Everyone has regrets in life, and this is a typical part of the human experience. While it's common to wish we had acted differently in the past, dwelling on these feelings can be detrimental to our mental and physical health. Instead, regret can be a powerful tool for personal growth and positive change. May these best quotes and phrases about regret give you insights into avoiding any possible regrets or help you move on.
1. “The one thing I learned is to just give everything a shot. You don't want to live in regret.” – Chloe Kim
2. “Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, It might have been.” – Kurt Vonnegut
3. “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
4. “Have you ever hoped for something? And held out for it against all the odds? Until everything you did was ridiculous?” – Ali Shaw
5. “Regret is mostly caused by not having done anything.” – Charles Bukowski
6. “The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.” – Oscar Wilde
7. “Never regret trusting someone. It proves you have a heart. But if he turns out to be a lying worm, I'm not going to waste my time crying. Because I am way too fabulous for that.” – Jude Watson
8. “Living with regrets was like driving a car that only moved in reverse.” – Jodi Picoult
9. “You can't regret the life you didn't lead.” – Junot DÃaz
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10. “Our biggest regrets are not for the things we have done but for the things we haven't done.” – Chad Michael Murray
11. “Heartbreak could be lived with if it weren't accompanied by regret.” – Laura Kasischke
12. “If I'm sincere today, what does it matter if I regret it tomorrow?” – José Saramago
13. “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
14. “There was a long hard time when I kept far from me the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth.” – Charles Dickens
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15. “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
16. “Not everything's perfect, especially in the beginning. And it's all right to have a little bit of regret every once in a while. It's when you feel it all the time and can't do anything about it. That's when you get into trouble.” – Sarah Dessen
17. “The mistakes I've made are dead to me. But I can't take back the things I never did.” – Jonathan Safran Foer
18. “Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.” – Arthur Miller
19. “Forget regret, or life is yours to miss. No other path, no other way, no day but today.” – Jonathan Larson
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20. “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
21. “I want to undo this. To make it right. But I have no idea how. I don't seem to know how to open up to people without getting the door slammed in my face. So I do nothing.” – Gayle Forman
22. “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
23. “Everybody was sorry. Sorry was easy. Sorry was for suckers.” – Gretchen McNeil
24. “If you had to relive your life exactly as it was, same successes and failures, same happiness, same miseries, same mixture of comedy and tragedy, would you want to? Was it worth it?” – Gavin Extence
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25. “Four things do not come back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity.” – Ted Chiang
26. “If only. Those must be the two saddest words in the world.” – Mercedes Lackey
27. “There are moments in your life where you realize you could do nothing, but if you do, you'll probably regret it forever.” – Milana Vayntrub
28. “I try to face things without regret, or make sure that I'm happy with things and leave nothing unsaid if I can.” – Hozier
29. “Sensitive people either love deeply or they regret deeply. There really is no middle ground because they live in passionate extremes.” – Shannon L. Alder
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30. “Regrets are pointless. It's too late for regrets. You've already done it, haven't you? You've lived your life. No point wishing you could change it.” – Lemmy Kilmister
More Deep and Sad Regret Quotes and Sayings about Life
31. “When we grow old, there can only be one regret, not to have given enough of ourselves.” – Eleonora Duse
32. “No amount of guilt can change the past and no amount of worrying can change the future.” – Umar ibn Al-Khattab
33. “There is no more disastrous mania, no more dangerous whim, than the speculation over roads not taken.” – Juan Gabriel Vásquez
34. “I'm too old to recover, too narrow to forgive myself.” – Lillian Hellman
35. “The advance of regret can be so gradual that it is impossible to say: Yesterday I was happy, Today I am not.” – E.M. Forster
36. “Uncertainty is the worst of all evils until the moment when reality makes us regret uncertainty.” – Alphonse Karr
37. “Sometimes I wish life was written pencil so we could erase it and write it all over again.” – Thisuri Wanniarachchi
38. “We should have taken our chances back then, when we were young and beautiful and didn't even know it.” – Lois McMaster Bujold
39. “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
40. “If you are afraid to take a chance, take one anyway. What you don't do can create the same regrets as the mistakes you make.” – Iyanla Vanzant
41. “Regret is an unavoidable result of any loss, for in loss we lose the tomorrow that we needed to make right our yesterday or today.” – Gerald Lawson Sittser
42. “The longer our trail of regrets, the more we tend to value the importance of making wise decisions.” – Bob Santos
43. “We have to let go of all blame, all attacking, all judging, to free our inner selves to attract what we say we want.” – Joe Vitale
44. “We cannot always change what has happened to us, but we can change how we react and how we live in the future. Living with no regrets is living successfully.” – Dr. Ellen Taricani
45. “Never regret. If it's good, it's wonderful. If it's bad, it's experience.” – Victoria Holt
46. “Most of us have had regrets and recognize how they can hold us back or keep us stuck in life and relationships. Overcoming the past is important for anyone desiring to live beyond mistakes and the problems they make.” – Ron Neff
47. “Something you need most might be something you turn away from, something you turn away from might be something you regret, and something you regret, in the end, might cost you the one chance you ever had.” – Brian Judge
48. “We all make mistakes in life that's true. Some little, some big, some simple and some more complex. Some mistakes we regret forever.” – Rashard Royster
49. “Regrets are idle; yet history is one long regret. Everything might have turned out so differently.” – Charles Dudley Warner
50. “If we fill our hours with regrets over the failures of yesterday, we have no today in which to be thankful.” – Anonymous
51. “I'd rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done.” – Lucille Ball
52. “Never regret anything you have done with a sincere affection; nothing is lost that is born of the heart.” – Basil Rathbone
53. “I made decisions that I regret, and I took them as learning experiences. I'm human, not perfect, like anybody else.” – Queen Latifah
54. “A great source of calamity lies in regret and anticipation; therefore a person is wise who thinks of the present alone, regardless of the past or future.” – Oliver Goldsmith
55. “One of the greatest regrets in life is being what others would want you to be, rather than being yourself.” – Shannon L. Alder
56. “When something goes wrong in your life, it doesn't finish you, and you should become braver, knowing that you've got to go for things in life and don't regret because you didn't try to be as good as you might be.” – Gareth Southgate
57. “Regret doesn't remind us that we did badly. It reminds us that we know we can do better.” – Kathryn Schulz
58. “Never regret yesterday. Life is in you today and you make your tomorrow.” – L. Ron Hubbard
59. “I never regret anything. Because every little detail of your life is what made you into who you are in the end.” – Drew Barrymore
60. “I think to regret is useless in life. It belongs to the past.” – Marlon Brando
61. “It is better to look ahead and prepare than to look back and regret.” – Jackie Joyner Kersee
62. “Regret is the worst human emotion. If you took another road, you might have fallen off a cliff. I'm content.” – William Shatner
63. “We crucify ourselves between two thieves: regret for yesterday and fear of tomorrow.” – Fulton Oursler
64. “Get correct views of life, and learn to see the world in its true light. It will enable you to live pleasantly, to do good, and, when summoned away, to leave without regret.” – Robert E. Lee
65. “You can never regret anything you do in life. You kind of have to learn the lesson from whatever the experience is and take it with you on your journey forward.” – Aubrey O'Day
66. “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
67. “Regret is a tough but fair teacher. To live without regret is to believe you have nothing to learn, no amends to make, and no opportunity to be braver with your life. ” – Brene Brown
68. “Don’t live your life regretting yesterday. Live your life so tomorrow you won’t regret today.” – Catherine Pulsifer
69. “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
70. “Never regret anything from your past because one day, you’ll look back and thank it for hurting you so much that you decided to become a stronger human being.” – Faith Star
71. “I never regret anything. Because every little detail of your life is what made you into who you are in the end.” – Drew Barrymore
72. “Your heart and your instincts are far more reliable than your brain. When you follow your heart, you can be sure you won't regret it later. Even if you calculate your every move, it's not like life ever goes according to plan.” – Nithya Menen
73. “There is no need to lament on the bygone failures, instead concentrate on things that you can change and let other things take their own course.” – Robert Gallagher
