Quotes & Sayings About Past Regrets

Don't give life to regrets and live on ifs and only, when you can no more unscramble an egg than change the past. — Nadia Janice Brown

If we have regrets about our past, this would help us to realize about our wrong doings and make us apologize to others. — Saaif Alam

The unfortunate thing is that, sometimes, we slip, but, fortunately, consciously or unconsciously, we learn from our slips all the time, except some people! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

We can't make up for lost time, but we can make room to share space. — T.F. Hodge

Today is the day you can wipe away all those regrets you've been carrying around for far too long. Today is the day that you can put your past in your past, and let God directs your future. — Robin Bertram

There are probably a million and one regrets I have, and if they are going to be between us here or in bed, then let's just stop it now, because I'm not going to do combat over my past when my future is finally starting to be something I want to invest in. — Jay Crownover

I had drunk our great cultural Kool-Aid about regret, which is that lamenting things that occurred in the past is an absolute waste of time, that we should always look forward and not backward, and that one of the noblest and best things we can do is strive to live a life free of regrets. — Kathryn Schulz

She needs a new journal. The one she has is problematic. To get to the present, she needs to page through the past, and when she does, she remembers things, and her new journal entries become, for the most part, reactions to the days she regrets, wants to correct, rewrite. — Dave Eggers

When you no longer worry about the future, and no longer have regrets about the past, you exist purely in the moment. If you concentrate on that moment you instinctively know, that as long as you have life you have hope.
Enjoy the moment. Breathe easily. Relax. — Paul Wilson

There is no time for regrets. Regrets relate to the past. We have been there. We need to progress to the future. — Marilyn L. Rice

You get to know what you should have done better regretfully when you watch others take the stage enthusiastically to do what you should have done better — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

What haunts me far more than anything I've ever done are the things I haven't done. — Dan Pearce

NOEL: You can get excited about the future. The past won't mind. — Hillary DePiano

When the drum beat comes to an end, you shall not hear the drum beat again, but you shall remember how it sounded, and you shall understand clearly how you should or should not have danced to the drum beat — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

There is no future in the past and there is no real hope in the future, only regrets, worries, plans and aim for the best. — Auliq Ice

When the time is right, life will have a meaning.
When the time is right, world will be bright again.
When the time is right, things will fall into place.
Just remember, never regret. — Akash Lakhotia

Career is different. Career is the stringing together of opportunities and jobs. Mix in public opinion and past regrets. Add a dash of future panic and a whole lot of financial uncertainty. Career is something that fools you into thinking you are in control and then takes pleasure in reminding you that you aren't. Career is the thing that will not fill you up and never make you truly whole. Depending on your career is like eating cake for breakfast and wondering why you start crying an hour later. — Amy Poehler

Because of the past, so many people are living in the past! No one is free from the past, but we are free to choose to move from the past into the present or stay in the past, though we live in the present! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Because Jesus was forsaken, we are forgiven. Because He was beaten, we are healed. Because He was thirsty, we're awash in the water of life. Because He died, we have an eternal home. No matter how deep our regrets, how searing our conscience, how messy our past, we start each day with a clean slate. All our failures are washed away in His blood. — Robert J. Morgan

Do not be ready to listen to anyone who is ready to show you your past mistakes instead, be ready to listen to someone who is ready to show you the untold lessons from your past mistakes so that you may be able to skip your future mistakes — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Sometimes in life, you may take a step, only to realize the steps you missed. Sometimes in life, you may delay a step taking, only to see a step you shouldn't have miss. Notwithstanding the results of your steps, you still ought to take steps. Life keeps moving and you can't afford to be static! Keep on moving on! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Pastor Smith did not have the religious constitution needed to provide salvation for any of us who'd had a hand in this tragic event. We had put on the armour of God, and there was no undoing what we had done. My faith, my belief in myself as a good citizen, everything I had thought was truth was scattered to the wind, and no one on this earth could put that to rights. Things weren't as simple as living and dying. I understood that now. — Cheryl R Cowtan

