Missed Opportunity Quotes

“Too often, we miss out on opportunities in this life because we were too busy waiting for them to fall into our lap that we missed them tapping on our shoulder.”
― Daniel Willey

“It seems to me that our lives are consumed by countless wasting years, but only a few shining moments. I missed mine. Yes is what I should have said. Of course I should have said yes.”
― Mordecai Richler, Solomon Gursky Was Here

“She felt intense disappointment, even a kind of guilt, as if she had missed something, perhaps forever. He had been there, she could have spoken to him. Could she call out now, cry his name? It was impossible.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“[...] những cái "ước gì", "giá mà", "nếu mà mình đã"... chúng là những câu hỏi tu từ thú vị nhưng chẳng có ích gì cho cuộc sống cả. [...] Anh biết đấy, mọi người hay nói chuyện "cơ hội bị bỏ lỡ", họ bảo ồ nếu như mình đã quyết định thế kia thay vì thế này thì mình đã... Hồi xưa em cũng hay nghĩ như thế, nhưng gần đây em nhận ra, làm gì có cơ hội nào bị bỏ lỡ, chúng chẳng có ở đó để cho ta bỏ lỡ bởi vì anh như là anh vào thời điểm anh ra quyết định, thì anh chỉ có thể ra được cái quyết định mà anh đã ra, anh không thể nào ra được cái quyết định mà anh cho là anh bỏ lỡ; cho nên những quyết định đó đâu có dành cho anh, đâu có bị anh bỏ lỡ... Mỗi lúc, anh chỉ có thể ra một quyết định tốt nhất. [264-265]”
― Phan Việt, Xuyên Mỹ

“A missed opportunity repentance only leaves behind”
― Eve Berlin, Desire's Edge

“Most great accomplishments do not look promising in the beginning. If you give up on a big dream too early, you have probably stepped on gold and mistook it for a rock.”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Leaders' Ladder

“All the roads you regret for not going to the end represent the alternative lives you have missed!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“But the spark vanished, there was no longed-for recognition, no dawning sign of recovery. The love she had learnt in tending him was an enclosed love, muted and maimed, already mourning. They would never communicate now.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“Beyond her declaration of love she could not see. But as she rehearsed the intensity of her passion she thought that he must, when the time came, respond. The desire to, at the right time, tell him became, as the years moved forward toward that time, increasingly painful, like a poisoned wound that must heal itself by breaking open. She now thought in anguish of the times, the recent times, when she could have told him, and had been afraid to, and had clumsily withdrawn, when she could have attracted him and drawn his attention to her. When she had watched over him when he was sleeping in the sedan-chair and could have wakened him with a kiss. If only she had let him know, then she could more easily have borne his not preferring her. He was ready to fall in love — and if he had known — he must have loved her — if he had known how much she loved him. The pain of this loss burnt her in every waking moment, that awful 'if only'. She had lost him, and lost him through her own fault. There were no more pleasures now in life.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“Torschlusspanik," Simon said.
"Okay," Sam said. "I'll bite."
"Don't encourage him," Ant said.
"What's Torschlusspanik?" Sam said.
"It means 'gate-shut panic,'" Simon said. "It's the fear that time is running out and that you're going to miss an opportunity. Literally, the gate is closing, and you'll never get in.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“It may be that you've just missed a great opportunity that should have been your turning point towards the direction of greatness. What next? Go into your closet and learn your lessons; "opportunity missed may not be regained, but new opportunity can be recreated with the will that have to work harder!”
― Israelmore Ayivor, The Great Hand Book of Quotes

“I’m always left with such a barren idea of myself if I let an opportunity pass. I get home and I feel like yesterday’s dirty plates, smeared in dried sauce and grease. I have this idea that it’s the women we don’t sleep with who haunt us. They become like a missing page in our book. The part of the story we’ll never know.”
― glenn haybittle, The Way Back to Florence

“If you give up on a big dream too early, you have probably stepped on gold and mistook it for a rock.”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Leaders' Ladder

“I have squandered in one unintended jerk the string of pearls that was handed to me. And each pearl is lost in a dark corner that I knew not existed.”
― Mukta Singh-Zocchi, Game of Big Numbers

“The garden, which was exposed to the pure light of the Evemeria morning, had already begun to change in hue, due to the light intensity, before she could enjoy it through the window.

For some reason, she couldn’t bear missing such scenery more than being thrown out of the social circle.

Enduring the sadness and regret she couldn’t quite understand deep within her heart, Dia was terrified there was almost no space left to store said bitterness.”
― Sakurase Ayaka (桜瀬彩香), 長い夜の国と最後の舞踏会 1　～ひとりぼっちの公爵令嬢と真夜中の精霊～

“All too often missed opportunities are in plain sight.”
― Germany Kent

“In the guv, we train the young people to do mindless tasks until they can supervise other young people doing mindless tasks. There's an actual talent pool there if only we’d develop it.”
― Vincent H. O'Neil, A Pause in the Perpetual Rotation

“Regrets are a sinkhole. You are walking on a field of flowers, expecting solid ground, where all at once there is none and with your disappointed expectations you are being swallowed by what lies beneath you, until you cannot see it anymore: not the field of flowers and neither the path you have been walking on.”
― Sima Moussavian - Engineered Death