Deathbed Regret Quotes & Sayings

A quark is not the smallest thing. The smallest thing is the regret you will feel on your deathbed for not having worked more. — Matt Haig

Kahneman's evidence shows that we suck at remembering and predicting our own well-being. We as a culture still ignore this empirical evidence, recommending to live our lives so as to avoid deathbed regrets. Deathbed regrets are like Hollywood films: they stir passions for a couple hours, but are poorly connected to reality. They are not good criteria for a well-lived life. — Nick Winter

But nothing will fill your heart with a greater sense of regret than lying on your deathbed knowing that you did not live your life and do your dreams." Robin — Robin S. Sharma

When Olivier had been taken away Gamache had sat back down and stared at the sack. what could be worse than Chaos, Despair, War?
What would even the Mountain flee from? Gamache had given it a lot of thought.
What haunted people even, perhaps especially, on their deathbed? What chased them, tortured them and brought some of them to their knees? And Gamache thought he had the answer.
Regret.
Regret for things said, for things done, and not done. Regret for the people they might have been. And failed to be.
Finally, when he was alone, the Chief Inspector had opened the sack and looking inside had realize he'd been wrong. The worst thing of all wasn't regret. — Louise Penny

Don't be on your deathbed someday, having squandered your one chance at life, full of regret because you pursued little distractions instead of big dreams. — Derek Sivers

Distress that drives us to God does that. It turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that kind of pain. But those who let distress drive them away from God are full of regrets, end up on a deathbed of regrets. — Eugene H. Peterson

No one, on his deathbed, ever regretted having been a Catholic. — Thomas More

Regret was an emotional cancer, destroying you from the inside out. Eating at your most vital parts until there was nothing left but scar tissue and sorrow. It chipped away at you in small increments, shattering your defenses and tiring you out. But, unlike a physical cancer, which might eventually go into remission or be cut out with a few careful strokes of a surgeon's scalpel, regret would stay with you forever. It was chronic, but not terminal - a constant companion that would haunt you until your deathbed. And there were no cures to diminish its influence. No salves to counteract its effects.
Regret didn't break your body. It crushed your spirit.
Mine had just been broken beyond repair. — Julie Johnson

Rocco was gripped with the panic he often experienced around her, around himself. He seemed to be both here now and simultaneously five years in the future looking back at this moment, at the loss of this moment. He was always sliding past the nowness of being with her, throwing himself at her like a cranked-up insincere clown for an exhausting fifteen minutes a day or getting cozy with booze in order to achieve the proper mood, and from the time she was born he had felt he was on his deathbed, remembering with regret how skittish and slippery his time with her had been. Had been, as if she were a hard thirty-seven and divorced instead of a two-year old baby, as if he were eighty-six and senile instead of forty-three and slightly overweight. — Richard Price

I regret always writing, writing. I gave
my kid the whole plastic bag of marshmallows,
so i could have 20 minutes to write.
I sat at my mother's deathbed, writing.
I did swab her mouth with water, and feel
her pliant tongue enjoy water, then harden
and die. Before I had language,
before I had stories, I wanted to write.
That desire is going away.
I've said what I have to say.
I'll stop and look at things I called
distractions. Become a reader of the world,
no more writer of it. — Maxine Hong Kingston

My presidential victory, if it had happened, would have been artificial in relation to the Socialist party. It may be that on my deathbed, I will come to regret my decision, but for the moment, I live at peace with it. — Jacques Delors

On out deathbeds we're not going to regret all the work we didn't do. We're going to regret all the sex we didn't have! — John Betjeman

On your deathbed, in the twilight of your life, it will not be all the risks you took that you will regret the most. — Robin S. Sharma

I think the only advice I can give you on how to live your life well is, first off, remember ... it's not the things we do in life that we regret on our deathbed, it is the things we do not. — Randy Pausch

I'll make you this promise: on your deathbed, in the twilight of your life, it will not be all the risks you took that you will regret the most. Rather, what will fill your heart with the greatest amount of regret and sadness will be all those risks that you did not take, all those opportunities you did not seize and all those fears you did not face. — Robin S. Sharma

I felt stuck in a Sisyphean loop, writing the same press release over and over. Even more, I was tired of promoting other people's creations instead of creating something myself. I imagined myself on my deathbed, and I could hear my biggest regret: I never even tried to be a writer. — Helene Wecker

What haunted people even, perhaps especially, on their deathbed? What chased them, tortured them and brought some of them to their knees? And [he] thought he had the answer. Regret. Regret for things said, things done, and things not done. Regret for the people they might have been. And failed to be. — Louise Penny

And yet the irony was that she soon placed herself in the margins voluntarily, giving up work for family, because she imagined that when she eventually arrived at her deathbed, she would feel more regret about unborn children than unwritten books. — Matt Haig

One regret dear world, that I am determined not to have when I am lying on my deathbed is that I did not kiss you enough. — Hafez

I refuse to live with the regret of gambling for tomorrow. I will not lay on my deathbed wondering what might have been. I will ride the waves of purpose and chance towards the wonderful splendor of my dreams. At the end of my day, I will rest my head on the pillow of a day well-lived and a life well-ventured. — Steve Maraboli

Despite a legacy consisting of enough violence and death for twenty men, Jackson admitted to having two regrets on his deathbed: "I didn't shoot Henry Clay and I didn't murder John C. Calhoun." In a life rich with murdering people for little-to-no reason, Jackson's only regret was that he didn't kill quite enough people. People like Calhoun, who, it should be noted, was Jackson's vice president. No one is safe from Jackson's wrath. — Daniel O'Brien