Top 100 If Only I Had Quotes
#1. [Misquotation; not by Einstein.] If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker. [Apparently remorseful for his role in the development of the atom bomb.]
Albert Einstein
#2. If only I had grown up worshipping Julia Child. I was already grown up - thank you very much - when Julia Child's book was published. When I moved to New York in 1962, you had to own it.
Nora Ephron
#3. Who wakes up when they're worth £120million and says, 'I'm unhappy today but if only I had an extra £2million!'
Moby
#5. If only I had it in me to be all fierce, fearless and forthright instead of forever sprinkling my discourse with pitiful retractions, apologies and prevarications.
Anonymous
#6. If only I had an enemy bigger than my apathy I could've won.
Mumford & Sons
#7. God!...If only I had not read so much Egyptology before coming to this land which is the fountain of all darkness and terror!
H.P. Lovecraft
#8. Bones leaned back, studying me. I felt so self-conscious. If only I had a shield of makeup, some perfectly arranged hair ... and oh yeah. Some panties.
Jeaniene Frost
#9. The release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking ... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker. (1945)
Albert Einstein
#12. There is only one thing I want. I would like to be seriously ill, and to hear nothing more about him for at least a week. Why doesn't something happen to me? Why do I have to go through all this? If only I had never set eyes on him!
Eva Braun
#13. If only I had more money is the easiest way to postpone the intense self-examination and decision-making necessary to create a life of enjoyment - now and not later.
Anonymous
#14. If only I had known that it takes a lot more than love to make a marriage work, then maybe our story would be different.
Mia Asher
#15. RVM Thoughts for Today -
If only I had spent my life Smiling and Laughing rather than regretting and cursing , I would have been much Happier.
R.v.m.
#16. I'm sure I could write endlessly about nothing. If only I had nothing to say.
Patti Smith
#17. I had questioned God. I had thought that I was so special, I could hold God to account. And why? I had never been promised, ever, that life would be safe and have a happy ending for myself and those I knew and loved, if only I had faith in Him. A
James Patterson
#18. I would far rather get to be ninety years old and look back and say, "I tried my damnedest" to succeed, rather than get to be ninety and think, "I wonder what would have happened if only I had done something different.
Katie's character, Julia's Chocolates
Cathy Lamb
#19. Ah, if only I had brought a cigar with me! This would have
established my identity.
Charles Dickens
#20. Most of us spend our lives convinced that there's something missing: "If only I had a bigger barbecue, more money, a bigger car, a different wife, a different ... If only I could upgrade somehow, then I would be okay."
Arjuna Ardagh
#21. If only I had feathered wings,
that could bend and curve and reach,
beyond imagined dreams,
unhindered by the weight of earth.
Craig Froman
#22. Of all human lamentations, without doubt, the most common is if only I had known. But we can't know, and so days of death and fire so often begin no differently than those of love and warmth.
Tom Clancy
#23. I find it somewhat reassuring that I'm not the only one who feels like I should be running around shouting, Where's the script? Where's the script? If only I had a script I'd know what the freak I'm supposed to be doing.
Patricia Briggs
#24. Photographers - idiots, of which there are so many - say, "Oh, if only I had a Nikon or a Leica, I could make great photographs." That's the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life. It's nothing but a matter of seeing, and thinking, and interest.
Andreas Feininger
#25. If only I had discipline, but alas, it is only an obsessive-compulsive trait and the beauty of habit that causes me to return again and again to my work.
Louise Erdrich
#26. If only I had a wife!" I used to think, "who could stay home and keep the children happy, why I could support six of them. A cinch.
Brenda Ueland
#28. How did you become blind, uh, Jeff is it?
Yeah, Jeff. Well, I looked directly at the sun, you know, the way they always tell you not to. If only I had listened.
James Patterson
#29. If only I had spent my time spending my money rather than just making it, I would have died a happier man. -RVM
R.v.m.
#30. If only I had the influence with my wife and children that I have in some other quarters!
Charlie Munger
#31. If only I had something to take the edge off the loneliness. If only lonely were a more accurate word. It should sound much less pretty.
Nina LaCour
#32. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.
Albert Einstein
#33. If only I had thought of a Kodak! I could have flashed that glimpse of the Under-world in a second, and examined it at leisure.
