What man does not remember with regret the first time he read Robinson Crusoe? Macaulay.

Never any prince expressed a more lively regret for the loss of a servant. Clarendon.

From its peaceful bosom [the grave] spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections. W. Irving.

Syn. -- Grief; concern; sorrow; lamentation; repentance; penitence; self-condemnation. -- Regret, Remorse, Compunction, Contrition, Repentance. Regret does not carry with it the energy of remorse, the sting of compunction, the sacredness of contrition, or the practical character of repentance. We even apply the term regret to circumstance over which we have had no control, as the absence of friends or their loss. When connected with ourselves, it relates rather to unwise acts than to wrong or sinful ones. C. J. Smith.

Calmly he looked on either life, and here
Saw nothing to regret, or there to fear. Pope.

In a few hours they [the Israelites] began to regret their slavery, and to murmur against their leader. Macaulay.

Recruits who regretted the plow from which they had been violently taken. Macaulay.