Wit & Attitude Quote by Hugh Leonard

Leonard’s confession lands with the blunt timing of a well-built stage monologue: the laugh catches in your throat because it’s aimed at a very specific modern pose - the sanctimonious “no regrets” posture that passes for wisdom. He calls his earlier self “an idiot,” but the real target is the arrogance hidden inside that slogan. Saying you wouldn’t change anything isn’t bravery; it’s a bid to look finished, impermeable, above the messy bargaining of memory.

The line works because it performs a reversal in real time. “There’s nothing I would change” sounds stoic, even noble, until he names it as vanity. Then the language tightens into particulars: not abstract mistakes, not cosmic fate, but people. “There are people I would have steered clear of” is devastatingly ordinary, which is why it stings. It’s the adult realization that some damage isn’t a grand tragic flaw; it’s proximity. Leonard suggests regret isn’t about self-flagellation, it’s about belated discernment: realizing you had agency earlier than you admitted, and you outsourced it to pride.

As a dramatist, Leonard understands that character is revealed by choices - and by the refusals to admit choices were available. The subtext is less “I made errors” than “I pretended my errors were destiny.” In a culture that treats regret as weakness and “authenticity” as a brand, Leonard offers a colder, sharper honesty: maturity isn’t owning every scar as a trophy; it’s acknowledging which ones were avoidable, and why you kept walking toward them.