Regret Quotes

A man is not old until his regrets take the place of his dreams. Proverb

“Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves - regret for the past and fear of the future.” Fulton Oursler

 “I have no regrets in my life. I think that everything happens to you for a reason. The hard times that you go through build character, making you a much stronger person.” Rita Mero 

 “If only. Those must be the two saddest words in the world.” Mercedes Lackey

“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 Smith 

“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” Alexander Graham Bell

“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.” Soren Kierkegaard

 “I have no regrets. I wouldn't have lived my life the way I did if I was going to worry about what people were going to say.” Ingrid Bergman

And then... another view:

Nowadays 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 Picture of Dorian Gray (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (Barnes & Noble Classics)

The Past Quotes

Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.
No man is rich enough to buy back his past.
Oscar Wilde

Man cannot learn to forget, but hangs on the past: however far or fast he runs, that chain runs with him.
Friedrich Nietzsche

God has no power over the past except to cover it with oblivion.
Pliny the Elder

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.
Napoleon Bonaparte

Only by acceptance of the past, can you alter it.
T.S. Eliot

I don't spend much time regretting the past, once I've taken my lesson from it. I don't dwell on it.
Charlie Munger

The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
Albert Einstein

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.
Virginia Woolf

The past is not your potential. In any hour you can choose to liberate the future.
Marilyn Ferguson