We are in misery because we are creatures of self - the self that is unyielding and narrow, that reflects no light, that is blind to the infinite. Our self is loud with its own discordant clamour - it is not the tuned harp whose chords vibrate with the music of the eternal. Sighs of discontent and weariness of failure, idle regrets for the past and anxieties for the future are troubling our shallow hearts because we have not found our souls, and the self-revealing spirit has not been manifest within us. Hence our cry. — Rabindranath Tagore

The old are often forgotten. Life moves on without a care for those who wish to remain in the past. We tend to talk too much because it's rare that we're listened to. — Tami Egonu

Most of us have spent our lives caught up in plans, expectations, ambitions for the future; in regrets, guilt or shame about the past. To come into the present is to stop the war. — Jack Kornfield

This I would wish, that there was no time or sleep. No more past, or future, and everything we did was good the first time, for the day. Without the need of looking back to learn from the past, and no future to hope for the better. No more tiredness, or having a need to dream, and no nightmares to fear. If there was a second time, this is how I would like to start over. — Anthony Liccione

They that fail to understand their dreams, visions and aspirations in life and the real steps to take to make dreams a reality shall always have realities of life teaching them the had I knows of life. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

The way to live a long time - oh, a thousand years or more - is something between the way a child does it and the way a mature man does it. Give the future enough thought to be ready for it - but don't worry about it. Live each day as if you were to die next sunrise. Then face each sunrise as a fresh creation and live for it, joyously. And never think about the past. No regrets, ever. — Robert A. Heinlein

What is past, but unalterable truth; life, just a pile of regrets; future, just a sum total of possibilities, and you...? just another trapped soul... — Gayathri Jayakumar

When the past is mentioned, some cry! When the past is mentioned, some ponder! When the past is mentioned, never again comes into the mind of some people. When the past is mentioned, some recall their had I known! The past is past, but its footprints never go! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

When I am running I inhabit and exit my body in the same moment. I bear witness to the harshest of physical sensations, even while I feel myself flying free and away. I do not want to remember what has happened to me. I do not want to reflect on the past. I can't in a way. I'm not made for regrets. — Carrie Snyder

A wise man has said: 'Only a Christian can live wholly in the present, for to him the past is pardoned and the future is safe in God.' ... the Christian life must be a life without regrets, without remorse. — Evelyn Underhill

The thing about past love is that they exist, only in your fantasy as a fantasy. — Hafsa Shah

This time last year, I never would have imagined my life would turn out this way, but I feel like everything that's happened in my life led me to him. My choices, my heartaches, my regrets, everything. When I'm with him, everything in my past seems worth it, because if even one thing had happened differently, I might have never met this wonderful, amazing man. ~ Ariana UNBREK ME — E.J. Logan

Back when he had first come to the monastery, they had given him a very simple ritual called Forgiving the Day. Even the youngest child could do this; all it required was looking back over the day and dismissing the day's pains as a thing that were past while choosing to remember as gains lessons learned or moments of insight. As initiates grew in the ways of Sa, it was expected they would grow more sophisticated in this exercise, learning to balance the day, taking responsibility for their own actions and learning from them without indulging in either guilt or regrets."
p. 240 — Robin Hobb

anytime you speak to anybody, remember somebody — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Immediate, glad obedience to God sets our course on the sea of happiness. Disobedience drops anchor in the sea of despair.Godly living means no regrets about yesterday, no embarrassments today, no schemes for tomorrow. Trust and let the One who holds both the past and future be your Guide for the present. — Woodrow Kroll

A thousand regrets I've had in love,
A thousand times I've longed to change the past.
I know, my love, there is no going back.
No undoing of our thousand burdens.
We must go on despite our heavy hearts.
A thousand regrets I've had in love, but I shall never regret you. — Rachel Hartman

It's not good to dig in the past, raise the ghost up from the grave, and have it walk with the flesh. — Anthony Liccione

Diwali means to be in the present, so drop the regrets of the past and the worries of the future and live in the moment. It is a time to forget the bickering and negativities that have happened through the year. It is a time when you throw light on the wisdom you have gained and welcome a new beginning. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Still the dream persists, suppressed but always there, that somehow by some miraculous effort of the heart what was done could be undone. What form would such atonement take that would turn back time and bring the dead to life? None. None possible, not in the real world. And yet in my imaginings I can clearly see this cleansed new creature steaming up out of myself like a proselyte rising drenched from the baptismal river amid glad cries. — John Banville

