52 Ending Quotes

Life is a series of beginnings and endings, with each chapter bringing its own lessons and emotions. Quotes have a unique ability to encapsulate these moments, offering wisdom and perspective as we navigate the transitions. If you're searching for inspiration or comfort as one phase concludes and another begins, you've come to the right place. Discover a curated collection of the top 52 ending quotes, selected to resonate with your heart and mind, helping you make sense of life's inevitable conclusions. Whether you're saying goodbye to a loved one, closing a chapter in your career, or simply reflecting on the passage of time, these quotes are here to guide and uplift you.

1. “The end of a melody is not its goal: but nonetheless, had the melody not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. A parable.” - Nietzche

2. “True stories seldom have endings.I don't want a happy ending, I want more story.” - Frances Hardinge

3. “A man is like a novel: until the very last page you don't know how it will end. Otherwise it wouldn't even be worth reading.” - Yevgeny Zamyatin

4. “There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.” - Frank Herbert

5. “October knew, of course, that the action of turning a page, of ending a chapter or of shutting a book, did not end a tale. Having admitted that, he would also avow that happy endings were never difficult to find: "It is simply a matter," he explained to April, "of finding a sunny place in a garden, where the light is golden and the grass is soft; somewhere to rest, to stop reading, and to be content.” - Neil Gaiman

6. “There’s a trick to the 'graceful exit.' It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, or a relationship is over — and let it go. It means leaving what’s over without denying its validity or its past importance to our lives. It involves a sense of future, a belief that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving up, rather than out.” - Ellen Goodman

7. “The opposite of the happy ending is not actually the sad ending--the sad ending is sometimes the happy ending. The opposite of the happy ending is actually the unsatisfying ending.” - Orson Scott Card

8. “The anxiety, which in this state of their attachment must be the portion of Henry and Catherine, and of all who loved either, as to its final event, can hardly extend, I fear, to the bosom of my readers, who will see in the tell-tale compression of the pages before them, that we are all hastening together to perfect felicity.” - Jane Austen

9. “I am almost a hundred years old; waiting for the end, and thinking about the beginning.There are things I need to tell you, but would you listen if I told you how quickly time passes?I know you are unable to imagine this.Nevertheless, I can tell you that you will awake someday to find that your life has rushed by at a speed at once impossible and cruel. The most intense moments will seem to have occurred only yesterday and nothing will have erased the pain and pleasure, the impossible intensity of love and its dog-leaping happiness, the bleak blackness of passions unrequited, or unexpressed, or unresolved.” - Meg Rosoff

10. “It's a lot easier to say when something ended rather than when it began. Most of us can recognize the end from a mile away, but the beginning always slips up on us, lulling us into thinking what we're living through is yet another moment, in yet another day.” - Steve Yarbrough

11. “Catherine Land liked the beginnings of things. The pure white possibility of the empty room, the first kiss, the first swipe at larceny. And endings, she liked endings, too. The drama of the smashing glass, the dead bird, the tearful goodbye, the last awful word which could never be unsaid or unremembered.It was the middles that gave her pause. This, for all its forward momentum, this was a middle. The beginnings were sweet, the endings usually bitter, but the middles were only the tightrope you walked between the one and the other. No more than that.” - Robert Goolrick

12. “Soon it began to drizzle for the second time that night. The drops grew heavier and became visible in the headlights of the cars. It was said by some of the police on the scene that God was crying for the girl in the garden. To others, it was only rain.” - George P. Pelecanos

13. “The great miraculous bell of translucent ice is suspended in mid-air.It rings to announce endings and beginnings. And it rings because there is fresh promise and wonder in the skies.Its clear tones resound in the placid silence of the winter day, and echo long into the silver-blue serenity of night.The bell can only be seen at the turning of the year, when the days wind down into nothing, and get ready to march out again.When you hear the bell, you feel a tug at your heart.It is your immortal inspiration.” - Vera Nazarian

14. “I mean, maybe under the surface, somewhere that's hard to see, I've known it had to end for a long time. I just never thought I'd be the one to end it.” - Susane Colasanti

15. “Well, I’m an abridger, so I’m entitled to a few ideas of my own. Did they make it? Was the pirate ship there? You can answer it for yourself, but, for me, I say yes it was. And yes, they got away. And got their strength back and had lots of adventures and more than their share of laughs. But that doesn’t mean I think they had a happy ending, either. Because, in my opinion, anyway, they squabbled a lot, and Buttercup lost her looks eventually, and one day Fezzik lost a fight and some hot-shot kid whipped Inigo with a sword and Westley was never able to really sleep sound because of Humperdinck maybe being on the trail. I’m not trying to make this a downer, understand. I mean, I really do think that love is the best thing in the world, next to cough drops. But I also have to say, for the umpty-umpth time, that life isn’t fair. It’s just fairer than death, that’s all.” - William Goldman

16. “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

17. “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

18. “To respect the dignity of a relationship also implies accepting the end when it comes. Except in my mind, except in my dreams, where the aftertaste of her still lingers.” - Andre Brink

19. “What the trees can do handsomely-greening and flowering, fading and then the falling of leaves-human beings cannot do with dignity, let alone without pain.” - Martha Gellhorn

20. “Let me give my love to you.Let me take your hand.And as we walk in the dimming lightOh darling understandThat everything ends...” - Death Cab for Cutie

21. “Have you thought of an ending?""Yes, several, and all are dark and unpleasant.""Oh, that won't do! Books ought to have good endings. How would this do: and they all settled down and lived together happily ever after?""It will do well, if it ever came to that.""Ah! And where will they live? That's what I often wonder.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

22. “Endings to be useful must be inconclusive.” - Samuel R. Delaney

23. “In the planning stage of a book, don't plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it.” - Rose Tremain

24. “Ends are not bad things, they just mean that something else is about to begin. And there are many things that don't really end, anyway, they just begin again in a new way. Ends are not bad and many ends aren't really an ending; some things are never-ending.” - C. JoyBell C.

