Regret quotes

Regret

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Regret quotes (page 32 of 122)

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James Joyce Novelist, Poet
Regret

"A dim antagonism gathered force within him and darkened his mind as a cloud against her disloyalty: and when it passed, cloudlike, leaving his mind serene and dutiful towards her again, he was made aware dimly and without regret of a first noiseless sundering of their lives."

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Henry David Thoreau Writer, Philosopher
Regret

"You ask particularly after my health. I suppose that I have not many months to live; but, of course, I know nothing about it. I may add that I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and regret nothing."

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Henry David Thoreau Writer, Philosopher
Regret

"You ask if there is no doctrine of sorrow in my philosophy. Of acute sorrow I suppose that I know comparatively little. My saddestand most genuine sorrows are apt to be but transient regrets. The place of sorrow is supplied, perchance, by a certain hard and proportionately barren indifference. I am of kin to the sod, and partake of its dull patience,--in winter expecting the sun of spring."

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Henry David Thoreau Writer, Philosopher
Regret

"What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot to-day? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they give only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and Godspeed, to the right, as it goes by them."

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Henry David Thoreau Writer, Philosopher
Regret

"Many a forenoon have I stolen away, preferring to spend thus the most valued part of the day; for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly; nor do I regret that I did not waste more of them in the workshop or the teacher's desk."

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Kenny Smith Basketball Player
Regret

"I regret not getting brutally forthright with human beings a hell of a lot sooner than I did. Civility and obliquity are wasted on people who will not make the effort to be harsher or stricter on their own gooey egos than they are on other people."

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Lewis Mumford Philosopher, Author
Regret

"Do you want to know what I most regret about my youth? That I didn't dream more boldly and demand of myself more impossible things; for all one does in maturity is to carve in granite or porphyry the soap bubble one blew in youth! Oh to have dreamed harder!"

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Henry Rollins Musician, Writer, Actor
Regret

"Pride is not a word or sentiment I can ascribe to anything I have done or do. As far as regret, it is a luxury I can not afford. Anything I did, that was bad or wrong or regretful, I stand accused, I am guilty and I'm ready to serve my time."

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Friedrich Schiller Playwright, Poet
Regret

"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."

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Friedrich Nietzsche Philosopher, Writer
Regret

"When we think of all the things we want to do with our other half the answer should be simple; we should want to do absolutely everything with them. We should want to experience everything, feel everything, see everything with no one but them by our sides. When we look back on our lives it's not the things we did do with them that we'll regret, it's the things we didn't do."

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Kevin Shelley Politician
Regret

"While I have made errors that I deeply regret, I have never, ever done so with the intent of subverting the law or of benefiting myself."

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Khalil Gibran Poet, Writer
Regret

"And some of your elders remember pleasures with regret like wrongs committed in drunkenness. But regret is the beclouding of the mind and not its chastisement. They should remember their pleasures with gratitude, as they would the harvest of a summer."

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Mark Twain Writer, Humorist
Regret

"Even popularity can be overdone. In Rome, along at first, you are full of regrets that Michelangelo died; but by and by, you only regret that you didn't see him do it."

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Jane Austen Novelist
Regret

"She was stronger alone; and her own good sense so well supported her, that her firmness was as unshaken, her appearance of cheerfulness as invariable, as, with regrets so poignant and so fresh, it was possible for them to be."

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