Top 100 I Should Have Quotes
#1. Of course, I should have got rid of you. I should have shaken you out of my life as a man shakes from his raiment a thing that has stung him.
Oscar Wilde
#2. It did not seem to me that prejudice, poverty, discrimination, repression and racism were confined to the North of Ireland. I could see them everywhere I spoke and still cannot comprehend the mentality that argues that I should have pretended not to see them, because it wasn't my business.
Bernadette Devlin
#3. I should have worked harder in my life. I suffer from a guilt complex.
Gian Carlo Menotti
#4. Someone else's vision will never be as good as your own vision of your self. Live and die with it 'cause in the end it's all you have. Lose it and you lose yourself and everything else. I should have listened to myself.
Georgia O'Keeffe
#5. I was a good Indian girl, but naughty in that I would often sneak out of the back door and into the garden and go off with my friends when I should have been at home cooking or cleaning.
Gurinder Chadha
#6. I should have forfeited my own self-respect, and perhaps the good opinion of my countrymen, if I had failed to resent such an injury by calling the offender in question to a personal account.
Preston Brooks
#7. I didn't do the engineering, and I didn't do the math, because I thought I
understood what was going on and I thought I made a good rig. But I was
wrong. I should have done it.
Jamie Hyneman
#8. There I am in my younger days, star gazing
Painting picture perfect maps
Of how my life and love would be
Not counting the unmarked paths of misdirection
My compass, faith in love's perfection
I missed ten million miles I should have seen.
Indigo Girls
#9. It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York - and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land.
F Scott Fitzgerald
#10. I didn't understand most of what he was saying. I should have had to understand what he was saying. I was still so young. And I certainly should not have had to learn it this way!
Elizabeth Smart
#11. I should have been thinking more about my family, how I raised my children, how I maintained life's work, so to speak.
Joe Namath
#13. Lucien sighed as he looked me over. "Do you ever stop being so serious and dull?" "Do you ever stop being such a prick?" I snapped back. Dead - really, truly, I should have been dead for that. But Lucien grinned at me. "Much better." Alis, it seemed, had not been wrong.
Sarah J. Maas
#14. I once called the head of a network a liar. In hindsight, I should have called him an incompetent liar.
Steven Levitan
#15. Wolves? I should have known. Of course you have wolves. Doesn't everybody?" She snapped her fingers. "The gun, Lucian. Hand it over. I've decided I have to shoot you after all. It's the only way to preserve my sanity.
Christine Feehan
#16. I should have known [ ... ] I am the rain. [ ... ] I am the land [ ... ] and I am the rain. The grass will grow out of me in a little while.
John Steinbeck
#17. I should never have made a good scientist, but I should have made a perfectly adequate one.
C.P. Snow
#18. 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.
Imelda May
#20. I can see that you spoke in ignorance, and I bitterly regret that I should have been so petty as to take offence where none was intended.
T.H. White
#21. So she's been to college, too. I should have known. That's what we get then," he said nastily, "for educating women. They get all kinds of ridiculous ideas."
"Oh, I don't know," Marian said with a touch of sharpness, "there's some men it doesn't do much good for either.
Margaret Atwood
#22. I should have judged her according to her actions, not her words. she perfumed my planet and lit up my life.
Antoine De Saint-Exupery
#23. I was always shocked when I went to the doctor's office and they did my X-ray and didn't find that I had eight more ribs than I should have or that my blood was the color green.
Nicolas Cage
#24. In 1998 Harry Reid and I had a very close race. It was less than a tenth of a percentage point. We had a reasonable recount. There were a lot of things that I could have pursued at the time, but I just felt that at the time that I should have, you know, conceded the race.
John Ensign
#26. We have a family holiday once a year, usually abroad, but that's it. I feel I should have holidays for my family's sake, but I'm not that adventurous.
Robert Webb
#27. I didn't appreciate the moment as much as I should have while living it, but I can attribute that to my poor emotional state and hindsight.
S.A. Tawks
#28. Tim considered the school. "Maybe I want to walk down the hallway with you, hand in hand, like I should have done a long time ago." Ben's eyes softened. "You don't have to do this." "I want to.
Jay Bell
#29. If I had not smoked I should have been dead ten years ago.
Francois Guizot
#30. Something I should have achieved quite easily took me a long time to get around to.
Jim Morris
#31. I should have suspected my husband was lazy. On our wedding day, his mother told me: "I'm not losing a son; I'm gaining a couch."
Phyllis Diller
#32. We live in a culture that expects instantaneous gratification for everything, and the web has only enhanced that in many ways. It empowers in many ways, but it also makes people believe 'I should have everything right now.'
Tony Robbins
#33. Prayer has been the saviour of my life. Without it I should have been a lunatic long ago.
Mahatma Gandhi
#34. Where were you?" Shahrzad tried to control the tremor in her voice.
"Not where I should have been."
"This morning and last night."
His breath fanned on her skin as he bent toward her ear. "This morning, I was not where I should have been. Last night, I was not where I wanted to be.
Renee Ahdieh
#35. I only listen to my music. I'm just analyzing it. Critical. Seeing what I like what I don't like. Say what I should have said. What I could say next time, what I should have said, things like that.
