Top 100 Quotes About What Might Have Been
#1. Sometimes," she said, "two people pass each other by, look into each other's eyes for a moment, and all that's left is a wish. A dream of what might have been. And then they move away from each other with every step, and away from all their dreams.
Kai Meyer
#2. The evening air holds the bittersweet tang of what might have been,
Ally Condie
#3. 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
#4. First, imagine taking the potentially regret - producing path of inaction. Then imagine what the very best outcome would be were you to take this risk. By picturing both scenarios in advance, you can avoid the regret of what might have been.
Wayne Dyer
#5. It's not about being upset about the things you might have said or done yesterday, which is quite appropriate at the moment. It's about looking forward rather than looking back. I hate people who look back on the past or talk about what might have been.
Noel Gallagher
#6. From him I have learned that prayer is not asking for what you think you want but asking to be changed in ways you can't imagine. To be more grateful, more able to see the good in what you have been given instead of always grieving for what might have been.
Kathleen Norris
#7. What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present. Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened. - T. S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton
Blake Crouch
#10. Life is too short, time is too precious, and the stakes are too high to dwell on what might have been. We have to work together for what still can be.
Hillary Clinton
#11. You learn not to think about what might have been, and to just appreciate what you have.
Jonathan Tropper
#12. What did the poet say? That the saddest words of tongue or pen were what might have been?
Charles Todd
#13. As she realized what might have been, she grew to be thankful for what was.
Elizabeth Gaskell
#14. Perhaps. But it is childish to think of what might have been.
Chaim Potok
#15. I'm not paralyzed by fear about what might have been or what might be. I'm grateful for what is and I make excellent use of what I've got.
Linda Gray
#16. You can't dwell on what might have been ... and it's not fair to condemn him for something he hasn't done.
Wendelin Van Draanen
#17. You do what you do and you pay for your sins and there's no such thing as what might have been.
Tim McGraw
#18. Lil had always believed that a person's duty was to make the best of the hand they were dealt. No use wondering what might have been, she used to say, all that matters is what is.
Kate Morton
#19. Child," said Aslan, "did I not explain to you once before that no one is ever told what might have been?
C.S. Lewis
#20. The endless, agonizing recycling of what might have been, soon followed by a litany of rationalizations and self-deceptions as you struggle to reconcile the void between the person you want to be and the person you fear you are..
Jon Krakauer
#21. You can't become who you're supposed to be if you keep looking back on what might have been. - Alexis
Candace Knoebel
#22. I wanted to say something to him about regret, about how I didn't really believe in the idea of regret because it was always based on what might have happened. People always held up the now, the concrete now, and compared it to what might have been, and that wasn't a fair comparison.
Kim Culbertson
#23. There is a wealth of unexpressed love in the world. It is one of the chief causes of sorrow evoked by death: what might have been said or might have been done that never can be said or done.
Arthur Hopkins
#24. If I make a wrong decision, I worry what might have been. I stress out over very insignificant things.
Courtney Barnett
#25. You must never regret what might have been. The past that did not happen is as hidden from us as the future we cannot see.
Richard Martin Stern
#26. As a cancer survivor, I am very aware of how many wasted minutes I don't have. The surest way to waste what is left of your life is to worry about what might happen or what might have been.
Shelley Hamlin
#27. You talk to me of choices?' said Reinhardt. 'I only know that the choices life makes you take strip away the person we wanted to be. Builds us up into something we never wanted. Until you look back on life, and you see that the track of your life is a scar that hides what might have been.
Luke McCallin
#28. And now let us love and take that which is given us, and be happy; for in the grave there is no love and no warmth, nor any touching of the lips. Nothing perchance, or perchance but bitter memories of what might have been.
H. Rider Haggard
#29. When people get disillusioned and get insecure and content about the future, they tend to brood about what might have been.
Dave Davies
#30. So much of the deep lingering sadness over President Kennedy's assassination is about the unfinished promise: unspoken speeches, unfulfilled hopes, the wondering about what might have been.
Marian Wright Edelman
#31. I had to know if I could make it somewhere else. I did not want to go through the rest of my life wondering what might have been without putting myself to the test.
Kenny Dalglish
#32. What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
T. S. Eliot
#33. I wish to Heaven that I might forget. It would be so much easier than to go through life always remembering what might have been.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#34. Think of what is and don't let what might have been distract you.
Robin Hobb
#35. Never job backwards. What might have been was a waste of time.
Ian Fleming
#36. We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams.
We are only what might have been ...
Charles Lamb
#38. Don't think I have any intention of caressing your cheek and saying I was wrong," he said softly as I watched the life ebb out of him. "I will not weep and wonder what might have been. I'm sure you understand.
