Top 100 Quotes About What Could Have Been
#1. I'm not going to hold my breath because life goes on. Life is too short to sit around moaning about what could have been or what was.
Tina Weymouth
#2. You can learn a lot about a person by where they are from and where they have chosen to be."
"You'll never know what could have been if it never was.
Sarah Sloat
#3. You really can't worry about stuff you can't control ... You need to focus on getting where you need to be and not worry about what could have been and what should have been.
Robbie Lawler
#4. Decades of Saddam's rule made what could have been a fairly rich country, due to its oil reserves, into a very poor one.
Chris Kyle
#5. I didn't have a role model. My role model was Michael Jordan. Bad role model for an Indian dude ... I didn't have anyone who looked like me. And by the time I was old enough to have what could have been a role model, they were my peers. Aziz Ansari is my peer. Kal Penn is my peer.
Utkarsh Ambudkar
#6. Ikenna, I have come to realize, is a man who carries with him the weight of what could have been.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
#7. My heart is empty.
But my brain -
my brain is full.
It races with thoughts
of what could have been.
Samantha Schutz
#8. Travis considered the larger one below it. A file drawer. Was it even worth bothering with? What could have been in it but paper? What could be in it now but an inch-deep layer of mold dust?
He opened it.
It contained an inch-deep layer of mold dust.
Patrick Lee
#9. What hurts the most
Was being so close
And having so much to say
And watching you walk away
And never knowing
What could have been
And not seeing that loving you
Is what I was tryin' to do
Rascal Flatts
#10. There is no grief more devastating than the grief for what could have been.
Kaya McLaren
#11. Don't think about it. Don't think about what could have been. It's too unbearable.
Sophie Kinsella
#12. Tragedy is the difference between what is and what could have been.
Abba Eban
#13. Can't get myself down by thinking about what could have been, right?
S.A. Tawks
#14. Jo claimed that the reason people survived breakups was that within days of the amputation, Mother Nature started reminding you of what you had been doing without, what could have been better, all the samll discontents you had been filing away.
Emma Donoghue
#15. It was no good to look back, to apologize for what had happened, or to wonder what could have been different.
Lily Blake
#16. I supposed, perhaps, you miss the promise of what could have been, while at the same time you are grateful that what it was instead is over.
Sylvia Day
#17. Tasting what could have been - what should have been - didn't make it easier.
Kele Moon
#18. It dishonors the death of our loved ones to shut out happiness. We throw away what could have been and waste our opportunities. We each have a purpose, a destiny and to realize it we must reach beyond what we are capable of.
Colleen Houck
#19. Don't waste time thinking about what could have been when you could be thinking about what could be.
Christopher Jones
#21. As a player leaving early, you always look back and wonder what could have been. But you have to be happy with your decisions, because you ultimately have to live with them.
Gilbert Arenas
#22. Things are what they are and there's no point dwelling in the past or wondering what could have been.
Emily Giffin
#23. I don't care what your Oort woman wants you to steal for her," she says. "You already did your worst. You stole what could have been. From me and from yourself. And you can never have it back.
Hannu Rajaniemi
#24. If with so little we have done so much in Brazil, imagine what could have been done on a global scale, if the fight against hunger and poverty were a real priority for the international community.
Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva
#25. You will never know what could have been done until you start doing what needs to be done.
Orrin Woodward
#26. It was not his habit to dwell on what could have been, but what could never be.
Alan Paton
#27. What could have been simply bizarre, sentimental or contrived here becomes an utterly absorbing love story; This is early days in the festival, but Rust and Bone has to be a real contender for prizes, and, the odds will be shortening to vanishing point for Cotillard getting the best actress award.
Peter Bradshaw
#28. It was too late to think about what could have been or what should have been. What's done is done. The past was in the past and there was no changing it.
Jason Medina
#29. You ask every conceivable question after Sept. 11 in terms of what more could have been done, what could have been done differently. My impression from working on these cases and investigations for almost nine years was that an awful lot of people were working over time to connect dots.
Mary Jo White
#30. Do you think peace of mind can be found in holding a grudge ... or harboring resentment ... or wallowing in thoughts of what could have been? Me neither.
Steve Maraboli
#31. Pining for what could have been only holds people back from living their lives now. Life is full of surprises, and it doesn't help us to fixate on regrets or try to recover what has been lost.
Jeff Goins
#32. So you'll excuse me if I have to disagree with you. It is not okay-it will not ever be okay-and whereas I'm more than willing to live with the fact that I was a walking, talking lie for decades, the idea that it sacrificed what could have been between us ... is absolutely, positively not okay to me.
J.R. Ward
#33. He won't feel a fraction of what I do for you. You won't change his life. And you will always wonder about what could have been, always feel that funny little ache right here. He puts his hand over your heart.
Josh Lanyon
#34. Don't give up love for what might be, for if you do, you shall never know what could have been.
Darby Browne
#35. Even when life turns out different than what you've planned, it's always better to try and fail than to wonder what could have been.
Kirsten Hubbard
#36. What would be awful would be to die and look back miserably - seeing only the bad things, the opportunities missed, or what could have been.
Audrey Hepburn
#37. After what could have been an eternity or a few seconds, Cade whispered, Pain changes us. Mine made me want to be perfect, so that no one would ever want to leave me again.
Cora Carmack
#38. I snorted. Brace and Lucy loved to make fun of me for my minor freak out when I'd been bitten by a zombie. I think I had a legit reaction to what could have been a tragic situation.
Jaymin Eve
#39. I'll always wonder what could have been with Steven Warner, but he never showed any interest outside of friendship so I never pushed it.
Rachel Robinson
#40. The days that passed had begun to melt together into weeks and months, creating a twisted mosaic of memories in her mind. Her dreams travelled a tortuous path between what had actually happened, and what could have been.
Kim Cormack
#41. Blaine needed what she was unable to give and she needed what he was unable to give, and she grieved this, the loss of what could have been. So
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
#42. Closure. Such an odd concept. Did relationships really need it? Or was it just an excuse for one last glimpse at what could have been?
Alessandra Torre
#43. Those who fixate on what could have been are bound to miss what already is.
Sara Secora
#45. For too long nurses have been undervalued, restricted in what they could do, with too few career opportunities in clinical practice. For far too long, nurses have endured a pay system that has held them back - both professionally as well as financially.
John Hutton
#46. Yeah, I know what your English Professor tried to tell you. But if your English Professor could make a living writing fiction, they would have been doing it.
Dean Wesley Smith
#47. My stiffest earthly assignment is ended and my major life's work is done. My country is now free and I have been honoured to be its first indigenous head of state. What more could one desire in life?
Nnamdi Azikiwe
#48. I'm not good, Mac. Never have been.'
What-true confession time? my eyes tease. Don't need it.
'I want what I want and I take it.'
Is he warning me? What could he possibly threaten me with now?
'There's nothing I can't live with. Only things I won't live without.
Karen Marie Moning
#49. About that mystifying enthusiasm a million years ago for turning over as many human activities as possible to machinery: What could that have been but yet another acknowledgment by people that their brains were no damn good?
Kurt Vonnegut
#50. I have been asked what would I ban immediately if I could. Advertising.
Vivienne Westwood
#51. If Jesus simply came to tell us what to do and provide moral instruction so we could try harder to please God, then his life would have been an utter failure.
Matt Perman
#52. The road is a strange place. Shuffling along, I looked up and you were there walking across the grass toward my truck on an August day. In retrospect, it seems inevitable - it could not have been any other way
a case of what I call the high probability of the improbable
Robert James Waller
#53. Are you sorry? Do you wish you could do it all again and go off and write novels instead of being a teacher?
No. You can't trade what is for what might have been.
Lurlene McDaniel
#54. I feel there are so many things in this world that have been and are being created that I could spend the rest of my life thinking about, and I couldn't cover all the things I'm interested in. That to me is what makes life sweet-learning and exploring.
James Franco
#55. The Stones were always exemplary of one of the best of all rock qualities: tightness. They have always been economical, the opposite of ornamental. Having a very clear idea of what they wanted to say they could go into a studio and make it all up on a three minute cut.
Jon Landau
#56. I can't even think about what life "could
have been" like in Boston, without crying. It's like deja-vu, I don't think me
and Boston were ever meant to be.
Cecelia Ahern
#57. Joy was something she willed herself to show us, something she raised from deep inside herself as a promise for what could be. Now her life seemed to have opened up into it as if it had been waiting for her. (215)
Andre Dubus III
#58. It still amazes him how they could have been misled by her personality in Year Eleven. It's what depression does to a person, it changes them completely.
