Antoine de Saint-Exupery Quotes

We've all got a black book of missed opportunities.

Hell begins on the day when God grants us a clear vision of all that we might have achieved, of all the gifts which we have wasted, of all that we might have done which we did not do.

I never got the chance to meet Linda Brown; there were several times we were supposed to meet or be on the same stage together, but life gets in the way, and it never happened.

And all the trips you know you missed And all the lips you never kissed Cut through you like a knife. And now you see stretched out before thee Just another story of a life.

The wealthiest place on the planet is the graveyard, because in the graveyard we will find inventions that we were never ever exposed to, ideas, dreams that never became a reality, hopes and aspirations that were never acted upon.

We are like roses that have never bothered to bloom when we should have bloomed and it is as if the sun has become disgusted with waiting

It's not what you are, it's what you don't become that hurts.

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.

The moment had passed, the door between the lives we could have led and the lives we led had shut in our faces.

The scene I had just witnessed (a couple making love in the ocean) brought back a lot of memories – not of things I had done but of things I had failed to do, wasted hours and frustrated moments and opportunities forever lost because time had eaten so much of my life and I would never get it back. I envied Yeoman and felt sorry for myself at the same time, because I had seen him in a moment that made all my happiness seem dull.

No one was to blame for what happened, but that does not make it any less difficult to accept. It was all a matter of missed connections, bad timing, blundering in the dark. We were always in the right place at the wrong time, the wrong place at the right time, always just missing each other, always just a few inches from figuring the whole thing out. That's what the story boils down to, I think. A series of lost chances. All the pieces were there from the beginning, but no one knew how to put them together.

We all know of people who thought they could to it (whatever “it” is) tomorrow. We have all procrastinated on such a way, and often to our personal regret. It happens time and again, putting off things that we convince ourselves might be better, more meaningful, more appropriate for another time. So often that better time either never comes or really isn’t better or more appropriate after all. And then, sadly, the window of opportunity -to do something great- closes.

Time ticks by; we grow older. Before we know it, too much time has passed and we've missed the chance to have had other people hurt us. To a younger me this sounded like luck; to an older me this sounds like a quiet tragedy.

Graveyards are filled with books that were never written, songs that were never sung, words that were never spoken, things that were never done.

Men spoke much in my boyhood about restricted or ruined men of genius: and it was common to say that many a man was a Great Might-Have-Been. To me it's a more solid and startling fact that any man in the street is a Great Might-Not-Have-Been.

Have we not all, amid life's petty strife, Some pure ideal of a noble life That once seemed possible? Did we not hear The flutter of its wings, and feel it near, And just within our reach? It was. And yet We lost it in this daily jar and fret, And now live idle in a vague regret; But still our place is kept, and it will wait, Ready for us to fill it, soon or late. No star is ever lost we once have seen, We always may be what we might have been.

I hoped we never had to realize all the opportunities we missed in this life.

We are silent, considering shortfalls. There's not much time left, for us to become what we once intended. Jon had potential, but it's not a word that can be used comfortably any more. Potential has a shelf-life.

One is not allowed a grief for a life never lived. Yet one has buried the fruit of love, and a great deal of hope and many dreams.

That was Youth with its reckless exuberance when all things were possible pursued by Age where we are now, looking back at what we destroyed, what we tore away from that self who could do more, and its work that's become my enemy because that's what I can tell you about, that Youth who could do anything.

She had lived her early years as though she were waiting for something she might, but never did, become.

Every day thousands of people bury good ideas because they are afraid to act on them.And afterwards, the ghosts of these ideas come back to haunt them.

Nothing is so irretrievably missed as an opportunity we encounter every day.

The graveyard is the richest place on the surface of the earth because there you will see the books that were not published, ideas that were not harnessed, songs that were not sung, and drama pieces that were never acted.

Futures not achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches.