Sunday, May 11, 2014 – Some Regrets
Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind. ~ C. S. Lewis
Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh. ~ Henry David Thoreau
My one regret in life is that I am not someone else. ~ Woody Allen
I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations – one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it – you will regret both. ~ Søren Kierkegaard
I have many regrets, and I’m sure everyone does. The stupid things you do, you regret… if you have any sense, and if you don’t regret them, maybe you’re stupid. ~ Katharine Hepburn
Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable. ~ Sydney J. Harris
Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle, Old Age a regret. ~ Benjamin Disraeli
Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true. ~ Robert Brault
The only thing I regret about my past is the length of it. If I had to live my life again I’d make all the same mistakes – only sooner. ~ Tallulah Bankhead
Perfection is such a nuisance that I often regret having cured myself of using tobacco. ~ Emile Zola
We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce. ~ J. Edgar Hoover
If you want to live a life free of regret, there is an option open to you. It’s called a lobotomy. ~ Kathryn Schulz
I regret to this day that I never went to college. I feel I should have been a doctor. ~ Ty Cobb
A certain recluse, I know not who, once said that no bonds attached him to this life, and the only thing he would regret leaving was the sky. ~ Kenko Yoshida
If you can play guitar and sing, you can probably get a gig down the road playing at a restaurant, but don’t throw your life away chasing something that is so elusive it will only lead you to regret and may turn you bitter. ~ Cliff Richard
If I’m sincere today, what does it matter if I regret it tomorrow? ~ José Saramago, Blindness
Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you’re falling to the floor crying thinking, “I am falling to the floor crying,” but there’s an element of the ridiculous to it – you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you’re on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realize you didn’t paint it very well. ~ Richard Siken
Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets. ~ Arthur Miller
I don’t think I could love you so much if you had nothing to complain of and nothing to regret. I don’t like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and of little value. Life hasn’t revealed its beauty to them. ~ Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
“No trouble ever got fixed late at night,” he said. “Midnight is for regrets.” ~ Holly Black, Red Glove
Droll thing life is – that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself – that comes too late – a crop of inextinguishable regrets. ~ Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness and the Congo Diary
I regret exceedingly that the disputes between the protestants and Roman Catholics should be carried to the serious alarming height mentioned in your letters. Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause; and I was not without hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy of the present age would have put an effectual stop to contentions of this kind. ~ George Washington, Letter to Sir Edward Newenham, 22 June 1792
There is a time in the life of every boy when he for the first time takes the backward view of life. Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line into manhood. The boy is walking through the street of his town. He is thinking of the future and of the figure he will cut in the world. Ambitions and regrets awake within him. Suddenly something happens; he stops under a tree and waits as for a voice calling his name. Ghosts of old things creep into his consciousness; the voices outside of himself whisper a message concerning the limitations of life. From being quite sure of himself and his future he becomes not at all sure. If he be an imaginative boy a door is torn open and for the first time he looks out upon the world, seeing, as though they marched in procession before him, the countless figures of men who before his time have come out of nothingness into the world, lived their lives and again disappeared into nothingness. The sadness of sophistication has come to the boy. With a little gasp he sees himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind through the streets of his village. He knows that in spite of all the stout talk of his fellows he must live and die in uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a thing destined like corn to wilt in the sun. ~ Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum. ~ Havelock Ellis
An ardent supporter of the hometown team should go to a game prepared to take offense, no matter what happens. ~ Robert Benchley
It is dangerous for a national candidate to say things that people might remember. ~ Eugene McCarthy
I’m an idealist. I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way. ~ Carl Sandburg
Falsity cannot keep an idea from being beautiful; there are certain errors of such ingenuity that one could regret their not ranking among the achievements of the human mind. ~ Jean Rostand
Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered? ~ Woody Allen
I don’t have nothing to regret at all in the past, except that I might’ve unintentionally hurt somebody else or something. ~ Jimi Hendrix
I don’t have to wait until the next morning to regret something I did that was kinda dumb. ~ Bobby Knight
My biggest regret in life is that I didn’t hit John Denver in the mouth while I had the chance. ~ Denis Leary
No, I don’t regret anything at this point. That may change on the next phone call, but at the moment I don’t regret anything. ~ William Shatner
No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business, I always found. ~ Samuel Beckett
If only. Those must be the two saddest words in the world. ~ Mercedes Lackey
Never regret. If it’s good, it’s wonderful. If it’s bad, it’s experience. ~ Victoria Holt
Regret is an odd emotion because it comes only upon reflection. Regret lacks immediacy, and so its power seldom influences events when it could do some good. ~ William O’Rourke
Remorse is the poison of life. ~ Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
So it is with all life. A tedium that includes the expectation of nothing but more tedium; a regret, right now, for the regret I’ll have tomorrow for having felt regret today. ~ Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient then repent. ~ Bob Dylan
Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes. ~ Oscar Wilde
The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught. ~ H. L. Mencken
The discontented believe that their regrets are about the past. ~ Mason Cooley
Blame someone else and get on with your life. ~ Alan Woods
Just Above Sunset 