Regret quotes

“What’s done cannot be undone.”

Some consequences cannot be reversed, so the practical question becomes how to respond now rather than how to erase the past.

Source note: Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1; Lady Macbeth speaks during the sleepwalking scene while confronting actions that cannot be reversed.

“Let the dead Past bury its dead!”

The poem rejects living backward and immediately redirects attention toward action available in the present.

Source note: A Psalm of Life, in the stanza beginning “Trust no Future.”

“While we are postponing, life speeds by.”

Seneca warns that postponement is itself a use of finite life: waiting for a more convenient future can become the very way the available present is lost.

Source note: Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter 1, “On Saving Time,” Richard M. Gummere translation. The line follows Seneca’s advice to hold every hour and precedes his claim that nothing is truly ours except time. Letter 1 remains part of the single normalized Moral Letters work family.

“I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.”

Time ignored earlier becomes painfully visible later, when opportunities narrow and delay can no longer be recovered.

Source note: Richard II, Act 5, Scene 5.

“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope.”

Wentworth’s letter holds pain and possibility together: the renewed declaration is intense because he still does not know whether Anne’s feelings have survived their long separation.

Source note: Persuasion, Chapter XXIII, Project Gutenberg #105. Captain Frederick Wentworth writes the line to Anne Elliot while listening to her conversation with Captain Harville; the letter is signed “F. W.” and is fictional character writing, not Austen autobiography.

“Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.”

The epigram turns a flattering word into a comic rebrand for error, suggesting that experience often arrives only after something has gone wrong.

Source note: Lady Windermere’s Fan; a characteristic Wildean epigram linking experience and mistakes.

“We do not indeed so often disappoint others as ourselves.”

Private expectations can exceed what anyone else demands of us, so a life may feel disappointing chiefly by comparison with unfulfilled plans known only to oneself.

Source note: The Idler, No. 88; the surrounding paragraph concerns private hopes, proposed tasks and the gap between imagined achievement and lived action.

“It is foolish to lay out money in a purchase of repentance.”

Money spent on an unnecessary bargain can create regret rather than value, making restraint part of good purchasing judgment.

Source note: The Way to Wealth, frugality section; Project Gutenberg #43855. Father Abraham uses the maxim while warning auction buyers against purchases made only because they seem cheap.

“Misfortunes springing from ourselves are the hardest to bear.”

Harm is especially painful when our own choices, tools, or contributions helped create the conditions that made the loss possible.

Source note: Moral printed after “The Oak and the Woodcutters”; the oak laments wedges made from its own branches.

“I knew it was much to be regretted, but still it was not to be helped.”

Pip recognizes that his changed ambitions separated him from a simpler life he now sees could have been better, yet he also acknowledges that the lost path cannot simply be restored by wishing.

Source note: Great Expectations, Project Gutenberg #1400. Pip says this to Biddy after admitting that settling at the forge with Joe—and perhaps eventually with Biddy—might have made him a different and better-satisfied person. The line is Pip’s fictional first-person speech.

“we have suffered our purposes to sleep till the time of action is past”

Johnson describes procrastination as allowing intended work to remain dormant until the opportunity to act has disappeared.

Source note: The Idler, No. 88; this clause comes from Johnson’s reflection on private ambitions that remain unfinished while days and years pass.

“I ardently wished to extinguish that life which I had so thoughtlessly bestowed.”

Victor’s regret is inseparable from responsibility and revenge: after William and Justine’s deaths, he wishes he could reverse the act of creation whose consequences he believes he failed to foresee or govern.

Source note: Frankenstein, Chapter 9 in the represented Project Gutenberg #84 text. Victor narrates this while describing overwhelming remorse and guilt after Justine’s execution; his reaction also turns toward hatred and revenge, so the line is not presented as a complete model of healthy repair.

“To mourn a mischief that is past and gone is the next way to draw new mischief on.”

Grief over what cannot be changed can become a second injury when it prevents attention to what can still be done.

Source note: Othello, Act 1, Scene 3; the Duke urges Brabantio not to compound an irreversible loss by continuing to feed it with fresh grief.

“For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: “It might have been!””

Whittier compresses regret into the imagined alternative life: both Maud and the Judge later measure their ordinary lives against a possibility neither chose when they briefly met.

Source note: “Maud Muller,” in The Works of Whittier, Volume I, Project Gutenberg #9567. The poem first shows both characters imagining the life they might have shared, then calls “It might have been” the saddest formulation before ending with a separate note of hope.

“Dread remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre; remorse is the poison of life.”

Rochester describes remorse as corrosive because wrongdoing can continue to poison later life; the scene immediately turns to the harder question of whether repentance or actual reformation can change what follows.

Source note: Jane Eyre, Project Gutenberg #1260. Rochester says this to Jane while recounting his own decline. Jane replies that repentance is said to cure remorse; Rochester answers that reformation may be its cure. This is fictional character dialogue, not Charlotte Brontë’s direct psychological advice.

“When he had gone, I thought of a splendid answer I ought to have given him. However, I will keep it for another occasion.”

Pooter’s perfect comeback arrives only after the argument has ended, a familiar social failure made comic by his confidence that the delayed answer can simply be saved for later.

Source note: The Diary of a Nobody, April 6 entry; Pooter reflects after Borset leaves following their argument.

“Regrets are the natural property of grey hairs; and I enjoy, in common with all other men, at least my share of such inheritance.”

Old Martin treats regret as an almost ordinary inheritance of age: living long enough produces memories of choices, estrangements and missed opportunities that cannot all be revisited without hindsight.

Source note: Martin Chuzzlewit, Chapter X, Project Gutenberg #968. Old Martin Chuzzlewit says this while speaking to Pecksniff. The scene is part of a deliberately strategic performance inside the novel, so the maxim remains attached to the character rather than being flattened into direct Dickens autobiography.

“She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.”

The narrator summarizes Anne’s development as a reversal: excessive caution shaped her early choice, while experience later teaches her to value warmer confidence and attachment.

Source note: Persuasion, Chapter IV, Project Gutenberg #105. This is narrator commentary after Anne reconsiders the engagement she ended at nineteen under Lady Russell’s persuasion.

“Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone for ever.”

Many losses can be repaired through later effort, but spent time cannot be recovered, giving attention and method unusual importance.

Source note: Self-Help, Chapter IX, “Men of Business,” Project Gutenberg #935. The sentence appears in Smiles’s discussion of method, punctuality and the economical use of time, contrasting losses that may be repaired with time once spent, which cannot be recovered.

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”

The quatrain turns irreversibility into an image of writing that cannot be erased: tears, intelligence and devotion cannot literally rewrite what has already entered the past.

Source note: Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, quatrain LI in Edward FitzGerald’s English rendering, Project Gutenberg #246. The famous English wording is FitzGerald’s creative translation and adaptation, so the record does not present it as a literal English sentence written by the historical Omar Khayyam.