117 Heartbreak Quotes To Heal

Heartbreak is an inevitable part of the human experience, a poignant reminder of love's fragility and the depths of our emotions. Whether you're reeling from a recent breakup or reflecting on past loves, finding solace in shared words can be remarkably comforting. In this blog post, we've painstakingly curated 117 of the most poignant heartbreak quotes to help you navigate the stormy seas of grief and emerge with a renewed sense of hope and understanding. Let these quotes serve as beacons of wisdom and empathy, guiding you towards healing and embracing the strength within.

1. “EbbI know what my heart is likeSince your love died:It is like a hollow ledgeHolding a little poolLeft there by the tide,A little tepid pool,Drying inward from the edge.” - Edna St. Vincent Millay

2. “Perhaps this is what the stories meant when they called somebody heartsick. Your heart and your stomach and your whole insides felt empty and hollow and aching.” - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

3. “Time Does Not Bring ReliefTime does not bring relief; you all have lied Who told me time would ease me of my pain! I miss him in the weeping of the rain; I want him at the shrinking of the tide; The old snows melt from every mountain-side, And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane; But last year’s bitter loving must remain Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide. There are a hundred places where I fear To go,—so with his memory they brim. And entering with relief some quiet place Where never fell his foot or shone his face I say, “There is no memory of him here!” And so stand stricken, so remembering him.” - Edna St. Vincent Millay

4. “I'm just trying to outrun a broken heart, which is nothing to sneeze at, for a broken heart breaks a person.” - Sarah Hina

5. “There is one province in which, sooner or later, virtually everyone gets dealt a leading role--hero, heroine, or villain.... Unlike the slight implications of quotidian dilemmas that confront the average citizen in other areas of life ... the stakes in this realm could not be higher. For chances are that at some point along the line you will hold in your hands another person's heart. There is no greater responsibility on the planet. However you contend with this fragile organ, which pounds or seizes in accordance with your caprice, will take your full measure.” - Lionel Shriver

6. “I don't think anyone can give you advice when you've got a broken heart.” - Britney Spears

7. “Sometimes you break your heart in the right way, if you know what I mean.” - Gregory David Roberts

8. “They should tell you when you’re born: have a suitcase heart, be ready to travel.” - Gabrielle Zevin

9. “When trees burn, they leave the smell of heartbreak in the air.” - Jodi Thomas

10. “My heart was a little bit broken, but I still had to go to school. I buttoned my dress shirt over it and my winter coat, too. I hoped it didn't show too much.” - Gabrielle Zevin

11. “i can not go through the ocean. i can not drive the streets at night. i can not wake up in the morning without you on my mind. and so your gone and im haunted i bet you are just fine. did i make it that easy to walk right in and out of my life.” - A Fine Frenzy

12. “This was something she would keep hidden within herself, maybe in place of the knot of pain and anger she had been carrying under her breastbone...a security blanket, an ace up her sleeve. She might never use it, but she would always feel its presence like a swelling secret stone, and that way when she let go of the rage, she would not feel nearly as empty.” - Jodi Picoult

13. “I never wanted but your heart--that gone, you have nothing more to give.” - Mary Wollstoncraft

14. “I'm not supposed to miss you, I'm not supposed to care” - Deborah Cox

15. “Well, nowIf little by little you stop loving meI shall stop loving youLittle by littleIf suddenly you forget meDo not look for meFor I shall already have forgotten youIf you think it long and mad the wind of banners that passes through my lifeAnd you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have rootsRememberThat on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my armsAnd my roots will set off to seek another land” - Pablo Neruda

16. “It shattered something inside me that hadn't been broken before.” - E. Lockhart

17. “You can’t give your heart to a wild thing.” - Truman Capote

18. “I'm here!" I said..."I'm read to go home!" As if they couldn't see me. As if I couldn't remember what it had been like, fluttering next to someone's ear and whispering into it. How the whole earth was like a musical instrument that we could play effortlessly....I could not fly. My sister was not there. My heart was broken.” - Carolyn Turgeon

19. “Was it hard?" I ask.Letting go?"Not as hard as holding on to something that wasn't real.” - Lisa Schroeder

20. “Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! - I have as much soul as you, - and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you!” - Charlotte Brontë

21. “I have a big hole in my heart," I said. "But it'll close over."I don't want to sound all Dr. Phil," she said. "But don't let the scab seal the pain in, okay?"That's good advice," I said. "I hope I can manage it.” - Charlaine Harris

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

23. “I know my heart will never be the sameBut I'm telling myself I'll be okay” - Sara Evans

24. “Thought I couldn't live without youIt's gonna hurt when it heals tooEven though I really love youI'm gonna smile cause I deserve toQuickly I'm learning to love againAll I know is I'mma be ok” - Leona Lewis

25. “now I'm told that this is life, that pain is just a simple comprimise so we can get what we want out of it. Would someone care to classify a broken heart and some twisted minds so I can find someone to rely on?” - Hayley Williams

26. “Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope” - Elizabeth Gilbert

27. “I mean, at the end of the day, what the hell does it matter who I end up with if it can't be you?” - Tabitha Suzuma

28. “You're gonna catch a cold from the ice inside your soul” - Christina Perri

29. “If you're gonna leave, I wish you'd just leave. Why do you keep coming back if you're not going to stay? Because even when you're gone, you're never really gone... I won't get over it if you keep coming back. Losing you once was hard enough. And now you're here again and everything's coming back. I'm going to get screwed. And I can't do it again.” - Brodi Ashton

30. “Sometimes... Sometimes our hearts...crack a little.” - Brodi Ashton

31. “Not like a heart, which let people in without permission, held them in a special place she never had any say in and then yearned for them to remain there longer than they planned.” - Cecelia Ahern

32. “Thoughts are as simple as the process…a message from the soul; conveyed through the heart; received in the mind” - Jeremy Aldana

33. “Well, you can't have heartbreak without love," Dan pointed out. "If your heart was really broken, then at least you know you really loved him.” - Leila Sales

34. “You cannot be with someone just because you don’t want to hurt him. You have your own happiness to think about.” - Melissa de la Cruz

35. “What do you say when you feel your life is taken right from your chest, even though I miraculously find myself still breathing?” - Jason F. Wright

36. “You really want to know what else it was my mom said about you?" he asked.She shook her head.He didn't seem to notice. "She said you'd break my heart," he told her, and left.” - Cassandra Clare

37. “It was like letting go and falling back into water and seeing yourself grinning up through the water, your face like a mask, and seeing the bubbles coming up as if you were trying to speak from under the water. And how do you know what it's like to try to speak from under water when you're drowned?” - Jean Rhys

38. “So you're gone and i'm hauntedAnd i bet you are just fineDid i make it that easy to walkRight in and out of my life” - Fine Frenzy

39. “Growth in love comes from a place of absence, where the imagination is left to it’s own devices and creates you to be much more then reality would ever allow.” - Jamie Weise

40. “When we are in love, we are convinced nobody else will do. But as time goes, others do do, and often do do, much much better.” - Jamie Weise

41. “It's a dangerous thing when you have love without faith and trust... No one wants to feel unsure when they give their heart away.” - Solange nicole

42. “Heartbreak could be lived with if it weren't accompanied by regret.” - Laura Kasischke

43. “Heart’s blood and bitter pain belong to love,And tales of problems no one can remove;Cupbearer, fill the bowl with blood, not wine -And if you lack the heart’s rich blood take mine.Love thrives on inextinguishable pain,Which tears the soul, then knits the threads again.A mote of love exceeds all bounds; it givesThe vital essence to whatever lives.But where love thrives, there pain is always found;Angels alone escape this weary round -They love without that savage agonyWhich is reserved for vexed humanity.” - Farid ud-Din Attar

44. “Good night.' Diana summoned all the dignity that she could manage in her bedraggled state and began to move back up the beach. Her dress was soaked and her stockings dotted with sand and her heart couldn't possibly withstand any more.” - Anna Godbersen

45. “When you have to face up to the fact that marriage to the man you love is really over, that's very tough, sheer agony. In that kind of harrowing situation, I always go away and cut myself off from the world. Also, I sober up immediately when there is genuine bad news in my life; I never face it with alcohol in my brain. I just rented a house in Palm Springs and sat there and just suffered for a couple of weeks. I suffered there until I was strong enough to face it.” - Ava Gardner

46. “She had loved him for such a long time, she thought. How was it that she did now know him at all?” - Cassandra Clare

47. “One of the most difficult things he'd ever done was turn away and leave her standing in the shadows.” - Rachel Gibson

48. “You don't ask nobody to give what they can't give, or be what they can't be. You've learnt that, you got a headstart on heartbreak.” - Jack Farris

49. “You are going, Jane?""I am going, sir.""You are leaving me?""Yes.""You will not come? You will not be my comforter, my rescuer? My deep love, my wild woe, my frantic prayer, are all nothing to you?"What unutterable pathos was in his voice! How hard was it to reiterate firmly, "I am going!""Jane!""Mr. Rochester.""Withdraw then, I consent; but remember, you leave me here in anguish. Go up to your own room, think over all I have said, and, Jane, cast a glance on my sufferings; think of me."He turned away, he threw himself on his face on the sofa. "Oh, Jane! my hope, my love, my life!" broke in anguish from his lips. Then came a deep, strong sob.” - Charlotte Brontë

