Really? Then you must be five years old or the most shallow person on Planet Earth. So you’ve never said or done anything that’s hurt someone else? Never failed to take advantage of an opportunity? Never fallen on your face. Never said yes when you should have said no? Never said no when you wish you’d said yes? Never missed a chance to say a last good-bye?

Wow.

I’ve done all of the above. Regrets, disappointments, missteps, screwups, embarrassments, and devastating hurts have taught me more than any triumph. It’s hard for me to imagine how a life could be well-lived if it didn’t contain at least a few incidents of bittersweet regret. And apparently, I’m not alone …

“The greatness comes not when things go always good for you. But the greatness comes when you’re really tested, when you take some knocks, some disappointments, when sadness comes. Because only if you’ve been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.”

—Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States

“Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.”

—Sidney J. Harris, journalist

“I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.”

—Publilius Syrus, Latin writer of maxims, 100 B.C.

“Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.”

—Oscar Wilde, playwright and novelist

“When one door closes another door opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.”

—Alexander Graham Bell, inventor

“The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret.”

—Henri-Frédéric Amiel, Swiss philoslopher and critic

“Small minds are much distressed by little things. Great minds see them all but are not upset by them.”

—François de La Rochefoucauld, author and moralist

“The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.”

—Thomas Paine, U.S. patriot and philosopher