Our regrets want to bring
back many things we leave behind — Munia Khan

But harboring regrets is making love to the past, and there is no movement here. — Terry Tempest Williams

A good man lives for the joy in life and the happiness of being alive, not shackled to the wants of the future or the regrets of the past. — Carew Papritz

The only thing we can control is what we do in the present. The more we replay yesterday, the further we get from today's opportunities. And the further away we move from opportunities, the tougher the road is to get back. Opportunities never look as good coming as they do going, and they wait for no one. We need to be highly attentive to spot them. And we must be focused on our present capabilities, not past regrets. — John C. Maxwell

What about you?" he asked, his words not much more than a mumble. "Regrets?"

"Many," Skuduggery said.

Tesseract's breath rattled in his chest. "That's the goo thing about living. You get to make up for past mistakes."

"Or make brand-new ones. — Derek Landy

The future is now! Don't make that second pass you into regrets. — Anthony Liccione

Man's dearest possession is life. It is given to him but once, and he must live it so as to feel no torturing regrets for wasted years, never know the burning shame of a mean and petty past; so live that, dying, he might say: all my life, all my strength were given to the finest cause in all the world--the fight for the Liberation of Mankind — Nikolai Ostrovsky

New Year's resolutions often fail because toxic emotions and experiences from our past can sabotage us or keep us stuck with the same old thoughts, patterns and regrets. — Debbie Ford

The discontented believe that their regrets are about the past. — Mason Cooley

I have no regrets. To regret my past would be to admit I am not satisfied with who or what I have become. Everything I have accomplished and all I have been exposed to - good or evil - has created what sits before you. — Scott Hildreth

Rather than having regrets over events in the past, or worrying whether or not the future will bring you what you need or desire, allow yourself to rest in the present, the now. Understand that all that has transpired has brought you to this moment, and in this very moment, riches that far outweigh those of the world already lie within you. — Kristi Bowman

I'm halfway through my life, and as far as I can tell, the real lesson of the past isn't that I made some mistakes, it's that I didn't make nearly enough of them. I doubt I'll be lying on my deathbed in forty or fifty years, congratulating myself on the fact that I never had sex in an airplane with a handsome Italian businessman, or patting myself on the back for all those years of involuntary celibacy I endured after my divorce. If recent experience is any guide, I'll probably be lying in that hospital bed with my body full of tubes, sneaking glances at the handsome young doctor, wishing that I hadn't been such a coward. Wishing I'd taken more risks, made more mistakes, and accumulated more regrets. Just wishing I'd lived when I had the chance. — Tom Perrotta

Whenever I have a birthday, I think back over the past year, how I've spent my time, what I've accomplished, what regrets I have, how I've tried to make the world a better place, and what exactly I've been doing with my life over the past 365 days, and I think to myself: 'Man, I wish I'd gotten laid more'. — Richard M. Weiner

Leave aside your regrets of the past and anxieties of the future
And focus intelligently on the present.
This is the best way of ensuring a positive future. — Chinmayananda Saraswati

Don't flounder in the preambles of the past
Wounded with regrets; don't let autumnal
Nostalgia blind you to the sounds and scents
Of the present's Spring; you're a native of
The pellucid moment, make it infinite beyond
The curving snake of passing time and space.
Learn to die in the infinitely elusive moment. — Rumi

What does it take to delete the past? A thousand apologies?
A million regrets?
A litany of prayers?
If I shouted them, would you hear? If I whispered them, would you believe? If I fell at your feet, would you forgive? If I asked, would you start again? — A.L. Jackson

Whoever said that the past isn't dead had it backward. It's the future that's already dead, already played out. — Gayle Forman