Melina Marchetta
#59. I have been thinking about what might happen if they installed clappers to turn on and off the lights in a concert hall. Maybe they could spare the cost of hiring some people for the next rock concert.
Linnea Gelland
#60. I'm a little frightened, perhaps. We always are, aren't we? When we have to open a door that's always been there...but we've never opened. [...] I mean frightened by the immensity of what lies beyond the door. A God of Love--infinite and eternal. How could I ever be worthy of that?
Tony Hendra
#61. Postal inspectors have been given advanced warning that Publishers Clearinghouse is sending packets of laundry detergent that could be mistaken for anthrax. Oh, good timing. What genius came up with this promotion? What's next - a ticking alarm clock? Let's put that in a box.
Jay Leno
#62. asked: "And I was very surprised by the ending. Were you?" "Of course not - I'd read it first. I don't think I could have stood the suspense if I hadn't known what was going to happen. I'd have been way too worried.
Will Schwalbe
#63. I've kind of gotten more timid. I used to be fearless - at a certain point I didn't care about what anybody thought. I had all the answers and I could have been as bad as I wanted to be. But nowadays I just want to be good and make people happy.
Ariel Pink
#64. After my parents passed away - in 2000 and 2003 - I felt I could take the time to think about the past and imagine what it would have been like to be my grandmother.
Joyce Carol Oates
#65. If you give your life to a cause in which you believe, and if it is right and just, and if your life comes to an end as a result of this, then your life could not have been spent in a more redemptive way. I think that is what my husband has done.
Coretta Scott King
#66. I have always done the best I could, and yet, somehow, it has never been enough. No one cared what I did. They always turned their backs on me.
Marie Lu
#67. The sun will rise tomorrow. It always does, and all the wishing in the world for the way things were, or for what they could have been, won't change that. It won't change how things are.
Elizabeth Scott
#68. All of the great achievers of the past have been visionary figures; they were men and women who projected into the future. They thought of what could be, rather than what already was, and then they moved themselves into action, to bring these things into fruition.
Bob Proctor
#69. I wish I was what I have been
And what I was could be
As when I roved in shadows green
And loved my willow tree
To gaze upon the starry sky
And higher fancies build
And make in solitary joy
Loves temple in the field
John Clare
#70. What I learned, in the two months that we shot, I don't think I could have learned in two to four years of drama school. It's invaluable to me, and that's been the most fun. It's been nice to let this be a learning experience in everything.
Steven Yeun
#71. Experience is the only teacher," Hey-Soos says. "Even if I could have told you, it would have been a lecture. Why do you think kids don't listen to their parents, or people don't leave churches and do what the preacher tells them?
Chris Crutcher
#72. If I could have somehow been the kind of artist who could crank out two or three issues a year, that's different. That's sort of what it's all about, to get this thing out so that there's some kind of continuity. But to do a comic book every year or two was just so anti-climactic.
Daniel Clowes
#73. What could have John Edwards' motivations been to have the affair with Rielle Hunter, given his wife is smarter than he is and probably nagging him a lot about doing this, and he found somebody that did something with her mouth other than talk.
Rush Limbaugh
#74. When I first came to work her i spotted a problem that needed to be solved, but I didn't know what to do. So I called the One Minute Manager. When he answered the phone, I said, Sir, I have a problem. Befor I could get another word out, he said, Good! That's what you've been hired to solve.
Kenneth H. Blanchard
#75. How could I have never told anyone what He had done for me? Nothing else had worked. Nothing had been able to break the chains that kept me living on the edge. Nothing ... except the gentleness of His touch.
Nikki Rosen
#76. Maybe if I hadn't been so hell-bent on not becoming my parents, I could have saved Charlie. Maybe I would have been his girlfriend. Maybe we could have gotten married and been happy, regardless of who our parents were and what they did to each other.
A.S. King
#77. Her lack of maidenly scruple would have amused me at another moment, but just now her face was so grimly determined that I could only wonder what she had in mind. Nothing could have been less seductive, anyway, than her expression at that moment.
Elizabeth Kostova
#78. Dez, on the other hand, was pure backcountry Pennsylvania; a blue-eyed blonde who could have been a model for fitness equipment if not for what JT personally viewed as an overactive redneck gene.
