This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Regret for time wasted can become a power for good in the time that remains." - Arthur Brisbane
"Some people regret that they have poor memories. Alas! it is much more difficult to forget." - Madame Deluzy, Luzy Dorothee
"Right actions for the future are the best explanations or apologies for wrong ones in the past; the best evidence of regret for them that we can offer, or the world receive." - Tyron Edwards
"Time is given us that we may take care for eternity; and eternity will not be too long to regret the loss of our time if we have misspent it." - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
"Anger begins with madness, and ends with regret." - Abraham Hasdai
"Never regret yesterday. Life is in you today, and you make your tomorrow." - L. Ron Hubbard, fully Lafayette Ron Hubbard
"No one, looking back, ever really regrets one of his young enthusiasms. It is the enthusiasms we did not have that we regret." - John William MacKail
"Regret is an appalling waste of energy. You can't build on it; it's only good for wallowing in." - Katherine Mansfield, pseudonymn of Kathleen Beauchamp, Mrs. J. M. Murry
"I regret not death. I am going to meet my friends in another world." - Ludovico Ariosto
"To regret nothing is the beginning of all wisdom." - Ludwig Börne, fully Karl Ludwig Börne
"Man often acquires must so much knowledge as to discover his ignorance, and attains so much experience as to regret his follies, and then dies." - William Benton Clulow
"Right actions for the future are the best apologies for wrong ones in the past - the best evidence of regret for them that we can offer, or the world receives." - Tyron Edwards
"Be avaricious of time; do not give any moment without receiving it in value; only allow hours to go from you with as much regret as you give to your gold; do not allow a single day to pass without increasing the treasure of your knowledge and virtue." - Nicolas Le Letourneux
"My religion is to live - and die - without regret." - Milarepa, fully Jetsun Milarepa NULL
"Almost all men are over-anxious. No sooner do they enter the world than they lose that taste fore natural and simple pleasures so remarkable in early life. Every hour do they ask themselves what progress they have made in the pursuit of wealth or honor; and on they go as their fathers went before them, till, weary and sick at heart, they look back with a sigh of regret to the golden time of their childhood." - Samuel Rogers
"Never utter a word in private which you would regret to have heard in public." - Sa'di (or Saadi), pen name of Abū-Muḥammad Muṣliḥ al-Dīn bin Abdallāh Shīrāzī, born Muslih-uddin NULL
"The only causes of regret are laziness, outbursts of temper, hurting others, prejudice, jealousy and envy." - Germaine Greer
"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
"We should live in such a way that in our last hours we will not regret having loved too little." - Chiara Lubich
"If we follow what we love, if we live deeply and attentively in this moment, we will not feel bound by regret at the moment of our death. We will live with reverence for all things and a deep gratefulness for the gift of a single day upon the earth." - Wayne Muller
"As you grow older, you'll find the only things you regret are the things you didn't do." - Zachary Scott
"Happiness is essentially a state of going somewhere, wholeheartedly, one-directionally, without regret or reservation." - William H. Seldon
"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. Value your present moments. Using them up in any self-defeating ways means you've lost them forever." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
"Of all things acquired through life, the one possession we hope to never attain is regret. For that is a possession which cannot be sold or traded for anything at any cost." - Aaron Waldie
"The truth is that you learn the lore of love only when your love is out of reach; and the lore of the blue landscape seen from your mountain-top only when you are struggling up a rock wall on your long ascent; and you learn of God only in the exercise of prayer that remains unanswered. For the one satisfaction that time cannot wither, the one joy that never knows regret, is that which is granted you when your course is run and in the fullness of time it is given you to be, having finished with becoming." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Instead of always thinking about our plans and anxiously looking to the future, or giving ourselves up to regret for the past, we should never forget that the present is the only reality, the only certainty; the future almost always turns out contrary to our expectations; the past, too, was very different from what we suppose it to have been." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"Sadness is a great obstacle to serving the Almighty. A person who has transgressed should not become excessively sad since this will prevent him from further spiritual growth. One should feel deep regret for the wrong he has done and then continue to feel joy in his relationship with the Almighty since he has sincere regret and is resolved not to repeat his transgression." -
"Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
"There is little in common between us. The ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their final resting place is hallowed ground, while you wander away from the tombs of your fathers without regret. Your religion was written on tablets of stone by the iron finger of an angry God, lest you might forget it. The red man could never remember nor comprehend it. Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors, the dreams of our old men, given them by the Great Spirit, and the visions of our sachems [chiefs], and is written in the hearts of our people. Your dead cease to love you and the homes of their nativity as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb. They wander far off beyond the stars, are soon forgotten, and never return. Our dead never forget the beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its winding rivers, its great mountains, and its sequestered vales." - Chief Seattle, also spelled Seathl
"Whenever you do a thing, act so that it will give your friends no occasion for regret and your foes no cause for joy." - Chinese Proverbs
"He who hears the truth in the morning may die in the evening without regret." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
"Our repentance is not so much regret for the evil we have done as fear of what may happen to us because of it." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"To regret deeply is to live afresh." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"What heart has not acknowledged the influence of this hour, the sweet and soothing hour of twilight - the hour of love - the hour of adoration - the hour of rest - when we think of those we love, only to regret that we have not loved them more dearly; when we remember our enemies only to forgive them." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"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." - James Goldsmith
"Be careful about starting something you may regret." - Latin Proverbs
"The most learned men have told us that only the wise man is free. What is freedom but the ability to live as one will? The man who lives as he wills is none other than the one who strives for the right, who does his duty, who plans his life with forethought, and who obeys the laws because he knows it is good for him, and not out of fear. Everything he says, does, or thinks is spontaneous and free. His tasks and conduct begin and end in himself, because nothing has so much influence over him as his own counsel and decision. Even the supreme power of fortune is submissive to him. The wise poet has reminded us that fortune is molded for each man by the manner of his life. Only the wise man does nothing against his will, or with regret and by compulsion. Thought this truth deserves to be discussed at greater length, it is nevertheless proverbial that no one is free except the wise. Evil men are nothing but slaves." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"None has more frequent conversations with 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." - Oliver Goldsmith
"To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's life. It is not less than a denial of the soul." - Oscar Wilde, pen name for Fingal O'Flahertie Wills
"Regret not that which is past; and trust not to thine own righteousness." - Saint Anthony, aka Anthony the Great or Antony the Great, Anthony of Egypt, Anthony the Abbot, Anthony of the Desert, Anthony the Anchorite, Anthony of Thebes, Abba Antonius and Father of All Monks
"Patience gives peace, haste regret." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
"Patience reaps peace, and rashness regret; the former riches, the latter poverty." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
"I believe in the Holy Catholic Church, and I only regret it does not exist." - William Temple, fully Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet