Rather Regret Quotes & Sayings

Individuals we consider happy commonly seem complete in the present and we see them constantly in their wholeness: attentive, cheerful, open rather than closed to events, integral in the moment rather than distended across time by regret or anxiety. — Robert Grudin

Neighborhoods built up all at once change little physically over the years as a rule ... [Residents] regret that the neighborhood has changed. Yet the fact is, physically it has changed remarkably little. People's feelings about it, rather, have changed. The neighborhood shows a strange inability to update itself, enliven itself, repair itself, or to be sought after, out of choice, by a new generation. It is dead. Actually it was dead from birth, but nobody noticed this much until the corpse began to smell. — Jane Jacobs

So rather than denying or stuffing your past, go ahead and look at it, but without judgment. Look at it, express it, admit it, acknowledge it, accept it, and move on. In other words, let your past become something that is simply a matter of fact. That's all. Express your disappointment, your regret, your anger, and then LET IT GO! If you don't, you will continue to draw to you the very events that you are still resenting or regretting. — Lynn Grabhorn

Rather the pain of discipline than the pain of regret. — Bob Andrews

There's a quote of hers [Lucille Ball] that I've always loved: 'I guess I would rather regret the things I've done than to regret the things I've never done. — Carol Burnett

Never look back to the past, never regret, even if there is emptiness ahead.' But I couldn't help it. Sometimes I would rather look back if it meant that I could feel something in my heart, even something sad. Sadness was better than emptiness. — Xiaolu Guo

Why regret that I lived miserably Yesterday. Rather, Why not commit and resolve to live happily today. — R.v.m.

If we choose the right, we will find happiness-in time. If we choose evil, there comes sorrow and regret-in time. Those effects are sure. Yet they are often delayed for a purpose. If the blessings were immediate, choosing the right would not build faith. And since sorrow is also sometimes greatly delayed, it takes faith to feel the need to seek forgiveness for sin early rather than after we feel its sorrowful and painful effects. — Henry B. Eyring

So long as we see the stones and joints, and are not deceived as to the points of support in any piece of architecture, we may rather praise than regret the dexterous artifices which compel us to feel as if there were fibre in its shafts and life in its branches. — John Ruskin

I think what I regret is that I would rather do something like that when I was a more established actress and I really had proven myself first. Now, people are still unsure whether I can act or not. I just don't want to be one of those girls who are playing off the show's popularity. — Megan Fox

Any fighter knows that regret that doesn't inform your future is wasted emotion. If you lose and dwell on the missed opportunity rather than the chances to come, you're finished. — Craig Lancaster

TV actress Lucille Ball once remarked, 'I'd rather regret the things that I have done than the things that I've not done.' This — Ashwin Sanghi

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

What you don't ever catch a glimpse of on your wedding day - because how could you? - is that some days you will hate your spouse, that you will look at him and regret ever changing a word with him, let alone a ring and bodily fluids. And nor do you think about your husband waking up in the morning being someone you don't recognize. If anyone thought about any of these things, then no one would ever get married. In fact, the impulse to marry would come from the same place as the same impulse to drink a bottle of bleach, and those are the kind of impulses we try to ignore rather than celebrate.
So we can't afford to think of these things because getting married - or finding a partner whom we will want to spend our lives with and have children by - is on our agenda. It's something we know we will do one day, and if you take that away from us then we are left with promotions and work and the possibility of a winning lottery ticket, and it's not enough. — Nick Hornby

It is with regret that I pronounce the fatal truth: Louis ought to perish rather than a hundred thousand virtuous citizens; Louis must die that the country may live — Maximilien Robespierre

I'd rather trust and regret than doubt and regret. - Kirito — Rei Kawahara

We will never regret the kind words spoken or the affection shown. Rather, our regrets will come if such things are omitted from our relationships with those who mean the most to us.
— Thomas S. Monson

