to lure the unwary upon the rocks of loss and remorse. ~ George S. Clason

Sharon looked at Aaron and smiled. She'd made the right decision, hadn't she? Would she come to regret this decision too? She'd made so many mistakes in the past. Was this another one? No, self-doubt isn't an option. Everything is going to work out here. It has to. ~ Tamara Hoffa

That's what a conscience is made of, scar tissue ... Little strips and pieces of remorse sewn together year by year until they formed a distinctive pattern, a design for living. ~ Margaret Millar

Remorse is the fruit of crime. ~ Juvenal

Don't be so bitter about a bad experience from your past that you miss the opportunities in front of you. ~ Robert Kiyosaki

I'm not sure I handled it well," he sais,his face so open,gaze filled with such raw regret,my heart aches on his behalf.
"Considering the circumstances, I think you did fine.Besides,it's not like you stood a chance,her mind was make up the moment she saw you."
Dace jerks back,his expression slighted,voice unsure when he says, "I don't understand ... "
I fumble with my lunch sack,wondering why I can never say the right thing around him.Having no way to explain in a way that won't sound completely embarrassing,when Xotichl steps in.
"What's not to get? You're hot-Daire's gorgeous-it's a recipe for parental distress if there ever was one. ~ Alyson Noel

Everyone has ghosts that follow them throughout their lives. Ghosts of the past they wish they'd left behind, ghosts of love they once turned down, ghosts of regret and ghosts of loss. Ghosts of guilt. We all have them. I do. ~ Karina Halle