Heartbreaking quotes
A collection of quotes on the topic of sad quotes, heartbreaking, heart, love.
Best heartbreaking quotes
“You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
Source: You Learn by Living (1960), p. 29–30
Context: You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." … You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
“It's easier to build strong children then repair broken men.”
Variant: It is easier to build strong men, than to repair broken ones.
Source: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
“There is no remedy for love but to love more.”
Variant: The only remedy for love is to love more.
“The friendship that can cease has never been real.”
Amicitia quae desinere potest vera numquam fuit.
Letter 3
Letters
“Sadness flies away on the wings of time.”
“The course of true love never did run smooth.”
Lysander, Act I, scene i.
Source: A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595)
“The heart will break, but broken live on.”
Variant: And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on.
Heartbreaking quotes
“Keep smiling, because life is a beautiful thing and there's so much to smile about.”
“The good times of today are the sad thoughts of tomorrow.”
Variant: The good times of today are the sad thoughts of tomorrow.
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.”
1960s, The Trumpet of Conscience (1967)
Variant: In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
“Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes, it is letting go.”
“It's sad when someone you know becomes someone you knew.”
Variant: It is sad when someone you know becomes someone you knew.
“There's a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go.”
“Everybody said, "Follow your heart". I did, it got broken”
“Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.”
The Prophet (1923)
“It is sad not to be loved, but it is much sadder not to be able to love.”
To a Young Writer
“Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.”
“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable.”
The character "Rose Walker" in The Sandman #65
Context: Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up a whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life... You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' or 'how very perceptive' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love.
"In Blackwater Woods"
American Primitive (1983)
Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1
Source: Hearts in Atlantis (1999)
“Sometimes things fall apart so that better things can fall together.”
Variant: Sometimes good things fall apart so that better things can fall together.
Source: You Learn by Living (1960), p. 29–30
Context: You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." … You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
“It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), Love has always passed me by
“The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end.”
Book 4, chapter 1. Often misquoted as "The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can never end".
Books, Coningsby (1844), Henrietta Temple (1837)
“I have not broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.”
Source: Wuthering Heights
“I am hopelessly in love with a memory.
An echo from another time, another place.”
“Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. ”
“If there is a good will, there is great way.”
Source: Water Bound
“Breathing is hard. When you cry so much, it makes you realize that breathing is hard.”
Source: Love Is the Higher Law
“This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.”
Source: Eat, Pray, Love
“The reason it hurts so much to separate is because our souls are connected.”
“You know, a heart can be broken, but it keeps on beating, just the same.”
Variant: You know, a heart can be broken, but it still keeps a-beating just the same.
Source: Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
“The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.”
Source: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
“Pain is always emotional. Fear and depression keep constant company with chronic hurting.”
Source: The Shaking Woman, or A History of My Nerves
“It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses, we must plant more roses.”
“We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.”
“Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.”
“The question is—what is the question?”
Leonard Susskind, The Black Hole War (2008), chapter 13
“Hearts are not to be had as a gift, hearts are to be earned.”
“What is the opposite of two? A lonely me, a lonely you.”
"Opposites" (1973)
Source: Opposites, More Opposites, and a Few Differences
“My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, or else my heart concealing it will break.”
Source: The Taming of the Shrew
“Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, Pain of love lasts a lifetime.”
“Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.”
Attributed to Irving as early as 1883. [Hit and miss : a story of real life, Angie Stewart, Manly, Chicago, J.L. Regan, 1883, i, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/osu.32435018229575?urlappend=%3Bseq=7] However, it does not seem to appear in Irving's known works. Other citations from the same year leave the quotation unattributed. [Henry S. (ed.), Clubb, The Peacemaker and Court of Arbitration, Volume 1, Universal Peace Union, 1883, 125, Philadelphia, https://books.google.com/books?id=Uu84AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA125] [The Australian Women's Magazine and Domestic Journal, Vol. 2 No. 2 (May 1883), 1883, Melbourne, 435, https://books.google.com/books?id=mq0sAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA435]. A similar passage is found in a pseudonymous novel published two years earlier in 1881: "Julia knew that sacrifices to patience are not in vain. Although they often do not produce the happiness for which they are made, they will, always, flow back and soften and purify the heart of the one who makes them". [Illma, Or, Which was Wife?, Miss, M.L.A., Cornwell & Johnson, 1881, 239, New York, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/osu.32435017658592?urlappend=%3Bseq=245]
Disputed
“Hearts are breakable and I think even when you heal, you're never what you were before.”
