One simple apology is enough. Get up and don’t do it again

The only effective apology is the one you voice before you say or do something.

It's true, I'd never understood whether this vogue for apologising is a sign of humility or of impudence: you do something you shouldn't have done, then you apologise and wash your hands of it. It reminds me of the old joke about a cowboy riding across the prairie who hears a voice from heaven telling him to go to Abilene, then at Abilene the voice tells him to go into the saloon and put all his money on number five. Tempted by the voice, he obeys, number eighteen comes up, and the voice murmur, Too bad, we've lost.

A proper apology consists of conveying the 3 Rs: regret (genuine empathy with the other), responsibility (not blaming someone else), and remedy (your willingness to fix it).

Apologize: To lay the foundation for a future offence.

Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn't know before you learned it.

Socialism without public ownership is nothing but a fantastic apology.

I have made many mistakes and no doubt will make more before I die. When I have seen pain, when I have found that my ineptness has caused displeasure, I have learned to accept my responsibility and to forgive myself first, then to apologize to anyone injured by my misreckoning. Since I cannot in-live history, and repentance is all I can offer God, I have hopes that my sincere apologies were accepted.

I apologize.” “you aren’t sorry and don’t apologize.”

Proper apologies have three parts:

1) What I did was wrong.
2) I feel badly that I hurt you.
3) How do I make this better?

Sorry is the Kool-Aid of human emotions. It's what you say when you spill a cup of coffee or throw a gutter ball when you're bowling with the girls in the league. True sorrow is as rare as true love.

I always say sorry to everybody who I have wronged. Most likely the person I would like to say sorry to is not alive.

"Under a Certain Little Star"

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity in case I’m mistaken.
May happiness not be angry if I take it for my own.
May the dead forgive me that their memory’s but a flicker.
My apologies to time for the multiplicity of the world overlooked
each second.
My apologies to an old love for treating the new one as the first.
Forgive me far-off wars for taking my flowers home.
Forgive me open wounds for pricking my finger.
My apologies for the minuet record, to those calling out from the
abyss.
My apologies to those in railway stations for sleeping comfortably
at five in the morning.
Pardon me hounded hope for laughing sometimes.
Pardon me deserts for not rushing in with a spoonful of water.
And you O hawk, the same bird for years in the same cage,
forever still and staring at the same spot,
absolve me even if you happened to be stuffed.
My apologies to the tree felled for four table legs.
My apologies to large questions for small answers.
Truth, do not pay me too much attention.
Solemnity, be magnanimous to me.
Endure, O mystery of being that I might pull threads from your
veil.

Soul, don’t blame me that I’ve got you so seldom.
My apologies to everything that I can’t be everywhere.
My apologies to all for not knowing how to be every man and
woman.
I know that as long as I live nothing can excuse me,
because I myself am my own obstacle.
Do not hold it against me, O speech, that I borrow weighty words,
and then labor to make them light.

APOLOGIZE, v.i. To lay the foundation for a future offence.