To dwell in the here and now does not mean you never think about the past or responsibly plan for the future. The idea is simply not to allow yourself to get lost in regrets about the past or worries about the future. If you are firmly grounded in the present moment, the past can be an object of inquiry, the object of your mindfulness and concentration. You can attain many insights by looking into the past. But you are still grounded in the present moment. — Thich Nhat Hanh

The pages continue to turn, and every day I'm a little older, hopefully a little wiser and a lot more grateful. Do I have regrets? I have a few - but not as many as you might think. If it hadn't been for the darkness, I never would have known the light. In life we all take different paths, some more difficult than others, but in the end, all that matters is whether or not they lead us home. — Richard Paul Evans

History teaches us every day; our understanding is the matter! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

People want to avoid the past. I suppose that's natural. When we tally up all we've said and done over the years, despite the wonderful memories, the regrets may be fewer but stand out more prominently, glowing coals that we can never quite extinguish, try though we might — Jeffery Deaver

There's not a day that goes by, without me thinking of you, dying, in someone else's arms. — Anthony Liccione

When the bet is placed," he said, "a moment is carved away from the past and the future. In that enchanted moment, anything is possible. A man's debts and regrets and limitations disappear. He is buyin' the chance to imagine - for one moment at a time - that th enext card I deal will make him rich. — Mary Doria Russell

If I have learned one thing in my life, it is that lamentation and regrets only make things worse. A person must move on, move forward but never forget the past, but learn from it. If you ponder the 'if onlys' of life, they will drive you mad. — Lorraine Heath

Meditation is not meant to help us avoid problems or run away from difficulties. It is meant to allow positive healing to take place. To meditate is to learn how to stop - to stop being carried away by our regrets about the past, our anger or despair in the present, or our worries about the future. — Nhat Hanh

Career is the stringing together of opportunities and jobs. Mix in public opinion and past regrets. Add a dash of future panic and a whole lot of financial uncertainty. Career is something that fools you into thinking you are in control and then takes pleasure in reminding you that you aren't. Career is the thing that will not fill you up and will never make you truly whole. — Amy Poehler

MOTHER TIME: The past is always with us, dear, for better or worse. It is what it is and you can't change it. All you can do is learn how to live with it in the present. — Hillary DePiano

As of today, I have absolutely no regrets. I think I am a mature person who can take things in stride. I'm grateful for people in my past. They helped me get to where I am, wherever that is. But now, I am thinking for myself and sitting in on all the business transactions. — Marilyn Monroe

When you attend only to this moment regrets of the past begin to fade. — Karlyle Tomms

I remembered Daemon's feather soft kisses on my cheek, and I remembered the clouds parting and the sun shining on a cold February day in Ireland. And as my baby girl was laid on my chest and my husband held my hand, I saw my best friend Kat walk into the sun kissed part in the clouds, hand in hand, along with the last regrets of my past. — Rebecca Boucher

Regrets are like molecules. We're all made up of a lot of them. They are elemental. Building blocks. The foundations of memory. You can dawdle in the past, allow it to shadow you, or you can walk forward into the light of tomorrow.But you can't altogether disregard what has already been- byways chosen, detours taken. The misbegotten decisions you can never reverse, but only by sorting through them can you find where you took the wrong turns and gain proper perspective. Time is a parabolic lens, bringing hindsight into focus. — Ellen Hopkins

Was coming to that troubled twilight time, a time of regrets that resemble hopes, of hopes that resemble regrets, when youth is past but old age has not yet come. — Ivan Turgenev

People change as they get older ... grow wiser, make better decisions ... i am very old,Laurel. Anyone who lives as long as I have can't help but collect regrets along the way ... things they did in the past ... things they wish they'd done differently. — Kate Morton

Regrets are a waste of time. They're the past crippling you in the present. — Federico Fellini

Age has no pleasures, wrinkles have no influence, revenge itself dies away in impotent curses. Then comes remorse, with all its vipers, mixed with vain regrets for the past, and despair for the future! - Then, when all other strong impulses have ceased, we become like the fiends in hell, who may feel remorse, but never repentance. - But thy — Walter Scott

Its not that he didn't appreciate his dishwasher. There was something about washing dishes by hand that was therapeutic, as if he could wash away the regrets of the past and photos he wanted to wipe out of his memory forever. — James L. Rubart