74. “We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us.” – Lucy Maud Montgomery
75. “I'm living with every step. I can't live with regret. The past is the past. I'm not worried about it. I can't change it. I can't fix it. It is what it is. I'm just living.” – Ryan Sheckler
76. “If we don't deal with the roots of our regrets, if we don't make the choice to start over, the costs of what we're missing out on can be enormous and will accrue exponentially over time.” – Dave Ferguson
77. “I wouldn’t say I regret anything. I would say I just wish I did things better.” – Greg Odeni
78. “I don't talk about my past; people ask me about it. I've done things I'm ashamed of, but one thing I can honestly say is that things I've done that I regret, I've never done twice. I work really hard at that.” – Art Alexakis
79. “When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.” – Alexander Graham Bell
80. “A couple of words that somebody said to somebody many years ago is not who they are today. You regret it, you apologize, you make it right, you move on and you live your life according to the values of what you have.” – Diana Taylor
81. “It's better to regret trying and failing than to regret not trying at all.” – Aneko Yusagi
82. “Regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to.” – Trevor Noah
83. “Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it.” – George Halas
84. “There are no regrets in life, just lessons.” – Jennifer Aniston
85. “Never look back and regret, look back and smile at what you have learned.” – Anonymous
86. “Don't let a brief moment of happiness leave you with a lifetime of regret.” – Frank Sonnenberg
87. “The pain of trying and failing is intense and over rather quickly. The pain of failing to try, on the other hand, is less intense but never really goes away.” – Shane Parrish
88. “Never regret anything because at one time it was exactly what you wanted.” – Marilyn Monroe
89. “To regret deeply is to live afresh.” – Henry David Thoreau
90. “It is not the jumps you made in your life but mostly the jumps you haven't made are the real source of regrets in your life!” – Mehmet Murat ildan
91. “Looking back with regret stops you from moving forward and you get stuck in the past.” – Anonymous
92. “For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: It might have been.” – John Greenleaf Whittier
93. “If you don't learn from your mistakes, then they become regrets.” – John Cena
94. “The greatest regret in life is not the mistakes we make, but the opportunities we miss.” – Anonymous
95. “Never regret being kind to the wrong person. Your behavior shows who you are, and their behavior shows who they are.” – Anonymous
96. “The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.” – Harriet Beecher Stowe
97. “A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.” – John Barrymore
98. “Failure hurts but passes quickly. Regret hurts forever.” – Shane Parrish
99. “Regret is the only wound the soul does not recover from.” – Sarah Ban Breathnach
100. “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Share these Quotes on Regretting Mistakes with your friends, family, and loved ones to inspire them as well.
2. “Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, It might have been.” – Kurt Vonnegut
3. “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
4. “Have you ever hoped for something? And held out for it against all the odds? Until everything you did was ridiculous?” – Ali Shaw
5. “Regret is mostly caused by not having done anything.” – Charles Bukowski
6. “The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.” – Oscar Wilde
7. “Never regret trusting someone. It proves you have a heart. But if he turns out to be a lying worm, I'm not going to waste my time crying. Because I am way too fabulous for that.” – Jude Watson
8. “Living with regrets was like driving a car that only moved in reverse.” – Jodi Picoult
9. “You can't regret the life you didn't lead.” – Junot DÃaz
11. “Heartbreak could be lived with if it weren't accompanied by regret.” – Laura Kasischke
12. “If I'm sincere today, what does it matter if I regret it tomorrow?” – José Saramago
13. “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
14. “There was a long hard time when I kept far from me the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth.” – Charles Dickens
16. “Not everything's perfect, especially in the beginning. And it's all right to have a little bit of regret every once in a while. It's when you feel it all the time and can't do anything about it. That's when you get into trouble.” – Sarah Dessen
17. “The mistakes I've made are dead to me. But I can't take back the things I never did.” – Jonathan Safran Foer
18. “Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.” – Arthur Miller
19. “Forget regret, or life is yours to miss. No other path, no other way, no day but today.” – Jonathan Larson
21. “I want to undo this. To make it right. But I have no idea how. I don't seem to know how to open up to people without getting the door slammed in my face. So I do nothing.” – Gayle Forman