Oliver Bowden
#39. There are many of them in the world, I think, good men and women with their frail deeds. Wondering what might have been, how things might have danced, if we had only dared to be bright.
Ally Condie
#40. Caroline Waverly: Sometimes we hurt more for what might have been than for what is.
Nora Roberts
#41. By her hand, she draws you down. With her mouth, she breathes you in. Hope and dreams and soul devoured. Lostto you, what might have been.
Douglas Smith
#42. There comes a certain point in life when you have to stop blaming other people for how you feel or the misfortunes in your life. You can't go through life obsessing about what might have been.
Hugh Jackman
#43. How many times I have wondered what my fate might have been had I accompanied my parents that rainy spring morning. Such musings, I recognise, are more than a trifle insane, for envisioning what might have been had no more connection to our own true reality than a lunatic has to a lemon.
Catherine Gilbert Murdock
#44. Our habit of wishing backward from what is to what might have been is the soft but persistent tapping that cracks the crystal.
Walter Kirn
#45. As he was marched away, Evan looked back over his shoulder at me. Through his grief-stricken expression, he smiled. So sad, so full of love, and so full of what might have been. Then he was gone
Emma Scott
#46. I guess it's a sequel to our story From the journey 'tween heaven and hell With half the time thinking of what might have been and half thinkin' just as well. I guess only time will tell.
Harry Chapin
#47. There are choices in life which you are aware, even as you make them, cannot be undone; choices after which, once made, things will never be the same.
There is that moment when you can still walk away, but if you do, you will never know what might have been.
Alan Bradley
#48. But I'm terrified of giving up my career only to have the whole thing backfire in my face. What if I move down there and it doesn't work out?"
"What if you don't and you never know what might have been? Can you live with that?
Georgia Cates
#49. But let's not speak of what might have been. Let us speak instead of what is. You are whole.
Kate DiCamillo
#50. An emotion that lives with me is a sense of 'what might have been' had injuries not robbed me of my most lethal weapon - speed.
Michael Owen
#51. It's defeatist to harp on what might have been, and yet, it's hard to resist considering what might have been.
Christopher Reeve
#52. But fate and circumstance had made me no more than a shadow in his life, a phantom of what might have been
Daphne Du Maurier
#53. For better or worse, we live in possible worlds as much as actual ones. We are cursed by that characteristically human guilt and regret about what might have been in the past. But that may be the cost for our ability to hope and plan for what might be in the future.
Alison Gopnik
#54. Well, you do what you do and you pay for your sins, but there's no such thing as what might have been. That's a waste of time; drive you outta your mind
Tim McGraw
#55. What is, is, and what might have been could never have existed.
Edward Gorey
#56. Do you often wonder," she continued, desperately hoping her questions would win Vasily over, "what might have been had his gaze fallen upon some other miserable wretch? Yes, you would have been destitute, starving in the streets, scraping for your next meal ... but even beggars are free.
Melika Dannese Lux
#57. She wanted to tell him what happened wasn't really his fault, but she knew that wasn't the way this kind of guilt worked. Intellectually, he already knew that. It was his emotions that were tripping him up. The tangle of love and memory and what might have been.
Charles De Lint
#58. When we rely on written records we need to continually ask ourselves what might be missing, what might have been recorded in order to manipulate events and in what direction, and in what ways we are allowing ourselves to assume that objectivity is in any way connected with literacy.
Aurora Levins Morales
#59. I can't stop thinking about what might have been ... I can't stop imagining the two of us together. My body burns at the thought of it. Sephy and I might've been together for ever.
- Callum McGregor
Malorie Blackman
#60. It is one of those invaluable seeds, from which, since it is impossible to have every experience fully, one can grow something that represents other people's experiences. Often one has to make do with seeds; the germs of what might have been, had one's life been different.
Virginia Woolf
#61. We can't live our lives according to what might have been. We have to live by what is.
Terry Goodkind
#62. To try and fail is at least to learn; to fail to try is to suffer the inestimable loss of what might have been.
Chester Barnard
#63. You can't afford to think about what might have been. You just be aware of what is.
Noel Gallagher
#64. Every so often we long to steal to the land of what-might-have-been. But that doesn't soften the ache we feel when reality sets back in.
Stephen Schwartz
#65. It was a real book - onionskin pages bound in what might have been actual leather. Miller had seen pictures of them before; the idea of that much weight for a single megabyte of data struck him as decadent.
James S.A. Corey
#66. Grab a chance and you won't be sorry for what might have been
Arthur Ransome
#67. It's just the way things are. And you can't dwell on what might have been. You have to look at what is.
