180 Heartbreak Quotes

“One is easily fooled by that which one loves.”

Moliere, “Le Tartuffe” (1664), IV. 3 in “Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations” by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, (pp. 182-183), 1922.

“In the absence of love, there is nothing worth fighting for.”

Elijah Wood

“There’s a sort of rage a man feels when he’s been deceived where he most trusted. It compares to no other anger.”

ORSON SCOTT CARD, “Treason”. Book by Orson Scott Card, 1988.

“What is the opposite of two? A lonely me, a lonely you.”

RICHARD WILBUR (2006). “Opposites, More Opposites, and a Few Differences”, p.12, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt – Heartbreak Quotes

“There is a time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go.”

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS (2008). “Camino Real”, p.59, New Directions Publishing

“In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”

Albert Camus, “The Unquiet Vision : Mirrors of Man in Existentialism” by Nathan A. Scott, (p. 116), 1969.

“The cruelest lies are often told in silence.”

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON (1903). “Virginibus Puerisque: An Essay in Four Parts”

“What right have I to grieve, who have not ceased to wonder?”

HENRY DAVID THOREAU (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1631, Delphi Classics

“When you love you should not think you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.”

KHALIL GIBRAN (2014). “The Prophet – Der Prophet”, p.24, Lulu.com

“The best way to mend a broken heart is time and girlfriends.”

Gwyneth Paltrow

“I hate the day, because it lendeth light

To see all things, but not my love to see.”

EDMUND SPENSER (1849). “The Works of Edmund Spenser: With Observations of His Life and Writings”, p.440

“The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.”

W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM, “A Writer’s Notebook” by W. Somerset Maugham, Country Life Press, (p. 13), 1949.

“The saddest thing about love, Joe, is that not only the love cannot last forever, but even the heartbreak is soon forgotten.”

WILLIAM FAULKNER (2014). “Soldier’s Pay”, p.319, Random House – Heartbreak quotes

“I hated her now with a hatred more fatal than indifference because it was the other side of love.”

AUGUST STRINDBERG (1967). “A Madman’s Defense”, Peter Smith Pub Incorporated

“Yet leave me not; yet, if thou wilt, be free; love me no more, but love my love of thee.”

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated)”, p.220, Delphi Classics

“I am thinking of you in my sleepless solitude tonight.”

Mariah Carey, Song: My All Stay A While, Album: Butterfly, 1997 – Heartbreak Quotes

“Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.”

AMBROSE BIERCE (2001). “The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary”, p.155, University of Georgia Press

“Every happiness is the child of a separation it did not think it could survive.”

RAINER MARIA RILKE (2005). “In Praise of Mortality: Selections from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus”, Riverhead Books (Hardcover)

“Sadness flies on the wings of the morning, and out of the heart of darkness comes the light.”

JEAN GIRAUDOUX (1974). “The Madwoman of Chaillot: Comedy in Two Acts”, p.65, Dramatists Play Service Inc – Heartbreak Quotes

“When we discuss those we love with those who do not love them, the end of love is near.”

MIGNON MCLAUGHLIN (2014). “Aperçus: The Aphorisms of Mignon McLaughlin”, p.23, BookBaby

“It is sheer good fortune to miss somebody long before they leave you.”

TONI MORRISON (1987). “Sula”

“You can’t give your heart to a wild thing.”

TRUMAN CAPOTE (2012). “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, p.74, Vintage – Heartbreak Quotes

“The act of quiet nighttime talking, illustrates for me more than anything else the curious alchemy of companionship.”

ELIZABETH GILBERT (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.456, A&C Black

“How else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in?”

OSCAR WILDE, The Ballad of Reading Gaol pt. 5, st. 14 (1898)

“Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday.”

THORNTON WILDER (2009). “The Bridge of San Luis Rey and Other Novels, 1926-1948” – Heartbreak Quotes

“Romance has been elegantly defined as the offspring of fiction and love.”

BENJAMIN DISRAELI (Earl of Beaconsfield) (1861). “Curiosities of literature”, p.119

“Sometimes life has a cruel sense of humor, giving you the thing you always wanted at the worst time possible.”

LISA KLEYPAS (2015). “The Travis Family Series, Books 1-3: Blue-Eyed Devil, Smooth Taking Stranger and Sugar Daddy”, p.549, St. Martin’s Press

“Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of your life’s expectations for happiness into the hands of one mere person. Keeping that going is hard work.”

ELIZABETH GILBERT (2010). “Committed: A Sceptic Makes Peace With Marriage”, p.32, A&C Black – Heartbreak Quotes

“When the karma of a relationship is done, only love remains. It’s safe. Let go.”

ELIZABETH GILBERT  (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.176, A&C Black

“There is no choice more intensely personal, after all, than whom you choose to marry; that choice tells us, to a large extent, who you are.”

ELIZABETH GILBERT (2010). “Committed: A Sceptic Makes Peace With Marriage”, p.25, A&C Black

“He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It’s his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry.”

