Regret Quotes - Page 31

• It's always the idle habits you acquire which you will regret. Father said that. That Christ was not crucified: he was worn away by a minute clicking of little wheels. That had no sister.

  William Faulkner

  Father, Littles, Wheels

  William Faulkner (2011). “FAULKNER READER”, p.79, Modern Library

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• Regrets came up and asked me if I’d like to own them. Declined them for the most part but took a few just so I wouldn’t leave this relationship empty handed.

  Steve Toltz

  Empty, Ifs

  Steve Toltz (2008). “A Fraction of the Whole”, p.214, Spiegel & Grau

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• It is the bungled crime that brings remorse.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Crime, Remorse

  P. G. Wodehouse (2010). “Love Among the Chickens”, p.118, The Floating Press

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• That's not a real answer.' Says who?' Says me. I mean real fear, like of failure, of death, of regret. Like that. Something that keeps you awake nights, questioning your very existence.' Clowns.

  Sarah Dessen

  Real, Mean, Night

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• But a slow, deeply satisfied smile came over him, and his breath quickened. 'So softly it starts,' he whispered. 'Foolishly clever and with an unsurvivable trust. It just saved your miserable life, that questionable show of thought, my itchy-witch.' Al’s smile shifted, becoming lighter. 'And now you will live to possibly regret it.

  Kim Harrison

  Clever, Als, Becoming

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• America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.

  James Ellroy

  Fall, America, Grace

  James Ellroy (2011). “American Tabloid: Underworld USA (1)”, p.3, Vintage

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• It was a long and gloomy night that gathered on me, haunted by the ghosts of many hopes, of many dear remembrances, many errors, many unavailing sorrows and regrets.

  Charles Dickens

  Night, Errors, Long

  Charles Dickens (1850). “The Personal History of David Copperfield”, p.577

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• He felt as though he were failing in practically every area of his life. Lately, happiness seemed as distant and unattainable to him as space travel. He hadn't always felt this way. There had been a long period of time during which he remembered being very happy. But things change. People change. Change was one of the inevitable laws of nature, exacting its toll on people's lives. Mistakes are made, regrets form, and all that was left were repercussions that made something as simple as rising from the bed seem almost laborious.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Mistake, Simple, Space

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• Regret, already sogging me down, burst its dam. It seeped into my legs, it pooled in my heart.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Heart, Dams, Legs

  Jeffrey Eugenides (2003). “Middlesex”, p.378, A&C Black

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• No. No, I don't believe you'd betray me with her. I don't believe you'd cheat on me. But I'm afraid, and I'm sick in my heart that you might look at her, then at me. And regret.

  Nora Roberts

  Believe, Heart, Sick

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• I do not know what I regret. I sit with my pen, and cannot find an end to that sentence.

  Matthew Tobin Anderson

  Ends, Sentences, Pens

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• In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the small-pox, taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly, and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation. This I mention for the sake of parents who omit that operation, on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it; my example showing that the regret may be the same either way, and that, therefore, the safer should be chosen.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Children, Taken, Son

  Benjamin Franklin (2008). “The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin”, p.152, Applewood Books

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• Never regret thy fall, O Icarus of the fearless flight For the greatest tragedy of them all Is never to feel the burning light.

  Oscar Wilde

  Fall, Light, Fearless

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• 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.

  Tennessee Williams

  Past, Men, Facts

  Tennessee Williams (1999). “The Glass Menagerie”, p.45, New Directions Publishing

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• What every girl dreams of when she's dumped is - that the guy will someday feel regrest and come back and tell her all about it. And the beauty of it is you have no regrets whatsoever.

  Emily Giffin

  Girl, Dream, Guy

  Emily Giffin (2008). “Love the One You're With”, p.166, Macmillan

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• Sacrifice is a part of life. It’s supposed to be. It’s not something to regret. It’s something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices. A mother works so her son can go to school. A daughter moves home to take care of her sick father.

  Mitch Albom

  Daughter, Mother, Father

  "The Five People You Meet in Heaven". Book by Mitch Albom, 2003.

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• The act of sending a letter is an act of generosity, even if, in retrospect, it might seem reckless. Why regret one's generosity? Why regret one's impulsiveness, one's misjudgment of others? The inevitable discovery that someone is selling letters you'd written in trust is simply to discover an obvious human truth: there are those who don't cherish us as we'd cherished them, and had wished to be cherished by them.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Discovery, Generosity, Letters

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• I regret to say that during the first act of this, I fell so soundly asleep that the gentleman who brought me piled up a barricade of overcoat, hat, stick, and gloves between us to establish a separation in the eyes of the world, and went into an impersonation of A Young Man Who Has Come to the Theater Unaccompanied.

  Dorothy Parker

  Eye, Men, Gentleman

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• Is a lifetime long enough to hold the regret that I have for that fantastically aborted but crazily sweet love affair?

  Tennessee Williams

  Sweet, Long, Affair

  Tennessee Williams (1975). “Memoirs”, p.33, New Directions Publishing

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• To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.

  Oscar Wilde

  Lying, Soul, Experience

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: De profundis, "Epistola : in carcere et vinculis"”, p.100, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• Some of our children are our justifications and some are but our regrets

  Khalil Gibran

  Children, Justification, Our Children

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• Crashing into the trembling void Stretching my hand to you Losing myself to frigid regret Is this fragile love A way To say Good-bye

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Hands, Bye, Way

  Maggie Stiefvater (2014). “Shiver Series (Shiver, Linger, Forever, Sinner)”, p.251, Scholastic Inc.

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• 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

  Skulls, Decision, Soul

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• L'imagination m'apportait des délices infinies. En recouvrant ce que les hommes appellent la raison, faudra-t-il regretter de les avoir perdues...? My imagination gave me infinite delight. In recovering what men call reason, do I have to regret the loss of these joys?

  Gerard De Nerval

  Loss, Men, Imagination

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• But it is imperative, for our own survival, that we avoiid one another, and what more successful means of avoidance are there than words? Language will keep us safe from human onslaught, will express for us our regret at being unable to supply groceries or love or peace.

  Janet Frame

  Mean, Successful, Survival

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