Saltar al contenido
  • Start Here
  • About
  • Quotes
  • Learn
    • Lifestyle Design
    • Making Money
    • Psychology
    • Travel & Exploration
  • Contact
  • es_COES
  • Start Here
  • About
  • Quotes
  • Learn
    • Lifestyle Design
    • Making Money
    • Psychology
    • Travel & Exploration
  • Contact
  • es_COES
Instagram Twitter Youtube
  • Start Here
  • About
  • Quotes
  • Learn
    • Lifestyle Design
    • Making Money
    • Psychology
    • Travel & Exploration
  • Contact
  • es_COES
Instagram Twitter Youtube
  • Start Here
  • About
  • Quotes
  • Learn
    • Lifestyle Design
    • Making Money
    • Psychology
    • Travel & Exploration
  • Contact
  • es_COES
Killer Quotes

73 Quotes About Regret That Give You Perspective

  • November 26, 2024
3d-20-questions-that-unlock-freedom

QUESTIONS THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE(STYLE)

Simple prompts intended to help align you along your way.

OPEN
  • Home
  • Killer Quotes
  • 73 Quotes About Regret That Give You Perspective
Last Modified: November 26, 2024
2 Comments
quotes-about-regret

Sometimes, our decisions (or lack of action) can haunt us for years. We replay the moments over and over in our heads. If only we knew then what we know now. Fortunately, some people have been able to articulate this feeling perfectly. Here are some of the most insightful quotes about regret that will help put everything into perspective.

Blake Miner

I'm a social scientist and entrepreneur fascinated by the psychology of personal freedom and location-independent business. Since selling a portion of my small language learning startup in 2018, I've spent time across 4 continents consulting with SaaS and web3 companies and exploring different cultures.
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

Regret is a powerful emotion. It can leave us feeling stuck in the past and unable to move on.

And while it’s important to learn from our past experiences, it’s good to remind ourselves that we all make the wrong choices at times. Every experience in life is a chance to grow and evolve in our perspectives — even the ones we regret (or regret not pursuing).

Sometimes it just takes looking at things through a new lens.

Regret can act a reminder of the choices you’ve made, the lessons you’ve learned, and the infinite number of possibilities that you still have ahead of you.

This collection of quotes about regret show that regret is natural part of life, and offer perspective in terms of how we can view this universal feeling.

May they inspire you to look at things differently.

Quotes About Regret

No one looks back and regrets leaving this world. What’s regretted is how real we thought it was.

Rumi

As far as I’m concerned, I regret nothing.

Miyamoto Musashi

It is regret for the absence of his loved one which causes a mourner to grieve: yet it is clear that this in itself is bearable enough; for we do not weep at their being absent or intending to be absent during their lifetime, although when they leave our sight we have no more pleasure in them. What tortures us, therefore, is an idea.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca
quotes-about-regret 1

In February there is everything to hope for and nothing to regret.

Patience Strong

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

Henry David Thoreau
quotes-about-regret 2

Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.

C.S. Lewis

Remorse is the punishment of crime; repentance, its expiation. The former appertains to a tormented conscience; the latter to a soul changed for the better.

Joseph Joubert

We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.

Jim Rohn
quotes-about-regret 3

With everything that has happened to you, you can either feel sorry for yourself or treat what has happened as a gift. Everything is either an opportunity to grow or an obstacle to keep you from growing. You get to choose.

Wayne Dyer

Prefer loss to the wealth of dishonest gain. The former vexes you for a time; the latter will bring you lasting remorse.

Chilo
quotes-about-regret 4

Don’t be so bitter about a bad experience from your past that you miss the opportunities in front of you.

Robert Kiyosaki

Remorse is the poison of life.

Charlotte Bronte

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
quotes-about-regret 5

You’ll seldom experience regret for anything that you’ve done. It is what you haven’t done that will torment you. The message, therefore, is clear. Do it! Develop an appreciation for the present moment. Seize every second of your life and savor it.

Wayne Dyer

As a general rule, most “regrets” after one is caught aren’t regrets about having committed the action, but regrets about having been caught. Apologies count only when they are spontaneous, coming out of deep principles. Otherwise they are just an expression of submission.

Nassim Taleb
quotes-about-regret 6

Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves – regret for the past and fear of the future.

Fulton Oursler

Remorse goes to sleep during a prosperous period and wakes up in adversity.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The greatest freedoms are freedom from regret, freedom from fear, freedom from anxiety, and freedom from sorrow.

Thich Nhat Hanh
quotes-about-regret 7

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home.

Henry David Thoreau
quotes-about-regret 8

If only. Those must be the two saddest words in the world.

Mercedes Lackey

We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment.

Jim Rohn

Regret for time wasted can become a power for good in the time that remains, if we will only stop the waste and the idle, useless regretting.

Arthur Brisbane
quotes-about-regret 9

Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Listen hard. Practice wellness. Play with abandon. Laugh. Choose with no regret. Appreciate your friends. Continue to learn. Do what you love. Live as if this is all there is.

Mary Anne Radmacher

In the end, we only regret the chances we didn’t take, the relationships we were afraid to have, and the decisions we waited too long to make.

Lewis Carroll
quotes-about-regret 10

Never regret. If it’s good, it’s wonderful. If it’s bad, it’s experience.

Jean Plaidy

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.

Stefan Zweig

This is our big mistake: to think we look forward to death. Most of death is already gone. Whatever time has passed is owned by death.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca
quotes-about-regret 11

Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy, you can’t build on it it’s only good for wallowing in.

Katherine Mansfield

Remorse is virtue’s root; its fair increase are fruits of innocence and blessedness.

William C. Bryant
quotes-about-regret 12

Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.

Ambrose Bierce

Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.

George Sand

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.

Søren Kierkegaard
quotes-about-regret 13

Only as a warrior can one withstand the path of knowledge. A warrior cannot complain or regret anything. His life is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot possibly be good or bad. Challenges are simply challenges.

Carlos Castaneda

It’s not what you are, it’s what you don’t become that hurts.

Oscar Levant
quotes-about-regret 14

Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy, you can’t build on it it’s only good for wallowing in.

Katherine Mansfield

Looking back, I have this to regret, that too often when I loved, I did not say so.

Ray Stannard Baker

Dead people receive more flowers than the living ones because the regret is stronger than gratitude.

Anne Frank
quotes-about-regret 15

Neither look forward where there is doubt nor backward where there is regret. Look inward and ask not if there is anything outside you want, but whether there is anything inside that you have not yet unpacked.

Quentin Crisp

Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will be delightful, old age will bring few regrets, and life will become a beautiful success.

Louisa May Alcott
quotes-about-regret 16

The follies which a man regrets the most in his life are those which he didn’t commit when he had the opportunity.

Helen Rowland

Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.

Arthur Miller

No one looks back and regrets leaving this world. What’s regretted is how real we thought it was. 

Rumi
quotes-about-regret 17

It is with regret that I pronounce the fatal truth: Louis ought to perish rather than a hundred thousand virtuous citizens; Louis must die so that the country may live.

Maximilien Robespierre

Remorse goes to sleep during a prosperous period and wakes up in adversity.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
quotes-about-regret 18

Regrets are a waste of time. They’re the past crippling you in the present.

Federico Fellini

My only regret in life is that I did not drink more wine.

Ernest Hemingway

There are two kinds of guilt: the kind that drowns you until you’re useless, and the kind that fires your soul to purpose.

Sabaa Tahir
quotes-about-regret 19

My advice to other disabled people would be, concentrate on things your disability doesn’t prevent you doing well, and don’t regret the things it interferes with. Don’t be disabled in spirit, as well as physically.

Stephen Hawking

The perfect man uses his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing. It regrets nothing. It receives but does not keep.

Zhuangzi
quotes-about-regret 20

I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.

Jeff Bezos

One regret dear world, that I am determined not to have when I am lying on my deathbed is that I did not kiss you enough.

Hafez

The great tragedy of the average man is that he goes to his grave with his music still in him.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
quotes-about-regret 21

The bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late.

Ogden Nash

Regret for wasted time is more wasted time.

Mason Cooley
quotes-about-regret 22

Do not regret what you have done.

Miyamoto Musashi

To regret the past, to hope in the future, and never to be satisfied with the present: that is what I spend my whole life doing.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

The only conquests that are permanent and leave no regrets are our conquests over ourselves.

Napoleon Bonaparte
quotes-about-regret 23

Bereavement is terrible, of course. And when somebody you love dies, it’s a time for reflection, a time for memory, a time for regret.

Richard Dawkins

I often regret that I have spoken; never that I have been silent.

Publilius Syrus
quotes-about-regret 24

In my flowery dreams there’s always you. I do not regret it one bit.

Alfred de Musset

Tap into that one fear that drives greatness – the fear of regret.

Betty Liu

For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, ‘It might have been’.

John Greenleaf Whittier
quotes-about-regret 25

One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world.

William Hazlitt

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

We suffer more in imagination than in reality.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca
quotes-about-regret 26

We all make mistakes, have struggles, and even regret things in our past. But you are not your mistakes, you are not your struggles, and you are here now with the power to shape your day and your future.

Steve Maraboli

One’s real life is often the life that one does not lead.

Oscar Wilde
quotes-about-regret 27

We all do things we desperately wish we could undo. Those regrets just become part of who we are, along with everything else. To spend time trying to change that, well, it’s like chasing clouds.

Libba Bray

I regret very much that I have painted a picture that requires any description.

Winslow Homer

There is no person so severely punished, as those who subject themselves to the whip of their own remorse.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca
quotes-about-regret 28

Remorse is virtue’s root; its fair increase are fruits of innocence and blessedness.

William Cullen Bryant

So often is the virgin sheet of paper more real than what one has to say, and so often one regrets having married it.

Harold Acton

Parting Words

I’ve come to see how regret can be one of the most powerful emotions we experience.

It can help highlight missed opportunities or latent, unfulfilled desires that we’re meant to pursue. It can act as a teacher. It can give us valuable insights into our values, passions, and next steps.

It’s an inevitable part of this experience we call ‘being human’, so let’s take the lessons that we can from this feeling and turn it into something positive.

What are your favorite quotes about regret? Let me know in the comments.

P.S. Liked this? You may also enjoy these related quote collections:

  • Quotes About Moments
  • Quotes About Idleness (The Good and the Bad)
  • Quotes About Memories
  • Quotes About Dreams and Reality
  • Quotes About Hope

Originally published November 15, 2022. The date of the last significant edit is reflected at the top of the post.

✍️ Cusco, Peru

Our website is supported by our users. We may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on our site at no additional cost to you.

Filed Under: 
Killer Quotes

This Post Has 2 Comments

  1. Luis Manteiga Pousa March 14, 2023 Reply

    En definitiva, que esta frase puede ser valida para algunos casos particulares, quizás como el de su autor, pero nunca será valida como norma general.

  2. Luis Manteiga Pousa March 13, 2023 Reply

    La de Publius Syrus, o de quien sea, porque también se le atribuye a Xenócrates, a Simónides… “Muchas veces me he arrepentido de haber hablado y nunca de haber callado”. Obviamente, esta frase no es cierta. No se lo que le pasó a el en su vida, es posible que a el no le pasase, pero es obvio que también nos podemos arrepentir de haber callado. Hay otra versión en la que en vez de “ninguna” dice “pocas veces”. Esta ya me parece bastante más acertada aunque también podría decir “bastantes” o “muchas”

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Let’s Connect

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Instagram Youtube

Blog CATEGORIES

Categories

MOSTRECENT Posts

​​65 Short Travel Quotes to Inspire Your Next Adventure

129 Quotes About Experience That Help You Evolve

90 Quotes About Optimism That Will Flip Your Perspective

73 Quotes About Regret That Give You Perspective

GET RECOMMENDEDRESOURCES
Join OurCOMMUNITY
LEARN THE BUSINESS MODELS

Ready to create your own freedom?

We’ve compiled our best resources for creating a life of autonomy into one toolkit. 

Get the essential tools and tactics for crafting your own life of freedom, regardless of where you’re starting from.

Escape the daily grind, take back your dreams, and design a life you love living.

LEARN MORE
  • Related Posts

​​65 Short Travel Quotes to Inspire Your Next Adventure

quotes-about-experience

129 Quotes About Experience That Help You Evolve

quotes-about-optimism

90 Quotes About Optimism That Will Flip Your Perspective

Get Started

  • Start Here
  • Lifestyle Design Books
  • Recommendations

Learn

  • Our Story
  • What’s a Flâneur?
  • Unlock Freedom

Connect

  • Contact
  • Join the Community
  • Sitemap

Read

  • Privacy Policy
  • Disclaimer
  • Terms and Conditions

Follow Along

Facebook-f Instagram Twitter Youtube Pinterest

© 2025 Flâneur Life. All rights reserved.

Made for free range humans 🐢🚶