MARKUS ZUSAK (2013). “The Book Thief: Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition”, p.531, RH Childrens Books – Heartbreak Quotes

“Every intimacy carries secreted somewhere below its initial lovely surfaces, the ever-coiled makings of complete catastrophe.”

ELIZABETH GILBERT (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.322, A&C Black

“I feel like someone after a deluge being asked to describe the way it was before the flood while I’m still plucking seaweed out of my hair.”

NORMAN RUSH (2013). “Mating”, p.16, Granta Books

“The end / of passion / may refashion / a friend.”

MONA VAN DUYN (1993). “Firefall: poems”, Alfred A. Knopf – Heartbreak Quotes

“Betrayal is the only truth that sticks.”

ARTHUR MILLER (2015). “After the Fall”, p.96, Bloomsbury Publishing

“A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income.”

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW (2012). “Man and Superman: A Comedy and a Philosophy”, p.237, The Floating Press

“Hearts are not had as a gift, But hearts are earned.”

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS (1931). “Later Poems”, p.140, Library of Alexandria

“If we must part for ever,

Give me but one kind word to think upon,

And please myself withal, whilst my heart’s breaking!”

THOMAS OTWAY, “Best Plays”.

“After all my erstwhile dear, my no longer cherished; Need we say it was not love, just because it perished?”

EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY (2003). “Edna St. Vincent Millay: Selected Poems”, p.59, Library of America

“We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love, never so forlornly unhappy as when we have lost our love object or its love.”

SIGMUND FREUD (1930). “Civilization and Its Discontents”, p.16, Courier Dover Publications – Heartbreak Quotes

“I prithee send me back my heart, Since I cannot have thine; For if from yours you will not part, Why, then, shouldst thou have mine?”

JOHN SUCKLING (1874). “The Poems, Plays and Other Remains of Sir John Suckling”, p.65

“I was nauseous and tingly all over. I was either in love or I had smallpox.”

WOODY ALLEN, “Annie Hall”. Comedy, Romance, 1977.

“While nearly every way of falling in love is kind, every way of getting out of love is cruel.”

J. E. BUCKROSE (1923). “What I Have Gathered” – Heartbreak Quotes

“What the heart has once owned and had, it shall never lose.”

HENRY WARD BEECHER (2009). “Star Papers”, p.184, Applewood Books

“O madam, my old heart is cracked, it’s cracked!”

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1992). “The Tragedy of King Lear”, p.145, Cambridge University Press

“Only the young and stupid are confident about sex and romance.”

ELIZABETH GILBERT (2007). “Eat Pray Love 10th-Anniversary Edition: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia”, p.451, Penguin – Heartbreak Quotes

“Perhaps some day I’ll crawl back home, beaten, defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorrow.”

SYLVIA PLATH (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.23, Anchor

“So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.”

E. A. Bucchianeri

“Have you ever been hurt and the place tries to heal a bit, and you just pull the scar off of it over and over again.”

Rosa Parks

“All in all I learned a lesson from it though. You never see it coming you just get to see it go.”

DRAKE, “Song: “Fireworks” (“Thank Me Later”)”. May 26, 2010.

“Even on my weakest days I get a little bit stronger”

SARA EVANS, Song: A Little Bit Stronger, Album: Stronger, 2011

“No man is rich enough to buy back his past.”

OSCAR WILDE (1959). “The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde”, p.32, Courier Corporation – Heartbreak Quotes

“To weep is to make less the depth of grief.”

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, 1592 Richard. Henry VI PartThree, act 2, sc.1, l.85-6.

“Said that I was your all and I believed you. That’s why it hurts to the core I gotta leave you.”

NICKI MINAJ, Song: Letcha Go

“Take away love and our earth is a tomb.”

ROBERT BROWNING (2013). “MEN AND WOMEN Songs of love and life”, p.55, Lulu.com – Heartbreak Quotes

“’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

ALFRED LORD TENNYSON, In Memoriam canto 27 (1850) See Congreve 7

“I felt her absence. it was like waking up one day with no teeth in your mouth. you wouldn’t need to run to the mirror to know they were gone.”

JAMES DASHNER (2015). “The Scorch Trials Movie Tie-in Edition (Maze Runner, Book Two)”, p.35, Delacorte Press

“I realize I waited too long but please don’t move on.”

DRAKE, Song: Sooner Than Later, Album: So Far Gone

“Turn your wounds into wisdom.”

OPRAH WINFREY (2017). “The Wisdom of Sundays: Life-Changing Insights and Inspirational Conversations”, p.120, Pan Macmillan

“To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose, the next best.”

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY (1850). “The History of Pendennis: His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy”, p.9

“We always believe our first love is our last, and our last love our first.”

GEORGE JOHN WHYTE-MELVILLE (1875). “Katerfelto: A Story of Exmoor”, p.154 – Heartbreak Quotes

“You succeeded at your attempts to make me Need you desperately to vindicate me.”

NICKI MINAJ, Song: Catch Me, Album: Gold, 2010

“And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.”

KHALIL GIBRAN (2014). “The Prophet – Der Prophet”, p.18, Lulu.com

“Those who don’t know how to weep with their whole heart, don’t know how to laugh either.”

