Alan Ladd Quotes

Lest Arab governments be tempted out of sheer routine to rush into impulsive rejection, let me suggest that tragedy is not what men suffer but what they miss.

You tend to regret the things you haven't done.

I may be the type who manages to grab all the pointless things in life but lets the really important things slip away.

I don't know if I would do this if I had to start over again.

If I had it to do over, I might have finished school first, then devoted all my time to StumbleUpon instead of dividing my time between the two. In the end, however, it was probably good to take the time I did.

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.

I don't regret what I've done but some of the things I didn't do.

If you do not take advantage of your chances, you can pay for it.

We often experience more regret over the part we have left, than pleasure over the part we have preferred.

The person who takes no chances generally has to take whatever is left when others are through choosing.

You said to us once before," said Hermione quietly, "that there was time to turn back if we wanted to. We've had time, haven't we?

Usually you regret the things you say no to.

Choosing one path means abandoning others - if you try to follow every possible path you will end up following none.

I thought that if the right time gets missed, if one has refused or been refused something for too long, it's too late, even if it is finally tackled with energy and received with joy. Or is there no such thing as "too late"? Is there only "late," and is "late" always better than "never"? I don't know.

But lost chances are as much a part of life as chances taken, and a story cannot dwell on what might have been.

Since those don’t hit financial reports, the opportunities you had but didn’t accept, most people don’t bother thinking about them very much. At least that is a mistake we don’t make. We rub our own noses in our mistakes in blowing opportunities, as we just did.

The most important things we talk about on Sundays are things to which we pay very little attention.

Don't mind your make-up, you'd better make your mind up.

It is remarkable that there are few men so well employed, so much to their minds, but that a little money or fame would commonly buy them off from their present pursuit.

The mistakes I've made are dead to me. But I can't take back the things I never did.

Looking at small advantages prevents great affairs from being accomplished.

Knowing what I now know I would never have done anything so fatuous; but then I never would have known what I know now had I not.

I've never been offered a job that I turned down and regretted. I didn't have Stanley Kubrick offer me something and me say no.

People go on postponing everything that is meaningful. Tomorrow they will laugh; today, money has to be gathered... more money, more power, more things, more gadgets. Tomorrow they will love - today there is no time. But tomorrow never comes, and one day they find themselves burdened with all kinds of gadgets, burdened with money. They have come to the top of the ladder - and there is nowhere to go except to jump in a lake.

No space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused