94 Relationship Quotes

In the complex tapestry of human connections, relationships stand out as both intricate and beautiful threads that bind us together. Whether it's the bond between friends, the romance of a partnership, or the unconditional love of family, each relationship holds profound significance in our lives. To celebrate these meaningful connections, we’ve curated a collection of the top 94 relationship quotes. These quotes encapsulate the wisdom, joy, and sometimes the challenges that come with loving and being loved. Get ready to be inspired, as each quote offers a glimpse into the profound truths of the human experience.

1. “Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken.” - Jane Austen

2. “A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.” - Marilynne Robinson

3. “At least there's nothing scary about him and hopefully he doesn't see anything scary in me. We go way back, to summer camp. We KNOW each other. People I don't know just make me want to say YIKES! I'll take history over mystery any day of the week.” - Douglas Coupland

4. “Physical love is unthinkable without violence.” - Milan Kundera

5. “Anya looked upon Nin admirably. Having him as a partner-in-crime—if only on this one occasion, which she hoped would only be the start of something more—was more revitalizing than the cheap thrills of a cookie-cutter shallow, superficial romance, where the top priority was how beautiful a person was on the outside.” - Jess C. Scott

6. “And now you are and I am and we're a mystery which will never happen again.” - E.E. Cummings

7. “You can measure the happiness of a marriage by the number of scars that each partner carries on their tongues, earned from years of biting back angry words.” - Elizabeth Gilbert

8. “I may not always be with you But when we're far apartRemember you will be with meRight inside my heart” - Marc Wambolt

9. “We have to recognise that there cannot be relationships unless there is commitment, unless there is loyalty, unless there is love, patience, persistence.” - Cornel West

10. “It's just the most amazing thing to love a dog, isn't it? It makes our relationships with people seem as boring as a bowl of oatmeal.” - John Grogan

11. “Theresa, I know there's a part of you that believes you can change someone, but the reality is that you can't. You can change yourself, and Garrett can change himself, but you can't do it for him.” - Nicholas Sparks

12. “Moreover, in conversations with women, men do most of the talking (Haas, 1979), and despite hackneyed stereotypes about women being more talkative than men, we're apparently used to this pattern. When people listen to record-ings of conversations, they think it's more disrespectful and assertive for a woman to interrupt a m~ than vice versa (Lafrance, 1992).” - Rowland Miller

13. “Relationships are never about power, and one way to avoid the will to power is to choose to limit oneself- to serve.” - Wm. Paul Young

14. “For you she learned to wear a short black slipand red lipstick,how to order a glass of red wineand finish it. She learned to reach outas if to touch your arm and then nottouch it, changing the subject.Didn't you think, she'd begin, orWeren't you sorry. . . .To call your best friendsby their schoolboy namesand give them kisses good-bye,to look away when they sayYour wife! So your confidence grows.She doesn't ask what you wantbecause she knows.Isn't that what you think?When actually she was only waitingto be told Take off your dress---to be stunned, and then do this,never rehearsed, but perfectly obvious:in one motion up, over, and gone,the X of her arms crossing and uncrossing,her face flashing away from you in the fabricso that you couldn't say if she wasappearing or disappearing.” - Deborah Garrison

15. “Cheating and lying aren't struggles, they're reasons to break up.” - Patti Callahan Henry

16. “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

17. “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

18. “I've decided that there isn't much difference in the way we treat our siblings and the way we treat our special someones. But at the end of it all we know our siblings have to forgive us...or they'll never be able to borrow our car.” - Emma Daley

19. “All I want from you is to trust me with what little you can, and grow in loving people around you with the same love I share with you. It's not your job to change them, or to convince them. You are free to love without an agenda.” - Wm. Paul Young

20. “When introverts go to church, we crave sanctuary in every sense of the word, as we flee from the disorienting distractions of twenty-first-century life. We desire to escape from superficial relationships, trivial communications and the constant noise that pervade our world, and find rest in the probing depths of God's love.” - Adam S. McHugh

21. “She was aware that in love even the most passionate idealism will not rid the body's surface of its terrible, basic importance.” - Milan Kundera

22. “Sometimes not talking is effortless, and other times it’s more exhausting than lifting pianos.” - Steve Toltz

23. “Finally he turned his head toward her face and brushed a kiss over her cheek. “I love you and I believe with all my heart that you love me as well. Why can’t you say it, Hero?” - Elizabeth Hoyt

24. “When one has let go of that great hidden agenda that drives humanity and its varied histories, then one can begin to encounter the immensity of one's own soul. If we are courageous enough to say, "Not this person, nor any other, can ultimately give me what I want; only I can," then we are free to celebrate a relationship for what it can give.” - James Hollis

25. “Look for the positive qualities in your client's negative behavior.” - Marilyn Suttle

26. “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

27. “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

28. “You know a relationship has deteriorated past the point of salvage when one person detests another's gestures.” - Josephine Humphreys

29. “A while back, when Dick and Barry and I agreed that what really matters is what you like, not what you are like, Barry proposed the idea of a questionnaire for prospective partners.” - Nick Hornby

30. “There is an emotional promiscuity we’ve noticed among many good young men and women. The young man understands something of the journey of the heart. He wants to talk, to “share the journey.” The woman is grateful to be pursued, she opens up. They share the intimacies of their lives - their wounds, their walks with God. But he never commits. He enjoys her... then leaves. And she wonders, What did I do wrong? She failed to see his passivity. He really did not ever commit or offer assurances that he would. Like Willoughby to Marianne in Sense and Sensibility.Be careful you do not offer too much of yourself to a man until you have good, solid evidence that he is a strong man willing to commit. Look at his track record with other women. Is there anything to be concerned about there? If so, bring it up. Also, does he have any close male friends - and what are they like as men? Can he hold down a job? Is he walking with God in a real and intimate way? Is he facing the wounds of his own life, and is he also demonstrating a desire to repent of Adam’s passivity and/or violence? Is he headed somewhere with his life? A lot of questions, but your heart is a treasure, and we want you to offer it only to a man who is worthy and ready to handle it well.” - Stasi Eldredge

31. “I was aware that we were both silently making those inevitable comparisons, putting our relationship in context. She is more this and less that. He is better or worse in these ways. It is human nature to do this--unless its your first relationship, which might be the very reason that your first relationship feels special and remains forever sacred. But the older you get, the more cynical you become, and the more complicated and convoluted the exercise is. You begin to realize that nothing is perfect, that there are trade-offs and sacrifices. The worst is when someone in your past trumps the person in the present, and you think to yourself: if I'd known this, then maybe I wouldn't have let him go.” - Emily Giffin

32. “I decided that giving a girl a ring when you're not in a serious relationship is sort of like giving a guy a blow job when you have no real feelings for him. It makes everything feel a little cheap.It cheapens the giver and the recipient.” - Emily Giffin

33. “Was Deirdre right about me purposely wanting relationships that were impossible?” - Richelle Mead

34. “Okay, then, what was he like? Just give me something to go on so that I have a shot at him!''A shot at him? Are you on an elk hunt?” - Sara Zarr

35. “The first time someone I loved left me behind...I didn't know how my family would balance. We had been such a sturdy little end table, four solid legs. I was sure we would now be off-kilter, always unstable. Until one day I looked more closely, and realized that we had simply become a stool.” - Jodi Picoult

36. “Polyamorous people are wary of having others' values inflicted upon themselves, and so tend to stay very far away from making such pronouncements, to the point that they will actively ignore predatory behavior that is affecting their own "community.” - Anthony D. Ravenscroft

37. “Tenderness emerges from the fact that the two persons, longing, as all individuals do, to overcome the separateness and isolation to which we are all heir because we are individuals, can participate in a relationship that, for the moment, is not of two isolated selves but a union” - Rollo May

38. “These guys may not talk too much about relationships, but they sure do blush at telling moments, don’t they? Maybe that’s the key to understanding the opposite sex; I could invent a science, call it blushology.” - Jody Gehrman

39. “It made me realize how I needed to stop punishing her for something she couldn't help [...] because sometimes things happen to people and they're not equipped to deal with them.” - Suzanne Collins

40. “If I loved someone, I could never let him go away from me. I would be too miserable and lonely.” - Valerie Tripp

41. “He doesn’t have to love your CD collection. He doesn’t have to love your shoes. But any good, mature guy better make an attempt to love your friends and family—especially when they’re great.” - Greg Behrendt

42. “I was trying to decide if you still had free will as a wolf. If I was a terrible person for planning to drug my girlfriend and drag her back to my house to keep in the basement.” - Maggie Stiefvater

43. “People don't get to our ages without having pasts. I'm more interested in the future.” - Robyn Donald

44. “This is what our love is––a sacred pattern of unbroken unity sewn flawlessly invisible inside all other images, thoughts, smells, and sounds.” - Aberjhani

45. “We've come a long way from the time when the crowning achievement in a woman's life was her youthful marriage. And many would agree that this represents progress for women. But when did the search for someone to marry become self-absorbed and pathetic? This absence of social sympathy for women's ambitions to marry is all the more striking because the social world has cared so deeply about virtually every other aspect of these privileged young women's inner and outer lives. (...) The achievement of a good marriage is the one area of life where the most privileged, accomplished, and high achieving young women in society face a loss of support and sympathy for their ambitions and where the social expectations are for disappointment and failure, not success.” - Barbara Dafoe Whitehead

46. “the wounded child inside many males is a boy who, when he first spoke his truths, was silenced by paternal sadism, by a patriarchal world that did not want him to claim his true feelings. The wounded child inside many females is a girl who was taught from early childhood that she must become something other than herself, deny her true feelings, in order to attract and please others. When men and women punish each other for truth telling, we reinforce the notion that lies are better. To be loving we willingly hear the other’s truth, and most important, we affirm the value of truth telling. Lies may make people feel better, but they do not help them to know love.” - bell hooks

47. “Between Countess Nordston and Levin there had been established those relations, not infrequent in society, in which two persons, while ostensibly remaining on friendly terms, are contemptuous of each other to such a degree that they cannot even treat each other seriously and cannot even insult each one another.” - Leo Tolstoy

48. “Is this what it's like to get close to other people--you do something insane together and then you have to share everything even if you don't really want to?” - Courtney Summers

49. “Men, being accustomed to act on reflection themselves, are a great deal too apt to believe that women act on reflection, too. Women do nothing of the sort. They act on impulse; and, in nine cases out of ten, they are heartily sorry for it afterward.” - Wilkie Collins

50. “Life is filled with rhythms-day and night, hot and cold, summer and winter, spring and fall, cloudy and clear. Likewise in a relationship, men and women have their own rhythms and cycles.” - john gray

51. “Što je našao u tebi, pitala me moja majka?Što si našao u meni?Ne seri.” - Vedrana Rudan

52. “Why was it that boys said girls were so hard to understand when she hadn't known a single guy who hadn't confused her to the point of screaming?” - C.C. Hunter

53. “I am going to-morrow where I shall find a man who has not one agreeable quality, who has neither manner nor sense to recommend him. Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing, after all.” - Jane Austen

54. “I realized that in some unspoken, still tentative way, she and I were already becoming a family.” - Barack Obama

55. “That dip in the road- that sends your belly to your throat... that's how it feels when you kiss me.” - Kellie Elmore

56. “because in the past words have only driven them apart.” - