How to comfort someone in emotional pain quotes

Usually, when people talk about love, the conversations focus on soulmates, kismet connections, and idealized romance. But as many have experienced, opening your heart to love can also open yourself up to hurt and heartache. Prepare to feel seen—these 90 sad love quotes are sure to stir up a lot of feelings as Valentine's Day approaches, regardless of your current relationship status.

Breakups, unrequited love, being ghosted, losing someone too soon, having a secret crush, divorce, unmet expectations in a relationship—there are many examples of attachment and tender affections ultimately coming to an end. And when the pull that we feel toward someone is not reciprocated, stops abruptly or fizzles out, it can lead to many questions and emotional pain.

Memories of what was and dreams of what you'd hoped for may flood through your mind unceasingly or pop up unexpectedly even years later. Sometimes, after experiencing such an ordeal, it helps to vent and cry and let it all out to those closest to you. Other times, it feels impossible to find words to explain how you're feeling and what you're currently going through.

But although the sorrow and heartbreak can feel isolating, you are not alone—these 90 sad love quotes will speak to your soul and give you words for the collective ache that arises from the stinging absence of what had originally been envisioned. And in time, you will be able to take steps forward to heal and begin again!

90 Sad Love Quotes

1. "You kept me like a secret, but I kept you like an oath." — Taylor Swift

2. "When you loved someone and had to let them go, there will always be that small part of yourself that whispers, 'What was it that you wanted and why didn't you fight for it?'" — Shannon L. Alder

3. "My heart might be bruised, but it will recover and become capable of seeing beauty of life once more. It's happened before, it will happen again, I'm sure. When someone leaves, it's because someone else is about to arrive--I'll find love again.” ― Paulo Coelho

4. "I've been heartbroken. I've broken hearts. That's part of life, and it's part of figuring out who you are so you can find the right partner." — Heidi Klum

5. "Maybe true love isn't out there for me, but I can sublimate my loneliness with the notion that true love is out there for someone." — Roxane Gay

Related: 101 of the Best Breakup Quotes

6. "It hurts to let go. Sometimes it seems the harder you try to hold on to something or someone the more it wants to getaway. You feel like some kind of criminal for having felt, for having wanted. For having wanted to be wanted. It confuses you, because you think that your feelings were wrong and it makes you feel so small because it's so hard to keep it inside when you let it out and it doesn't come back. You're left so alone that you can't explain." — Henry Rollins

7. "I know my heart will never be the same, but I'm telling myself I'll be okay.” ― Sara Evans

8. "I got my heart's desire, and there my troubles began.” ― Lev Grossman

9. "I'm so scared of dying without ever being really seen. Can you understand?” ― David Foster Wallace

10. "Maybe we tried to leave as much memories of ourselves with each other because we knew one day we wouldn't be together anymore.” ― Makoto Shinkai

11. "Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source." — Anaïs Nin

12. "After that breakup, I just wanna be a ghost, completely anonymous." — Before Sunrise

13. "The scariest thing about distance is you don't know if they'll miss you or forget about you." — Nicholas Sparks

14. "'You see,' she concluded miserably, 'when I can call like that to him across space--I belong to him. He doesn't love me--he never will--but I belong to him.'” ― L.M. Montgomery

15. "Every intimacy carries secreted somewhere below its initial lovely surfaces, the ever-coiled makings of complete catastrophe.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert

Related: Stages of a Breakup

16. "'I told him I loved him,' she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. 'And he just said it wasn’t enough.' Her eyes were wide and bleak. 'How am I supposed to live with that?'" — Jojo Moyes

17. "You cannot convince people to love you. This is an absolute rule. No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give it. Real love moves freely in both directions. Don’t waste your time on anything else.” — Cheryl Strayed

18. "You know it's love when all you want is that person to be happy, even if you're not part of their happiness." — Julia Roberts

19. "The dreams break into a million tiny pieces. The dream dies. Which leaves you with a choice: you can settle for reality, or you can go off, like a fool, and dream another dream.” — Nora Ephron

20. "The shattering of a heart when being broken is the loudest quiet ever." — Carroll Bryant

21. "The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too." — Ernest Hemingway

22. "Hearts live by being wounded." — Oscar Wilde

23. "Pleasure of love lasts but a moment. Pain of love lasts a lifetime." — Bette Davis

24. "It is so difficult in the world for people to find love, true love." — LaToya Jackson

25. "It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages." — Friedrich Nietzsche

Related: How to Get Over Someone

26. "Everyone wanted to believe that endless love was possible. She'd believed in it once too, back when she was eighteen. But she knew that love was messy, just like life. It took turns that people couldn't foresee or even understand, leaving a long trail of regret in its wake. And almost always, those regrets led to the kinds of what if questions that could never be answered." — Nicholas Sparks

27. "Perhaps someday 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

28. "I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year.” ― Edna St. Vincent Millay

29. "Real relationships are the product of time spent, which is why so many of us have so few of them.” ― Craig D. Lounsbrough

30. "I used to think you were the best thing that happened, but now I think you might maybe be the worst thing." — Silver Linings Playbook

31. "I think you have to pay for love with bitter tears." — Edith Piaf

32. "We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness.” ― Albert Schweitzer

33. "Women explore for eternity in the vast garden of sacrifice." — Before Midnight

34. "Loss alone is but the wounding of a heart; it is memory that makes it our ruin.” — Brian Ruckley

35. "This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something." — Elizabeth Gilbert

Related: 100 Best Breakup Songs

36. "I’d rather love a million times and have my heart broken every time, than hold a permanently empty heart forever." — H.C. Paye

37. "That's all you can do in this world, no matter how strong the current beats against you, or how heavy your burden, or how tragic your love story. You keep going.” ― Robyn Schneider

38. "There are many ways of breaking a heart. Stories were full of hearts broken by love, but what really broke a heart was taking away its dream—whatever that dream might be.” — Pearl S. Buck

39. "Love is the hardest habit to break, and the most difficult to satisfy." — Drew Barrymore

40. "I know someday you'll have a beautiful life, I know you'll be a star in somebody else's sky—but why, why, why can't it be, oh can't it be mine?" — Pearl Jam

41. "Looking back, I have this to regret, that too often when I loved, I did not say so." — Ray Stannard Baker

42. "He nods, as if to acknowledge that endings are almost always a little sad, even when there is something to look forward to on the other side.” — Emily Giffin

43. "The opposite of love is not hate; it's indifference." — Elie Wiesel

44. "Oh, I hope you're happy, but not like how you were with me. I'm selfish, I know, I can't let you go. So find someone great, but don't find no one better. I hope you're happy, but don't be happier." — Olivia Rodrigo

45. "I will never regret you or say I wish I’d never met you. Because once upon a time you were exactly what I needed.” — Bob Marley

Related: How to Move on From a Relationship

46. "When you struggle with your partner, you are struggling with yourself. Every fault you see in them touches a denied weakness in yourself.” ― Deepak Chopra

47. "Even being alone--it's better than being with a lover and feeling lonely." — Before Sunset

48. "Change isn't always for the best." — Nicholas Sparks

49. "Yes, I was infatuated with you: I am still. No one has ever heightened such a keen capacity of physical sensation in me. I cut you out because I couldn't stand being a passing fancy. Before I give my body, I must give my thoughts, my mind, my dreams. And you weren't having any of those." — Sylvia Plath

50. "Unrequited love is the infinite curse of a lonely heart.” ― Christina Westover

51. "There are so many things that demand to be said. Where did you go? Do you ever think about me? You've ruined me. Are you okay? But of course, I can't say any of that.” ― Gayle Forman

52. "That's when I finally got it. I finally understood. It wasn't the thought that counted. It was the actual execution that mattered, the showing up for somebody. The intent behind it wasn't enough. Not for me. Not anymore. It wasn't enough to know that deep down, he loved me. You had to actually say it to somebody, show them you cared. And he just didn't. Not enough.” ― Jenny Han

53. "You don’t need those people. By stepping aside, they’ve done you a favor. Because what you’ve got left after the fools have departed are the old souls and the true hearts. Those are the über cool sparkle rocket mind-blowers we’re after. Those are the people worthy of your love.” — Cheryl Strayed

54. "Failed relationships can be described as so much wasted make-up.” ― Marian Keyes

55. "Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart." — Washington Irving

Related: 3 Ways to Tell How Long it Will Take to Get Over Someone

56. "Loneliness is proof that your innate search for connection is intact." — Martha Beck

57. "Tell me, do you feel the way my past aches? When you lay on me, can you hear the way my heart breaks? I wanted you to have everything I never had—I'm so sorry if what I've done makes you feel sad." — Adele

58. "I'm pretty horrible at relationships and haven't been in many long-term ones. Leaving and moving on - returning to a familiar sense of self-reliance and autonomy - is what I know; that feeling is as comfortable and comforting as it might be for a different person to stay." — Carrie Brownstein

59. "You ask everybody you know: How long does it usually take to get over it? There are many formulas. One year for every year you dated. Two years for every year you dated. It’s just a matter of willpower: The day you decide it’s over, it’s over. You never get over it." — Junot Díaz

60. "Well, now
If little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you
Little by little
If suddenly you forget me
Do not look for me
For I shall already have forgotten you" — Pablo Neruda

61. "When we face pain in relationships our first response is often to sever bonds rather than to maintain commitment.” ― bell hooks

62. "No matter how hard your heart is broken, the world doesn’t stop for your grief.” — Faraaz Kazi

63. "When what you hear and what you see don't match, trust your eyes.” ― Dale Renton

64. "What if you find your soul mate... at the wrong time?" — Lauren Kate

65. "The saddest thing about love is that not only that it cannot last forever, but that heartbreak is soon forgotten." — William Faulkner

Related: 100 Grief Quotes

66. "How much longer can I howl into this wind? For how much longer can I cry like this? A thousand wasted hours a day just to feel my heart for a second. A thousand hours just thrown away just to feel my heart for a second." — The Cure

67. "You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.” — James Baldwin

68. "Though you don't call anymore, I sit and wait in vain." — Aretha Franklin

69. "It is strange how often a heart must be broken before the years can make it wise." — Sara Teasdale

70. "If you've got to my age, you've probably had your heart broken many times. So it's not that difficult to unpack a bit of grief from some little corner of your heart and cry over it." — Emma Thompson

71. "Nothing in this world was more difficult than love.” ― Gabriel García Márquez

72. "A divorce is like an amputation: You survive it, but there's less of you." — Margaret Atwood

73. "Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull." — H. L. Mencken

74. "When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough." — Maurice Maeterlinck

75. "If you have to force it, it’s not for you. Love should come with ease, freedom and space to expand.” — Alex Elle

Related: 12 Things You Should Never Say to Your Partner

76. "Moving on is easy. It's staying moved on that's trickier.” ― Katerina Stoykova Klemer

77. "How do you trust your feelings when they can just disappear like that?" — Blue Valentine

78. "I think you are wrong to want a heart. It makes most people unhappy. If you only knew it, you are in luck not to have a heart.” ― L. Frank Baum

79. "Memories are wonderful things, if you don't have to deal with the past." — Before Sunset

80. "If only I'd thought of the right words, I could have held onto your heart. If only I'd thought of the right words, I wouldn't be breaking apart all my pictures of you." — The Cure

81. "It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you." — John Green

82. "Romantic love is an illusion. Most of us discover this truth at the end of a love affair or else when the sweet emotions of love lead us into marriage and then turn down their flames." — Thomas Moore

83. "Right now, everything is great, everyone is happy, everyone is in love, and that is wonderful. But you gotta know that sooner or later you're gonna be screaming at each other about who's gonna get this dish." — When Harry Met Sally

84. "'Because you aren't just someone I loved back then. You were my best friend, my best self, and I can't imagine giving that up again.' He hesitated searching for the right words. 'You might not understand, but I gave you the best of me, and after you left, nothing was ever the same.'” — Nicholas Sparks

85. "No matter how cleverly we might shelter it, our delicate friendship wasn't going to last forever. We were bound to reach a dead end. That was painfully clear.” ― Haruki Murakami

Related: 15 Signs You're Falling Out of Love

86. "I know happy couples...but I think they lie to each other." — Before Sunrise

87. "And I know it's long gone and there was nothing else I could do, and I forget about you long enough to forget why I needed to." — Taylor Swift

88. "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." — Alfred Lord Tennyson

89. "Love is like a faucet, it turns off and on." — Billie Holiday

90. "With the whole world crumbling, we pick this time to fall in love." — Casablanca

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