119 Meaningful Quotes about Pain in Relationships 💔

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Plus, advice from experts about overcoming heartbreak

Co-authored by Elvina Lui, MFT and Dev Murphy, MA

Last Updated: October 27, 2025 Fact Checked

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• Relatable Quotes
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• Short
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• Breakups
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• Unrequited Love
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• Moving On
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• Healing from Heartbreak

|Show more |Show less

"Love hurts," as the band Nazareth famously (and rightly) said. When you're navigating heartache, one thing that can soothe a broken heart is reading quotes about pain in love. So we've compiled a long list of our favorite quotes and song lyrics about breakups, unrequited love, and moving on in relationships. We've also spoken to relationship experts for their advice on overcoming heartache—because while things may seem impossibly hard right now, there's always a light at the end of the tunnel.

Quotes about Heartbreak

As marriage and family therapist Elvina Lui, MFT reminds us, "When you open your heart and love, obviously, it will hurt deeply when you lose that. That is what makes love beautiful." Here are some of our favorite quotes about heartbreak and love lost:

• "It hurts to love. It's like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin." —Susan Sontag, Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947–1963
• "Bittersweet memories / is all I'm taking with me. / So goodbye, don't cry. / We both know I'm not what you need." —Dolly Parton, "I Will Always Love You"
• "Will anybody ever love me? / For good reasons, without grievance, not for sport." —Sufjan Stevens, "Will Anybody Ever Love Me?"
• "What business had I to think so much of one that never thought of me?" —Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey
• "We met at the wrong time. That's what I keep telling myself anyway." —Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

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Section 1 of 6:

Relatable Quotes about Pain in Love

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1. 
   Pain in love is inevitable—but that doesn't mean it's easy to endure. Sometimes, reading quotes from books, songs, movies, and famous figures can ease the pain of intense heartache…and remind us we're not alone in our grief.

   • "It hurts to love. It's like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin." —Susan Sontag, Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947–1963
   • "It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." —Alfred, Lord Tennyson
   • "Will anybody ever love me? / For good reasons, without grievance, not for sport. / Will anybody ever love me? / In every season, pledge allegiance to my heart." —Sufjan Stevens, "Will Anybody Ever Love Me?"
   • "Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source." —Anaïs Nin
   • "When love is lost, do not bow your head in sadness; instead, keep your head up high and gaze into heaven for that is where your broken heart has been sent to heal." —Anonymous
   • "Sometimes, the only way to heal our hearts is to give them to the one who broke them." —Anonymous
   • "I really feel that I'm losin' my best friend. / I can't believe this could be the end. / It looks as though you're lettin' go / And if it's real, well, I don't want to know." —No Doubt, "Don't Speak"
   • "True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen." —François de La Rochefoucauld
   • "There is a time for departure, even when there is no certain place to go." —Tennessee Williams
   • "The saddest thing about love is that not only the love cannot last forever, but even the heartbreak is soon forgotten." —William Faulkner
   • "Letting go means to come to the realization that some people are a part of your history, but not a part of your destiny." —Steve Maraboli
   • "There is an ocean of silence between us… and I am drowning in it." —Ranata Suzuki
   • "Loneliness will sit over our roofs with brooding wings." —Bram Stoker, Dracula
   • "The emotion that can break your heart is sometimes the very one that heals it." —Nicholas Sparks
   • "The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain." —Kahlil Gibran
   • "The worst kind of hurt is betrayal, because it means someone was willing to hurt you just to make themselves feel better." —Unknown
   • "It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend." —William Blake
   • "Betrayal is the only truth that sticks." —Arthur Miller
   • "For there to be betrayal, there would have to have been trust first." —Suzanne Collins
   • "There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery." —Dante Alighieri
   • "The eternal quest of the human being is to shatter his loneliness." —Norman Cousins
   • "It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness." —Chuck Palahniuk
   • "Goodbye, evergreen. / You know I love you, / But everything heaven sent / Must burn out in the end." —Sufjan Stevens, "Goodbye Evergreen"
   • "Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars." —Kahlil Gibran

   Meet the wikiHow Experts

   Elvina Lui, MFT is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist specializing in relationship counseling based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

   Kelli Miller, LCSW, MSW is a Psychotherapist based in Los Angeles, California. Kelli specializes in individual and couples therapy focusing on relationships, depression, anxiety, sexuality, communication, parenting, and more.

   Rachel Eddins, M.Ed., LPC-S is a Licensed Professional Counselor and the Executive Director of Eddins Counseling Group. She specializes in working with clients with anxiety and depression, relationship issues, and career obstacles.

   Lia Huynh, LMFT is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist with over 20 years of experience. She specializes in providing counseling services for individuals, couples, Christians, and Asian Americans.

   Amy Chan is a Relationship Coach based in New York, New York. She is the Founder of Renew Breakup Bootcamp, a retreat that takes a scientific and spiritual approach to healing after the end of a relationship.
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Section 2 of 6:

Short Quotes about Pain in Love

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1. 
   Even a brief quote can provide some healing. You don't always have time to read a whole novel about pain in love, but thankfully, even a few words can offer comfort in times of sorrow and despair.

   • "Don't be so amazing or I'll miss you too much. / I felt something that I had never touched." —Bright Eyes, "Lime Tree"
   • "Love is so short, forgetting is so long." —Pablo Neruda
   • "The heart was made to be broken." —Oscar Wilde
   • "Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop." —H. L. Mencken
   • "The hottest love has the coldest end." —Socrates
   • "You can’t give your heart to a wild thing." —Truman Capote
   • "Love is an endless act of forgiveness. Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom." —Maya Angelou
   • "Hearts are not had as a gift, but hearts are earned." —W.B. Yeats
   • "Pain is never permanent.” — Saint Teresa of Ávila
   • “Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.” — Victor Hugo
   • "Love is the hardest habit to break, and the most difficult to satisfy." —Drew Barrymore
   • "It is sad not to love, but it is much sadder not to be able to love." —Miguel de Unamuno
   • "The soul would have no rainbow if the eyes had no tears." —John Vance Cheney
   • "Tears come from the heart and not from the brain." —Leonardo da Vinci
   • "The pain of the mind is worse than the pain of the body." —Publilius Syrus
   • "Hearts will never be practical until they are made unbreakable." —L. Frank Baum
   • "Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go." —Hermann Hesse
   • "Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs." —William Shakespeare
   • "Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds." —William Shakespeare
   • "The wound is the place where the light enters you." —Rumi
   • "I did the searching and remembering, she did the disappearing and the forgetting." —Ann Brashares, My Name Is Memory
   • "I wish I knew how to quit you." —Brokeback Mountain
   • "Love is the most beautiful of dreams and the worst of nightmares." —Aman Jassal
   • "Love begins with a smile, grows with a kiss, and ends with a teardrop." —Anonymous
   • "Pleasure of love lasts but a moment. Pain of love lasts a lifetime." —Bette Davis
   • "Love can sometimes be magic. But magic can sometimes just be an illusion." —Javan
   • "To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose, the next best." —William Makepeace Thackeray
   • "My life, at its best, is misery." —Dracula, Bram Stoker's Dracula

Section 3 of 6:

Quotes about Breakups

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1. 
   When you're navigating the end of a relationship, a few words about experiencing loss, regret, and heartache can make all the difference. Song lyrics, book quotes, and words from celebrated figures may help you remember that though your heartache feels acute and so unique, there are people who know what you're going through.

   • "There were days when the sun was so cruel that all the tears turned to dust and I knew my eyes were drying up forever." —Celine Dion, "It's All Coming Back to Me Now"
   • "And I know we weren't perfect but I've never felt this way for no one / And I just can't imagine how you could be so okay now that I'm gone. / Guess you didn't mean what you wrote in that song about me / 'Cause you said forever, now I drive alone past your street." —Olivia Rodrigo, "Driver's License"
   • "We met at the wrong time. That's what I keep telling myself anyway." —Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
   • "So you are tired of me / So rest your head / Turning back all that we had in our life / While I return to death." —Sufjan Stevens, "So You Are Tired"
   • "Un-break my heart, / Say you'll love me again, / Undo this hurt you caused / When you walked out the door." —Toni Braxton, "Un-Break My Heart"
   • "Bittersweet memories / is all I'm taking with me. / So goodbye, don't cry. / We both know I'm not what you need." —Dolly Parton, "I Will Always Love You"
   • "Sometimes, the person you’d take a bullet for ends up being the one behind the gun." —Anonymous
   • "Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation." —Kahlil Gibran
   • "Don’t cry when the sun is gone, because the tears won’t let you see the stars." —Violeta Parra
   • "What do you do when the one who broke your heart is the only one who can fix it?" —Anonymous
   • "Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye." —H. Jackson Brown Jr.
   • "You flew off with the wings of my heart and left me flightless." —Stelle Atwater
   • "The heart will break, but broken live on." —Lord Byron
   • "A broken heart is just the growing pains necessary so that you can love more completely when the real thing comes along." —J.S.B. Morse
   • "You can close your eyes to the things you do not want to see, but you cannot close your heart to the things you do not want to feel." —Chester Bennington
   • "It’s amazing how quickly your mood can change, how deep your heart can sink and how much one person can affect you." —Anonymous
   • "The emotion that can break your heart is sometimes the very one that heals it." —Nicholas Sparks
   • "Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies." —Aristotle
   • "It hurts to breathe because every breath I take proves I can’t live without you." —Anonymous
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Section 4 of 6:

Quotes about Unrequited Love

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   Loving someone who doesn't love you back is one of the most acute pains you can experience. On top of grieving the loss of the person you love, you may be feeling particularly unlovable and even silly for putting yourself out there. But as Lui reminds us, "For you to love deeply and feel deeply, you are braver than people who guard themselves. They are the ones who are cowards, obsessed with not getting hurt; they are missing out. When you open your heart and love, obviously, it will hurt deeply when you lose that. That is what makes love beautiful."

   • "What business had I to think so much of one that never thought of me?" —Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey
   • "Must I go bound while you go free? / Must I love a man who doesn't love me? / Must I be born with so little art / As to love a man who'll break my heart?" —Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince
   • "The hardest thing in life is to watch the person you love, love someone else." —Unknown
   • "The greatest pain that comes from love is loving someone you can never have." —Unknown
   • "To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves." —Federico García Lorca, Blood Wedding
   • “Unrequited love is the infinite curse of a lonely heart.” —Christina Westover
   • “Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.” —Charles M. Schulz
   • "If only the strength of the love that people feel when it is reciprocated could be as intense and obsessive as the love we feel when it is not, then marriages would be truly made in heaven." —Ben Elton, Stark
   • "Unrequited love does not die; it's only beaten down to a secret place where it hides, curled and wounded. For some unfortunates, it turns bitter and mean, and those who come after pay the price for the hurt done by the one who came before." —Elle Newmark, The Book of Unholy Mischief
   • "Every broken heart has screamed at one time or another: 'Why can't you see who I truly am?'" —Shannon L. Alder
   • "When unrequited love is the most expensive thing on the menu, sometimes you settle for the daily special." —Miranda Kenneally, Catching Jordan
   • "Unrequited love is a ridiculous state, and it makes those in it behave ridiculously." —Cassandra Clare
   • "One is never too old to yearn." —Italian Proverb
   • "Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart." —Washington Irving
   • "A mighty pain to love it is, / And 'tis a pain that pain to miss; / But of all pains, the greatest pain / It is to love, but love in vain." —Abraham Cowley
   • "Unrequited love is the infinite curse of a lonely heart." —Christina Westover
   • "I realized that one might love him secretly with no hope of encouragement, which can be very enjoyable for the young or inexperienced." —Barbara Pym, Excellent Women
   • "But that afternoon he asked himself, with his infinite capacity for illusion, if such pitiless indifference might not be a subterfuge for hiding the torments of love." —Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
   • "Let no one who loves be called unhappy. Even love unreturned has its rainbow." —James Matthew Barrie
   • "Love that remains longest in your heart is the one that is not returned." —Unknown
   • "We only said goodbye with words. I died a hundred times. / You go back to her and I go back to, I go back to us." —Amy Winehouse, "Back to Black"

Section 5 of 6:

Quotes about Moving On

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1. 
   It may not seem like it at first, but healing will happen. "Sometimes it's hard to see the light," relationship counselor Kelli Miller, LCSW, MSW acknowledges, "but you will be okay. It may not seem like it initially, but you will be okay without that person and that relationship, and you will be able to build another life as a stronger person."

   • "I believe in some blending of hope and sunshine sweetening the worst lots. I believe that this life is not all; neither the beginning nor the end. I believe while I tremble; I trust while I weep." —Charlotte Brontë, Villette
   • "Healing takes courage, and we all have courage, even if we have to dig a little to find it." —Tori Amos
   • "You can’t truly heal unless you’re willing to acknowledge the pain." —Unknown
   • "The only journey is the one within." —Rainer Maria Rilke
   • "It’s not the strength of the body that counts, but the strength of the spirit." —J.R.R. Tolkien
   • “What happens when people open their hearts? They get better.” — Haruki Murakami
   • "You can’t reach for anything new if your hands are still full of yesterday’s junk." —Louise Smith
   • "Turn your wounds into wisdom." —Oprah Winfrey
   • "Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment." —Buddha
   • "You don’t have to forget the past, but you cannot let it define your future." —Unknown
   • "Nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to know." —Pema Chödrön
   • "The human capacity for burden is like bamboo—far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance." —Jodi Picoult
   • "Some things are just never meant to be, no matter how much we wish they were." —Unknown
   • "Courage is the power to let go of the familiar." —Raymond Lindquist
   • "Every sunset is an opportunity to reset. Every sunrise begins with new eyes." —Richie Norton
   • "Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it." —Helen Keller
   • "To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you." —Lewis B. Smedes
   • "When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves." —Viktor Frankl
   • "Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future." —Paul Boese
   • "There is no love without forgiveness, and there is no forgiveness without love." —Bryant H. McGill
   • "You must find the place inside yourself where nothing is impossible." —Deepak Chopra
   • "Healing begins where the wound was made." —Alice Walker
   • "Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness." —Thich Nhat Hanh
   • "Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die." —Anne Lamott
   • "What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." —Ralph Waldo Emerson
   • "Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant." —Robert Louis Stevenson
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Section 6 of 6:

Healing from Heartbreak

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1. 1
   Feel your feelings. "Don’t be afraid to feel your emotional pain—hurt, sadness, even anger," advises licensed professional counselor Rachel Eddins, M.Ed., LPC-S. "Identifying our feelings helps to regulate them and prevents you from pushing down your feelings in an unhealthy way. Soothe your hurt feelings and give yourself compassion for what you are going through."
2. 2
   Distract yourself. While feeling the tough feelings is essential to the healing process, marriage and family therapist Lia Huynh, LMFT stresses that you shouldn't be in your emotions constantly: "I think the best thing to do is to balance out processing and feeling feelings, and distraction. You need time to process the grief…. However, you can’t be in that state all the time. You will fall into despair." Give yourself (and your heart) a break with some healthy distractions now and then.

   • Relationship coach Amy Chan recommends, "Get your feel-good chemicals from spending time with friends, community, and self-care. Get your endorphins going by exercising (hey, this is a great time to try out that new dance class you've been considering)."
3. 3
   Invest in yourself. Whether you're navigating a tough time in your relationship or healing from a breakup, Chan strongly advises taking time for yourself: "Take that class you've wondered about, invest in deepening friendships that you might have left on the back burner, take that solo trip that excites you and scares you simultaneously, take that dream you've been procrastinating on, and use your extra energy and time to focus on making that into a reality."
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