H.G.Wells
#34. If only i had known that the moment you think everything has ended, something new is beginning.
Kyung-Sook Shin
#35. Eighty-two years later, the sound of her crying still haunts me. If only I had paid closer attention to why she was crying instead of simply trying to quiet her. If only I had paid closer attention.
Christina Baker Kline
#36. If only I had wings, I would not hesitate to fly away from my mistakes.
Delano Johnson
#37. If only I had the Theorems! Then I should find the proofs easily enough.
Bernhard Riemann
#38. If only I had objected harder, or ordered him or something. It could have been different. It should have been different. None of this was meant to happen this way ...
Steve Merrick
#39. When I first tried out some hash, smoked some then. And I'll do it again, if only I had some cash.
Neil Young
#40. I do play all the characters, when I write them, one after another. If they actually had to film me, the only one I could play would be Samwell Tarly or Hot Pie.
George R R Martin
#41. My grandmother always used to tell me, if I had a problem, I was only allowed to complain for one second. Then I had to take action.
Euzhan Palcy
#42. THE MAGICIAN
They asked St. Germain's manservant if his master was truly a thousand years old, as it was rumored he had claimed.
'How would I know?" the man replied. "I have only been in the master's employ for three hundred years.
Neil Gaiman
#43. It felt as if I had lived all my life inside a flat painting and only now had I stepped into the real world.
Rosamund Hodge
#44. Joe!' he called. 'Hey, honey, can you get the pretty girl a Coke?'
'Only if you stop calling me *honey*,' the bartender, a bearded man in his thirties, replied. 'We've had this discussion before, Harrison.'
'Aw, Joe. It's so cute that you think I listen.
Kody Keplinger
#45. I could never stop eating meat ... I'm not a good person to talk about diets. If I had to only eat salads, I'd kill myself!
Izabel Goulart
#46. I'm sorry. I can't serve him that item," the waitress said, only somewhat surprising her since she had a pretty good idea why.
"Why not?" she found herself asking anyway out of curiosity to see if she was right.
***
"Because he's a Bradford," the woman explained with a shrug.
R.L. Mathewson
#47. Life is about choices, and you have the ability to choose. You always have had this ability. I suggest that not only do you have the ability, you have the responsibility to make choices for yourself. It is your life, and you are in the driver's seat, if you choose to be.
Lou Tice
#48. She had become the demon, only too much, and too fast. I had an incredible urge to knock her on her ass, take her down a few notches. Turning her just got higher on the priority scale. That's if I didn't kill her first.
L.J. Kentowski
#49. My trust is solely in God. And I trust men only because I trust God. If I had no God to rely upon, I should be like Timon, a hater of my species.
Mahatma Gandhi
#50. Hacking was the only entertainment that would occupy my mind - like a huge video game, but with real consequences. I could have evaded the FBI a lot longer if I had been able to control my passion for hacking.
Kevin Mitnick
#51. I'd like to think that had I known the truth, I might have been a kinder, more loving person. If only we knew the Truth, mightn't we all?
Tom Robbins
#52. If I had my life to live over, instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy, I'd have cherished ever moment and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was the only chance in life to assist God in a miracle.
Erma Bombeck
#53. We'd be better off if we only had the words 'I love you.'
Gackt
#54. is not the time you spend with someone, it is what happens in that time. I have known people for years, and yet never met the real person inside, if there is one. Others I have spoken with for only an hour or two, and yet what was said had meaning and honesty that will last forever.
Anne Perry
#55. I'm often asked if I regret not going to Hollywood. I'm glad I didn't go, because if I had I wouldn't have my extended family, which is the fabric of my life. Only recently have I realised how special and unusual it is.
Francesca Annis
#56. I never thought I was finished when people said I was finished, or any of that stuff. I always had this undying belief that even if I was in a wheelchair and I could only move my finger, somehow I would become the guy who does the amazing thing with his finger.
Jim Carrey
#57. The world is full of 'friends' of suicide victims thinking 'if I had only made that drive over there, I could have done something.
Darnell Lamont Walker
#58. The great thing about baseball is when you're done, you'll only tell your grandchildren the good things. If they ask me about 1989, I'll tell them I had amnesia.