GOLDA MEIR, Interview with Oriana Fallaci, Ms. Magazine, April 1973.

“When you break up, your whole identity is shattered. It’s like death.”

DENNIS QUAID, “Quaid: Split From Ryan Was ‘Like Death'”. W Magazine Interview, abcnews.go.com. July 19, 2001.

“After the break up of the municipality and the loss of his income my father lost health and spirits.”

CATHERINE HELEN SPENCE (2005). “Ever Yours, C.H. Spence: Catherine Helen Spence’s An Autobiography (1825-1910), Diary (1894) and Some Correspondence (1894-1910)”, p.40, Wakefield Press

“Losing the future is the best thing that ever happened to me.”

MARILYN FRENCH (2013). “A Season in Hell: A Memoir”, p.245, Open Road Media – Heartbreak Quotes

“The sweetest part of being a couple is sharing your life with someone else. But my life, evidently, had not been good enough to share.”

Charlaine Harris (2003). “Club Dead: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel”, p.23, Penguin

“Our story has three parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end. And although this is the way all stories unfold, I still can’t believe that ours didn’t go on forever.”

NICHOLAS SPARKS, “Dear John”. Book by, August 7, 2007.

“Like some wines our love could neither mature nor travel.”

GRAHAM GREENE (1966). “THE COMEDIANS”

“When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”

KHALIL GIBRAN (2014). “The Prophet – Der Prophet”, p.48, Lulu.com

“You can’t say you’re happy either. You don’t even smile for me.”

DRAKE, Song: Lets Call It Off, Album: So Far Gone, 2009

“We need never be ashamed of our tears.”

CHARLES DICKENS (2016). “Great Expectations”, Xist Publishing – Heartbreak Quotes

“I haven’t slept in days. And me and my latest girl agreed to go our separate ways.”

DRAKE, Song: Unforgettable, Album: Thank Me Later, 2010

“Stuart needs “space” and “time,” as if this were physics and not a human relationship.”

Kathryn Stockett (2009). “The Help”, p.291, Penguin

“I can’t write another breakup record. That would be a real cliche.”

ADELE, “The year of Adele”. “60 minutes” with Anderson Cooper, February 15, 2012. – Heartbreak Quotes

“That’s the trouble with caring about anybody, you begin to feel overprotective. Then you begin to feel crowded.”

John Updike (2010). “Rabbit Redux”, p.19, Random House

“The male is always the pawn in a romantic comedy. Come together, break up, go chase her, get her, roll credits. That’s what happens in all of them.”

MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY, “Matthew McConaughey: from himbo to highbrow”. Interview with Andrew Pulver, June 28, 2012.

“You’re everything I thought you never were and nothing like I thought you could’ve been.”

BEYONCE KNOWLES, Song: No-broken Hearted Girl – Quotes about Heartbreak

“Love: a grave mental disease.”

PLATO, Wit and Wisdom of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle: Being a Treasury of Thousands of Glorious, Inspiring and Imperishable Thoughts, Views and Observations of the Three Great Greek Philosophers, Classified Under about Four Hundred Subjects for Comparative Study”

“Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it and it darts away.”

DOROTHY PARKER (2004). “Dorothy Parker in Her Own Words”, Taylor Trade Publishing

“Mad cause he aint like me… Oh you mad cause nobody ever did it like me.”

DRAKE, Song: Shot for Me, Album: Take Care, 2011 – Heartbreak Quotes

“Chords that were broken will vibrate once more.”

FANNY CROSBY (1915). “Fanny Crosby’s Story of Ninety-four Years”

“Breakups hurt like a motherf*#ker, but they are not the end of the world. The pain is temporary, and if handled properly, they can even be life-changing.”

GREG BEHRENDT (2009). “It’s Called a Breakup Because It’s Broken: The Smart Girl’s Breakup Buddy”, p.3, HarperCollins UK

“The time it takes to feel better about a breakup is directly proportional to the time it takes to feel better about yourself.”

GREG BEHRENDT (2005). “It’s Called a Breakup Because It’s Broken: The Smart Girl’s Break-Up Buddy”, p.33, Harmony – Heartbreak Quotes

“I hate the day, because it lendeth light

To see all things, but not my love to see.”

EDMUND SPENSER (1849). “The Works of Edmund Spenser: With Observations of His Life and Writings”, p.440 – Heartbreak Quotes

“Failed relationships can be described as so much wasted make-up.”

MARIAN KEYES (1995). “Watermelon”, Dufour Editions

“If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.”

ERNEST HEMINGWAY (2002). “Death in the Afternoon”, p.100, Simon and Schuster – Heartbreak Quotes

“I know my heart will never be the same But I’m telling myself I’ll be okay”

SARA EVANS, Song: A Little Bit Stronger, Album: Stronger, 2011

“I think the best post-breakup album is The Strokes’ first album. It’s just fun.”

PATRICK CARNEY, “The GQA: The Black Keys”. Interview with Mark Anthony Green, March 28, 2012.