#regret

Each dark conjecture came and for a moment settled like a vulture on Bond's shoulder and croaked into his ear that he had been a blind fool. ↗

— Ian Fleming

#folly #foolishness #guilt #regret #anger

I regret what happened. I saw no other possibility to achieve my goal. It was not hooliganism. ↗

— Mathias Rust

#goal #happened #i #other #possibility

The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all. ↗

— Ted Hughes

#heart #love #regret #love

I’ve found the things I’ve regretted most in my life are the things I wanted to do but never had the courage to try. And I’m beginning to think I don’t want you to become one of my what-if-I’d-only-tried-it regrets. ↗

— Linda Kage

#courage

When the last autumn of Dickens's life was over, he continued to work through his final winter and into spring. This is how all of us writers give away the days and years and decades of our lives in exchange for stacks of paper with scratches and squiggles on them. And when Death calls, how many of us would trade all those pages, all that squandered lifetime-worth of painfully achieved scratches and squiggles, for just one more day, one more fully lived and experienced day? And what price would we writers pay for that one extra day spent with those we ignored while we were locked away scratching and squiggling in our arrogant years of solipsistic isolation? Would we trade all those pages for a single hour? Or all of our books for one real minute? ↗

— Dan Simmons

#charles-dickens #death #life #old-age #regret

...alone in this city, alone on this sea. The days were strewn about him, he was a drunkard of days. He had achieved nothing. He had his life--it was not worth much--not like a life that, though ended, had truly been something. If I had had courage,he thought, if I had had faith. We preserve ourselves as if that were important, and always at the expense of others. We hoard ourselves. We succeed if they fail, we are wise if they are foolish, and we go onward, clutching, until there is no one--we are left with no companion save God. In whom we do not believe. Who we know does not exist. ↗

— James Salter

#faith #loneliness #regret #selfishness #age

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

#consequences #life #mistakes #regrets #change

Regret is counterproductive. It's looking back on a past that you can't change. Questioning things as they occur can prevent regret in the future. ↗

— Colleen Hoover

#life #past #questioning #regret #change

A decision made during a moment of weakness can ruin your life.         To date, I had made three. ↗

— Melika Dannese Lux

#corcitura #danger #eric-bradburry #hindsight #hybrid-vampires

No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found. ↗

— Samuel Beckett

#been #born #business #dying #found