Jonathan Maberry
#79. When I came into your life your life was over. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. This is the end. You can say that things could have turned out differently. That they could have been some other way. But what does that mean? They are not some other way. They are this way.
Cormac McCarthy
#80. I made mistakes. I trusted both too little and too much. But, by the gods, I tried so hard. I gave everything I had.
I have always done the best I could, and yet, somehow,it has never been enough. No one cared what I did. They always turned their backs on me. Why can't I be like that?
Marie Lu
#81. Blood has an oder faint but distinct, of conceit and modesty, of courage and cowardice, of charity and greed, of faith and doubt, in short the fragrance of what we might have been and the smell of what we are ...
Dean Koontz
#82. I've been working at performing for five years now. I've been working in Australia and Spain and England. When I was only 15 or 16, 1 was performing in bars; I could have had legal problems, but it's also the only way to get to know what music is all about.
Andy Gibb
#83. Could I - could I say good-bye to him, sir? asked Hagrid. He bent his great, shaggy head over Harry and gave him what must have been a very scratchy, whiskery kiss. Then, suddenly, Hagrid let out a howl like a wounded dog.
J.K. Rowling
#84. My father was always suppressing the softer side of my nature; it seemed to have disappeared in the course of those boxing lessons, that's what boxing did to me. My father took away the real me and replaced all what I could have been by imposing his brutal regime of terror upon me.
Stephen Richards
#85. The warmth of the bourbon still glowed deep within her, helping her find her center. How could something so simple have brought her so much relief? But Safia sensed it wasn't truly the alcohol so much as the kindness. She had forgotten what that was like. It had been too long. Not since ... not
James Rollins
#86. I like things to be what they're going to be. Not what they were. Or could have been.
Angie Smibert
#87. Gazzy, man, jeezum!" Fang exclaimed. "What the heck have you been eating for God's sake?"
That was a smoke bomb!" Gazzy defended himself. "Not even i could fill this whole flippin' house!
James Patterson
#88. Is this what's going to make you happy?'
'How different everything could have been, if you had thought to ask me that before.
Marissa Meyer
#89. First of all, God inspires me, where he's brought me, it blows my mind. To know that He brought me this far, it could not have been an accident, to go forward, I'm excited to leap into the void, I'm excited about tomorrow, the unknown, excited to see what else He has for me.
Columbus Short
#90. You know what the true definition of hell is? It's when you die, you get to meet the person you could have been.
Frank Mir
#91. I would not, if I could, give up the memory of the joy I have had in books for any advantage that could be offered in other pursuits or occupations. Books have been to me what gold is to the miser, what new fields are to the explorer.
Margaret Elizabeth Sangster
#92. A big ethical question is what happens after people stop using the device. Does it degrade the environment? Could it have been designed so it would actually be good for the environment?
Donald Norman
#93. Oh could I feel as I have felt,-or be what I have been,
Or weep as I could once have wept, o'er many a vanish'd scene;
As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish though they be,
So midst the wither'd waste of life, those tears would flow to me.
George Gordon Byron
#94. I guess if I'd had any sense, I'd have been a little scared [to register to vote] - but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they could do was kill me, and it kinda seemed like they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time since I could remember.
Fannie Lou Hamer
#95. Ever since I could first write I have been doing so. When I was taught how to write and read at school, I made up my mind that this was what I love to do best and this was the world I was going to occupy.
Anita Desai
#96. The religion of the God who became man has met the religion (for such it is) of man who makes himself God. And what happened? Was there a clash, a battle, a condemnation? There could have been, but there was none
Pope Paul VI
#97. He bent down so I could hear him over the music. "What are you doing here?" he asked with a hard tone.
Okay. Not the best first line. Something like, you look beautiful, have my babies would have been a little bit better.
R.S. Grey
#98. In the Damascus airport she had been humiliated by what she was assumed to be, and when she returned home, she felt angry because of what she could have been.
Azar Nafisi
#99. Could that have been what happened to the human race - a willing perversity that set at naught all human values which had been so hardly won and structured in the light of reason for a span of more than a million years?
Clifford D. Simak
#100. The music for 'The Departed' could have been played by an orchestra, but you make a decision about orchestration based on the context of the film. You want the music to broaden the scope of a film, not just repeat what you're seeing.
Howard Shore