25. “No, this is not the beginning of a new chapter in my life; this is the beginning of a new book! That first book is already closed, ended, and tossed into the seas; this new book is newly opened, has just begun! Look, it is the first page! And it is a beautiful one!” - C. JoyBell C.

26. “All stories must end so, with the next tale winking out of the corners of the last pages, promising more, promising moonlight and dancing and revels, if only you will come back when spring comes again.” - Catherynne M. Valente

27. “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

28. “I always had this idea that you should never give up a happy middle in the hopes of a happy ending, because there is no such thing as a happy ending. Do you know what I mean? There is so much to lose.” - John Green

29. “The feeling is less like an ending than just another starting point.” - Chuck Palahniuk

30. “The most important thing is this: to sacrifice what you are now for what you can become tomorrow.” - Shannon Alder

31. “And in fact the only way I can deal with this eerie situation at all is to make a conscious decision that I have already lived and finished the life I planned to live - and everything from now on will be A New Life, a different thing, a gig that ends tonight and starts tomorrow morning.” - Hunter S. Thompson

32. “That is the nature of endings, it seems. They never end. When all the missing pieces of your life are found, put together with glue of memory and reason, there are more pieces to be found.” - Amy Tan

33. “This was it. The beginning of the blasted end.” - Fisher Amelie

34. “I guess I just don't get the point. It's like, why should you bother getting attached to anything if,A: It's never gonna last, andB: It hurts like hell when it's over?” - Alyson Noel

35. “Everything comes to an end. A good bottle of wine, a summer’s day, a long-running sitcom, one’s life, and eventually our species. The question for many of us is not that everything will come to an end but when. And can we do anything vaguely useful until it does?” - Jasper Fforde

36. “Sometimes things end worse for one side than the other. These 'injured parties' always seem to see themselves as victims of a moral outrage. They never feel simply rejected, but also abused. I've known many women who were great believers in the curative powers of indignation.” - Lionel Shriver

37. “I wanted to end it now, like a bad TV show turned off in the middle.” - Tawni O'Dell

38. “Stephen's heart was big to bursting with the violence of his grief, yet even as he looked distractedly from side to side his mind told him that there was something amiss, the more so as the cheering had now almost entirely died away. The whaler had a huge spread of canvas aboard, far too great a press of sail for her possibly to enter the lagoon: she was tearing along with a great bow-wave and she sped past the mouth of the farther channel. A cable's length beyond the Opening her main and fore topgallantmasts carried clean away, as though brought down by a shot, and she instantly hauled to the wind, striking her colours as she did so. Her pursuer came racing into sight round the southern cape, studdingsails aloft and alow on either side—a dead silence from the motionless Norfolks below—fired a full, prodigal broadside to leeward, lowered down a boat and began to reduce sail, cheering like a ship clean out of her mind with delight. 'She is the Surprise,' said Stephen, and he whispered, 'The joyful Surprise, God and Mary be with her.” - Patrick O'Brian

39. “In my limited realm of experience, beginnings led to endings.” - Ellen Hopkins

40. “My day is done, and I am like a boat drawn on the beach, listening to the dance-music of the tide in the evening.” - Rabindranath Tagore

41. “Best not to look back. Best to believe there will be happily ever afters all the way around - and so there may be; who is to say there will not be such endings? Not all boats which sail away into darkness never find the sun again, or the hand of another child; if life teaches anything at all, it teaches that there are so many happy endings that the man who believes there is no God needs his rationality called into serious question..” - Stephen King

42. “I'm against endings. I'm against things being over. Being finished should be stopped! I am Comrade-in-Chief of going on. I support furthermore and etcetera!” - Saša Stanišić

43. “...my novels are like life - I never know where they're going until I get to the end...” - John Geddes A Familiar Rain

44. “Frederica also thought, for she had been there many times, that if this was a beginning, it was the beginning of an ending, that was the way it went.” - A.S. Byatt

45. “Give life long enough and it will solve all your problems, including the one of being alive.” - colum mccann

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

47. “I know you’re just a rag doll now, sewn together with memories that we might have had. I know you’re just the dream inside of a dream And don’t worry, I know I don’t know you, anymore.” - pleasefindthis

48. “I could’ve sworn I was telling the truth when I told you I didn’t miss you.” - pleasefindthis

49. “You’re just another story I can’t tell anymore.” - pleasefindthis

50. “All's well that ends well.''Assuming there's an end somewhere,' Aomame said.Tamaru formed some short creases near his mouth that were faintly reminiscent of a smile. 'There has to be an end somewhere. It's just that nothing's labeled "This is the end." Is the top rung of a ladder labeled "This is the last rung. Please don't step higher than this'?"Aomame shook her head.'It's the same thing,' Tamaru said.Aomame said, 'If you use common sense and keep your eyes open, it becomes clear enough where the end is.'Tamaru nodded. 'And even if it doesn't' -- he made a falling gesture with his finger -- 'the end is right there.” - Haruki Murakami

51. “There's nothing on Earth like really nailing the last line of a big book. You have 200 pages to tickle their fancy, and seven words to break their heart.” - Alex de Campi

52. “It was an ending. I don't think I realized it at the time, and now wonder if anyone truly does recognize the event that starts an ending. Or is it when we look backwards, that we are finally able to understand." Eagle's Destiny ~ Chapter 1” - C.J. Corbin