It does no good to regret the past... yet regret remains just the same. — Sang-Sun Park

An important aspect of self-compassion is to be able to empathically hold both parts of ourselves-the self that regrets a past action and the self that took the action in the first place. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

Forget the dead, the past? O yet there are ghosts that may take revenge for it, memories that make the heart a tomb, regrets which gild thro' the spirit's gloom, and with ghastly whispers tell that joy, once lost, is pain. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

I did have regrets these past six months," he told me quietly. "I found it a curse as much as a blessing, all that time to think. About the things I could have said, that I should have told you ... — Karen Chance

Never think about something wrong you did in the past, always look forward with your head up high; have no regrets. — Jared Leto

Feelings of regret represent our aversion to reality. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting. — Haruki Murakami

I can't take back the past, but I can fight for the future. — Shannon A. Thompson

Regrets of the past can be turned into seeds to grow a more positive future or unlearned, doomed to repeat the same. — Tambre Bryant

Your children make it impossible to regret your past. They're its finest fruits. Sometimes the only ones. — Anna Quindlen

Everyone says that you should live like there is no tomorrow, but I think it's even more important to live like there is no yesterday. Your future means so much more than your past. — John A. Ashley

Don't let regrets about the past or worries about the future rob you of your enjoyment of the present. — Nicky Gumbel

Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears
To-day of past Regrets and future Fears
To-morrow?
Why, To-morrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n Thousand Years. — Omar Khayyam

Don't just think about what you missed! Don't continue to dwell on your past mistakes. You shall also miss something in life, consciously or unconsciously! You shall never be able to do all things excellently in life though you must try to! The lesson from what you missed and its application for a better tomorrow is what matter! Move your thought! Move your body! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

When you look to the past, don't sit and dwell on your regrets. Instead, focus on the things you learned from each experience and how they may enrich your future. Use the past not as something to hold you back, but as a method for reaffirming the drive to move forward on your chosen path. — Jack Davenport

I'm learning how much I have to learn, how little I know, how fragile my understanding is. I'm learning to be thankful and patient; today is all that we will ever have in this life. If we spend our time obsessing with the future or regretting the past then we will never live. Tomorrow will always be tomorrow and yesterday cannot be changed. The wise man seeks God in the now and brings both his regrets and fears before Him. The freedom that we are offered is truly amazing: to live, today, free from even our own fallen desires. This is where I want to be. — Jon Foreman

Bad days my memory functions no better than an out-of-focus kaleidoscope, but other days me recall is painfully perfect. — Mordecai Richler

When it came to Cage West, my mistakes were plenty and my regrets were numerous. If my past were a person, I would grab the throat of that motherfucker, drag her ass down Re-do Street, and once I'd beaten the ever loving shit out of her, I'd stand over her beaten-down, broken body and say:
You stupid bitch. You ignorant, stupid bitch. Love isn't a fucking answer. It hurts more than it doesn't, it's harder than it is easy, it takes work, guts and perseverance. — Madeline Sheehan

We all have regrets, Allison," he said, his voice unbearably gentle. "We all have succumbed to the darkness and the monster. There is not one vampire in the world who has not. Even James has points in his past he would change, if he could. The important thing is that you do not let these points define you. James gave up fighting it long ago. For you and I, it is a constant uphill battle not to give in, not to become that demon, and it will be that way for eternity. I will not lie and tell you it gets any easier. — Julie Kagawa

He should have done all things otherwise: poignant regrets, weary, incessant toiling of the mind to change what was unchangeable, to plan what was now useless, to be the architect of the irrevocable past. — Robert Louis Stevenson

I will practice coming back to the present moment ... not letting regrets and sorrow drag me back into the past or letting anxieties, fears, or cravings pull me out ... — Nhat Hanh

My past is my past. It made
me who I am. I have no
regrets, and wouldn't
change a thing. I just don't
live there anymore. — Semanyenzi Richard

Why was it so difficult to make new friends once you were past forty Was it because we didn't have dreams anymore, only regrets? — Jean-Claude Izzo