Regret and Guilt

[ On the Iran-Contra scandal :] Clearly, mistakes were made.

 

The unpublished manuscript is like an unconfessed sin that festers in the soul, corrupting and contaminating it.

I hold it true, what’re befall feel it, when I sorrow most ‘is better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.

Remorse: beholding heaven and feeling hell.

Than never to have loved at all.

’Tis better to have loved and lost

 

Had I but served my God with half the zeal

 

The days will grow to weeks, the weeks to months, The months will add themselves and make the years, The years will roll into the centuries, And mine will ever be a name of scorn.

 

So many worlds, so much to do, So little done, such things to be.

 

What one refuses in a minute No eternity will return.

 

Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.

A man has no business to be depressed by a disappointment, anyway; he ought to make up his mind to get even.

A bad conscience is easier to cope with than a bad reputation.

Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders.

What knows he of love who has not been obliged to despise just what he loved

When we have to change an opinion about any one, we charge heavily to his account the inconvenience he thereby causes us.

The tragedy of life is not so much what we suffer, but rather what we miss.

If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.

It is often hard to bear the tears that we ourselves have caused.

Misfortunes one can endure—they come from outside; they are accidents. But to suffer for one’s own faults—ah, there is the sting of life.

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

Nine times out of ten, the first thing a man’s companion knows of his shortcomings is from his apology.

The worst part is not in making a mistake but in trying to justify it, instead of using it as a heaven-sent warning of our mindlessness or our ignorance.

The man who finds that in the course of his life he has done a lot of wrong often wakes up at night in terror, like a child with a nightmare, and his life is full of foreboding: but the man who is conscious of no wrongdoing is filled with cheerfulness and hope.