Henry James Quotes

I started with the firm conviction that when I came to the end, I wanted to be regretting the things that I had done, not the things I hadn't.

To me, it's always interesting to see what people end up regretting, as a way maybe to avoid such regrets in your own life.

When you get older, it's not about what you did that you regret, it's what you didn't do.

You can't afford to live your life with regrets.

I don't regret anything I haven't done.

I will say that you can't live your life with any regrets.

I'm older, and I wish that a lot of things that I did in my life, I didn't do, but I'm able to talk about it.

Nobody will use other people's experience, nor have any of his own till it is too late to use it.

I don't really regret anything in my life.

Knowing what I know now and what I have been through, would I do it the same? I look at the alternative - a very simple life. It would have been nice to have a simple life.

If I had to do it over, I wouldn't change a thing.

I'd rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done.

When you're in your early 20s, you go ahead and do everything. And it's very hard to judge yourself.

There are many things that, if I have to relive, maybe I will do it another way. But I would not like to look back and think what I have not been able to.

Ask an older person you respect to tell you his or her greatest regret.

Your regrets aren't what you did, but what you didn't do. So I take every opportunity.

Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.

I don't want things that I regret in life, and things that I have not done - and I don't want to at 80 years wake up, and tell myself: 'Oh I was on top of my shape and skills and I didn't do it.'

But we make such mistakes all the time, all through our lives. Wisdom, I suppose, is seeing this and acting upon it before it is too late. But it is often too late, isn't it? - and those things that we should have said are unsaid, and remain unsaid for ever.

By the time a man is wise enough to watch his step, he's too old to go anywhere.

I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger. I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was stronger

Don't lie - when you are 105 years of age - on your deathbed, thinking, 'I should have done a few things!' I would like to think I tried as much as I could.

Five years from now I'm probably going to look back on the things I'm doing and cringe.

I'm a grown man. You know, I've been in a lot of scrapes, but I never felt like I got so - there are probably a lot of things I should have done that I didn't do.

For the first half of your life, people tell you what you should do; for the second half, they tell you what you should have done.