Individuals we consider happy commonly seem complete in the present and we see them constantly in their wholeness: attentive, cheerful, open rather than closed to events, integral in the moment rather than distended across time by regret or anxiety.
The hate of favourites is only a love of favour. The envy of NOT possessing it, consoles and softens its regrets by the contempt it evinces for those who possess it, and we refuse them our homage, not being able to detract from them what attracts that of the rest of the world.
I always think about opportunity and how you regret the things you don't do.
At peace? Who but the insane would ever be at peace? What person who has enjoyed life could possibly think one is enough? Who could live even a day and not feel the sweet ache of regret?
None has more frequent conversations with a disagreeable self than the man of pleasure; his enthusiasms are but few and transient; his appetites, like angry creditors, are continually making fruitless demands for what he is unable to pay; and the greater his former pleasures, the more strong his regret, the more impatient his expectations. A life of pleasure is, therefore, the most unpleasing life.
This is the book I never read ~ These are the words I never said ~ This is the path I'll never tread ~ These are the dreams I'll dream instead
I'm learning how much I have to learn, how little I know, how fragile my understanding is. I'm learning to be thankful and patient; today is all that we will ever have in this life. If we spend our time obsessing with the future or regretting the past then we will never live. Tomorrow will always be tomorrow and yesterday cannot be changed. The wise man seeks God in the now and brings both his regrets and fears before Him. The freedom that we are offered is truly amazing: to live, today, free from even our own fallen desires. This is where I want to be.
Wars and temper tantrums are the makeshifts of ignorance; regrets are illuminations come too late.
I regret the whole worlds that will never come into existence, the children, the grandchildren, all the human possibilities that never were and never will be.
I was going to record a solo album when I was 15 on a four-track. I started working on it, but then Fall Out Boy happened. The band was awesome and took me in a totally different direction. I don't regret it at all, but the band delayed the record I had been planning.
I never regret anything.
Our heroes are men who do things which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do.
Nothing is more usual than the sight of old people who yearn for retirement: and nothing is so rare than those who have retired and do not regret it.
I'm slowly becoming a repository for decomposing sorrows, regrets, ignored injustice, and forgotten promises. I can still feel its stench. But when I get accustomed to it, I will call it experience.
We regret the things we don't do more than the things we do.
I prefer buying things and figuring out where to put them later than regretting not buying them.
In history as in human life, regret does not bring back a lost moment and a thousand years will not recover something lost in a single hour.
Eventually, with regret, I left the religious life, and, once freed of the burden of failure and inadequacy, I felt my belief in God slip quietly away. He had never really impinged upon my life, though I had done my best to enable him to do so. Now that I no longer felt so guilty and anxious about him, he became too remote to be a reality.
In the early days I'd be slaving over a mixing desk. I'm not a recording engineer but I used to mix the record. We used to do it all by ourselves. I just don't really want to do it anymore. I want somebody to do it for me. I want to concentrate on other things. That's been a big change, a learning curve. But no regrets, it's all part of life's rich tapestry.
Regret, already sogging me down, burst its dam. It seeped into my legs, it pooled in my heart.