The changes we make in life often happen when we have a degree of certainty. However, the pain of our past failures and the fears of our peers often fuel our uncertainty. This inability to predict the future is why people find themselves stuck and unable to move forward. They don't want to feel the emotions of failure. They prefer to talk themselves into settling for an "okay" life, rather than the life they really want. However, failure is a matter of perspective! Is it not failure when you don't take a chance on the one thing you need? There is no happiness in regret, staying safe or settling for anything less than what you can have through action. — Shannon L. Alder

I don't regret the numerous pictures of Brigitte Bardot, but I'd rather have a good photograph of my father. — Raymond Depardon

You must not procrastinate. Rather, you should make preparations so that even if you did die tonight, you would have no regrets. If you develop an appreciation for the uncertainty and imminence of death, your sense of the importance of using your time wisely will get stronger and stronger. — Dalai Lama

Edna felt depressed rather than soothed after leaving them. The little glimpse of domestic harmony which had been offered her, gave her no regret, no longing. It was not a condition of life which fitted her, and she could see in it but an apalling and hopeless ennui. She was moved by a kind of commiseration for Madame Ratignolle, - a pity for that colorless existence which never uplifted its possessor beyond the region of blind contentment, in which no moment of anguish ever visited her soul, in which she would never have the taste of life's delirium. Edna vaguely wondered what she meant by "life's delirium." It had crossed her thought like some unsought, extraneous impression. — Kate Chopin

If you want to, you can let go of any feelings of resentment, of regret, of anger. You can accept that you are a fabulous human being because of all the bad things that have happened to you, not in spite of them. What is done is done, and you need to just get on with your life. Don't use the labels "good" and "bad." Yes, I know some of it is indeed bad, but it is how we let it affect us that is the real "bad." You could let all these things get you down, fizzle away internally like some emotional acid making you ill and resentful and stuck. But you will let them go, embrace them as character forming, and in general as positive rather then negative. — Richard Templar

I would rather regret the things that I have done than those I have not. — Garikai Nhongo

As part of an effort to prod college seniors to get tetanus shots, a group of students was given a lecture meant to educate them about the dangers of tetanus and the importance of getting inoculated against it. A large majority of those students reported that they were convinced and planned to get their shots, but in the end only 3 percent got them. Bu another group of students, who were presented with the same lecture, had a 28 percent inoculation rate. The difference? The second group was given a map of the campus and asked to plan their route to the health center and pick a date and time to go. Sometimes, you see, motivation isn't our problem. Rather, we need to identify life's everyday mental obstacles - regret, fatigue, overconfidence, fear, to name just four - and put ourselves into position to hurdle them. — Gary Belsky

I would much rather feel the physical soreness that comes with exercise than to feel the psychological soreness that comes with regret. — Steve Maraboli

Life, according to Stephen, was not a journey out of darkness into light. In fact, dark and light were two arbitrary categories applied to the human spirit in a vain hope that it, too, with all its fleshy influences, would be as orderly as the rise and fall of the sun. The light in the darkness, as Stephen explained it, did not chase away the shadows of fear and regret: It merely illuminated the fears worth fighting. It lit the paths dictated by fate and choice, rather than casting a celestial glow on the way to a better and more perfect world. — Christopher Rice

In a serious sense, wanting to change something from the past doesn't work for me - change something you don't enjoy now rather than regretting it later. — Rory McIlroy

Regret comes in four tones that operate in unison to shape our lives. First, we regret the life that we lived, the decisions we made, the words we said in anger, and enduring the shame wrought from experiencing painful failures in work and love. Secondly, we regret the life we did not live, the opportunities missed, the adventures postponed indefinitely, and the failure to become someone else other than whom we now are. American author Shannon L. Alder said, 'One of the greatest regrets in life is being what others would want you to be, rather than being yourself.' Third, we regret that parts of our life are over; we hang onto nostalgic feelings for the past. When we were young and happy, everything was new, and we had not yet encountered hardship. As we age and encounter painful setbacks, we experience disillusionment and can no longer envision a joyous future. Fourth, we experience bitterness because the world did not prove to be what we hoped or expected it would be. — Kilroy J. Oldster

