Phrases about regrets, quotes about remorse, proverbs and aphorisms about missed opportunities that express regret for not having grasped the moment when you could act in a certain way and you did not.
Phrases about remorse
- It is advisable to live one's life fully before finding oneself in old age, it is stupid to be afraid, every opportunity is lost and will never return.
- Those who regret the best days too much make the bad days worse. (Benjamin Franklin)
- We all have to suffer between two pains: the pain of duty or the pain of regret. The difference is that discipline weighs grams while regret weighs tons. (Jim Rohn)
- I do not regret anything, every little detail of life will make us what we will be in the end ... (Drew Barrymore)
- Do you think that in two decades you will be more sorry for the things you have not accomplished than for what you have done. Then lift the sails and sail to new shores, exploring and dreaming to discover the new opportunities that await you somewhere.
- The only things they regret are those that have not been done. (Michael Curtiz)
- Regrets are useless: abandoning them means losing the present time for a past that no longer belongs to us. (Abel Dufresne)
- Never regret anything you have done with sincere affection. Nothing is lost if done with the heart. (Sir Basil Rathbone)
- I have to stop thinking too much before doing my actions, to prevent all my opportunities from going away forever because of my indecision, giving way to a sad regret.
- When everything is lived to the end there is no death or regret, and not even a false spring. Every lived horizon opens up a bigger, wider horizon, from which there is no escape if not living. (Henry Valentine Miller)
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- Regret the wasted time is further wasted time. (Mason Cooley)
- Anything you hope to achieve by cross paths you can have already suffered, if you are not the one to prevent it: don't stay, that is, attached to your past, put your future in the hands of providence and worry only about the present, cultivating the love for the gods and respect for justice. (Marco Aurelio)
- We will regret not having told the truth with courage, of not having expressed with love the love to whom we had beside us and now it is no longer there, I am proud of you told your children, of not having apologized enough when we had wrong, on the contrary we preferred to truth the grudges consumed by time as opposed to long and disturbing silences.
- In love it is better to regret what has been done than to regret what has not been done. (Fred Vargas)
- Regret is the vain pasture of an unemployed spirit. Above all we must avoid regret by always occupying the spirit with new sensations and with new imaginations. (Gabriele D’Annunzio)
- Nowadays many people ... discover when it is too late that the only things they never regret are mistakes. (Oscar Wilde)
- Life is one, nobody offers us a second chance to exploit, we must be aware that, if you let something slip through your fingers, this is lost forever, even if you spend the rest of your life trying to find it.
- Regret is a recognition of something good that exists in life. (Gustave Flaubert)
- A missed life is a regret; a useless life is a remorse. (Henri Frédéric Amiel)
- Sitting alone at night and offering the moon to tell you about our pains; sleep alone at night and invoke crickets to confide our regrets. (Chang Ch’Ao)
- We begin a second life on the same day in which we realize that we have only one to live fully because it is not eternal.
- He carried with him a regret: that of never having seen the sea. (Paulo Coelho)
- The regret for things done can be mitigated by time; it is regret for those not made that does not find comfort. (Sydney J. Harris)
- Talk when you are angry and make the best speech you can ever regret. (Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce)
Proverbs on lost opportunities
- One of the biggest regrets in life is to have been just what others wanted from you, instead of being yourself and living accordingly.
- The trick is all about keeping regret away. (Nick Hornby)
- Life is divided into two parts: hope and regret. (Alphonse Karr)
- Why don't you enjoy what you have instead of regretting what you can't have? (David Spielberg)
- If you don't get stopped on your way then keep walking looking ahead without ever looking back.
- Halfway between desire and regret, there is a point called the present; you should train yourself to be right there, in balance, like jugglers. (Sylvain Tesson)
- Regret is a very particular type of pain; we are powerless in the face of it. It is like a window that opens on its own initiative: the room becomes freezing and we can only shiver. But every time it always opens a little less, until the day comes when we ask ourselves what happened to it. (Arthur Golden)
- Regreting the past and hoping for the future without ever being satisfied with the present: so I spent my life. (Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky)
- Missed opportunities and missed appointments are stored in a large warehouse where we would prefer never to have to come in to put order.
