52 Inspirational Quotes About Leaving

In moments of change and transition, finding the right words can offer solace and motivation. Whether you're embarking on a new journey, closing a chapter, or simply contemplating the idea of moving forward, the perfect quote can serve as a guiding light. Inspiration can be a powerful tool, especially when facing the unknown or making a significant decision to leave behind the familiar. Throughout this blog post, you will discover a curated selection of 52 inspirational quotes that capture the essence of leaving—words that encourage reflection, renew hope, and ignite the courage to embrace new beginnings. Let these quotes inspire you to let go gracefully and step confidently into the future.

1. “Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.” - Donald Miller

2. “You can't go home again” - Thomas Wolfe

3. “I love you. I love you. I send this message through my fingers and into his, up his arm and into his heart. Hear me. I love you. And I'm sorry to leave you.” - Jenny Downham

4. “I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.” - Beryl Markham

5. “We all take different paths in life, but no matter where we go, we take a little of each other everyhwere.” - Tim McGraw

6. “I hated myself for going, why couldn't I be the kind of person who stays?” - Jonathan Safran Foer

7. “To leave, after all, was not the same as being left.” - Anita Shreve

8. “And the danger is that in this move toward new horizons and far directions, that I may lose what I have now, and not find anything except loneliness.” - Sylvia Plath

9. “...and that, in the end, the most interesting people always leave.” - Paulo Coelho

10. “Things go away to return, brightened for the passage” - A.R. Ammons

11. “...they needed someone to explain, to spin, the parts of the tale that couldn't be suppressed. Someone reputable and educated. Someone brilliant yet absolutely committed to the faith. Someone like my father.” - Martha Beck

12. “It is a long way off, sir""From what Jane?""From England and from Thornfield: and ___""Well?""From you, sir” - Charlotte Brontë

13. “I make it easier for people to leave by making them hate me a little.” - Cecelia Ahern

14. “It was a life I didn’t want to leave behind.It was a life I didn’t want to forget.” - Maggie Stiefvater

15. “A spiritual pilgrim needs to discern when his or her life is stunted in an old field and find the courage and determination to go to a "new land" that the Lord will show. (Abraham-Journey) ...so that you can find the wholeness you seek.” - Sue Monk Kidd

16. “And yet, even as she spoke, she knew that she did not wish to come back. not to stay, not to live. She loved the little yellow cottage more than she loved any place on earth. but she was through with it except in her memories. ” - Maud Hart Lovelace

17. “They were involved in that awkward procedure of getting to unknow each other.” - John Irving

18. “He had a charm about him sometimes, a warmth that was irresistible, like sunshine. He planted Saffy triumphantly on the pavement, opened the taxi door, slung in his bag, gave a huge film-star wave, called, "All right, Peter? Good weekend?" to the taxi driver, who knew him well and considered him a lovely man, and was free."Back to the hard life," he said to Peter, and stretched out his legs.Back to the real life, he meant. The real world where there were no children lurking under tables, no wives wiping their noses on the ironing, no guinea pigs on the lawn, nor hamsters in the bedrooms, and no paper bags full of leaking tomato sandwiches.” - Hilary McKay

19. “We keep to our usual stuff, more or less, only inside out. We do on stage the things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit being an entrance somewhere else.” - Tom Stoppard

20. “He was not in the house. He did not come back that night. Days went by, and at last she understood that he would not return at all.” - Audrey Niffenegger

21. “I know absolutely nothing about where I'm going. I'm fine with that. I'm happy about it. Before, I had nothing. I had no life, no friends, and no family really, and I didn't really care. I had nothing, and nothing to lose, and then I knew loss. What I cared about was gone; it was all lost. Now I have everything to gain; everything is a clean slate. It's all blank pages waiting to be written on. It's all about going forward. It's all about uncertainty and possibilities.” - Gregory Galloway

22. “Leaving would imply suitcases and empty drawers, and late birthday cards with ten-dollar bills stuffed inside.” - Julie Kagawa

23. “And as paralyzing and upsetting as all the never agains were, the final leaving felt perfect. Pure. The most distilled possible form of liberation. Everything that mattered except one lousy picture was in the trash, but it felt so great. I started jogging, wanting to put even more distance between myself and school. It is so hard to leave—until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.” - John Green

24. “Don’t leave me,” he whispers.“Oh, for crying out loud—no! I am not going to go!” I shout and it’s cathartic. There, I’ve said it. I am not leaving.“Really?” His eyes widen.“What can I do to make you understand I will not run? What can I say?”He gazes at me, revealing his fear and anguish again. He swallows. “There is one thing you can do.”“What?” I snap.“Marry me,” he whispers.” - E.L. James

25. “In life, a person will come and go from many homes. We may leave a house, a town, a room, but that does not mean those places leave us. Once entered, we never entirely depart the homes we make for ourselves in the world. They follow us, like shadows, until we come upon them again, waiting for us in the mist.” - Ari Berk

26. “Every time we make the decision to love someone, we open ourselves to great suffering, because those we most love cause us not only great joy but also great pain. The greatest pain comes from leaving. When the child leaves home, when the husband or wife leaves for a long period of time or for good, when the beloved friend departs to another country or dies … the pain of the leaving can tear us apart.Still, if we want to avoid the suffering of leaving, we will never experience the joy of loving. And love is stronger than fear, life stronger than death, hope stronger than despair. We have to trust that the risk of loving is always worth taking.” - Henri Nouwen

