Not Regretting Past Quotes & Sayings

If you're busy regretting the past, then a new future can't come in. — Marianne Williamson

You create your luck by being healthy and not regretting the past or being anxious about the future. — James Altucher

Every historian loves the past or should do. If not, he has mistaken his vocation; but it is a short step from loving the past to regretting that it has ever changed. Conservatism is our greatest trade-risk; and we run psychoanalysts close in the belief that the only "normal" people are those who cause no trouble either to themselves or anybody else. — A.J.P. Taylor

What did you learn?"
"Letting go of my past, because it's all soot, nothing is left
of it, if I wandered there for long I would be running in circles
in the dark, no hope, no life. And if I chose to live in those
places rebuilt from ashes, I can never get rid of the darkness
which would prevail underneath."
"The present is my ray of hope. I could have stayed there,
complaining about the gloominess of the light, and regretting
not having turned a corner to explore a new horizon at the same
time I needed to respect that light because it was my savior from
the dark. I learnt it finally and that's why I reached here today
and found you — Dixy Gandhi

The rapid progress true Science now makes, occasions my regretting sometimes that I was born so soon. — Benjamin Franklin

You have nothing to be embarrassed about. Life would be awfully dull if we could look back without regretting at least one affair. — J.D. Robb

When to give grace? I'd rather stand before God knowing I loved others too much rather than regretting that I judged too harshly. — Lysa TerKeurst

Decisions are never made in retrospect, hence there is no point regretting them, ever. — David Darson

Heden chose to shut up. He could not remember ever regretting silence. — Matthew Colville

Regret for time wasted can become a power for good in the time that remains, if we will only stop the waste and the idle, useless regretting. — Arthur Brisbane

In 'Straight Talking,' I had bared my soul, and the press attention had been overwhelming. There were times when I felt scared and vulnerable, regretting the articles I had written to publicize the book, regretting I had opened my life up for all to see. — Jane Green

Some clever children don't discover how bright they are until after they've left school,' continued Mr Holcombe, 'and then spend the rest of their lives regretting the wasted years. — Jeffrey Archer

Suddenly she realized that what she was regretting was not the lost past but the lost future, not what had not been but what would never be. — F Scott Fitzgerald

It is not by regretting what is irreparable that true work is to be done, but by making the best of what we are. It is not by complaining that we have not the right tools, but by using well the tools we have. What we are, and where we are is God's providential arrangement - God's doing, though it may be man's misdoing; and the manly and the wise way is to look your disadvantages in the face, and see what can be made our of them. — Will Schwalbe

Hearing those words, I instinctively turn to my new keeper, regretting it, because for only the third time in my entire existence, tears are streaming down my cheeks. — Giselle Simlett

It isn't the great big pleasures that count the most; it's making a great deal out of the little ones
I've discovered the true secret of happiness, Daddy, and that is to live in the now. Not to be for ever regretting the past, or anticipating the future; but to get the most that you can out of this very instant. — Jean Webster

There's a difference between a mistake and a regret. Everything up to this moment has made this moment. If you can change a mistake, then go out and do what you can to change it. If you can't change it, there's no use regretting it because it will just make you miserable. Live right now, even if that involves dealing with the consequences of your actions. Time travel always ends badly. — Rebecca McKinsey

Regretting the past does not prevent me from repeating it. — Mason Cooley

I've discovered the true secret of happiness, Daddy, and that is to live in the now. Not to be for ever regretting the past, or anticipating the future; but to get the most that you can out of this very instant ... I'm going to enjoy every second, and I'm going to know I'm enjoying it while I'm enjoying it. — Jean Webster

If things are tough, remember that every flower had to go through a whole lot of dirt to get there. So do not grieve about a bitter experience. The present is slipping by while you are regretting the past and worrying about the future. Regret will not prevent tomorrow's sorrows; it will only rob today of its strength. — Barbara Johnson

They knew that flowers die and leaves fall, but they could not carry that knowledge into their own lives; the acceptance was beyond them. Sighing for the blossom, they missed the fruit, growing and ripening. Regretting the fruit, they did not see the delicate tracery of bare boughs against a winter sky. — Lettice Cooper

His look makes me think of all the people who lay on their deathbed regretting the lives they led. His look gets me to believe that there are really only two ways out of life, that you leave either unsatisfied or dissatisfied. — M.B. Julien

My evanescent anarchistic tendencies are purely classical. I use the word anarchist in the sense in which it was understood by the ancient Greeks. They, of course, accepted the anarchist as a fairly respectable--if somewhat vehement--opponent of government encroachment on the individual's rights to think and act freely. It is in this sense that I glimpse myself as an anarchist--regretting the growth of government and the ever-increasing trend toward regulation and, worst of all, standardization of human activity. — J. Paul Getty

It's unfair."
As a rule, life is unfair," I said.
Yeah, but I think I did say some awful things."
To Dick?"
Yeah."
I pulled the car over to the shoulder of the road and turned off the ignition. "That's just stupid, that kind of thinking," I said, nailing her with my eyes. "Instead of regretting what you did, you could have treated him decently from the beginning. You could've tried to be fair. But you didn't. You don't even have the right to be sorry. — Haruki Murakami

My life suddenly felt like an hourglass with a decision placed at my feet. Do I live as I am, or do I make a choice to become something else? No matter which way I went, I could end up regretting that choice. — Dannika Dark

