Remorse Quotes - Page 8

• She'd absolutely adored the library_an entire building where anyone could take things they didn't own and feel no remorse about it.

  Ally Carter

  Building, Feels

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• Men become cannibals of their own hearts; remorse, regret, and restless impatience usurp the place of more wholesome feeling: every thing seems better than that which is.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Regret, Heart, Men

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1835). “Lodore”, p.21

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• Remorse has no place in a warrior's mind... A war is like a game of chess, Nicholaa. Every battle is like a well-thought-out move on the board. Once it begins, there shouldn't be any emotion involved whatsoever.

  Julie Garwood

  War, Moving, Games

  Julie Garwood (1991). “The Prize”, p.46, Simon and Schuster

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• I had learned to dwell with pleasure as a beloved daydream on the thought of the separation of these elements. If each I told myself could be housed in separate identities life would be relieved of all that was unbearable the unjust might go his way delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path doing the good things in which he found his pleasure and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Hands, Evil, Identity

  Robert Louis Stevenson (2005). “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, second edition”, p.79, Broadview Press

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• Sometimes a woman's love of being loved gets the better of her conscience, and though she is agonized at the thought of treating a man cruelly, she encourages him to love her while she doesn't love him at all. Then, when she sees him suffering, her remorse sets in, and she does what she can to repair the wrong.

  Thomas Hardy

  Sex, Men, Suffering

  Thomas Hardy (2006). “Jude the Obscure: Easyread Edition”, p.68, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Until we have finally accepted the fact that there is nothing we can do to change the past, our feelings of regret and remorse and bitterness will prevent us from designing a better future with the opportunity that is before us today.

  Jim Rohn

  Regret, Past, Opportunity

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• Yesterday is but a memory, Tomorrow an uncharted course,
  So live today so it will be a memory without remorse.

  Edgar Cayce

  Memories, Yesterday, Live For Today

  Mary Ann Woodward, Edgar Cayce (1972). “Edgar Cayce's Story of Karma: Selections, Arrangement and Comments”

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• Guilt at least has a purpose; it tells us we've violated some ethical code. Ditto for remorse. Those feelings are educational; they manufacture wisdom. But regret-regret is useless.

  Daniel Smith

  Regret, Educational, Feelings

  Daniel Smith (2013). “Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety”, p.66, Simon and Schuster

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• In my terms, I settled for the realities of life, and submitted to its necessities: if this, then that, and so the years passed. In Adrian's terms, I gave up on life, gave up on examining it, took it as it came. And so, for the first time, I began to feel a more general remorse - a feeling somewhere between self-pity and self-hatred - about my whole life. All of it. I had lost the friends of my youth. I had lost the love of my wife. I had abandoned the ambitions I had entertained. I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded - and how pitiful that was.

  Julian Barnes

  Ambition, Reality, Self

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• I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yes, if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn't be here today. And I say without the slightest remorse, that we wouldn't be here, we would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened on very personal matters - who your neighbour is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use. We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think.

  Lee Kuan Yew

  Thinking, People, Mind

  Straits Times, April 20, 1987.

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• It is one of those problems of human nature, which may be noted down, but not solved; - although Ralph felt no remorse at that moment for his conduct towards the innocent, true-hearted girl; although his libertine clients had done precisely what he had expected, precisely what he most wished, and precisely what would tend most to his advantage, still he hated them for doing it, from the very bottom of his soul.

  Charles Dickens

  Girl, Character, Interesting

  Charles Dickens (1854). “The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby ... With a Frontispiece from a Painting by T. Webster”, p.223

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• From the outer edge of his life, looking back, there was only one remorse, and that was only that he wished to go on living.

  Ray Bradbury

  Goes On, Edges, Looking Back

  Ray Bradbury (2012). “The Illustrated Man”, p.33, Simon and Schuster

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• I shall possess this woman; I shall steal her from the husband who profanes her: I will even dare ravish her from the God whom she adores. What delight, to be in turns the object and the victor of her remorse! Far be it from me to destroy the prejudices which sway her mind! They will add to my happiness and my triumph. Let her believe in virtue, and sacrifice it to me; let the idea of falling terrify her, without preventing her fall; and may she, shaken by a thousand terrors, forget them, vanquish them only in my arms.

  Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

  Husband, Believe, Fall

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• For my omniscience paid I toll In infinite remorse of soul. All sin was of my sinning, all Atoning mine, and mine the gall Of all regret. Mine was the weight Of every brooded wrong, the hate That stood behind each envious thrust, Mine every greed, mine every lust. And all the while for every grief, Each suffering, I craved relief With individual desire, – Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire About a thousand people crawl; Perished with each, — then mourned for all!

  Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Regret, Hate, Grief

  Edna St. Vincent Millay (2013). “Renascence and Other Poems”, p.3, Courier Corporation

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• It's important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse.

  Yann Martel

  Letting Go, Heart, Should Have

  Yann Martel, Canongate Books (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.294, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The critical question about regret is whether experience led to growth and new learning. Some people seem to keep on making the same mistakes, while others at least make new ones. Regret and remorse can be either paralyzing or inspiring. [p. 199]

  Mary Catherine Bateson

  Regret, Mistake, People

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• So I make no effort to hide my pain. I don’t ever put it all on display like this—but for today and all the rest of the days of the trial, I must. My every flinch, every flicker of pain, will be magnified a hundred times over, then dissected by the pundits and talking heads. But I’m told it’s necessary; the world needs to see me vulnerable and wounded. I cannot appear not to care or to lack remorse, but that removes a crucial component of my self- defense mechanism and leaves me bleeding for all the world to see. I suppose that’s rather the point.

  Ann Aguirre

  Pain, Self, Talking

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• The sea can bind us to her many moods, whispering to us by the subtle token of a shadow or a gleam upon the waves, and hinting in these ways of her mournfulness or rejoicing. Always she is remembering old things, and these memories, though we may not grasp them, are imparted to us, so that we share her gaiety or remorse.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Memories, Old Things, Sea

  H.P. Lovecraft (2012). “The Complete Fiction Collection vol III”, p.241, Lulu.com

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• A Strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sorrow. The idea of sorrow has always appealed to me but now I am almost ashamed of it's complete egoism. I have known boredom, regret, and occasionally remorse, but never sorrow. Today it envelops me like a silken web, enervating and soft, and sets me apart from everybody else.

  Francoise Sagan

  Sad, Beautiful, Regret

  FRANCOISE SAGAN (1955). “BONOUR TRISTESSE”

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• On that first day when we look back, either happily or with remorse, to the stony ways over which we have traveled, losing concern for that part of the journey which is yet to come, we have grown old.

  Myrtle Reed

  Journey, Age, Looks

  Myrtle Reed (1905). “The Master's Violin”

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• I must be without remorse or regrets as I am without excuse; for from the instant of my upsurge into being, I carry the weight of the world by myself alone without help, engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being able, whatever I do, to tear myself away from this responsibility for an instant.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Regret, Responsibility, Tears

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• In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
  That old perplexity an empty purse,
  Or the day's vanity, the night's remorse.

  William Butler Yeats

  Work, Frustration, Night

  William Butler Yeats (2011). “Selected Poems And Four Plays”, p.138, Simon and Schuster

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• The fruition of what is unlawful must be followed by remorse. The core sticks in the throat after the apple is eaten, and the sated appetite loathes the interdicted pleasure for which innocence was bartered.

  Jane Porter

  Apples, Fruition, Sticks

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• Whoever heard of a midwife as a literary heroine? Yet midwifery is the very stuff of drama. Every child is conceived either in love or lust, is born in pain, followed by joy or sometimes remorse. A midwife is in the thick of it, she sees it all.

  Jennifer Worth

  Children, Pain, Drama

  "Call the Midwife: The real life heroine behind major new TV series", www.mirror.co.uk. January 14, 2012.

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• For perpetrators, when they apologize and experience remorse, it gives them a chance to reclaim their own humanity. Some rise to the moral challenge. Others of course don't care, and they continue acting with contempt.

  Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela

  Forgiveness, Giving, Challenges

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