You'll never let me go, will you? Giving me the space and freedom I want isn't your idea of love, is it? You'd rather cut me deep on earth to spare me pain in hell, whereas I think hell is right here. — Matthew J. Hefti

A certain critic
for such men, I regret to say, do exist
made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained 'all the old Wodehouse characters under different names.' He has probably by now been eaten by bears, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha: but if he still survives he will not be able to make a similar charge against Summer Lightning. With my superior intelligence, I have out-generalled the man this time by putting in all the old Wodehouse characters under the same names. Pretty silly it will make him feel, I rather fancy. — P.G. Wodehouse

I would rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done. ~Lucille Ball — K. Langston

I want to take retirement rather than feel as if it's taking me unawares. Maybe even seize it joyously. But at least behold it without looking back so longingly that I turn into a pillar of regret. — Klaus H. Carl

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 would rather regret the things I have done than the things I have not — Lucille Ball

Above all, documentary must reflect the problems and realities of the present. It cannot regret the past; it is dangerous to prophesy the future. It can, and does, draw on the past in its use of existing heritages but it only does so to give point to a modern argument. In no sense is documentary a historical reconstruction and attempts to make it so are destined to failure. Rather it is contemporary fact and event expressed in relation to human associations. — Paul Rotha

A millenarian fire burned in Oppenheimer's spirit, fueled by his pride as a world-historical individual, by his fear that the natural force he loosed upon the world would escape all human control, and by a pure-hearted longing to ensure that his discovery of the devastation latent in the elemental substance of the world would serve concord rather than the ultimate discord, perpetual peace rather than permanent self-destruction. — Algis Valiunas

Regrets are the last words you speak to your loved ones when you die and the one thing we all fear when we live. I'd rather regret the things I've done and said than regret the things I haven't done or said. It is all the experiences and people you missed out on in life that you will feel the most regretful for in the end. God will forgive you of your mistakes, but there is nothing to forgive if you have never even tried, done or said anything that made a difference in your life or others. — Shannon L. Alder

I'd rather regret the things I have done than the things that I haven't. — Lucille Ball

Every event has a purpose and every setback a lesson. Failure is essential to personal expansion. It brings inner growth and a whole host of psychic rewards. Never regret your past. Rather embrace it as the teacher it is. — Robin S. Sharma

I have no regret about making 'Heroine'; rather, I am happy I made it. I never shun my films; I stick to it. — Madhur Bhandarkar

Strangely enough, when you get older the things you didn't understand when you were a child start to make sense. "When this happened, I should have done that." "When that happened, I should have said this." those types of things. You start to understand rather than regret. It may be closer to repentance. So it may be that I do want to repent and erase the ignorant self from my childhood. — Natsuki Takaya

At the time there were moments of extreme discomfort; but the adventure, the danger, the exhilaration of doubt and peril are in retrospect something I rather regret having lost. — Elizabeth Peters

Don't you think it's actually harder for you . . . to adapt, I mean? Because you've done all that stuff?'
'Are you asking me if I wish I'd never done it?'
'I'm just wondering if it would have been easier for you. If you'd led a smaller life. To live like this, I mean.'
'I will never, ever regret the things I've done. Because most days, if you're stuck in one of these, all you have are the places n your memory that you can go to.' He smiled. It was tight, as if it cost him. 'So if you're asking me would I rather be reminiscing about the view of the caste from the minimart, or that lovely row of shops down off the roundabout, then, no. My life was just fine, thanks. — Jojo Moyes

Walking with our heads down trying to pull the weight of our mistakes doesn't make them go away. Choice it the only thing that conquers regret. Choosing to learn from our past and waking up with hope on the pillowcase beside us rather than remorse. — Robin Bielman

Essentially, I spent most of my childhood with my mother and my older sister, and I suppose I had rather a romantic vision of how things might be if there were men around; I saw myself in a country house with six children and a garden. That has never been achieved - and I still regret it. — Claire Tomalin

Throe accepted the soup and went over to where Xcor had been sitting. Sinking down to the floor, he put the brass box on the far side of himself and began to eat.
Xcor joined him on the stain of the blood he had shed during the day, and in silence, they completed their reunion. But it was not over, at least not on Xcor's part.
His regret stayed with him, the heaviness of the burden of his actions altering him forever, like an injury that had scarred over and healed wrong.
Or rather, in this case ... healed right. — J.R. Ward

The only regrets I have are rather prosaic - like I wish I went for a swim in the Pacific. — Paul Allen

A moving wall of oxen advanced, and our mighty elephant himself was brought to a standstill. There was nothing to regret in this enforced halt, however, for a most curious spectacle was presented to our observations. A drove of four or five thousand oxen encumbered the road, and, as our guide had supposed, they belonged to a caravan of Brinjarees. "These people," said Banks, "are the Zingaris of Hindostan. They are a people rather than a tribe, and have no fixed abode, dwelling under tents in summer, in huts during the winter or rainy season. They are the porters and carriers of India, and I saw how they worked during the insurrection of 1857. By a sort of tacit agreement between the belligerents, their convoys were permitted to pass through the disturbed provinces. In fact, they kept up the supply of provisions to both armies. If these Brinjarees belong to one part of India more than to another, I should say it was Rajpootana, and perhaps more particularly the kingdom of Milwar. — Jules Verne

Never regret your past. Rather,
embrace it as the teacher that it is. — Robin S. Sharma

So what are you doing next Friday night?"
"What have you got in mind?"
"We could try hitting each other with cars," she suggested cheerfully.
"Did that last weekend with Jase," he said with mock regret.
"Go to the zoo and throw ourselves to the lions?" she fired back quickly, desperate to keep him focused on her rather than his caved-in chest.
"The Romans sort of wore that one out. Got anything original?"
"I'll think of something," she warned him.
"Can't wait! — Josephine Angelini

However, after 1930 Liddell never competed again in public in a major athletic meeting. Did he ever regret missing the 1928 Olympics and the chance of winning at least another gold medal? Did he lament trading fame and glory for a life of obscurity and hardship? He gave clear and unequivocal answers to these questions when interviewed in Canada at the end of his first furlough in 1932. 'Are you glad you gave your life to missionary work? Don't you miss the limelight, the rush, the frenzy, the cheers, the rich red wine of victory?' probed the interviewer in rather florid prose. 'Oh well, of course it's natural for a chap to think over all that sometimes,' replied Liddell. 'But I'm glad I'm at the work I'm engaged in now. A fellow's life counts for far more for this than the other. Not a corruptible crown, but an incorruptible one, you know. — Julian Wilson

For me, the most powerful way to write about something is through the absence of it. Rather than writing about what it was to become a new mother, I wrote, for example, a father facing death and addressing his estranged son about the regrets of his relationship. — Nicole Krauss

I regret nothing. No woman with any self-respect would have done less. The question of good and evil will always be one of philosophy's most intriguing problems, up there with the problem of existence itself. I'm not quarreling with your choice of issues, only with your intellectually diminished approach. If evil means to be self-motivated, to live on one's own terms, then every artist, every thinker, every original mind, is evil. Because we dare to look through our own eyes rather than mouth cliches lent us from the so-called Fathers. To dare to see is to steal fire from the Gods. This is mankind's destiny, the engine which fuels us as a race. — Janet Fitch

I think that being good to people - you'll never regret that. Maybe you'll get walked all over, maybe you'll get tricked, maybe you'll get fooled, but I think it's so much better to be kind to people and to trust people rather then to have your guard up and say mean things to people. You never want to be the reason that someone else feels bad. — Taylor Swift

The memories which come to us through music are not accompanied by any regrets; for a moment music gives us back the pleasures it retraces, and we feel them again rather than recollect them. — Madame De Stael

It would have been a difficult matter for Mr. Pontellier to define to his own satisfaction or any one else's wherein his wife failed in her duty toward their children. It was something which he felt rather than perceived, and he never voiced the feeling without subsequent regret and ample atonement. — Kate Chopin