Never leave yourself open to regret Grace. We can only make a decision when we know the choices we are faced with. If we shy away, turn our backs and hide, we will simply never know. And that is when you end up old and wondering and regretting. Live a life of hope. Don't live a life of regret. — Hazel Gaynor

No, war will not be stopped. But it is a comfort, in the midst of a war, to read an antiwar book this good, and be reminded that just because something keeps happening, doesn't mean we get to stop regretting it. Massacres are bad, the death of innocents is bad, hate is bad, and there's something cleansing about hearing it said so purely. — George Saunders

You have a way of turning the established order on its head." Instantly regretting that, he forced his face to relax; Lynx must not see anger in his eyes. — Gwynn White

Self-confidence is not pride. Just the contrary: only a person or a nation that is self-confident, in the best sense of the word, is capable of listening to others, accepting them as equals, forgiving its enemies and regretting its own guilt. — Vaclav Havel

True penance consists in regretting without ceasing the faults of the past, and in firmly resolving to never again commit that which is so deplorable. — Bernard Of Clairvaux

Always be truthful and you will have fewer visits from regret, guilt or fear. — Suzy Kassem

I turned up the inane sound effects and let them fill the room, setting up an atmosphere of mind-body pollution while Miss Chianti and I got better acquainted. A couple of glasses had me convinced that she's a real sweetheart, though a protracted rendezvous was probably going to leave me regretting the entire encounter. It's always the quiet ones that come back to bite you. — Alice Yi-Li Yeh

I never regret anything. I always said that when I'm old, I want to be sitting there regretting the things that I did and not the things that I didn't do; and now I'm old, and I don't regret anything! I had fun. I had fun, and I'm still having it. — Michael Caine

Some things you did were worth regretting; others not. — Richard Yates

Mike Mason says, "A decision to rejoice in the present changes not only the present, it also changes my view of the past and ignites my future with hope."[26] I've stopped demanding that a moment last longer than it can. I don't require a moment to be anything other than what it is: a brief span of time that has been given by a gracious Father. I will wring every bit of pleasure out of this moment because I don't know when the next one will come. We're rarely satisfied with today; we spend too much time regretting the unrepeatable past and wishing we could get a do-over, or we waste our energy on worry and anxiety about the unknowable future. Either way, TODAY is ignored or minimized. — Kay Warren

Part of being of a true existentialist is wanting to be what we make ourselves be by the way we choose to act, as opposed to making excuses for the way we act and regretting it. — Gary Cox

The Greeks put us to shame not only by their simplicity, which is foreign to our age; they are at the same time our rivals, nay, frequently our models, in those very points of superiority from which we seek comfort when regretting the unnatural character of our manners. We see that remarkable people uniting at once fullness of form and fullness of substance, both philosophising and creating, both tender and energetic, uniting a youthful fancy to the virility of reason in a glorious humanity. — Friedrich Schiller

Heredity. It's like going to a fortune-teller and regretting it. As human beings, we tend not to like things we can't avoid. Death, for instance. — Jo Nesbo

Good Lord, I'm regretting this now," I muttered. "I have never - ever - smelled BO this bad in my life. And I once had s'mores wit a Sasquatch."
"Hang out with him for awhile," Mort gasped. "Eventually it's not so bad."
"Wow. Really?"
"No. Not really. — Jim Butcher

We keep ourselves so tied up in regretting the past and fearing the future that we don't have any energy left to figure out who we are and what we want to create right now. — Gay Hendricks

Shall we go?' he murmured, perhaps regretting his decision to show me his army of plastic cartoon figurines. — Jon Ronson

I don't regret one day of breaking that rule. Because it'd mean regretting every moment that I spent with Baylee. And I don't. I just don't. I can't. — Krista Ritchie

And he began to understand what a wild game we play in life; he began to understand that a thing once done cannot be undone nor changed by saying I am sorry! — Robert Louis Stevenson

Instead of regretting what we cannot do, it is better to do anything we can do. Even if what we do does not bring us to our goal, it brings us much closer to it. — CLAMP

When I went into the last lap I was regretting a bit that it was over. I was enjoying again the first sector for the last time. Simply fantastic this circuit, and if you get 53 laps more, you appreciate it even more. It's made by God's hands. — Sebastian Vettel

I don't believe in regretting - one should try to move on. My mum was good at that. She was deeply in love with my father, and he died when I was nine. She remarried, and her second husband died, too. I saw the grieving process she went through. My mother had this way of moving on. It was a fine trait. — Robert Winston

In twenty years you could say and do a lot you wish you hadn't. In twenty years you could store up a lot of regrets. And then, when it was too late, when there was no one left to say "I'm sorry" to, "I didn't mean it" to, you could stop sleeping for regret, stop eating, talking, working, for regret. You could stop wanting to live. You could want to die for regret.
It was only remembering the good times that kept you from taking the knife from the kitchen drawer and, holding it so, tightly in your fist, on the bed, naked to no purpose except that that was how you came into the world and how your best moments in the world had been spent
holding it so, roll onto the blade, slowly so that it slid like love between your ribs and into that stupidly pumping muscle in your chest that kept you regretting. — Joseph Hansen

To me, it's always interesting to see what people end up regretting, as a way maybe to avoid such regrets in your own life. — Robin Marantz Henig