42 Divorce Quotes For Inspiration

Divorce is one of life's most challenging experiences, filled with a whirlwind of emotions, from sorrow and anger to relief and newfound freedom. Whether you're seeking comfort, understanding, or a bit of motivation to navigate this challenging time, words of wisdom can be incredibly powerful. Our carefully curated collection of the top 42 divorce quotes offers solace, inspiration, and a reminder that you're not alone. These quotes, crafted by individuals who have experienced similar journeys, aim to uplift and encourage you as you find your path forward. Let's explore these heartening words and embrace the strength within.

1. “In college, I had a course in Latin, and one day the word "divorce" came up. I always figured it came from some root that meant "divide." In truth, it comes from "divertere," which means "to divert."I believe that. All divorce does is divert you, taking you away from everything you thought you knew and everything you thought you wanted and steering you into all kinds of other stuff, like discussions about your mother's girdle and whether she should marry someone else.” - Mitch Albom

2. “In every marriage more than a week old, there are grounds for divorce. The trick is to find and continue to find grounds for marriage.” - Robert Anderson

3. “I took the sleeper out of Glasgow, and as the smelly old train bumped out of Central Station and across the Jamaica Street Bridge, I stared out at the orange halogen streetlamps reflected in the black water of the river Clyde. I gazed at the crumbling Victorian buildings that would soon be sandblasted and renovated into yuppie hutches. I watched the revelers and rascals traverse the shiny wet streets. I thought of the thrill and danger of my youth and the fear and frustration of my adult life thus far. I thought of the failure of my marriage and my failures as a man. I saw all this through my reflection in the nighttime window. Down the tracks I went, hardly aware that I was going further south with every passing second.” - Craig Ferguson

4. “Americans, who make more of marrying for love than any other people, also break up more of their marriages, but the figure reflects not so much the failure of love as the determination of people not to live without it.” - Morton Hunt

5. “My mother is a firm believer in the long pause, useful in interrogations, proclamations of truth, and the occasional cutting dead of someone without their knowing it.” - Suzanne Finnamore

6. “I sensed he may have occasionally strayed in some of his past relationships. It was something I felt but ignored, a rent in the fabric of an otherwise splendid garment I thought I could mend. I thought I could live with it—I thought, yes and I admit it, that I would be different. That at the very least, middle age and children would slow him down; however, they seemed to accelerate his pace.” - Suzanne Finnamore

7. “Soon he was online every night until one or two a.m. Often he would wake up at three of four a.m. and go back online. He would shut down the computer screen when I walked in. In the past, he used to take the laptop to bed with him and we would both be on our laptops, hips touching. He stopped doing that, slipping off to his office instead and closing the door even when A was asleep. He started closing doors behind him. I was steeped in denial, but my body knew.” - Suzanne Finnamore

8. “Although I notice there is never a truly good time to have a nice long chat with one´s mother-in-law, unless you are having an extraordinary life and marriage and your mother-in-law is, say, Maureen Dowd, or Indira Gandhi. Someone of that ilk.” - Suzanne Finnamore

9. “How can I grieve what is still in motion?" I ask her. "Shoes are still dropping all over the place. I´m not kidding," I say. "It´s Normandy out there.” - Suzanne Finnamore

10. “I review what I know once again, confronting the monolith now alien and almost unconnected to me: my marriage.” - Suzanne Finnamore

11. “Yes. THANK YOU. And say hello to Judas Iscariot.” - Suzanne Finnamore

12. “He announces that lately he keeps losing things. "Like your wife and child," I want to say, but don´t. At fourty, I´ve learned not to say everything clever, not to score every point.” - Suzanne Finnamore

13. “I´ve blown it, the whole grisly charade.” - Suzanne Finnamore

14. “We talk. Darlene worries aloud that her husband works with a lot of attractive young women; she herself is fourty. I tell her it´s not about age. "Little thing called character," I say, thinking, Accepting marital advice from me: the height of lunacy.” - Suzanne Finnamore

15. “How do you know? How best to ensure his nervous breakdown?" I ask."Keep going," Christian says. "Just go on as if nothing has happened. We all hate that.” - Suzanne Finnamore

16. “God is great and God is good," Lisa says. "But where are the Apache attack helicopters when you need them?” - Suzanne Finnamore

17. “The marriage is over; counseling is the eulogy. The relationship autopsy is the wake.” - Suzanne Finnamore

18. “The problem of unmet expectations in marriage is primarily a problem of stereotyping. Each and every human being on this planet is a unique person. Since marriage is inevitably a relationship between two unique people, no one marriage is going to be exactly like any other. Yet we tend to wed with explicit visions of what a “good” marriage ought to be like. Then we suffer enormously from trying to force the relationship to fit the stereotype and from the neurotic guilt and anger we experience when we fail to pull it off.” - M. Scott Peck

19. “I harbor ill feelings toward a society, and a clergy, that allows marriage partners to split over the smallest incompatibility, where divorce comes in a multitude of flavors, like Baskin Robbins ice cream, where men and women can blame one another and everything except themselves for matrimony's mess. They look for externals over which they have no control and, fingering them, take no responsibility.” - Robert Dykstra