22. “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
23. “Everybody was sorry. Sorry was easy. Sorry was for suckers.” – Gretchen McNeil
24. “If you had to relive your life exactly as it was, same successes and failures, same happiness, same miseries, same mixture of comedy and tragedy, would you want to? Was it worth it?” – Gavin Extence
26. “If only. Those must be the two saddest words in the world.” – Mercedes Lackey
27. “There are moments in your life where you realize you could do nothing, but if you do, you'll probably regret it forever.” – Milana Vayntrub
28. “I try to face things without regret, or make sure that I'm happy with things and leave nothing unsaid if I can.” – Hozier
29. “Sensitive people either love deeply or they regret deeply. There really is no middle ground because they live in passionate extremes.” – Shannon L. Alder
More Deep and Sad Regret Quotes and Sayings about Life
31. “When we grow old, there can only be one regret, not to have given enough of ourselves.” – Eleonora Duse
32. “No amount of guilt can change the past and no amount of worrying can change the future.” – Umar ibn Al-Khattab
33. “There is no more disastrous mania, no more dangerous whim, than the speculation over roads not taken.” – Juan Gabriel Vásquez
34. “I'm too old to recover, too narrow to forgive myself.” – Lillian Hellman
35. “The advance of regret can be so gradual that it is impossible to say: Yesterday I was happy, Today I am not.” – E.M. Forster
36. “Uncertainty is the worst of all evils until the moment when reality makes us regret uncertainty.” – Alphonse Karr
37. “Sometimes I wish life was written pencil so we could erase it and write it all over again.” – Thisuri Wanniarachchi
38. “We should have taken our chances back then, when we were young and beautiful and didn't even know it.” – Lois McMaster Bujold
39. “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
40. “If you are afraid to take a chance, take one anyway. What you don't do can create the same regrets as the mistakes you make.” – Iyanla Vanzant
41. “Regret is an unavoidable result of any loss, for in loss we lose the tomorrow that we needed to make right our yesterday or today.” – Gerald Lawson Sittser
42. “The longer our trail of regrets, the more we tend to value the importance of making wise decisions.” – Bob Santos
43. “We have to let go of all blame, all attacking, all judging, to free our inner selves to attract what we say we want.” – Joe Vitale
44. “We cannot always change what has happened to us, but we can change how we react and how we live in the future. Living with no regrets is living successfully.” – Dr. Ellen Taricani
45. “Never regret. If it's good, it's wonderful. If it's bad, it's experience.” – Victoria Holt
46. “Most of us have had regrets and recognize how they can hold us back or keep us stuck in life and relationships. Overcoming the past is important for anyone desiring to live beyond mistakes and the problems they make.” – Ron Neff
47. “Something you need most might be something you turn away from, something you turn away from might be something you regret, and something you regret, in the end, might cost you the one chance you ever had.” – Brian Judge
48. “We all make mistakes in life that's true. Some little, some big, some simple and some more complex. Some mistakes we regret forever.” – Rashard Royster
49. “Regrets are idle; yet history is one long regret. Everything might have turned out so differently.” – Charles Dudley Warner
50. “If we fill our hours with regrets over the failures of yesterday, we have no today in which to be thankful.” – Anonymous
51. “I'd rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done.” – Lucille Ball
52. “Never regret anything you have done with a sincere affection; nothing is lost that is born of the heart.” – Basil Rathbone
53. “I made decisions that I regret, and I took them as learning experiences. I'm human, not perfect, like anybody else.” – Queen Latifah
54. “A great source of calamity lies in regret and anticipation; therefore a person is wise who thinks of the present alone, regardless of the past or future.” – Oliver Goldsmith
55. “One of the greatest regrets in life is being what others would want you to be, rather than being yourself.” – Shannon L. Alder
56. “When something goes wrong in your life, it doesn't finish you, and you should become braver, knowing that you've got to go for things in life and don't regret because you didn't try to be as good as you might be.” – Gareth Southgate
57. “Regret doesn't remind us that we did badly. It reminds us that we know we can do better.” – Kathryn Schulz
58. “Never regret yesterday. Life is in you today and you make your tomorrow.” – L. Ron Hubbard
59. “I never regret anything. Because every little detail of your life is what made you into who you are in the end.” – Drew Barrymore
60. “I think to regret is useless in life. It belongs to the past.” – Marlon Brando