Sparky Anderson
#59. There's not a single country that actually approaches economics in a pure, free market, capitalist way. I like the free market - but it very much exists only in textbooks. If I had a choice, and we could live in a very pure world, I would be a supporter of the free markets.
Dambisa Moyo
#60. Don't know how many minutes I stood there. It was precisely the comfort she seemed to need this night. If only she had known to ask, or I to give, we could've done away with the blindfold ... Thank God for the blindfold. She
Abraham Verghese
#61. Even if I only had 10 readers, I'd rather do the book for them than for a million readers online.
Daniel Clowes
#62. A movie I must have seen 10 times is 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull.' It's an old movie, but still such a beautiful message. If I had only one film I could take on my computer on a desert island, I would take 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull.'
Bertrand Piccard
#63. No matter what gifts you have, practice is the only way to get better at anything.
"If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery it would not seem so wonderful at all" - Michael Angelo
Jonathan Harnum
#64. If I had only known then how you make it easy to conquer fear, the paralyzing fear of an audience, I wouldn't have lost these past five years." The man who spoke these revealing
Dale Carnegie
#65. Most umpires are good about letting the argument go, but you can only go on for so long, or go so far. If you don't leave it alone after a minute or two, you're in trouble. They want to keep the game moving, so they've got to throw you out. I had trouble leaving it alone, I guess.
Bobby Cox
#66. stared at it for so long that I became lightheaded, just so I wouldn't lose my focus. If I had, the only thing that would come to mind
Barbara Speak
#67. It was soon evident in my lodgings that I had become a dangerous lunatic, and there would be nothing left to destroy if strong measures were not taken. So I was turned out of the house, but it was only into the garden, where I was allowed to build a small darkroom of oilcloth.
Henry Peach Robinson
#68. This version of the facts having been restored, it only remains to say it is no better than the other and no less incompatible with the kind of creature I might just conceivably have been if they had known how to take me. So let us consider now what really occurred.
Samuel Beckett
#69. Whenever I finished filming a movie, I felt my job was only half done. Every film had to be nurtured in the marketplace. You can have the greatest movie in the world, but if you don't get it out there, if people don't know about it, you have nothing.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
#70. I was the only child, and I know my father had certain thoughts about me. He was a lawyer and extremely literary, but he would have been much happier if I had wanted to be a lawyer, a scientist, an engineer. But what I wanted to do was read.
Robert Gottlieb
#71. If sex were baseball, I was still on the bench. The only action my bases had seen was courtesy of my own curious hands, and even then, I'd never achieved a homerun.
Leisa Rayven
#72. Was Apollo worth all the effort and expense? If it had been about the Moon, the answer would be no, but it wasn't, it was about the Earth. The answer is yes. The only thing I can't see in all this is a rationale for going back. Unless we could find a way to take everyone.
Andrew Smith
#73. But I didn't. I didn't say anything, if only because I had no idea how to respond to such an overture. If my experience with friends was sparse, what I knew about boys- other than a competitors for grades or class rank- was nonexistent
Sarah Dessen
#74. Growing up, if I hadn't had sports, I don't know where I'd be. God only knows what street corners I'd have been standing on and God only knows what I'd have been doing, but instead I played hockey and went to school and stayed out of trouble.
Bobby Orr
#75. I felt betrayed, as if what we shared on our journey to the Iron King was only a farce, a tactic the cunning Ice prince had used to get me to come to the Unseelie Court. Or perhaps he had just grown tired of me and moved on. Just another reminder of how capricious and insensitive the fey could be.
Julie Kagawa
#76. Luke indicated Simon and Clary with a wave of his hand. 'I brought some people to see you.'
Jace's eyes moved to them. They were as blanked as if the had been painted. 'Unfortunately, ' he said, 'I only had the one pencil.
Cassandra Clare
#77. If I had to face only the Sermon on the Mount and my own interpretation of it, I should not hesitate to say, 'O yes, I am a Christian.'
Mahatma Gandhi
#78. Rooney is one of the best players in the world and I love watching him play. But if you had to pick out only one, then for their history and for all that they have achieved it would have to be Paul Scholes or Ryan Giggs. They are two shining examples for any player.
