39 Heartfelt Goodbye Quotes

Saying goodbye is never easy, whether it's a temporary farewell or a permanent parting. These moments are often filled with a mix of emotions, including gratitude, sadness, and hope. Heartfelt goodbye quotes can help express what words sometimes struggle to convey, offering comfort and closure to both parties involved. In this curated collection of 39 quotes, you’ll find touching words that capture the essence of farewells, providing you with the perfect sentiments to share in your letters, cards, or speeches. Whether you’re bidding adieu to a loved one, a friend, or a colleague, these quotes will help make your goodbye a meaningful one.

1. “I've heard it said that people come into our lives for a reasonBringing something we must learnAnd we are led to those who help us most to grow If we let them and we help them in return.” - Stephen Schwartz

2. “Promise me you'll never forget me because if I thought you would, I'd never leave.” - A.A. Milne

3. “But I'd long ago learned not to be picky in farewells. They weren't guaranteed or promised. You were lucky, more than blessed, if you got a good-bye at all.” - Sarah Dessen

4. “I guess it's going to have to hurt, I guess I'm going to have to cry, And let go of some things I've loved to get to the other sideI guess it's going to break me down, Like fallin when you try to fly, Sad but sometimes moving on with the rest of your life starts with goodbye” - Carrie Underwood

5. “I don't know how you say good-bye to whom and what you love. I don't know a painless way to do it, don't know the words to capture a heart so full and a longing so intense.” - Laura Wiess

6. “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

7. “Despite the fact that I have no regrets about how things turned out in my life, I still can't help wanting to understand my intense relationship with Leo, as well as that turbulent time between adolescence and adulthood when everything feels raw and invigorating and scary-and why those feelings are all coming back to me now.” - Emily Giffin

8. “It'll be hard, but life moves fast-we'll see each other again. I know that. I can feel that. Just like I can feel how much you care for me and how much I love you” - Nicholas Sparks

9. “It were a grief so brief to part with thee.Farewell.” - William Shakespeare

10. “All I was afraid of is saying good-bye.” - Mitch Albom

11. “When you have only two minutes to say good-bye to the person you love most in the world, and you don’t know when you’ll see each other again, you can become logjammed with the effort to say and do and settle everything at once.” - Elizabeth Gilbert

12. “Your time may come. Do not be too sad, Sam. You cannot be always torn in two. You will have to be one and whole, for many years. You have so much to enjoy and to be, and to do.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

13. “He came up and kissed me on my forehead, and before he stepped away, I closed my eyes and tried hard to memorize this moment. I wanted to remember him exactly as he was right then, how his arms looked brown against his white shirt, the way his hair was cut a little too short in the front. Even the bruise, there because of me.Then he was gone.Just for that moment, the thought that I might never see him again… it felt worse than death. I wanted torun after him. Tell him anything, everything. Just don’t go. Please just never go. Please just always be near me, so I can at least see you.Because it felt final. I always believed that we would find our way back to each other every time. That no matter what, we would be connected—by our history, by this house. But this time, this last time, it felt final. Like I would never see him again, or that when I did, it would be different, there would be a mountain between us.I knew it in my bones. That this time was it. I had finally made my choice, and so had he. He let me go. I was relieved, which I expected. What I didn’t expect was to feel so much grief.Bye bye, Birdie.” - Jenny Han

14. “It always is harder to be left behind than to be the one to go...” - Bodie Thoene; Brock Thoene

15. “And there it is: Even though we’re standing in the same patch of sun-drenched pavement, we might as well be a hundred thousand miles apart.” - Lauren Oliver

16. “The end of a relationship is not always a failure. Sometimes all the love in the world is not enough to save something. In these cases, it is not a matter of fault from either person. Some things cannot be, it's as simple as that.” - Ashly Lorenzana

17. “When you want to share something with another person more than anything, it is one of the most difficult things to realize that you can never have it. Accepting this realization is even more difficult. Loving someone does mean saying goodbye to them in some cases, though we will fight that until the oftentimes bitter end before doing the right thing.” - Ashly Lorenzana

18. “Isia stepped forward. "Yes, sir. I know." Holding his fine brilliant wings above his body, he stood in front of us with his luminous lidless eyes full upon us. "I'm sorry to leave you. We've shared a lot together, and you have loved me even when I was ugly. But we'll see each other. Good-bye.” - Sheila Moon

