Regretful Quotes

• A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.

  Bertrand Russell

  Motivational, Courage, Atheist

  Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, p.23, Simon and Schuster

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• The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.

  Mary Oliver

  Uprising, People, Creative

  Mary Oliver (2016). “Upstream: Selected Essays”, p.21, Penguin

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  When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.

  Alexander Graham Bell

  Love, Inspirational, Life

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• I'm not regretful about dropping acid, but I could have stopped it a little sooner.

  David Carradine

  Regret, Dropping Acid, Littles

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• The end we know not; but we wander on,
  Down the regretful wilderness of time.

  Henry Abbey

  Time, Wilderness, Ends

  Henry Abbey, “Emmanuel”

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• I want to do the right thing, but often I don't know just what the right thing is. Every day I know I have come short of what I would like to have done. Yet as the years pass and I see the very world itself, with its oceans and mountains and plains, as something unfinished, a peculiar little satisfaction hunts out the corners of my heart. Sunsets and evening shadows find me regretful at task's undone, but sleep and the dawn and the air of the morning touch me with freshening hopes. Strange things blow in through my window on the wings of the night wind and I don't worry about my destiny.

  Carl Sandburg

  Hope, Morning, Ocean

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• My ambition in the Army was to make everybody I worked for regretful when I was ordered to other duty.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Ambition, Army, Duty

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• [ Rajiv Gandhi] was very reflective and rueful and regretful about the fact that his children's education...He wanted them to get educated outside of India, but he said to me the only place that he found where they would be safe was in Russia, and he didn't really want them to be educated there! So, I said, "Well, send them to Australia. I'll look after them." And my security bloke went absolutely bloody bananas, and I said, "We'll look after them." But, in the end, he didn't send them.

  Bob Hawke

  Children, Australia, Russia

  Source: www.commonwealthoralhistories.org

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• There is my father whispering in my ear, Be still still still. And yet you change everything. What was the marsh like, waiting for the storm before you came and kneeled in the water? It was nothing. Watch after you leave the water, now cold and regretful, miles from home, certain of the belt on your backside, the cold shoulder, the extra chores; watch. Watch the water heal itself of your presence--not to repair injury but to offer itself again should you care to risk another strapping [...].

  Paul Harding

  Father, Home, Heal Itself

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• And to have spent the night sleeping and awoken regretful, is better than to have spent the night standing (in prayer) and awaken impressed with oneself!

  Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya

  Prayer, Sleep, Night

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• The historical relationship between Christians and Jews for most of the two thousand years of Christianity has not been good and it's been mostly persecution by Christians of Jews - not all the time, not every place, but mostly it's been that. I think that's just a terribly regretful thing. I don't see it anywhere in the Scriptures that I read, that Christians are to persecute Jews. I think it's been quite damaging. I think it's been a bad witness.

  Sam Brownback

  Christian, Thinking, Years

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• 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.

  Henry Rollins

  Regret, Pride, Luxury

  "Henry Rollins - Recountdown Tour 2008 Update". Live Q&A, www.washingtonpost.com. October 28, 2008.

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• Ragnor looked very regretful about all the choices that had led him to his being in this place and especially in this company

  Cassandra Clare

  Choices, Company, Ragnor Fell

  Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan, Maureen Johnson (2014). “The Bane Chronicles”, p.13, Simon and Schuster

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• I am thrilled. I love movies. I don't have those nagging, regretful feelings about either of them, it is a miracle.

  Kristen Stewart

  Love, Miracle, Feelings

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• As for those who protest that I am robbing people of the great comfort and consolation they gain from Christianity, I can only say that Christianity includes hell, eternal torture for the vast majority of humanity, for most of your relatives and friends. . . . If I could feel that I had robbed anybody of his faith in hell, I should not be ashamed or regretful.

  Rupert Hughes

  Relatives And Friends, People, Humanity

  Rupert Hughes (1940). “Why I Quit Going to Church: With Answers to Critics and Correspondents”

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