Sophie Kinsella
#68. I don't spend any time whatsoever thinking about what might have been.
Alex Trebek
#70. If you truly feel that self esteem and motivation have to happen first before you can make changes in your life, then we'll probably be sharing walkers at a retirement home as we talk over what might have been.
Shannon L. Alder
#71. We can never know what might have been but what is to come is another matter entirely
C.S. Lewis
#72. We know too much, and what might have been excused in other times can no longer stand up to reason. ... with that understanding comes moral responsibility.
Wayne Pacelle
#73. When the tides of life turn against you
And the current upsets your boat,
Don't waste those tears on what might have been,
Just lie on your back and float.
Edward Norton
#74. Time past and time future
what might have been and what has been
point to one end, which is always present.
T. S. Eliot
#75. The hardest memories are the pieces of what might have been.
Deborah Smith
#76. It's sometimes more torment for a man, Mr. Fagin said, to consider what might have been than to live with what is.
Alice McDermott
#77. The fact is that the New Deal did not work. It prolonged what might have been a troubling two-year downturn into a horrifying blow to world prosperity that ended up in a war that killed countless millions. It was one of the greatest acts of wreckage in world history.
Llewellyn Rockwell
#78. I count the years and I shed no tears; I'm blinded to what might have been. Nature's voice makes my heart rejoice; play me the wild song of the wind.
Bob Dylan
#79. He felt weighted down by guilt and regret for what might have been his last words to all of them.
Karen Ann Wirtz
#80. You should never start thinking about 'what might have been,' and you should also never start thinking about another boy when you're heartbroken over someone else.
Lauren Barnholdt
#81. Don't regret what might have been. Accept what is and rejoice in what is yet to be.
MaryAnn Koopmann
#82. I wondered whether music might not be the unique example of what might have been - if the invention of language, the formation of words, the analysis of ideas had not intervened - the means of communication between souls.
Marcel Proust
#83. Haven't you ever wished that you could steal back just a few hours of your past?" she asked softly. "That's all I want ... just a little taste of what might have been.
Lisa Kleypas
#84. They never listened until it was too late, and then only with stern forbearance and strong reminders of what might have been - had things been as they were perceived to be, which they were not.
Robert Ludlum
#85. What Might Have Been {Couplet}
Dwell not upon what might have been,
Within such idle spin, you can never win.
Beryl Dov
#86. Can you experience nostalgia for something that hasn't happened? We talk of 'regrets' about the course of our lives, when we are almost certain we have taken the wrong decision; but one can also be enveloped in a sweet and mysterious euphoria, a sort of nostalgia for what might have been. Meeting
Antoine Laurain
#87. But lost chances are as much a part of life as chances taken, and a story cannot dwell on what might have been.
Paul Auster
#88. Our particular causality scheme has brought us to a modest and rudimentary, although in many respects heroic, series of explorations. But it is far inferior to what might have been, and may one day be.
Carl Sagan
#89. When a dream takes hold of you, what can you do? You can run with it, let it run your life, or let it go and think for the rest of your life about what might have been.
Patch Adams
#90. He just wanted to see it. From afar. To see what might have been, what he was glad hadn't been. But maybe should have been.
Julia Quinn
#91. But old dreams never really died. They were always there, living as regrets for what might have been
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#92. No loss is felt more keenly than the loss of what might have been. No nostalgia hurts as much as nostalgia for things that never existed.
Rabih Alameddine
#93. I don't want to live the rest of my life thinking about you and dreaming of what might have been. Stay with me, Allie.
Nicholas Sparks
#94. I said what might have been a bad word meaning excrement, but I hope that I used a polite synonym.
Dean Koontz
#95. She had filled her days mourning that shadow life, and it had no more meaning than the chattering of monkeys. Instead, these last few weeks, she had seen what might have been had she not felt perpetually done out of something better.
Anna Quindlen
#96. Tragedy was like that, a razor that sliced through time, severing the now from the before, incising the what-might-have-been from reality as cleanly as any surgeon's blade.
Kristin Hannah
#97. In history there are no control groups. There is no one to tell us what might have been. We weep over the might have been, but there is no might have been. There never was.
Cormac McCarthy
#98. There was no use grieving over what might have been
Janette Oke
#99. Do not allow yourself to be buried
In the howling Of what might have been.
Sharon M. Van Sluys
#100. The first sequel thing I wrote was this 'Forever Dawn' thing that will never get out, because it's horrid. But it's a really good outline for 'Breaking Dawn' - it's very similar. I knew what I was doing, which is good, because I think if I hadn't, there might have been a lot of pressure.
Stephenie Meyer