19. “I drag the body out into the snowdrifts, as far away from our shack as I can muster. I put her in a thicket of trees, where the green seems to still have a voice in the branches, and try not to think about the beasts that’ll soon be gathering. There’s no way of burying her; the ground is a solid rock of ice beneath us. I kneel beside her and want desperately to weep. My throat tightens and my head aches. Everything hurts inside. But I have no way of releasing it. I’m locked up and hard as stone.“I’m sorry, Mamma,” I whisper to the shell in front of me. I take her hand. It could belong to a glass doll. There’s no life there anymore. So I gather rocks, one by one, and set them over her, trying my best to protect her from the birds, the beasts, keep her safe as much as I can now. I pile the dark stones gently on her stomach, her arms, and over her face, until she becomes one with the mountain. I stand and study my work, feeling like the rocks are on me instead, then I leave the body for the forest and ice.” - Rachel A. Marks

20. “When someone you love says goodbye you can stare long and hard at the door they closed and forget to see all the doors God has open in front of you.” - Shannon Alder

21. “Maybe I am everything I knew that I would never be. I looked back at Jay and smiled.” - Holly Hood

22. “The last day is way shorter than counting to ten.” - Leena Ahmad Almashat

23. “I write you a letter that beginsWith I love you and ends with I love you andSomewhere in the middle is one goodbye forEvery hurt” - Patricia Smith

24. “Breathless, I gazed into his eyes. “I love you Ollie. No matter what happens, never forget that. I will always love you. You have a piece of my heartforever.”Beaming at me the tip of his nose touched mine as his forehead rested against my own. “I love you too Layla. You’ve had my heart since themoment you looked up at me from the hallway floor. You always will.” - Marie Coulson

25. “Sometimes the hardest goodbyes are the ones never said, the ones that always just hang there in the back of the mind like a dark cloud. There's so much to say but no one to say it to because the person you want most to hear it is already gone. That's how he felt. Sorrow, regret, a wound so deep it didn't even bleed. Like a puncture wound, an ache that didn't heal but just hurt. He didn't know if he wanted it to heal. That'd be too much like a final goodbye.” - Virginia Brown

26. “Goodbye," she said.When I didn't say it back, she rested her hand on the top of my head. The weight was strange and gentle. "I love you," she said. "And when I tell you goodbye, I don't mean forever or for long. Just that I'm going home now, and so are you.” - Brenna Yovanoff

27. “and now we get to the hard part. the endings, the farewells, and the famous last words. if you don't hear from me often, remember that you're in my thoughts.” - Paul Auster

28. “For Sayonara, literally translated, 'Since it must be so,' of all the good-bys I have heard is the most beautiful. Unlike the Auf Wiedershens and Au revoirs, it does not try to cheat itself by any bravado 'Till we meet again,' any sedative to postpone the pain of separation. It does not evade the issue like the sturdy blinking Farewell. Farewell is a father's good-by. It is - 'Go out in the world and do well, my son.' It is encouragement and admonition. It is hope and faith. But it passes over the significance of the moment; of parting it says nothing. It hides its emotion. It says too little. While Good-by ('God be with you') and Adios say too much. They try to bridge the distance, almost to deny it. Good-by is a prayer, a ringing cry. 'You must not go - I cannot bear to have you go! But you shall not go alone, unwatched. God will be with you. God's hand will over you' and even - underneath, hidden, but it is there, incorrigible - 'I will be with you; I will watch you - always.' It is a mother's good-by. But Sayonara says neither too much nor too little. It is a simple acceptance of fact. All understanding of life lies in its limits. All emotion, smoldering, is banked up behind it. But it says nothing. It is really the unspoken good-by, the pressure of a hand, 'Sayonara.” - Anne Morrow Lindbergh

29. “I don’t say goodbye unless I think it’s final.” - Shannon A Thompson

30. “It seemed so good when it started.I gave my trust to you.I came to you open-hearted,Hoping it was true.Now I've gotten smart.Now I've learned some things.Now I know that what once was a start,Is just an ending.The longest good-byeI ever knew,The longest good-byeWas the dayI said hello to you.” - Heather Lynn Rigaud

31. “We stood, holding each other's faces, memorising every last detail. I was deperate with my own need to capture this last, lingering moment, desperate to forget the horrible sink at the pit of my stomach telling me all this would be lost forever once they pulled the chip out. Please don't let me forget.” - Heather Anastasiu

