Regret quotes
2.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside regret — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"It took me less than half a lifetime to realize that regret is one of the few guaranteed certainties. Sooner or later everything is touched by it, despite our naive and senseless hope that just this time we will be spared its cold hand on our heart."
"Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret."
"No one should forget: Eros alone can fulfill life; knowledge, never. Only Eros makes sense; knowledge is empty infinity; – for thoughts, there is always time; life has its time; there is no thought that comes too late; any desire can become a regret."
"Make the best of where you are and do your best to line up your Energy from where you are, because any bit of struggle or any bit of regret only holds your cork under the water and doesn't allow you to connect with the Energy that would allow anything to improve."
"It is not the conscience which raises a blush, for a man may sincerely regret some slight fault committed in solitude, or he may suffer the deepest remorse for an undetected crime, but he will not blush... It is not the sense of guilt, but the thought that others think or know us to be guilty which crimsons the face."
"Practically everybody (1) overweighs the stuff that can be numbered, because it yields to the statistical techniques they’re taught in academia, and (2) doesn’t mix in the hard-to-measure stuff that may be more important. That is a mistake I’ve tried all my life to avoid, and I have no regrets for having done that."
"Listen widely to remove your doubts and be careful when speaking about the rest and your mistakes will be few. See much and get rid of what is dangerous and be careful in acting on the rest and your causes for regret will be few. Speaking without fault, acting without causing regret: 'upgrading' consists in this."
"I regret being the richest man in the world because that position attracts undeserved publicity."
"I have never been able, really, to regret anything in all my life. I have always been far much too absorbed in the present moment or the immediate future to think back."
"[When I die], I will decidedly not be regretting missed opportunities for a good time. My regrets will be more along the lines of a sad list of people hurt, people let down, assets wasted and advantages squandered."
"You are the only young man that I know of who ignores the fact that the future becomes the present, the present the past, and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don't plan for it."
"Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of good wine."
"I have tons of regrets, but I think that's one of the reasons that push people to create things. Out of their angst, their regret, comes the best from artists, painters and writers."
"I regret trusting The Guardian. I didn't want to do an interview, but the journalist was persistent. [The writer] was masked as a fan, but was hiding sinister ambitions and angles. Maybe he's actually the boring one looking for something interesting to write about."
"When we enter the present moment deeply, our regrets and sorrows disappear, and we discover life with all its wonders."
"When the thunder rumbles, Now the age of gold is dead. When the dreams we've clung to Trying to stay young, Have left us parched and old instead. When my courage crumbles, When I feel confused and frail, When my spirit falters on decaying altars And my illusions fail -- I go on right then. I go on again. I go on to say I will celebrate another day. I go on. If tomorrow tumbles And everything I love is gone, I will face regret all my days, and yet I will still go on."
"A sort of melancholy, and regret, seizes us every time we meet a sophisticated, adulterated idiot. Oh the nice fools of yestertime! Genuine, natural. Like homemade bread."
"We must know, as much as possible, in our beautiful art...what we are talking about and the only way to know is to have lived and loved and cursed and floundered and enjoyed and suffered. I think I don't regret a single "excess" of my responsive youth I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn't embrace."
"I like challenges and I don't believe in failure. I don't believe in regrets. I believe suffering, failure - all those concepts - are things that are absolutely necessary to make us the best people that we can be, the best at whatever we want to do."
"You hear it said time and time again by successful directors: You have to make a movie for yourself. Don't make it for anyone else. My style of filmmaking happens to be give the audience what they know they don't want, but they want. Ultimately I have to write and direct in a way that let's just say, you don't want to regret making a choice."
