Right actions in the future are the best apologies for bad actions
in the past.
—Tryon Edwards
A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience.
—Doug Larson
My life had gone right; it had gone exactly as it needed to in order to bring me here.
—Beth Harbison in Always Something There to Remind Me
I have to live with my mistakes, but I don’t have to regret them. I regret my actions but I can’t regret the consequences. We all make our own paths in life. Everyone we meet, everything we do, it changes us. It makes us who we are. And, if we’re lucky, we’re given the chance to make things right again.
—Karina Halle in Sins & Needles
I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence.
—John Lennon
Regrets are the most useless form of guilt. They always arrive too late to do any good.
—Eileen Wilks in Tempting Danger
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
I’ve got this tiny pang of regret when I think of how much I have probably missed out on in the last few years because I was too scared to take a risk, or too shy to speak up, or too worried to be bold.
—Jessi Kirby in Golden
I don’t know what comes next. I can’t know, until I’ve walked the road I’ve chosen. I don’t have a plan, and there is no map for this. It’s terrifying, but there’s a spark of exhilaration that gives me hope that the choice I just made could turn out to be right and this feels infinitely better than the weight of regret.
—Jessi Kirby in Golden
Is it really so difficult to tell a good action from a bad one? I think one usually knows right away or a moment afterward, in a horrid flash of regret.
—Mary McCarthy
That life… that she had complained against, had murmured at, had raged at and defied—nonetheless she had loved it so, joyed in it so, both in good days and evil, that not one day had there been when it would not have seemed hard to give it back to God, nor one grief that she could have forgone without regret.
—Sigrid Undsetfs
If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.
—Tallulah Bankhead
Love does strange things to you sometimes. It can twist you into saying and doing things that you know you’ll regret and still, you do them.
—C.K. Kelly Martin in I Know It’s Over
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
—George Bernard Shaw
I have done bad things. I can’t take them back, and they are part of who I am. Most of the time, they seem like the only thing I am.
—Veronica Roth in Insurgent