32. “I'll be back," she said. "Very soon."He needed to reply. He needed to say Good, come back; better, Don't go; or better still, I'll join you. He wanted to say, Your neck is beautiful. He wanted to say, I never ever thought my life would hold this, and if your leaving is what I must give for what I was given, then it was worth it.But the children were all around and Mr Abasi was calling out and motioning for her to come, and anyway, he knew now, if he hadn't known before, that there were limitations to words - words in the air or on a page.” - Masha Hamilton

33. “I do plan on saying one or two things to him when we're allowed an hour for goodbyes. To let him know how essential he's been to me all these years. How better my life has been for knowing him.” - Suzanne Collins

34. “Sometimes we have so much to say, we cannot say it. Sometimes it's best we do not say goodbyes.” - Susan Fletcher

35. “Whatever the cause, I could not meet his sunshine with cloud. If this were my last moment with him, I would not waste it in forced, unnatural distance. I loved him well - too well not to smite out of my path even Jealousy herself, when she would have obstructed a kind farewell. A cordial word from his lips, or a gentle look from his eyes, would do me good, for all the span of life that remained to me; it would be comfort in the last strait of loneliness; I would take it - I would taste the elixir, and pride should not spill the cup.” - Charlotte Brontë

36. “Come, Paul!" she reiterated, her eye grazing me with its hard ray like a steel stylet. She pushed against her kinsman. I thought he receded; I thought he would go. Pierced deeper than I could endure, made now to feel what defied suppression, I cried -"My heart will break!"What I felt seemed literal heart-break; but the seal of another fountain yielded under the strain: one breath from M. Paul, the whisper, "Trust me!" lifted a load, opened an outlet. With many a deep sob, with thrilling, with icy shiver, with strong trembling, and yet with relief - I wept."Leave her to me; it is a crisis: I will give her a cordial, and it will pass," said the calm Madame Beck.To be left to her and her cordial seemed to me something like being left to the poisoner and her bowl. When M. Paul answered deeply, harshly, and briefly - "Laissez-moi!" in the grim sound I felt a music strange, strong, but life-giving."Laissez-moi!" he repeated, his nostrils opening, and his facial muscles all quivering as he spoke."But this will never do," said Madame, with sternness. More sternly rejoined her kinsman -"Sortez d'ici!""I will send for Père Silas: on the spot I will send for him," she threatened pertinaciously."Femme!" cried the Professor, not now in his deep tones, but in his highest and most excited key, "Femme! sortez à l'instant!"He was roused, and I loved him in his wrath with a passion beyond what I had yet felt."What you do is wrong," pursued Madame; "it is an act characteristic of men of your unreliable, imaginative temperament; a step impulsive, injudicious, inconsistent - a proceeding vexatious, and not estimable in the view of persons of steadier and more resolute character.""You know not what I have of steady and resolute in me," said he, "but you shall see; the event shall teach you. Modeste," he continued less fiercely, "be gentle, be pitying, be a woman; look at this poor face, and relent. You know I am your friend, and the friend of your friends; in spite of your taunts, you well and deeply know I may be trusted. Of sacrificing myself I made no difficulty but my heart is pained by what I see; it must have and give solace. Leave me!"This time, in the "leave me" there was an intonation so bitter and so imperative, I wondered that even Madame Beck herself could for one moment delay obedience; but she stood firm; she gazed upon him dauntless; she met his eye, forbidding and fixed as stone. She was opening her lips to retort; I saw over all M. Paul's face a quick rising light and fire; I can hardly tell how he managed the movement; it did not seem violent; it kept the form of courtesy; he gave his hand; it scarce touched her I thought; she ran, she whirled from the room; she was gone, and the door shut, in one second.The flash of passion was all over very soon. He smiled as he told me to wipe my eyes; he waited quietly till I was calm, dropping from time to time a stilling, solacing word. Ere long I sat beside him once more myself - re-assured, not desperate, nor yet desolate; not friendless, not hopeless, not sick of life, and seeking death."It made you very sad then to lose your friend?" said he."It kills me to be forgotten, Monsieur," I said.” - Charlotte Brontë

37. “The weird thing about saying good-bye is that it never gets easier.” - Alyson Noel

38. “The tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the beautiful die young, but that they grow old and mean. It will not happen to me.” - Raymond Chandler

39. “The best thing about endings is knowing that just ahead is the daunting task to start over.” - Jodi Picoult