Everything was cold, and she chewed from habit rather than enjoyment, but she knew she would regret it later if she went to bed hungry as well as angry. — Renee Ahdieh

I'd rather have weeks, days, hours with you happy and content than a lifetime filled with regret. — Faith Sullivan

The regrets about all she had let go flooded her. Where had all that enterprise gone? All that energy? Why had she never traveled? Or had more sex when she could? She had bleached and annihilated every waking moment of the last twenty years. Anything, rather than feel. — Rachel Joyce

But I'd rather look back and regret something I did when I was young and crazy, than look back and regret something I never had the courage to do, and realize it's too late. — Cherrie Lynn

You must always remember that your future holds promise and good fortune. Count your blessings, and never regret what was not. Rather, focus on the path God has chosen for you. — Mirella Sichirollo Patzer

Life is short and precious and we never know what is around the corner. So you live for now, seize every moment that comes your way and if you're going to look back on your life with regret, it's easier to regret the things that you did do, rather than the things you didn't — Holly Martin

If you really want to know, I'd rather not have been born at all. I find life very tiring. The thing's done now, of course, and I can't alter it. But there will always be this regret at the back of my mind, I shall never quite be able to get rid of it, and it will spoil everything. The thing to do now is to grow old quickly, to eat up the years as fast as possible, looking neither right nor left. — Jean-Marie G. Le Clezio

We suddenly feel fearful and apprehensive, naked in our perishable flesh, and for just a moment we wish we could go back to being stone - crumbling in death rather than rotting, trapped inside an immobile prison of stone rather than reduced to immaterial souls like those that now rattled within our skulls. The moment passes. There is no point in regretting irreversible decisions - one has to live with them, and we try. — Ekaterina Sedia

It's my life and I'm not afraid to LIVE it! I would rather experience the ups and downs of a life I have chosen, than to suffer the regret of a life I have settled for. — Steve Maraboli

I will do you one last favour, in the name and memory of the figment you have replaced. I will clarify a misapprehension of yours. Circumstances did not conspire against me. I was not led into anything, nor did I fall. I chose my life and my course. I chose to do wrong in the hope that right might come of it. I regret it. I would choose differently now. But the choice was mine. Deny that, falsify it, tinsel it over with pious, pitying justification, and you deny everything I am and every scrap of what little good I have been able to do in my life. Good or bad, give me credit for what I have done. I would rather go honestly to Hell, admitting that I leaped knowingly into error and folly, than enter into the sweetest Heaven men can dream of by whining that I had been pushed. — Steven Brust

Rather than regret for what I have written, I feel regret for what I shall never be able to read. — Antonio Tabucchi

The light in the darkness, as Stephen explained it, did not chase away the shadows of fear and regret: It merely illuminated the fears worth fighting. It lit the paths dictated by fate and choice, rather than casting a celestial glow on the way to a better and more perfect world. Although — Christopher Rice

I hope it doesn't get worse. But even if it gets worse, I won't regret it. I would rather be dead than live in the factory anymore. Not much difference as they just want you to work to death anyway. And you can't even think there or talk. but I have to think. I have to talk. I have to talk about what I think. — Sigmund Brouwer

Gro Rollag was no beauty, but she was a strong capable young woman with a long face, prominent cheekbones, high forehead, and a kindly intelligent look in her rather narrow eyes. According to family lore, she was not the most conscientious housekeeper because she preferred reading to housework. A love of books and reading ran in the family. Of all the possessions they were forced to sell or leave behind in Norway, what the Rollags remembered with deepest regret was the library they inherited from an eighteenth-century ancestor - lovely old books sold to pay for their passage to America. — David Laskin

I'd rather regret the things that I have done than the things that I have not. — Lucille Ball

I'd rather regret what I do than what I don't — Jenny Hilborne

Don't live in a world of 'I never should have'. Regret is a terrible burden to carry through life. It stoops your shoulders and keeps you looking down at the ground rather than up at the stars. — Mary Alice Kruesi

The happiest people are those with the fewest regrets. It is not because they have succeeded in everything they've tried; rather, they're happier because they at least put forth the effort - win or lose -and tried to make their thoughts and dreams a reality. — Ian K. Smith