50. “He broke my heart, and now it's raining, just to rub it in...” - Alicia Keys

51. “Falling down ain't falling down,If you don't cry when you hit the floor,It's called the past cause I'm getting past,And I ain't nothing like I was before,You ought to see me now” - Alicia Keys

52. “So here’s my question: when you lose the most important person to you in the entire world, where is all the love – love you never even knew you were capable of – supposed to go?” - Ted Michael

53. “In some deep place in her heart, Caroline had kept alive the silly romantic notion that somehow David Henry had once known her as no one else ever could. But it was not true. He had never even glimpsed her.” - Kim Edwards

54. “Love hurts worse than getting slammed by a 250-pound linebacker.” - Miranda Kenneally

55. “An ache filled my chest, so sharp that I gasped out loud. Was this what a broken heart felt like? Was it possible to die from the pain? I’d always thought the girls at school so dramatic; when they broke up with their boyfriends, they cried and carried on for weeks. I didn’t think they needed to throw such a fuss. But I’d never been in love before.” - Julie Kagawa

56. “Juliet shook her head. The thought of eating anything made her feel nauseous. "No thanks, I'm not hungry.""Oh yeah, the heartbreak diet," nodded Trudy sagely. "Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt.” - Alexandra Potter

57. “Campbell" Julia says "Don't do this to me""Do what?""Push me off the same cliff twice” - Jodi Picoult

58. “While I'm fine with you two dating and being happy, please try not to break his heart too much when the time comes.” - Richelle Mead

59. “When you lose someone, you get used to living day to day without them. But you’ll never get used to the “10 second heartbreak.” That’s the time it takes to wake to full consciousness each day and remember…” - Nina Guilbeau

60. “but i've slammed the door to my inner self; if he ever wants to force the lock again, he'll have to use a harder crowbar!” - Anne Frank

61. “I am but a stranger ... as we all are. Lonely inside our separate skins, we cannot know each others pain and must bear our own in solitude. For my part, I have found that walking soothes it; and that, given luck, sometimes we find one to walk besides us ... at least for a little way.” - Alan Moore

62. “First he threw out all of his records, trashed his heart and then he went to sleep.” - Pete Wentz

63. “How can you smile as though your whole life hasn't capsized” - Michael Ondaatje

64. “You may right now be nursing a broken heart. Friends will say, "Aren't you glad you had the experience anyway?" And you may say "No." Eventually, unbelievably, you may not remember the boy that triggered it all. You'll recall all the places you visited, but not how you got there. You'll remember the songs that you listened to.” - Emma Forrest

65. “People don't know. We don't know ourselves so we tell ourselves what we really know is other people. We could say the depth of pain we feel for the lovers who've left us is because we knew them so well.” - Emma Forrest

66. “It's as if he can no longer acknowledge the love he felt or the pain I am in. I have been dismissed. I don't think I was smarter or as beautiful as the other girls he did this to. It's just that I was me. It was all I had.” - Emma Forrest

67. “What do you know of my heart? What do you know of anything but your own suffering. For weeks, Marianne, I've had this pressing on me without being at liberty to speak of it to a single creature. It was forced on me by the very person whose prior claims ruined all my hope. I have endured her exultations again and again whilst knowing myself to be divided from Edward forever. Believe me, Marianne, had I not been bound to silence I could have provided proof enough of a broken heart, even for you.” - Jane Austen

68. “It's my opinion, with some people, just knowing they are alone, living inside of their own miserable, self hating, dysfunctional mind, with their own immature, insecure, self pitying self is its own revenge. Their existence is their karma.” - Colleen Truscott Fry

69. “It's risky most of the time, but its better to listen to your heart.” - Jonathan Anthony Burkett

70. “Well in case you failed to notice,In case you failed to see,This is my heart bleeding before you,This is me down on my kneesThese foolish games are tearing me apartYour thoughtless words are breaking my heartYou're breaking my heart” - Jewel Kilcher

71. “I can never think of you as a friend. You can do without a friend.” - Graham Greene

72. “You talked over the tour guide who pointed to houses and windows. Showing us where people had lived and died and other people now stayed in their place. Just like a broken heart." - Adieu” - Kate Chisman

73. “Then his heart, now broken into a thousand pieces, slowly began to turn to ice.” - Morgan Rhodes

74. “I could feel my insides sink. My knees too. So I sat on the ground, against the wall, letting it support me. I thought I knew what heartbreak felt like. I thought heartbreak was me, standing alone at the prom. That was nothing. This, this was heartbreak. The pain in your chest, the ache behind your eyes. The knowing that things will never be the same again. It’s all relative, I suppose. You think you know love, you think you know real pain, but you don’t. You don’t know anything.” - Jenny Han

75. “One night I heard my dad say to my mom: I can't help but think of the good times we're having now as being painful memories later on. And my mom saying, c'mon now honey.” - Miriam Toews

76. “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 will power: The day you decide it's over, it's over. You never get over it.” - Junot Diaz

77. “Seeing his face after months was as immediate as a pointed gun.” - Marie-Helene Bertino

78. “When God gets us alone through suffering, heartbreak, temptation, disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted friendship - when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are totally speechless, unable to ask even one question, then He begins to teach us.” - Oswald Chambers

79. “I first got very thin after Ashley. I felt like my stomach was doing backflips - like my emotions had taken over and made me full.” - Cheryl Cole

80. “She was drawn to damaged souls like a moth to a flame. ” - Anna McPartlin

81. “I thought he'd pick me, I know he has kids, but when it came down to it, I really thought he'd pick me."Tears rolled down her face and her nose ran. She sniffed."I know I'm selfish""You're human""I wanted him to abandon his children” - Anna McPartlin

82. “The emptiness made her insides ache.” - Anna McPartlin

83. “What Karen wants to do - needs to do - is cry, but she can't. Here, alone, when she could howl, beat the sofa cushions, scream; now, somehow, she is unable. It's for fear that if she gives in to it, she'll lose all sense of who she is. She is afraid that if she falls apart in private, then she'll fall apart completely. That if she crumbles, like a house in an earthquake, she will disappear down some deep, dark crevasse, and never be able to pull herself out and put herself back together again.” - Sarah Rayner

84. “I had fallen out of my secure world, precipitated beyond the territories I had only begun to control so skillfully. What a foolish step to take. What an insane move to make.” - Francesca Marciano

85. “I can't leave you," he says hoarsely."I can't leave you either," I say, shaking my head. "I can't.""Then don't," he says, and grabs me behind the neck and kisses me again, and the world is tilting, and everything goes black.” - Cynthia Hand

86. “My heart broke when he died, split in half and fell down into my stomach or somewhere deep and muddy, and I'm still not sure where it is now. I hear it beating sometimes in my ears, or feel its fast pulse in my neck, like I do now; but in my chest, where it should be, it mostly just feels empty.” - Jen Violi

87. “I don't want to know that you don't want me. I don't want to know what you do without me. I don't want to know what I'll be without you. I dont wanna know. I don't wanna know.” - Sara Quin

88. “You trample on hearts as if they're grapes and you're making wine.” - Mallory Kane

89. “What's the difference?" You ask meThe difference is, a smile touches my lipsWhen I remember both the memory of you entering my lifeAnd the memory of you leaving my life” - Tammy-Louise Wilkins

90. “I know I'll hold this loss in my heart forever. I know I'll hold, I'll hold. I know.” - Sara Quin

91. “We are all Romeos looking for our Juliet, but never finding her.” - Rae Hachton

92. “I have met so many heartbroken men. It's a catastrophe. Women are easily overcome by the process that happens when a boy falls in love and becomes a man. Men's hearts are so often broken. Still, you have to leave your broken heart in a place where- when the woman who knows how to see what a gift is, sees it- your broken heart can be picked up again. I think that it takes a very strong woman (inner strength) to be able to handle a man falling in love with her, without morphing into a monster (the process is a very potent process, it can poison a woman, really). A woman thinks she wants a man to fall in love with her for all the perks that come with it; but when a real love really does happen, when a real man shows his manhood; it's often too powerful a thing to endure without being poisoned. Hence, all the heartbroken men. But, I do believe that there are strong women in the world today. A few. But there are. You could say, that the mark of a real woman, is a woman who can handle a man- a man falling in love with her. A woman who can recognize that, and keep it with her.” - C. JoyBell C.

93. “Not to be with the one you love, Laura, the one person you should be spending your life with--it’s like a kind of living death. To wake up every morning and know you are still here. To have that brief, sweet moment of blankness, before your mind reminds you who you are, and why you are unhappy. It was like hell. A living hell of the heart’s own making.” - Harriet Evans

94. “She was telling me that I had a life of disappointment before me if I continued to love him as I did. A love that is too strong can turn poisonous and bring great unhappiness. And then, what is the remedy? Can you unlearn your heart's desire? Can you stop loving someone? Easier to drown yourself; easier to take the lover's leap.” - Alma Katsu

95. “She'd either be a heartless mother and wife or a spineless enabler, when all she really wanted was the man she'd once believed him to be.” - Nicholas Sparks

96. “Because before the time when you're heartbroken, you get to be in love, and that's worth it.” - Leila Sales

97. “Love is just like the flower; it has hidden depths that we rarely ever explore. Beneath the surface lies a network of roots. You can admire the flower for what it is, or you can dig deeper. The more you dig, the more you will find. The real reasons we love a person sometimes exist in the darkest and deepest part of us, the part that knows no logic…or rationale.” - Carol Oates

98. “Nothing says hell has to be fire.” - Robert Goolrick

99. “I found that the only way I could control this sorrow was not to think of [it] at all, which was almost as painful as the loss itself.” - Robin McKinley

100. “You dump trash. You dump yard waste and old ripped couches that smell like body odor and forgetfulness. You dump cigarette butts and banana peels and hazardous waste. But people?” - Autumn Doughton

101. “It wasn't the "I love you" she heard that made her let him go. It was the "Come with me" that she didn't.” - Meghan O'Connor

102. “If I wasn't so phenomenal. I would go back to you.” - Coco J. Ginger

103. “my own chocolate center has filled up with poison,the roses he gave me all twisted black” - Terra Elan McVoy

104. “they have seen the likes of you before, they may be intrigued by the looks of you, but they know that you-like everyone else-will leave them in the end.” - Terra Elan McVoy

105. “For some reason, the despair that's welling up in me is transforming into white-hot rage. I feel it working its way up from my toes, winding around my legs, and burrowing into the pit of my stomach. It spears its razor-sharp tendrils through the pieces of my broken heart. It's crippling, and devastating, and unrelenting. I have only one choice to survive this; I turn that rage outward.” - Michelle Figley

106. “What am I supposed to do when the best part of me was always you?And what am I supposed to say when I'm all choked up and you're ok?” - The Script

107. “It didn't matter how wonderful Andrew was and how much effort he was prepared to put into their relationship. While Lou didn't feel the same way, his love was only building a tower without foundations.” - Chris Manby

108. “All that time tying herself up in knots because she simply couldn't think of a good reason not to be with him” - Chris Manby

109. “Never love that which you cannot keep.” - Alexandra Adornetto

110. “Why do you think you deserve happily ever after? You were offered it before and tossed it away.” - Donna Lynn Hope

111. “She had hope in her heart but after a while, with each step forward, hope stepped back. And for the first time in months, the first time ever, she began to weep, and as she did she knew that with the retreat of hope her heart had finally caught up with her head. And as each tear spilled over she let them go, she was letting go.” - Donna Lynn Hope

112. “Home at last. Why was I not feeling relief? I turn in m bed thinking of the last time that I had laid my head on that pillow. Sadness took over me almost instantly. A pillow soaked in tears, the feeling of someone tearing a part of my chest out, it replayed in my head as if it had happened yesterday. I coculdn't believe that that girl was me. I was so much stronger than that, how had I allowed myself to become so vulnerable? I never thought that I would be the girl who'd get her heart broken. I never thought that he'd be the one to break it. But I was, and I know he did. I know, because, no one will ever know how much I cried that night.” - Everance Caiser

113. “And when I looked outside the window, something inside of me churned, swallowing hard I looked up and saw blue. I squeezed my eyes shut, holding back the tears and emotions that were swelling inside of me. And then I realized, the only time that I could feel anything at all, was when I could feel him.” - Everance Caiser

114. “Mostly she just missed Vaughn. Missed all those quiet, unspectacular moments that, when added up, showed how entwined their lives had become. And right now, she missed being able to phone him, because it would be so easy to tap in the eleven digits that would put his voice on the line. ‘Grace, about bloody time,’ he’d say, and make it sound like an endearment.But she couldn’t call Vaughn, because she’d left him. Which was a novelty, until Grace remembered that he’d have left her eventually if she hadn’t done it first. She was never the one. She was never even the one before the one. She was the girl who seemed like a good idea at the time, but ultimately was just a phase that people went through.That was the way it had always been. Friends and lovers came and went because there was something about her which repelled them, and she didn’t have a clue what it was. It was a mystery that she couldn’t solve on her own, and there wasn’t a single person in the world who could help . . .” - Sarra Manning

115. “I think,” Jace said, “that you don’t want to tell your secrets, so you decided to break up with Alec because...” - Cassandra Clare

116. “Love can give you such happiness, then can break the very heart it filled, leaving a hole that can never be fixed or protected by any armour.” - Kevin McLeod

117. “I gave you the best of me.” - Nicholas Sparks