20. “But in the real world, you couldnt really just split a family down the middle, mom on one side, dad the other, with the child equally divided between. It was like when you ripped a piece of paper into two: no matter how you tried, the seams never fit exactly right again. It was what you couldn't see, those tiniest of pieces, that were lost in the severing, and their absence kept everything from being complete.” - Sarah Dessen

21. “Like the muscles knew from the beginning that it would end with this, this inevitable falling apart... It's sad, but a relief as well to know that two things so closely bound together can separate with so little violence, leaving smooth surfaces instead of bloody shreds.” - Julie Powell

22. “Darling Daddy,This is Rose.The shed needs new wires now it has blown up.Caddy is bringing home rock-bottom boyfriends to see if they will do for Mummy. Instead of you.Love, Rose.” - Hilary McKay

23. “My sudden, unforeseen capitulation had knocked me backward, and I had nothing to hold on to. My internal weather was eerily calm, as if in a tornado's aftermath, birdsong, sunshine, supersaturated colors, wreckage all around, and myself, dazed and limping.” - Kate Christensen

24. “From the photo albums, every single print of her had been peeled away. Shots of the both of us together had been cut, the parts with her neatly trimmed away, leaving my image behind. Photos of me alone or of mountains and rivers and deer and cats were left intact. Three albums rendered into a revised past. It was as if I'd been alone at birth, alone all my days, and would continue alone.” - Haruki Murakami

25. “Nice people don't necessarily fall in love with nice people.” - Jonathan Franzen

26. “The divorce papers remained unopened in the crisp yellow envelope. He had thrown it on his desk without a backward glance. Between his lashes, his dark chocolate eyes burned with fury but there was something else in the depths that she hadn’t seen in a long time, passion.” - Suzan Battah

27. “It wasn't about being happy or unhappy. I just didn't want to be me anymore.” - Sarah Dessen

28. “I did not believe in stalemates. I believed in resolutions, one way or another, and if I found myself on the losing end, so be it. Losing meant quiet, and forgetting quickly, and giving up nothing of any real worth to me. I did not debate restaurant bills, politics, wrongly delivered mail, divorces. These things were officiously loud, and silence was always best.” - Soren Narnia

29. “Staying married may have long-term benefits. You can elicit much more sympathy from friends over a bad marriage than you ever can from a good divorce.” - P.J. O'Rourke

30. “And I know, by Noah's face, that even though he knew it, he didn't believe it, even though we all knew it, we were all holding on, somehow, hoping they'd keep trying, that they could just keep on living and fighting. We trusted them to do that.” - Hannah Moskowitz

31. “Until-as often happened during those first months travel, whenever I would feel such happiness-my guilt alarm went off. I heard my ex-husband's voice speaking disdainfully in my ear: So this is what you gave up everything for? This is why you gutted our entire life together? For a few stalks of asparagus and an Italian newspaper? I replied aloud to him: "First of all," I said, "I'm very sorry, but this isn't your business anymore. And secondly, to answer you question...yes.” - Elizabeth Gilbert

32. “Even the jerks earn some of our affection. We can be glad they're gone and yet still mourn the good parts.” - Shannon Hale

33. “There are two things you should never do alone: one is get divorced, the other is drink.” - Cheryl Nielsen

34. “Men are like wine-some turn to vinegar, but the best improve with age.” - Pope John XXIII

35. “One of life's gifts is that each of us, no matter how tired and downtrodden, finds reasons for thankfulness: for the crops carried in from the fields and the grapes from the vineyard.” - J. Robert Moskin

36. “Why don’t you just pretend that the asshole dropped dead? You can’t call or write to a dead man. Put a couple of candles in front of his picture, say a few Hail Marys, and get it over with.” - Isabel Lopez

37. “We have been together for 40 years, married for 36. There have been three times in our relationship when we were unable to resolve an issue on our own. We used all the skill that we have and yet it was still unresolved. In those three times we sought professional help because there was a blind spot for each of us. The therapist was able to listen to both of us and help us come to a place of resolution that we both felt good about. I feel very grateful for that help. Most times we have been able to work things through on our own. Sometimes we can clear the issue in a matter of a few minutes, sometimes an hour and sometimes it can take several days. But we still keep working on it until we both say that we feel complete, we understand our own part and responsibility in the issue rather than simply blaming each other, are willing to go on, and there is an even deeper connection and sometimes even humor to the situation. In working each issue through to completion we have been able to retain a beautiful lightness in our relationship that we both cherish.” - Joyce Vissell

38. “Pastor McFucking Bride this . . . Pastor McFucking Bride that. Fuck him!” - S.B. Redd

39. “I'm going to marry him. And if he thinks he can get divorced and married every two or three years in the approved Hollywood fashion, well, he never made a bigger mistake in his life. He's going to marry and stick to me.” - Agatha Christie

40. “Once that ship has sailed don't hold on to the anchor” - Stanley Victor Paskavich

41. “A divorce party--that's really better than a wedding party!” - Nujood Ali

42. “I like marriage, family life and I wish to get married again. But opting out of an unhappy marriage was a duty toward myself & my future.” - Rossana Condoleo