- Owning an asset is useless if you are not ready to lose it. And the goods whose loss is more easily tolerated are those which, lost, cannot be subject to regret. (Lucio Anneo Seneca)
- The instant has only a narrow place between hope and regret and is the place of life. (Marcel Jouhandeau)
- Nothing good is obtained by reviving the past. (Madeleine Stowe)
- You don't have to regret anything, because in its time it would have been exactly what you would have liked it to be.
- What regret, to think that it takes a lifetime to learn to live a life. (Jonathan Safran Foer)
- For the loss of certain people we feel more regret than affliction, while others leave us afflicted, but without regrets. (François de La Rochefoucauld)
- Don't turn around, never look back. (Stephen King)
- If you go after something that disturbs you internally, you should go all the way. Do not pretend, otherwise you will never know what could have happened to you. With a mistake you can continue to live without having the regret of not realizing what you would have found.
- I'd rather regret the things I did than the ones I didn't do. (Lucille Desiree Ball)
- Regret is a very particular type of pain; we are powerless in the face of it. It is like a window that opens on its own initiative: the room becomes freezing and we can only shiver. But every time it always opens a little less, until the day comes when we ask ourselves what happened to it. (Arthur Golden)
- Regret is the vain pasture of an unemployed spirit. Above all we must avoid regret by always occupying the spirit with new sensations and with new imaginations. (Gabriele D’Annunzio)
- Sooner or later the time comes to make a choice, that of running the risk of regretting it or resigning oneself to living with the regret of not having tried.
- Repent sensibly. I don't regret anything in my life, except what I haven't done. (Coco Chanel)
- The road to self-pity is paved with regrets. And self-pity never did anything for anyone ... Self-pity never peeled a potato. (Willy Russell)
- A man is old only when regrets in him overcome dreams. (John Barrymore)
Phrases about regrets
- I have no regrets at all, declares the arrogant, I will not regret anything, instead recites the inexperienced.
- After a mistake you can continue to live, but if nothing else you have no regret not knowing how it could have gone. (Nicholas Sparks)
- What foolishness to deplore and complain that in the past you have left without taking advantage of the opportunity offered to us for this or that happiness, this or that pleasure! What profit would he have now? The dry mummy of a memory. (Arthur Schopenhauer)
- We should all start living before we get too old. Fear is stupid. This is how regrets are born. (Marilyn Monroe)
- We wished, we should have, we could have represented the phrases that we would prefer not to have to pronounce.
- We have one life. Nobody offers us a second chance. If you miss something between your fingers, it is lost forever. And then you spend the rest of your life trying to find it. (Rosamunde Pilcher)
- The follies that a man regrets most in his life are those he did not commit when he had the opportunity. (Helen Rowland)
- One of the biggest regrets in life has been being what others would like you to be, rather than being yourself. (Shannon L. Alder)
- The past includes not only what happened but also what could have happened but it did not happen due to a set of circumstances.
- Regret is a huge waste of energy. Nothing can be built on it. It only serves to wallow in it. (Katherine Mansfield)
- My only regret in life is that I wasn't someone else. (Woody Allen)
- My father said that living with regrets is like driving a car that only moves backwards. (Jodi Picoult)
- Do not feel sorry for what has not been done because it was not possible, rather it is advisable to regret having chosen not to do the right thing when it was possible to do it.
- I do not regret anything, says the arrogance; I won't regret anything, says the inexperience. (Marie Von Ebner Eschenbach)
- In plans for the future, the best we can do is carefully choose our future regrets. (Gregory Norminton)
- Don't be sorry for what you couldn't do, regret only when you could and didn't want to. (Mao Tse Tung)
- Often it happens that we do not appreciate the value of what we have when we enjoy it, but as soon as we miss it, we become aware of how important it was for us.
- The light of our dreams turns into the monster of our nightmares. And we become slaves to unrealized things, unlived possibilities. (Paulo Coelho)
- Get away from the world, remain unknown and have no regrets: only the superior man can reach this. (Confucius)
- The regret that men feel for the misuse of time already lived does not always lead them to make better use of what remains for them to live. (Jean de La Bruyère)
- Regrets are useless, abandoning them means wasting the present time for a past that no longer belongs to us, remaining only a memory.
- A man is not old until regrets replace dreams. (John Barrymore)
- Perhaps all one can do is hope to come to an end with the right regrets. (Arthur Miller)
- Youth is, perhaps, only a short mistake - and old age a long regret. (Henri Duvernois)