I am not sorry, she realized. She had chosen to live freely as a killer rather than die quietly as a slave, and she could not regret that. — Leigh Bardugo

I would rather live with the consequences of my failures than live in regret without ever trying. — Bryan Nyaude

God, Satan, Paradise, and Hell all vanished one day in my fifteenth year, when I quite abruptly lost my faith. I recall it quite vividly.I was at school in England by then. The moment of awakening happened, in fact, during a Latin lessson, and afterwards, to prove my new-found atheism, I bought myself a rather tasteless ham sandwich, and so partook for the first time of the forbidden flesh of the swine. No thunderbolt arrived to strike me down. I remember feeling that my survival confirmed the correctness of new position. I did slightly regret the loss of Paradise, though. — Salman Rushdie

I'd rather look forward and dream, than look backward and regret. — James Van Praagh

I would rather regret what I have done than what I have not. — Fannie Hurst

I'd rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done. — Lucille Ball

Life is filled with challenges, blessing and the awareness that in life there are no guarantees. But one thing I'm sure of, is that for me, I'd rather die regretting the things I've done, then to regret the things I didn't do, but could have. So with this my new motto, I've decided to pursue what has lain quiescent in the back of my mind so now I write. — D.B. Jones

They were all fitting into place, the jig-saw pieces. The odd strained shapes that I had tried to piece together with my fumbling fingers and they had never fitted. Frank's odd manner when I spoke about Rebecca. Beatrice and her rather diffident negative attitude. The silence that I had always taken for sympathy and regret was a silence born of shame and embarrassment. It seemed incredible to me now that I had never understood. I wondered how many people there were in the world who suffered, and continued to suffer, because they could not break out from their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly built up a great wall in front of them that hid the truth. This was what I had done. I had built up false pictures in my mind and sat before them. I had never had the courage to demand the truth. Had I made one step forward out of my own shyness Maxim would have told these things four months, five months ago. — Daphne Du Maurier

What I do know is that there are two kinds of pain in this life: risk and regret. I'd rather live with the first than the second. — Holley Gerth

The expression 'to lose one's faith', as one might a purse or a ring of keys, has always seemed to me rather foolish. It must be one of those sayings of bourgeois piety, a legacy of those wretched priests of the eighteenth century who talked so much.

Faith is not a thing which one 'loses', we merely cease to shape our lives by it. That is why old-fashioned confessors are not far wrong in showing a certain amount of scepticism when dealing with 'intellectual crises', doubtless far more rare than people imagine. An educated man may come by degrees to tuck away his faith in some back corner of his brain, where he can find it again on reflection, by an effort of memory: yet even if he feels a tender regret for what no longer exists and might have been, the term 'faith' would nevertheless be inapplicable to such an abstraction, no more like real faith, to use a very well-worn simile, than the constellation of Cygne is like a swan. — Georges Bernanos

I would much rather have regrets about not doing what people said, than regretting not doing what my heart led me to and wondering what life had been like if I'd just been myself. — Brittany Finamore

We must come to grief and regret anyway - and I for one would rather regret the reality than its phantasm, knowledge than hope, the deed than the hesitation, true life and not mere sickly potentialities. — A.S. Byatt

It can't be more than a quarter of a mile to the finish, but it seems to go on forever. Do I really have to do this? My legs are entirely dead. Would it really matter if I stopped here?
But I know I'd regret it if I did, so I plod leadenly on, distracting myself...with the thought that, whatever troubles I may have been carrying around in my head before the race, I have now entirely forgotten what they were. This thought is rather refreshing. Whatever physical pains it has involved, this ordeal has utterly absorbed me, forcing my brain to focus on the kind of concerns for which it evolved - navigation, survival, balance, digging deep - rather than on the fretful urban anxieties to which it has become habituated. Reconnecting with your inner animal, I suppose you could call it; and it feels good. Especially when, blissfully, I catch sight of the finish. — Richard Askwith

In my body's effort to conserve itself, rather than attempt any movement outside, I have begun eating more sugar than is good for me. Sugar, while a comfort to many, is a detriment to those with my various physical complaints, and even a spoonful could plunge me into violent agony. It is a pleasurable agony, at least, and in my depression and desperation to have anything that resembled nutrition, I ate half a jar of chocolate spread. I know I should not buy these things. I seldom give in to such cibarious cagmaggery, even when it is On Sale, but when summer is imminent, I will do anything to feel better, including eat something that will make me regret my folly.