61. “It is better to look ahead and prepare than to look back and regret.” – Jackie Joyner Kersee
62. “Regret is the worst human emotion. If you took another road, you might have fallen off a cliff. I'm content.” – William Shatner
63. “We crucify ourselves between two thieves: regret for yesterday and fear of tomorrow.” – Fulton Oursler
64. “Get correct views of life, and learn to see the world in its true light. It will enable you to live pleasantly, to do good, and, when summoned away, to leave without regret.” – Robert E. Lee
65. “You can never regret anything you do in life. You kind of have to learn the lesson from whatever the experience is and take it with you on your journey forward.” – Aubrey O'Day
66. “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
67. “Regret is a tough but fair teacher. To live without regret is to believe you have nothing to learn, no amends to make, and no opportunity to be braver with your life. ” – Brene Brown
68. “Don’t live your life regretting yesterday. Live your life so tomorrow you won’t regret today.” – Catherine Pulsifer
69. “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
70. “Never regret anything from your past because one day, you’ll look back and thank it for hurting you so much that you decided to become a stronger human being.” – Faith Star
71. “I never regret anything. Because every little detail of your life is what made you into who you are in the end.” – Drew Barrymore
72. “Your heart and your instincts are far more reliable than your brain. When you follow your heart, you can be sure you won't regret it later. Even if you calculate your every move, it's not like life ever goes according to plan.” – Nithya Menen
73. “There is no need to lament on the bygone failures, instead concentrate on things that you can change and let other things take their own course.” – Robert Gallagher
74. “We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us.” – Lucy Maud Montgomery
75. “I'm living with every step. I can't live with regret. The past is the past. I'm not worried about it. I can't change it. I can't fix it. It is what it is. I'm just living.” – Ryan Sheckler
76. “If we don't deal with the roots of our regrets, if we don't make the choice to start over, the costs of what we're missing out on can be enormous and will accrue exponentially over time.” – Dave Ferguson
77. “I wouldn’t say I regret anything. I would say I just wish I did things better.” – Greg Odeni
78. “I don't talk about my past; people ask me about it. I've done things I'm ashamed of, but one thing I can honestly say is that things I've done that I regret, I've never done twice. I work really hard at that.” – Art Alexakis
79. “When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.” – Alexander Graham Bell
80. “A couple of words that somebody said to somebody many years ago is not who they are today. You regret it, you apologize, you make it right, you move on and you live your life according to the values of what you have.” – Diana Taylor
81. “It's better to regret trying and failing than to regret not trying at all.” – Aneko Yusagi
82. “Regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to.” – Trevor Noah
83. “Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it.” – George Halas
84. “There are no regrets in life, just lessons.” – Jennifer Aniston
85. “Never look back and regret, look back and smile at what you have learned.” – Anonymous
86. “Don't let a brief moment of happiness leave you with a lifetime of regret.” – Frank Sonnenberg
87. “The pain of trying and failing is intense and over rather quickly. The pain of failing to try, on the other hand, is less intense but never really goes away.” – Shane Parrish
88. “Never regret anything because at one time it was exactly what you wanted.” – Marilyn Monroe
89. “To regret deeply is to live afresh.” – Henry David Thoreau
90. “It is not the jumps you made in your life but mostly the jumps you haven't made are the real source of regrets in your life!” – Mehmet Murat ildan
91. “Looking back with regret stops you from moving forward and you get stuck in the past.” – Anonymous
92. “For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: It might have been.” – John Greenleaf Whittier
93. “If you don't learn from your mistakes, then they become regrets.” – John Cena
94. “The greatest regret in life is not the mistakes we make, but the opportunities we miss.” – Anonymous
95. “Never regret being kind to the wrong person. Your behavior shows who you are, and their behavior shows who they are.” – Anonymous
96. “The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.” – Harriet Beecher Stowe
97. “A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.” – John Barrymore
98. “Failure hurts but passes quickly. Regret hurts forever.” – Shane Parrish
99. “Regret is the only wound the soul does not recover from.” – Sarah Ban Breathnach
100. “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Share these Quotes on Regretting Mistakes with your friends, family, and loved ones to inspire them as well.