This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Joseph Conrad, born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski
A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line...To snatch in a moment of courage, from the remorseless rush of time, a passing phase of life is only the beginning of the task. The task approached in tenderness and faith is to hold up unquestioningly, without choice and without fear, the rescued fragment before all eyes and in the light of a sincere mood. It is to show its vibration, its colour, its form; and through its movement, its form, and its colour, reveal the substance of its truth -- disclose its inspiring secret: the stress and passion within the core of each convincing moment. In a single-minded attempt of that kind, if one be deserving and fortunate, one may perchance attain to such clearness of sincerity that at last the presented vision of regret or pity, of terror or mirth, shall awaken in the hearts of the beholders that feeling of unavoidable solidarity; of the solidarity in mysterious origin, in toil, in joy, in hope, in uncertain fate, which binds men to each other and all mankind to the visible world.
Art | Beginning | Choice | Faith | Justification | Life | Life | Light | Mankind | Men | Passion | Regret | Sincerity | Tenderness | Terror | Truth | Vision | Work | Art |
Religion is man's way of accepting life as an inevitable defeat. That it is not an inevitable defeat is a claim that cannot be defended in good faith. One can, of course, disperse one's life over the contingencies of every day, but even then it is only a ceaseless and desperate desire to live, and finally a regret that one has not lived. One can accept life, and accept it, at the same time, as a defeat only if one accepts that there is a sense beyond that which is inherent in human history -- if, in other words, one accepts the order of the sacred. A hypothetical world from which the sacred had been swept away would admit of only two possibilities: vain fantasy that recognizes itself as such, or immediate satisfaction which exhausts itself. It would leave only the choice proposed by Baudelaire, between lovers of prostitutes and lovers of clouds: those who know only the satisfactions of the moment and are therefore contemptible, and those who lose themselves in otiose imaginings , and are therefore contemptible. Everything is contemptible, and there is no more to be said. The conscience liberated from the sacred knows this, even if it conceals it from itself.
Choice | Conscience | Defeat | Desire | Good | History | Inevitable | Life | Life | Order | Regret | Sacred | Sense | World |
Lucille Ball, fully Lucille Désirée Ball
I would rather regret the things that I have done than the things that I have not.
Regret |
Lucy Maud Montgomery, aka Maud or L.M. Montgomery
We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us.
Marcel Proust, fully Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
The places that we have known belong now only to the little world of space on which we map them for our own convenience. None of them was ever more than a thin slice, held between the contiguous impressions that composed our life at that time; remembrance of a particular form is but regret for a particular moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the years.
Martin Fischer, fully John Martin Fischer
So total control is a chimaera. It is manifestly ludicrous to aspire to it or to regret its absence. The locus of control is not wholly within us. We do not exist in a protective bubble of control. Rather, we are thoroughly and pervasively subject to luck: actual causal factors entirely out of our control are such that, if they were not to occur, things at least might be very different. Quite apart from any special assumption about causal determinism, we can see that from a broader perspective, it is entirely a matter of luck or arbitrary that I behave as I do (or even that I developed into an agent at all — or have maintained that status). Although it is perfectly reasonable to wish to be the source of one's choices and behavior, it is not reasonable to interpret the relevant notion of sourcehood in terms of total control and internality.
True remorse is never just a regret over consequences; it is a regret over motive.
Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman
There’s a great deal of basis for believing that a free society is fundamentally unstable—we may regret this but we’ve got to face up to the facts.…I think it’s the utmost of naiveté to suppose that a free society is somehow the natural order of things.
Mitch Albom, fully Mitchell David "Mitch" Albom
There is no point in keeping vengeance or stubbornness. These things -he sighed- these things I so regret in my life. Pride. Vanity. Why do we do the things we do?
Morrie Schwartz, fully Morris "Morrie" S. Schwartz
There is no point in keeping vengeance or stubbornness. These things I so regret in my life. Pride. Vanity. Why do we do the things we do?
Don’t Over-react. You may react to a regrettable situation by taking many fewer chances. Don’t. This only ensures that you will miss out on new opportunities. Think Downward. Consider the downward alternatives. How could a bad situation have gone even worse? This makes you feel appreciative of what you have. Do It. If you decide to do something and it turns out badly, research shows that it probably won’t haunt you down the road. (You’ll reframe the failure and move on.) But you will regret the things left undone. Regrets are Opportunities Knocking. Our brains produce the most “if only” thoughts about things in our lives that we can still change. So consider regret as a signal flashing: It’s not too late!
Fifteen years of research have been combined into a list of the top four biggest regrets of the average American: not getting more education, career regrets, regrets in love, not spending enough time with kids. The list is essentially a summary of the biggest traps, pitfalls, and mistakes into which people like you might blunder. Look over the list and try to identify areas of your life that represent the greatest vulnerability to future regret. And act now to avoid regret later.
Enough | Future | Life | Life | People | Regret | Research | Time |
Neil Gaiman, fully Neil Richard Gaiman
We do not always remember the things that do no credit to us. We justify them, cover them in bright lies or with the thick dust of forgetfulness. All of the things that Shadow had done in his life of which he was not proud, all the things he wished he had done otherwise or left undone, came at him then in a swirling storm of guilt and regret and shame, and he had nowhere to hide from them. He was as naked and as open as a corpse on a table, and dark Anubis the jackal god was his prosector and his prosecutor and his persecutor.
Credit | God | Guilt | Justify | Life | Life | Regret | God |
Nicolas Chamfort,fully Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort, also spelled Nicholas
There is a kind of harmful modesty which … sometimes affects men of superior character to their detriment by keeping them in a state of mediocrity. I am reminded of the remark that a certain gentleman of acknowledged eminence once made at luncheon to some persons of the Court, How bitterly I regret the time I wasted merely to learn how superior I am to all of you!
Paul Wellstone, fully Paul David Wellstone
I believe that we will deeply regret this stampede to pass this legislation and the way in which we have taken all the human rights, religious freedom, right to organize, all of those concerns and we just put them in parenthesis, put them in brackets, as if they don't exist.
I do not regret for the suffering they experienced, I wear the scars as medals, I know that freedom has a high price as high as the price of slavery, the only difference is that you pay willingly and with a smile, though sometimes smile be accompanied by tears… I do not want to deal with my own darkness, have I promised to myself, finally closing the door on the Other. A drop in the third floor is just as much damage as dropping the hundredth floor… I have never heard of them, but, if it was a child who showed them to you, they exist… I have won important things for myself, but I'm going to destroy them, because I tell myself they have lost their meaning. I know that is not true. I know they are important, and that if I destroy them, I'll be destroying myself, as well.
Destroy | Freedom | Important | Price | Regret | Smile | Suffering | Child |