40 Quotes About Regrets and Guilt

There are many times in life we may make a mistake we regret or hurt someone unintentionally. Here is a look at some great quotes about regret and guilt that are encouraging.

“A wrong act, followed by just regret, and thoughtful caution to avoid like errors, makes a man better than he should have been if he had never fallen.”

“An exciting and inspiring future awaits you beyond the noise in your mind, beyond the guilt, doubt, fear, shame, insecurity and heaviness of the past you carry around.”

“Consciously or not, we are all on a quest for answers, trying to learn the lessons of life. We grapple with fear and guilt. We search for meaning, love, and power. We try to understand fear, loss, and time. We seek to discover who we are and how we can become truly happy.”

“Guilt has very quick ears to an accusation.”

“Guilt is anger directed at ourselves – at what we did or did not do. Resentment is anger directed at others – at what they did or did not do.”

“Guilt is cancer. Guilt will confine you, torture you, destroy you as an artist. It’s a black wall. It’s a thief.”

“Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death.”

“Guilt upon the conscience, like rust upon iron, both defiles and consumes it, gnawing and creeping into it, as that does which at last eats out the very heart and substance of the metal.”

“I have no regrets. If you regret things, you’re sort of stepping backwards. I’m a believer in going forwards.”

“I know that a man who shows me his wealth is like the beggar who shows me his poverty; they are both looking for alms from me, the rich man for the alms of my envy, the poor man for the alms of my guilt.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Is it really so difficult to tell a good action from a bad one? I think one usually knows right away or a moment afterward, in a horrid flash of regret.”

“It is a hard thing to let go of mistakes we’ve made and sins. God wants us to do that because He knows the guilt and the condemnation will keep us from becoming who He has created us to be.”

“It is human nature to want to go back and fix things or change things that we regret.”

“It is the truth of grace and not of the law that brings you true freedom. The truth of the law only binds you. In fact, religious bondage is one of the most crippling bondages with which a person can be encumbered. Religious bondage keeps one in constant fear, guilt, and anxiety.”

“Love lives in sealed bottles of regret.”

“Men become cannibals of their own hearts; remorse, regret, and restless impatience usurp the place of more wholesome feeling: every thing seems better than that which is.”

“Negative emotions like loneliness, envy, and guilt have an important role to play in a happy life; they’re big, flashing signs that something needs to change.”

“No man can be judged a criminal until he is found guilty; nor can society take from him the public protection until it has been proved that he has violated the conditions on which it was granted.”

“No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.”

“Often regret is very false and displaced, and imagines the past to be totally other than it was.”

“People tend to dwell more on negative things than on good things. So the mind then becomes obsessed with negative things, with judgments, guilt and”

“Punishment is now unfashionable… because it creates moral distinctions among men, which, to the democratic mind, are odious. We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility.”

“Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.”

“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.”

“Regret is a functional emotion that can protect us from wasting money and help us to maintain good social relationships.”

“Regret of neglected opportunity is the worst hell that a living soul can inhabit.”

“Regret, which is guilt without the neurosis, enables us … to move forward instead of back.”

“Remorse is the poison of life.”

“So it is with all life. A tedium that includes the expectation of nothing but more tedium; a regret, right now, for the regret I’ll have tomorrow for having felt regret today.”

“Something will be gathered from the tablet of the most faultless day for regret.”

“Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.”

“The best evidence of regret for wrong actions in the past, is right ones in the future; it is the best apology we can give to the world and to ourselves.”

“The dead, whatever they leave behind them, have nothing to regret. Good Christians are the only creatures in the world that are truly good; and them they will see again, and see them improved: therefore them they regret not.”

“The most frequent cause of regret for what we have done is because its effects interfere with what we would do.”

“The worst guilt is to accept an unearned guilt.”

“With integrity, you have nothing to fear, since you have nothing to hide. With integrity, you will do the right thing, so you will have no guilt.”

“You won’t regret the men you never killed, but you will regret the women you passed up.”

“You’ll never regret writing any letter out of love. However, it’s a good idea to reread anything you’ve written in anger.”

Finding a way to forgive yourself first and foremost will encourage you to go on and forgive others too.