Lil' Wayne
#36. If I had been an Italian I am sure that I should have been whole-heartedly with you from the start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism.
(Speech in Rome on 20 January, 1927, praising Mussolini)
Winston S. Churchill
#37. Even if I had gone further than in all honesty I should have done, my lies, those lies born of pity, had made her happy; and to make a person happy could never be a crime.
Stefan Zweig
#38. And then again, had I declared myself I should have robbed the woman I love of the wealth and position that her marriage to Clayton will now insure to her. I could not have done that - could I, Paul?
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#39. I don't want the sort of funeral that everybody else has, but there is one hymn, a good Protestant hymn, and it is sung at all Protestant funerals, and I think I should have it sung at mine. It is called 'The Day Thou Gave Us Lord is Ended'.
Jennifer Johnston
#40. I failed the test. He's right. It wasn't justice. Justice is dispassionate; it is fair. I am the leader. I passed the sentence. I should have done it. Instead, I gave license to vengeance and vendetta. The cancer will not be cut away; I made it worse.
Pierce Brown
#41. You seem to have quite a taste for discussing these horrible subjects," she said, rather scornfully; "you ought to have been a detective police officer."
"I sometimes think I should have been a good one."
"Why?"
"Because I am patient.
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
#42. You go to school to figure out who you want to be and how you can do it, and [maybe] I should have, because the films would probably be technically better.
John Waters
#43. If you'd only met her in Gotham, for instance, I should have had a song all ready for you. When you came in, I was just perfecting a little song about a wild woman of Gotham, who made love to young men and then shot 'em - till
Leslie Charteris
#44. In another situation, and in an active station in life, I should have been keenly occupied, and the founding of an order would have never come into my head.
Adam Weishaupt
#45. The kind aunt with whom I lived, herself the purest of beings, always told me that there was nothing she so desired for me as that I should have relations with a married woman: 'Rien ne forme un juene homme, comme une liaison avec une femme comme il faut'.{1}
Leo Tolstoy
#46. In short, I should have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest license of a child, and yet to have been man enough to know its value.
Charles Dickens
#47. I told a lie the other day. I said that I'd caught a 'bunch' of trout. What I should have said is that I caught a little trout that I named Bunch. There, I?ve confessed and now I feel much better.
Jimmy Moore
#48. It's easy to make mistakes that only come out much later, after you've already implemented a lot of code. You'll realize Oh I should have used a different type of data structure. Start over from scratch.
Guido Van Rossum
#49. I should have known better, of course. Whenever I'm feeling up to the mark and congratulating myself, some fearful fate trips me headlong, and I find myself haring for cover with my guts churning and Nemesis in full cry after me.
George MacDonald Fraser
#50. A good doctor. He would not let her take pills. Try each day just to laugh a little bit, it's a good medicine, he said. Pills were a second option. I should have taken them. No. Better off to try laughing. Die laughing.
Colum McCann
#51. I should have no compassion on these witches; I should burn them all.
Martin Luther
#53. No, I was not going to work. I was an artist, a lover, a lover of women, of the oppressed and downtrodden, a warrior really. I should have been somewhere leading an armed revolution in the name of love and no, I was not going to work.
Michelle Tea
#54. I should have been struck down by the despair a young lover feels who has sworn lifelong fidelity, when a friend speaks to him of the other mistresses he will have in time to come.
Marcel Proust
#55. He lowered his mouth and kissed me. I know I should have kneed him in the groin, but the kiss was delicious. Joe Morelli still knew how to kiss.
Janet Evanovich
#56. By letting go of dieting, I free up mental and emotional room. I have more space, I can move. The pursuit of another, elusive body, the body someone else says I should have, is a terrible distraction, a side-tracking that might have lasted my whole life long. By letting myself go, I go places.
Sallie Tisdale
#57. I felt I should have been taught about the landmine problem. It made me suddenly realize certain things about the world and how much I had to learn, like the history of the people.
Angelina Jolie
#58. I have always believed that I should have had no difficulty in causing my rights to be respected.
Eli Whitney
#59. I should have never left the inn,' she whispered. 'I shouldn't have done it!'
There was something in the ground that Ma had warned in her note. It was real. And Lettie hadn't listened, and now this ...
Sam Gayton
#60. Life had given me another sucker punch. I should have been used to it. I should have already known what was happening and what would happen. How it felt to be in the dark hole that was death.
Holly Hood
#61. I guess I will never come back all the way, a fog will always stand between the person I am and the person I should have been.
Sophie Glynn
#62. We do have a saying in America: if you're in a hole, stop digging ... erm, I'm not sure I should have said that.
Donald Rumsfeld
#63. Why had I taken all those useless classes like bio and German when I should have been taking lipreading?
Meg Cabot
#64. Once I should have been, if not satisfied, partially, at least, contented with suffrage for the intelligent and those who have been soldiers; now I am convinced that universal suffrage is demanded by sound policy and impartial justice.
Salmon P. Chase
#65. I should have known that people can sometimes come close enough to discover that they are strangers.
