- “Why should I give up revenge? On behalf of what? Moral principles? And what of the higher order of things, in which evil deeds are punished? For you, a philosopher and ethicist, an act of revenge is bad, disgraceful, unethical and illegal. But I ask: where is the punishment for evil? Who has it and grants access? The Gods, in which you do not believe? The great demiurge-creator, which you decided to replace the gods with? Or maybe the law? […] I know what evil is afraid of. Not your ethics, Vysogota, not your preaching or moral treaties on the life of dignity. Evil is afraid of pain, mutilation, suffering and at the end of the day, death! The dog howls when it is badly wounded! Writhing on the ground and growls, watching the blood flow from its veins and arteries, seeing the bone that sticks out from a stump, watching its guts escape its open belly, feeling the cold as death is about to take them. Then and only then will evil begin to beg, ‘Have mercy! I regret my sins! I’ll be good, I swear! Just save me, do not let me waste away!’. Yes, hermit. That is the way to fight evil! When evil wants to harm you, inflict pain – anticipate them, it’s best if evil does not expect it. But if you fail to prevent evil, if you have been hurt by evil, then avenge him! It is best when they have already forgotten, when they feel safe. Then pay them in double. In triple. An eye for an eye? No! Both eyes for an eye! A tooth for a tooth? No! All their teeth for a tooth! Repay evil! Make it wail in pain, howling until their eyes pop from their sockets. And then, you can look under your feet and boldly declare that what is there cannot endanger anyone, cannot hurt anyone. How can someone be a danger, when they have no eyes? How can someone hurt when they have no hands? They can only wait until they bleed to death.” ― Andrzej Sapkowski, Wieża Jaskółki
- “I may say that I have forgotten a certain thing.Partially false; it has just faded I know. Unintentionally that thing might have prick-ed me more than the other things that I might have let go.I will only understand its depth, if after years of persuasive erosions and new etch marks, I dream about you one fine night; having nothing to do with my present. Just some sweet-bitter memories might surface one day. And that one day I will regret and at the same time thank to have met you in my life.” ― Ranjani Ramachandran
- 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
- “Your heart will always go where your mind wanders.” ― Shannon L. Alder
- “People die with regret, and I want to die with respect and for that I am willing to take all the risks.” ― Anuj Jasani
- Advice my dad just gave me: “Do your best and be at peace with it.” A good reminder for us all, I think. James Clear
- “I wouldn’t have missed a single minute of it, Not for the whole world.” ― Stephen King
- “A thousand times I was ready to regret and take back my rash statement – yet it had been the truth.” ― Hermann Hesse
- Having regrets when you gave everything is wasted time. Maxime Lagacé
- 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 for wallowing in. Katherine Mansfield
- “That was how she had felt most of her life.Caught in the middle. Struggling, flailing, just trying to survive while not knowing which way to go. Which path to commit to without regret.” ― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library
- “Liam, soon-to-be-fucking-dead, Callahan was walking down the stairs—my fucking stairs—with his sex hair high and his green eyes sharper than razor blades. He was beautiful, and I almost regretted the fact that I would have to put a bullet in his head and then smash it through a fucking wall.-Melody G.” ― J.J. McAvoy, Ruthless People
- Overthinking is the problem. Taking action is the solution. Maxime Lagacé
- The pain of inaction stings longer than the pain of incorrect action. James Clear
- “I need just be a bayonet, a bayonet named Diving Punishment. I wish I’d been born a storm. Or a menace. Or a single grenade. No heart, no tears, just as a terrible gale’d have been good. If [by doing this] I become that, then so be it.” ― Kouta Hirano
- “You see, Katie,” Pastor Ron said, “that’s what makes faith so tough to grasp, but also makes it so wonderful. It’s all about believing in something—whether it’s God, or other people, or even yourself—when you’ve got nothing else to go on. Nothing but a little voice inside telling you it’s more than a hunch.” ― Kaylin McFarren, Flaherty’s Crossing
- “I wish I had been born a storm. No heart, no tears, just a terrible gale’d been good.” ― Kouta Hirano
- “Dear as remembered kisses after death,And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign’dOn lips that are for others; deep as love,Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;O Death in Life, the days that are no more!” ― Alfred Lord Tennyson
- It is not the things we do in life that we regret on our death bed. It is the things we do not. Randy Pausch (See also: The Last Lecture, cmu.edu)
- “Your life is being written by the pencil of “Time” on the paper of “Space”. When you get the Eraser of Supreme Knowledge, you neither get bothered by what has been written in the past, nor worry about what is going to be written in the future.” ― Shunya
- One of the greatest regrets in life is being what others would want you to be, rather than being yourself. Shannon L. Alder
- “I wanted to tell her everything, maybe if I’d been able to, we could have lived differently, maybe I’d be there with you now instead of here. Maybe… if I’d said, ‘I’m so afraid of losing something I love that I refuse to love anything,’ maybe that would have made the impossible possible. Maybe, but I couldn’t do it, I had buried too much too deeply inside me. And here I am, instead of there.” ― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
- Only one infinite deception is possible: self-deception. Søren Kierkegaard
- Fear less. Try more. Maxime Lagacé
- “I don’t care if it’s been five minutes or five months or five years. You’re it for me and there’s no sense in waiting.” ― Kelly Moran, Residual Burn
- “Life is a reality don’t live it like a rehearsal.” ― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words
- Fear not for the future, weep not for the past. Percy Bysshe Shelley
- It’s better to bet on this life than on the next. Albert Camus
- “There is nothing you cannot turn into your favor.” ― Andrei Ludu, Boundaries of a Complex World
- Don’t think about what you’ve left behind. Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist, Amazon book)