Regret Quotes - Page 33

• The past will not tell us what we ought to do, but... what we ought to avoid.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Past, Ought

  Jose Ortega Y Gasset (1960). “the Revolt of the Masses”

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• The only causes of regret are laziness, outbursts of temper, hurting others, prejudice, jealousy, and envy.

  Germaine Greer

  Hurt, Women, Envy

  Germaine Greer (1972). “The female eunuch”

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• Never look for birds of this year in the nests of the last.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Years, Bird, Looks

  "The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha".

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• Man is a transitory being, and his designs must partake of the imperfections of their author. To confer duration is not always in our power. We must snatch the present moment, and employ it well, without too much solicitude for the future, and content ourselves with reflecting that our part is performed. He that waits for an opportunity to do much at once, may breathe out his life in idle wishes, and regret, in the last hour, his useless intentions and barren zeal.

  Samuel Johnson

  Opportunity, Men, Design

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”

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• When a man has fulfilled all four of these requisites-to be wide awake, to have fear, respect, and absolute assurance-there are no mistakes for which he will have to account; under such conditions his actions lose the blundering quality of the acts of a fool. If such a man fails, or suffers a defeat, he will have lost only a battle, and there will be no pitiful regrets over that.

  Carlos Castaneda

  Respect, Courage, Mistake

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• Your good mother tells me you are feeling very badly in your new situation. Allow me to assure you it is a perfect certainty that you will, very soon, feel better - quite happy - if you only stick to the resolution you have taken to procure a military education.... On the contrary, if you falter, and give up, you will lose the power of keeping any resolution, and will regret it all your life.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Mother, Perseverance, Giving Up

  Abraham Lincoln, Bob Blaisdell (2013). “Abraham Lincoln's Wit & Wisdom”, p.13, Courier Corporation

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• I will do today that which is of today and pay no heed to the tomorrow; nor waste regrets on that which was yesterday.

  Walter Russell

  Yesterday, Secret, Pay

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• Your remarks upon chemical notation with the variety of systems which have arisen, &c., &c., had almost stirred me up to regret publicly that such hindrances to the progress of science should exist. I cannot help thinking it a most unfortunate thing that men who as experimentalists & philosophers are the most fitted to advance the general cause of science & knowledge should by promulgation of their own theoretical views under the form of nomenclature, notation, or scale, actually retard its progress.

  Michael Faraday

  Science, Men, Thinking

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• There was a golden period that I look back upon with great regret, in which the cheapest of experimental animals were medical students. Graduate students were even better. In the old days, if you offered a graduate student a thiamine-deficient diet, he gladly went on it, for that was the only way he could eat. Science is getting to be more and more difficult.

  George Wald

  Science, Animal, Golden

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• She is a reflection of comfortable middle-class values that do not take seriously the continuing unemployment. What I particularly regret is that she does not take seriously the intellectual decline. Having given up the Empire and the mass production of industrial goods, Britain's future lay in its scientific and artistic pre-eminence. Mrs Thatcher will be long remembered for the damage she has done.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Science, Reflection, Class

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• War seems to be one of the most salutary phenomena for the culture of human nature; and it is not without regret that I see it disappearing more and more from the scene.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Nature, War, Culture

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• The infant periods of most nations are buried in silence or veiled in fable; and the world perhaps has lost but little which it needs regret. The origin and outset of the American Republic contain lessons of which posterity ought not to be deprived: and happily there never was a case in which every interesting incident could be so accurately preserved.

  James Madison

  Education, Interesting, Silence

  James Madison, David B. Mattern (1997). “James Madison's "Advice to My Country"”, p.15, University of Virginia Press

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• I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him.

  Albert Einstein

  Children, Stupidity, Religion

  Letter to Edgar Meyer, January 2, 1915.

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• The chemist who can extract from his heart's elements compassion, respect, longing, patience, regret, surprise, and forgiveness and compound them into one can create that atom which is called love

  Khalil Gibran

  Love, Inspirational, Heart

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• Very gratefully, with grateful appreciation, with sincere appreciative gratitude, in appreciatively grateful sincerity of regret, he declined.

  James Joyce

  Gratitude, Appreciation, Grateful

  James Joyce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of James Joyce (Illustrated)”, p.740, Delphi Classics

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• Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. Wikis give us a place where anyone who is kind, thoughtful and intelligent can come and join us in building a better and more rational world. Jimmy Wales 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

  Kindness, Thoughtful, Intelligent

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• Who can depart from his pain and aloneness without regret? Too many fragments of the spirit have I scattered in these streets, and too many are the children of my longing that walk naked among these hills, and I cannot withdraw from them without a burden and an ache. It is not a garment I cast off this day, bit a skin that I tear with my own hands... Yet I cannot tarry longer.

  Khalil Gibran

  Children, Pain, Attachment

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• He who spends time regretting the past loses the present and risks the future.

  Francisco de Quevedo

  Positivity, Past, Risk

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• She had the consciousness of being nine-and-twenty to give her some regrets and some apprehensions; she was fully satisfied of being still quite as handsome as ever, but she felt her approach to the years of danger, and would have rejoiced to be certain of being properly solicited by baronet-blood within the next twelvemonth or two.

  Elisabeth Elliot

  Blood, Years, Two

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• Never despair, keep pushing on!

  Thomas Lipton

  Motivational, Despair, Pushing

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• Never abandon your dreams. You may regret it for the rest of your life.

  Fabiola Gianotti

  Inspirational, Dream, League

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• Discipline is the habit of taking consistent action until one can perform with unconscious competence. Discipline weighs ounces but regret weighs tons.

  Jhoon Goo Rhee

  Basketball, Discipline, Action

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• I have always tempered my killing with respect for the game pursued. I see the animal not only as a target, but as a living creature with more freedom than I will ever have. I take that life if I can, with regret as well as joy, and with the sure knowledge that nature's way of fang and claw and starvation are a far crueler fate than I bestow.

  Fred Bear

  Fate, Animal, Hunting

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• Tattoos tell stories of crime and passion, punishment and regret. They express an outlaw, antiauthoritarian point of view and communicate a romantic solidarity among society's outcasts.

  Douglas Kent Hall

  Tattoo, Passion, Views

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• I always look for a woman who has a tattoo. I see a woman with a tattoo, and I'm thinking, okay, here's a gal who's capable of making a decision she'll regret in the future.

  Richard Jeni

  Tattoo, Thinking, Decision

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