Gerard Donovan
#66. Of course. I should have realized. You're so brave, Eureka. How do you handle it?"
"I don't handle it, that's how.
Lauren Kate
#67. I should have known that the cruelty of girls is intensified here, living together 24/7, hundreds of miles away from home.
Cat Clarke
#68. Failures plagued me. Things I had omitted or ignored, neglected. What I should have given and hadn't. I felt the biting pang of every unfulfillment.
Richard Matheson
#69. There's been a lot of really cool stuff that's happened to me throughout my career, and I remember everything, but I don't think I savored every moment of it like I should have or like I do now.
Joe Nichols
#70. The advice I've been giving to people all my life - that you may not be interested in the dialectic but the dialectic is interested in you; you can't give up politics, it won't give you up - was the advice I should have been taking myself.
Christopher Hitchens
#71. I like to make everything my friends are involved in a little better. I should have just become a manager.
Drea De Matteo
#72. There had to be something wrong with my life. I should have been born a Yugoslavian shepherd who looked up at the Big Dipper every night.
Haruki Murakami
#74. That I'd been letting life act itself out on me when I should have been directing it.
Catherine McKenzie
#75. Had we lived I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale.
Robert Falcon Scott
#76. The last time we were here," I said, "I told you I liked you. I should have trusted myself to say I love you.
Daniel Keyes
#77. The main problem was a pacing problem. I had wanted the project to be about 20-30 issues, and I should have written it out as a full script beforehand.
Chester Brown
#78. I am not sure I should have dared to start; but I am sure that I should not have dared to stop.
Winston Churchill
#79. I should have remembered that when one is going to lead an entirely new life, one requires regular and wholesome meals.
Oscar Wilde
#80. I feel like I'm late for love. I'll be 30 in March. Damn it! I knew I should have set my alarm clock.
Jarod Kintz
#81. Christmas carols always brought tears to my eyes. I also cry at weddings. I should have cried at a couple of my own.
Ethel Merman
#82. I imagine I should have told it to you before? I love you, Sejal.I wish for you to become my wife.Recently I've also opened a shop in North Dakota and thinking that, just maybe, you love me too.
Chayada Welljaipet
#83. Scars are a reminder - a history or a memory stamped right onto your skin. I feel like I should have something stamped all over mine. On every single piece of me.
Beckie Stevenson
#84. More labels should be like that. Instead of putting these records out myself, I should have just signed with them, but they probably don't like my music (laughs).
Matthew Sweet
#85. I should have known he'd be trouble as soon as he walked into my workshop, but I couldn't have known he'd be the death of me.
Pippa DaCosta
#86. I love you," he said simply. "I should have told you a long time ago. Maybe we could have avoided so many stupid mistakes if I had. Then again," he added, beginning to smile, "sometimes I think it was all those obstacles that made me love you so deeply.
Kiera Cass
#87. I know I should have been grateful because it was a very nice thing to do. But I wasn't grateful. I wasn't grateful at all. Don't get me wrong. I acted like I was. But I wasn't. To tell you the truth, I was starting to get mad.
Stephen Chbosky
#88. I should have thought of this years ago.
But that was the problem with being sane. Sane people played by the rules. They looked for rational explanations and solutions in an insane universe.
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#89. In any just world, I should have been able to kick the front room door open, like Lord Flashheart in Blackadder, and shout "OH YEAH. THAT HYMEN'S GONE. DON'T YOU WORRY ABOUT THAT," and then run round the room, getting high fives from my parents and siblings.
Caitlin Moran
#90. I should have" is one of the most tragic phrases in the English language. Live while you can.
Michael A. McLellan
#91. When I was thin, I had no notion of what being fat is like. When I worked in a department store, I had sold clothes to women of most sizes, so I should have known; but perhaps you have to experience the state from the inside, to understand what fat is like.
Hilary Mantel
#92. I'm destined to die a virgin.
Maybe i should have gone off with him. Not to get high, but to ... well ... not die a virgin.
Katie McGarry
#95. They seem nice, though, your sisters, really,' Porcelain remarked.
'Ha!' I said. 'Shows what little you know! I hate them!'
'Hate them? I should have thought you'd love them.'
'Of course I love them,' I said ... 'That's why I'm so good at hating them.
Alan Bradley
#96. I made mistakes. My supporters and I failed to prevent a main like [Mikhail] Saakashvili from acquiring absolute power. I should have criticized him earlier on.
Irakli Okruashvili
#97. You told me I wrote that poem because I was afraid of dealing with myself. And I used my mom as an excuse, accusing her of not appreciating or accepting me, when I should have been saying those words into a mirror.
Jay Asher
#98. So that went well. Not that I should have expected better. Inebriated middle-of-the-night calls are sort of destined to fail.
Jessica Park
#99. I kept you so well, buried beneath the darkest shame and stilled with filthy lies. Perhaps I should have dug deeper.
Nicole Lyons
#100. I'll project myself into several futures simultaneously," I should have said, "a minor tremor in my hand; I'll work my way from irony to sincerity in the sinking city, a would-be Whitman of the vulnerable grid.
Ben Lerner