I am currently crippled on the floor and awaiting death, or I am lately dead and have taught my undead form to use a keyboard, I cannot tell which. I am no longer hot, however, and there is some comfort, whether I am dead or alive. I would rather be alive, I think, if only to buy more chocolate spread. — Michelle Franklin

People's most common regret was living the life others expected of them, rather than having the courage to live a life true to themselves, and realising some dreams had gone unfulfilled as a result. — Bianca Nogrady

If you've no world of your own, it's rather pleasant to regret the passing of someone else's. — John Osborne

His will to live was waning, and it made him almost transparent, as though rather than dying, he might just disappear one day, leaving behind only a vague scent of regret. — Ian Morgan Cron

I thought I was the center of the world and that my parents had nothing to do with me, and I regret that. I wish I had been a little kinder to my family and been friends with them and let them into my life and shared with them the things I was doing rather than feel like I needed to do my life in secret. — Jason Mraz

She could now be sad without losing a jot of hope. Nay, rather, the least approach of sadness would begin at once to wake her hope. She regretted nothing that had come, nothing that had gone. She believed more and more that not anything worth having is ever lost; that even the most evanescent shades of feeling are safe for those who grow after their true nature, toward that for which they were made - in other and higher words, after the will of God. — George MacDonald

Of course I am not referring to those outburts of passions that drive us to do and say things we will later regret, that delude us into thinking we cannot life without a certain person, that set us quivering with anxiety at the mere possibility we might ever lose that person-a feeling that impoverishes rather than enriches us because we long to possess what we cannot, to hold on what we cannot.
No. I speak of a love that brings sight to the blind. Of a love stronger than fear. I speak of a love that breathes meaning into life, that defies the natural laws of deterioration, that causes us to flourish, that knows no bounds. I speak of the triumph of the human spirit over selfishness and death. — Jan-Philipp Sendker

Why does man regret, even though he may endeavour to banish any such regret, that he has followed the one natural impulse, rather than the other; and why does he further feel that he ought to regret his conduct? Man in this respect differs profoundly from the lower animals. — Charles Darwin

I'd rather regret doing something than not doing something. — James Hetfield

Believer, your life is too essential to waste on pettiness or word wars, greed or ladder climbing, anger or bitterness, fear or anxiety, regret or disappointment. Life is too short. We must run, not walk, the way of Isaiah 58, embracing authentic faith manifested through mercy and community. Living on mission requires nothing less. It is a grand adventure, a true voyage into the kingdom of God. Would you lose days, months, years pointing fingers and quarreling, or would you rather break yokes of oppression? Imagine what would happen if we all chose the latter. — Jen Hatmaker

We regret because we fail to listen to an inner voice that says "I Can" and we watch as that pledge is hushed by our doubts and fears. We regret because we listened to someone else's voice rather than our own or because we knew what was right and didn't do it. Imagine a life where we trusted ourselves more, believed what others said less and committed to do what was noble. There would be no regret in that. — Jason Versey

The only thing I regret about age are the wrinkles. But I have high hopes
for this new almond cream! Do you know, that Italian apothecary promises the cream will make one's
skin as soft as a baby's cheek? Once your child arrives, we'll have a viable comparison. Not having seen
a baby in years, how would I know what its skin looks like?"
"I'm glad my condition will prove to be of use," Esme said rather tartly. — Eloisa James

She doesn't understand what she's asking, Jean-Claude said.
No, but she asks, and if we do not do it, we will always wonder. I would rather thy and fail than regret having never tried at all. — Laurell K. Hamilton