27. “Because maybe, in a way, we didn't leave it behind nearly as much as we might once have thought. Because somewhere underneath, a part of us stayed like that: fearful of the world around us, and no matter how much we despised ourselves for it--unable quite to let each other go.” - Kazuo Ishiguro

28. “There are times when the actual experience of leaving something makes you wish desperately that you could stay, and then there are times when the leaving reminds you a hundred times over why exactly you had to leave in the first place.” - Shauna Niequist

29. “New orders: Make sure everybody who doesn't want to live here is aboard in five minutes. We are leaving.-Captain Kevyn Andreyasn” - Howard Tayler

30. “There. That is the answer to this riddle. The promises I can make, and the one I can't. Gwen. I will never leave you willingly. Life is a risk, and so love is, as well. But I swear to God, you will not regret the gamble.” - Meredith Duran

31. “I don't understand, Jem. I don't understand why you'd leave me. Why would you that?” - Rachel Ward

32. “I walked out. I left. Andy Jankowski had taught me how.” - Nancy Werlin

33. “If I stayed here, something inside me would be lost forever—something I couldn't afford to lose. It was like a vague dream, a burning, unfulfilled desire. The kind of dream people have only when they're seventeen.” - Haruki Murakami

34. “Do you know what your problem is? You can't live with the idea that someone might leave.” - John Green

35. “How I adore you, Marya. How well I chose. Scold me; deny me. Tell me you want what you want and damn me forever. But don’t leave me.” - Catherynne M. Valente

36. “Blue jeans, white shirtWalked into the room you know you made my eyes burnIt was like, James Dean, for sureYou're so fresh to death and sick as ca-cancerYou were sorta punk rock, I grew up on hip hopBut you fit me better than my favourite sweater, and I knowThat love is mean, and love hurtsBut I still remember that day we met in december, oh baby!I will love you 'til the end of timeI would wait a million yearsPromise you'll remember that you're mineBaby can you see through the tearsLove you moreThan those bitches beforeSay you'll remember, oh baby, say you'll rememberI will love you 'til the end of timeBig dreams, gangsterSaid you had to leave to start your life overI was like, “No please, stay here,We don't need no money we can make it all work,”But he headed out on sunday, said he'd come home mondayI stayed up waitin', anticipatin', and pacin'But he was chasing paper"Caught up in the game" ‒ that was the last I heardI will love you 'til the end of timeI would wait a million yearsPromise you'll remember that you're mineBaby can you see through the tearsLove you moreThan those bitches beforeSay you'll remember, oh baby, say you'll rememberI will love you 'til the end of timeYou went out every nightAnd baby that's alrightI told you that no matter what you did I'd be by your sideCause Imma ride or dieWhether you fail or flyWell shit at least you tried.But when you walked out that door, a piece of me diedI told you I wanted more-but that's not what I had in mindI just want it like beforeWe were dancing all nightThen they took you away-stole you out of my lifeYou just need to remember....I will love you 'til the end of timeI would wait a million yearsPromise you'll remember that you're mineBaby can you see through the tearsLove you moreThan those bitches beforeSay you'll remember, oh baby, say you'll rememberI will love you 'til the end of time” - Lana Del Rey

37. “If I look back when I begin to leave, will they remember me?” - Owl City

38. “But that was all bravado. Already - how had it come about so quickly - desire had begotten need. A few whispered words (perhaps he didn't mean them) and I was ready to follow. It was worse to think of staying behind, to grind one day upon another. Nothing to hold me here. None to regret my leaving, save Az.” - Sarah Micklem

39. “You get use to someone—start to like them, even—and they leave. In the end, everyone leaves.” - Rachel Ward

40. “I’ve always wanted to go out with a bang, that’s why I carry two bricks around with me wherever I go, so when I leave a room I clap them together.” - Nicole McKay

41. “But I wasn't the girl I'd been when I left, and I knew it.” - Ally Carter

42. “Because Margo knows the secret of leaving, the secret I have only just now learned; leaving feels good and pure only when you leave something important, something that mattered to you. Pulling life out by the roots. But you can't do that until your life has grown roots.” - John Green

43. “Even though I always came back, he said he was always watching me leave.” - Kimberly Novosel

44. “You will never be skeleton, when I am in ghost.” - Anthony Liccione

45. “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

46. “You are not property. If you choose to leave, no one will stop you.” - Elizabeth Vaughan

47. “Of course. That's what people do in a disordered world, a world of freedom and choice: they leave when they want. They disappear, they come back, they leave again. And you are left to pick up the pieces on your own.” - Lauren Oliver

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

49. “We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there.” - Pascal Mercier

50. “DEPARTUREThe horizon slopes away The days are longer Trip A heart hops in a cage A bird sings It is going to die Another door is going to open At the end of the corridor Where a star Begins to shine A dark-haired woman The lantern of the departing train("Departure")” - Pierre Reverdy

51. “You read and write and sing and experience, thinking that one day these things will build the character you admire to live as. You love and lose and bleed best you can, to the extreme, hoping that one day the world will read you like the poem you want to be.” - Charlotte Eriksson

52. “I have a natural tendency to go away when told to do so. Do you really want me to?” - Margaret Way