Death Remorse Quotes & Sayings

From this outer edge of his life, looking back, there was only one remorse, and that was only that he wished to go on living. Did all dying people feel this way, as if they had never lived? Did life seem that short, indeed, over and done before you took a breath? Did it seem this abrupt and impossible to everyone, or only to himself, here, now, with a few hours left to him for thought and deliberation? — Ray Bradbury

So do the dark in soul expire, Or live like scorpion girt by fire; So writhes the mind remorse hath riven, Unfit for earth, undoom'd for heaven, Darkness above, despair beneath, Around it flame, within it death. — Lord Byron

I became aware that our love was doomed; love had turned into a love affair with a beginning and an end. I could name the very moment when it had begun, and one day I knew I should be able to name the final hour. When she left the house I couldn't settle to work. I would reconstruct what we had said to each other; I would fan myself into anger or remorse. And all the time I knew I was forcing the pace. I was pushing, pushing the only thing I loved out of my life. As long as I could make believe that love lasted I was happy; I think I was even good to live with, and so love did last. But if love had to die, I wanted it to die quickly. It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death; I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck. — Graham Greene

I shall die. I shall no longer feel the agonies which now consume me, or be the prey of feelings unsatisfied, yet unquenched ... Some years ago, when the images which this world affords first opened upon me, when I felt the cheering warmth of summer, and heard the rustling of the leaves and the chirping of the birds, and these were all to me, I should have wept to die; now it is my only consolation. — Mary Shelley

There will be no holding off, there will be no remorse and there will be no hesitation. They will die and they will die a horrible death. This is my pledge and vow, so bank on it and don't try to stop me. — Mark A. McCormick

He was the person all of us should be, but most of us aren't. And if I could have taken his place to buy him a little more time in the world, I'd have done it. I'm sorry I couldn't. — Trish Doller

Every morning I wake up, I feel guilty; every breath of borrowed time is heavy in my chest.-Lo-The Wild Hunt — Ashley Jeffery

Penance is a sacrifice, a voluntary punishment to show remorse for a sin. The more grievous the sin, the greater the self-inflicted suffering. For some, the ultimate penance is death. But for others, it simply a means to an end. — Emily Thorne

Looking back, my greatest regret is not that I didn't love them enough (to the brink of insanity and back again), but that I couldn't save them from themselves. — Bailey Vincent

We derive insightful perception by observing and studying, comparing and contrasting. Without investigating why we prefer the veil of life to the cloak of death and without considering how to create dangerously, live honorably, and die gloriously without remorse and regret, we risk dissipating what precious little shelf life our brittle humanity grants us. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Polluted by crimes, and torn by the bitterest remorse, where can I find rest but in death? — Mary Shelley

Is it possible that evil is never total, that its victory, no matter how overwhelming, is never absolute?
Consider this fallen man. He sought without remorse to shatter the mind of a fellow human being; and exploited, to do so, an entirely blameless woman, at least partly owing to his own impossible and voyeuristic desire for her. Yet this same man has risked death, with scarcely any hesitation, in a foolhardy rescue attempt. — Salman Rushdie

There is the love that I love but don't want to love and try to bleed out so the love that I want but don't want, can die a tragic death. And as it lays dying, I'm touched with remorse, feel regret, and try to keep it beating. If it does, I panic, and go through the cycle all over again. What do you call that except pure madness? I'm a catastrophic tsunami on any man who tries to love me. And if I really care about a man, you would think I would be sweet and supportive, but instead I set fires and dare them to walk through them. — Donna Lynn Hope

When we die the only judge we have is ourselves. We see our life played out in a hologram of knowledge that our earth souls cannot understand. We see all at once how each word and each action affected the lives of the people around us. How a moment of kindness can change a life and a sharp word can affect someone for ever. Words and actions are far more powerful than we realise. It's the pebble-in-the-lake effect-even the tiniest pebble thrown into water will create ripples right across the lake. We don't need to be punished because, when we have viewed the consequences of our actions on all the souls we have met, we have remorse enough. I believe there is no external judge. We must face ourselves. — Michele Knight

This, the guilt, will be the hardest part for Galen. He already takes responsibility for so much that isn't his fault. He will somehow blame himself for Rachel's death. He will fall into a spiral of remorse, into a self-made pit of regret.
And I silently promise him to catch him when he does. — Anna Banks

How I suffered when I had to preach to you those pious lies that I detest in my heart. What remorse your credulity caused me! A thousand times I was on the point of breaking out publicly and opening your eyes, but a fear stronger than myself held me back, and forced me to keep silence until my death. — Jean Meslier

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

The love of a dog for his master is notorious; in the agony of death he has been known to caress his master, and everyone has heard of the dog suffering under vivisection, who licked the hand of the operator; this man, unless he had a heart of stone, must have felt remorse to the last hour of his life. — Charles Darwin

Divine justice pursued its course; disasters came thick on me: I was forced to pass through the valley of the shadow of death. His chastisements are mighty; and one smote me which has humbled me for ever. You know I was proud of my strength: but what is it now, when I must give it over to foreign guidance, as a child does its weakness? Of late, Jane - only - only of late - I began to see and acknowledge the hand of God in my doom. I began to experience remorse, repentance; the wish for reconcilement to my Maker. I began to pray: very brief prayers they were, but very sincere. — Charlotte Bronte

Death will paint everything a different shade of remorse.

You'll feel guilty that you're still breathing.
But you can't stop.
You'll feel guilty for wanting to laugh again.
And it will be awful the first time that you do.
You'll feel guilty for just about everything at first.
And someday, at some point, you'll start to feel guilty . . .
for forgetting to feel guilty.

But of all Heaven's lessons, guilt isn't one of them. You don't need to hold on to it. It doesn't need to be a practice and it shouldn't be your life.

Heaven would never approve of your guilt.
Because Heaven has no regrets. — Tessa Shaffer

It's difficult the first time you have to get close to kill another. You see their eyes, see the light in it go out. Even a troll's eyes have that light. I'd be worried if you didn't feel something after that. I don't like hunting with a man who's a killer without that feeling. — Raymond E. Feist

The transience of humanity frames the tragedy of all people. There are no happy conclusions to life, we all die, and until we die, we will experience both happiness and pain. Acceptance of the tragedy of humankind without remorse is a shattering experience; it enables us to relinquish mawkish misconceptions, destructive obsessions, and crippling attachments. Only by accepting the tragedy of life as an integral part of the incandescent beauty of life, will I understand what it means to rejoice in the indelible bloom of life. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Death abides by no one's rules ... it takes what pleases it without consciousness to its decisions. It destroys what it will. It took the pieces of perfection I once knew and shattered them. Now what remains are shards of a dream, drawing blood with every step. — Cassandra Giovanni

..the irreversibility of things is a kind of death at the heart of life and threatens constantly to steer us into time past- the home of
nostalgia, guilt, regret and remorse, the great spoilers of happiness. — Luc Ferry

No, Marla says. No, she wants it all. The cancers, the parasites. Marla's eyes narrow. She never dreamed she could feel so marvelous. She actually felt alive. Her skin was clearing up. All her life, she never saw a dead person. There was no real sense of life because she had nothing to contrast it with. Oh, but now there was dying and death and loss and grief. Weeping and shuddering, terror and remorse. Now that she knows where we're all going, Marla feels every moment of her life. — Chuck Palahniuk

Oh Lestat, you deserved everything that's ever happened to you. You better not die. You might actually go to hell. — Anne Rice

BRANDY, n. A cordial composed on one part thunder-and-lightning, one part remorse, two parts bloody murder, one part death-hell-and-the-grave and four parts clarified Satan. — Ambrose Bierce

We need be careful how we deal with those about us, when every death carries to some small circle of survivors, thoughts of so much omitted, and so little done- of so many things forgotten, and so many more which might have been repaired! There is no remorse so deep as that which is unavailing; if we would be spared its tortures, let us remember this, in time. — Charles Dickens

She'd been conceived as a goddess of justice. But this wasn't just.
It wasn't right.
And her husband's wrongful death would not go unavenged.
Kissing cold lips Bathymaas laid him on the ground and covered his body with her cloak.
Artemis gasped and shrank away from her as she rose to her feet and turned towards Apollo and his mother.
For this, there would be hell to pay.
And hers would be the hand that gathered the payment. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Farewell! I leave you, and in you the last of humankind whom these eyes will ever behold. Farewell, Frankenstein! If thou wert yet alive and yet cherished a desire of revenge against me, it would be better satiated in my life than in my destruction. But it was not so; thou didst seek my extinction, that I might not cause greater wretchedness; and if yet, in some mode unknown to me, thou hadst not ceased to think and feel, thou wouldst not desire against me a vengeance greater than that which I feel. Blasted as thou wert, my agony was still superior to thine, for the bitter sting of remorse will not cease to rankle in my wounds until death shall close them forever. — Mary Shelley