Source: City of Fallen Angels, character Isabelle
Source: Bridge to Terabithia
“I know my heart will never be the same
But I'm telling myself I'll be okay”
“To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.”
1920s, Marriage and Morals (1929)
“I like the saying "The world is as you are."”
The Circle, p. 21
Catching the Big Fish (2006)
Context: I like the saying "The world is as you are." And I think films are as you are. That's why, although the frames of a film are always the same — the same number, in the same sequence, with the same sounds — every screening is different. The difference is sometimes subtle but it's there. It depends on the audience. There is a circle that goes from the audience to the film and back. Each person is looking and thinking and feeling and coming up with his or her own sense of things. And it's probably different from what I fell in love with.
So you don’t know how it's going to hit people. But if you thought about how it's going to hit people, or if it's going to hurt someone, or if it's going to do this or do that, then you would have to stop making films. You just do these things that you fall in love with, and you never know what's going to happen.
“Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull.”
“It's just a matter of willpower. The day you decide it's over, it's over. You never get over it.”
Source: This Is How You Lose Her
“The cure for a broken heart is simple, my lady. A hot bath and a good night's sleep.”
Source: Mary Queen of Scotland and The Isles
“I did the searching and remembering, she did the disappearing and the forgetting.”
Source: My Name Is Memory
“For my part, I prefer my heart to be broken. It is so lovely, dawn-kaleidoscopic within the crack.”
“The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.”
Variant: Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to
wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.
Source: The Spectator Bird
“She had loved him for such a long time, she thought. How was it that she did now know him at all?”
Source: Clockwork Prince
“We tiptoed around each other like heartbreaking new friends.”
Source: On the Road
“Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.”
"Dreams," from the anthology Golden Slippers: An Anthology of Negro Poetry for Young Readers, ed. Arna Bontemps (1941)
“Part of me aches at the thought of her being so close yet so untouchable.”
Source: Dear John
“There's beauty, heartbreaking beauty, everywhere.”
"The Ancient Dust", page 153
Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside (1984)
Source: The Bridges of Madison County
Source: The Book Thief
“Only time can heal your broken heart. Just as only time can heal his broken arms and legs.”
“Always, always, always believe in yourself, because if you don't, then who will, sweetie”
Variant: Keep trying, hold on, and always, always, always believe in yourself, because if you don't, then who will?
Hyperion http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5436, Bk. III, Ch. IV (1839).
Variant: Believe me, every heart has its secret sorrows, which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad.
Context: "Ah! this beautiful world!" said Flemming, with a smile. "Indeed, I know not what to think of it. Sometimes it is all gladness and sunshine, and Heaven itself lies not far off. And then it changes suddenly; and is dark and sorrowful, and clouds shut out the sky. In the lives of the saddest of us, there are bright days like this, when we feel as if we could take the great world in our arms and kiss it. Then come the gloomy hours, when the fire will neither burn on our hearths nor in our hearts; and all without and within is dismal, cold, and dark. Believe me, every heart has its secret sorrows, which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad."
“The difference between friendship and love is how much you can hurt each other.”
Variant: There were things I wanted to tell him. But I knew they would hurt him, so I buried them, and let them hurt me. (p. 181)
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), p. 181
Source: For Darkness Shows the Stars
“Stab the body and it heals, but injure the heart and the wound lasts a lifetime.”
“Come back. Even as a shadow, even as a dream.”
“Just because you fail once doesn't mean you're gonna fail at everything.”
“Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.
- Wizard”
Source: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
“but back then, in those first days, I was so alone that every day was like eating my own heart.”
Source: This Is How You Lose Her
Source: The Van Alen Legacy
“You may be hurt if you love too much, but you will live in misery if you love too little.”
Source: Napoleon Hill's Positive Action Plan: 365 Meditations For Making Each Day a Success
“The discovery that heartbreak is indeed heartbreaking consoles us about our humanity.”
Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin