Regret

Oh these holidays! why will they leave us some regret? why cannot we push them back, only a week or two in our memories, so as to put them at once at that convenient distance whence they may be regarded either with a calm indifference or a pleasant effort of recollection! why will they hang about us, like the flavour of yesterday's wine, suggestive of headaches and lassitude, and those good intentions for the future, which, under the earth, form the everlasting pavement of a large estate, and, upon it, usually endure until dinner-time or thereabouts!

Regret, like alcohol, is best savoured when alone but deepest drunk in the company of others. Alone, regret fills the palette, is enjoyed (or not), and one's appetite for it in a gradual wise expunged; in company, though, one drinks less discriminately, and while a greater portion may be imbibed the taste is not so harsh.

I marshall my regrets like fine wines; these are best-suited for consumption with friends, and these alone. These here I do not care to remember much of, for they are middling regrets, regrets of fancy, regrets best passed around and made cheap by overuse. These here I must wring the taste from, for they are the bitterest, the most cloying, the ones I must never forget the price of.

It has been said that in the end, you don't regret things you DID, you regret things you DIDN'T do. This is absolutely true.

Make a list of five things you've always wanted to do but were too afraid.

Go do them.

NOW.

WE REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT TOMORROW HAS BEEN CANCELLED DUE TO LACK OF INTEREST.

I don't know what's worse, regretting the things I've done, or regretting the things I haven't done.

A funny thing about »regret« is, that it is better to regret something you have done, than to regret, that you haven't done it.

To have lived life without risking regret is to have not lived at all.