47 Quotes About Regrets and Mistakes

Taking ownership of the mistakes you make will ensure you learn lessons and never repeat those same mistakes. These quotes about regrets and mistakes will inspire you to take a step back and evaluate major decisions in your life before you take a leap.

“A man has cause for regret only when he sows and no one reaps.”

“A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.”

“Concentrating on negatives, regrets or second thoughts won’t change what has happened.”

“Consider mistakes nothing more than detours on the way to success. Learn from them, and then go on.”

“Do not spend your youth, wandering, lost in your field of daydreams; you may wake up-spending the rest of your life-stranded on the path of regretful nightmares.”

“Don’t allow yourself to become one who, nearing death, regrets what you might have done if only you had taken a few risks We each have a purpose in life.”

“Don’t live your life regretting yesterday. Live your life so tomorrow you won’t regret today.”

“Forget regret, or life is yours to miss.”

“I have always found that each step we take in life is to be regretted-if we once begin to wonder how many other steps might have been possible.”

“I have no regrets in my life. I think that everything happens to you for a reason. The hard times that you go through build character, making you a much stronger person.”

“If only. Those must be the two saddest words in the world.”

“If we spend our time with regrets over yesterday, and worries over what might happen tomorrow, we have no today in which to live.”

“If you put in little effort and expect big returns, you will be deeply disappointed. You don’t get apples by planting lemon seeds.”

“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.”

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

“It’s better to look ahead and prepare than to look back and regret.”

“It’s not what your are, it’s what you don’t become that hurts.”

“Life is too short, time is too precious, and the stakes are too high to dwell on what might have been.”

“Looking back, I have this to regret, that too often when I loved, I did not say so.”

“Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back.”

“Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.”

“Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves – regret for the past and fear of the future.”

“Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.”

“My biggest regret could be summed up in one word, and that’s procrastination.”

“Never look back and regret, look back and smile at what you have learned.”

“Never regret. If it’s good, it’s wonderful. If it’s bad, it’s experience.”

“No space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused.”

“Nobody gets to live life backward. Look ahead, that is where your future lies.”

“Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it.”

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

“One doesn’t recognize the really important moments in one’s life until it’s too late.”

“Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many-not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”

“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 a universal emotion. We all make wrong or foolish choices, or something or someone does something hurtful to us, and we regret it.”

“Regret is an appalling waste of energy, you can’t build on it – it’s only good for wallowing in.”

“Regret is an odd emotion because it comes only upon reflection. Regret lacks immediacy, and so its power seldom influences events when it could do some good.”

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

“Regrets are the tears of choicesnot made and of good deeds left undone.”

“Regrets only apply when we don’t learn from a situation. No sense looking back, look forward with new knowledge and no regret.”

“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.”

“The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.”

“They say you should not suffer through the past. You should be able to wear it like a loose garment, take it off and let it drop.”

“We have to let go of all blame, all attacking, all judging, to free our inner selves to attract what we say we want.”

“We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regretor disappointment.”

“We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us.”

“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”

“When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.”

Not all regret is created equal. Some regret can prove to bring value into your life.