regret quotes

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.

-Woody pseudonym of  Allen Stewart Konigsberg Allen
Quoted as epigraph in Eric Lax Woody  Allen and His Comedy (1975).

I shall be but a short time tonight. I have seldom spoken with greaterregret, for my lips arenot yet unsealed.Were thesetroubles over I would make a case, and Iguarantee that not a man would go into the lobby against us.

- Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin (of Bewdley)
  Speech in the House of Commons,10 Dec, speaking on the Abyssinian crisis. This is often misquoted as'My lips are sealed'.

My only regret in the theatre is that I could never sit out front and watch me.

-John Barrymore
Quoted in Eddie Cantor The Way I See It (1959), ch.2.

The only possible regret I have isthe feeling that I will die without having played enough tennis.

-Jean Borotra
Quoted in Colin  Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle; Old Age a regret.

- Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield Disraeli
  Coningsby, bk.3, ch.1.

If that plane leaves the ground and you're not with him, you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.

-JuliusJ Epstein
  Humphrey Bogart as Rick in Casablanca (with Philip G Epstein and Howard Koch).

I only regretthat Ihave but onelifeto losefor mycountry.

- Nathan Hale
   At his execution, 22 Sep.

This is the last day of1943, a year to be said goodbye to without regret, holding as it did nothing beyond captivity and depression, weary waiting, and above all the sight of immeasurable human misery, suffering and death.

- Robert Hardie
  Diary entry, 31 Dec.

I regret very much that I have painted a picture that requires any description.

-Winslow Homer
On being asked about the meaning of a painting by a dealer. Quoted by Andrea Bennett in the NewYork Times Book Review, 15 Sep1991.

When vain desire at last and vain regret Go hand in hand to death, and all is vain, What shall assuage the unforgotten pain And teach the unforgetful to forget?

- Dante Gabriel Rossetti
The House of Life,'The One Hope', pt.2.

   Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds To dying ears, when unto dying eyes The casement slowly grows a glimmering square; So sad, so strange, the days that are no more. Dear as remembered kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned On 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.

-Tennyson
  The Princess, pt.4, added song, stanzas 3^4.

O last regret, regret can die!

-Tennyson
  In Memoriam A.H.H., canto 78, l.17.