Andres Iniesta
#79. I was convinced by now that his feelings for Laoghaire were only those of a chivalrous friendship, but I didn't know what he might do if he knew that his uncle had seduced the girl and got her with child.
Diana Gabaldon
#80. I haven't had a single moment of terror since they told me [I was dying]. My only regret is to die four pages too soon. If I can finish, then I'm quite happy to go.
Dennis Potter
#81. How often we set this trap for ourselves. I had learned to act as if I were the person I wished to be: an ascetically self-sufficient woman, a woman without needs, a woman immune to disappointment. And I found or urged myself to be attracted to people whom only such a woman should love.
Melissa Febos
#82. If I only did theatre I would have had to waitress, and I didn't want to waitress.
Kim Cattrall
#83. I wish I had money now. If only I'd saved my allowance growing up, instead of squandering it on balls, balloons, booze, and floozies.
Jarod Kintz
#84. I fucking loved that girl, Sky. I need to believe that what she did was the only answer she had left, because if I don't, then I'll never forgive myself for not helping her find a different one.
Colleen Hoover
#85. In an area of more than 1,000 war graves and with birdsong as the only sound, I contemplated the thin margin between life and death. If the sniper's bullet had been just two feet to one side, my father's life would have been over, aged just 27, and I would never have been born.
Michael Ashcroft
#86. Caroline was always moody and miserable, but I liked it. I liked feeling as if she had chosen me as the only person in the world not to hate, and so we spent all this time together just ragging on everyone, you know?
John Green
#87. Somehow I felt better toward him, knowing that he had possessed some instinct to fight back. It was something I needed to believe - that all men possess, somewhere, the dignity to value their own lives. If only enough to scratch the arm of the one who throws you to the wolves.
Randall Wallace
#88. Making mistakes is part of life. The only things I would feel ashamed of would be if I had said things I hadn't believed in order to get on. Some politicians do do that.
Tony Benn
#89. If only my folks had beaten me, I could have gotten some material about my miserable childhood. But as it is, I've had a great life.
Tim Conway
#90. If not for my diaries, I would swear I had lived only half as long as I have. Long periods of my life seem to have vanished. And now I read the passages and wonder who I was when I wrote them, for I cannot remember the events of my life. There are times I sit and wonder where it all has gone.
Nicholas Sparks
#91. Can I not get so much of my own will? Is not the thing feasible? Yes - yes - the end is not so difficult; if I had only a brain active enough to ferret out the means of attaining it. (Ch 10)
Charlotte Bronte
#92. When I was about forty-three years of age, I had a private secretary with a beautiful baritone voice. I told him I would give anything in the world if I could only carry a tune. He laughed and said, 'Anybody who has a voice and perseverance can sing.'
Heber J. Grant
#93. If I had to give advice about parents, it would be this: Value your relationships with them. Those relationships are what you stand for. Not only are we blessed to wear a uniform that says PHILLIES on the front, but we have our names on the back. That name means you're playing for your family.
Jim Thome
#94. If I were to be cast as Cyrano or a Connecticut prep-school teacher or a gay boutique owner, it would only happen if some director I had worked with in the past said, 'Why don't we give Rispoli a shot at it?'
Michael Rispoli
#95. I never had a clique. If I throw a party, the only thing connecting people is me. Maybe I just don't believe in fear. I bulldoze right in.
Liz Goldwyn
#96. The stove not only took up room and scented the house, but it concealed the fire, and I felt as if I had lost a companion. You can always see a face in the fire.
Henry David Thoreau
#97. If I had learned more about business ahead of time, I would have been shaped into believing that it was only about finances and quality management.
Anita Roddick
#98. It's gone on my whole life, this David and Goliath syndrome that a lot of these smaller guys always have. They think the only reason I've ever had any success in my career is because of my physical size. And you know what? If that's the case, so be it. I really don't care. Because I have that size.
Kevin Nash
#99. I'm a satirist, so I've got boxing gloves on if the person is worthy of satire. But I'm not an assassin. If that ever happens, it's only because something happened during the interview that got me going, and then I had to translate my feelings to the mouth of the character.
Stephen Colbert
#100. I had trouble listening to adults who didn't really mean anything that they said; it was as if their language poured into my ears only to drain right out a little spigot in the back of my head.
Reif Larsen
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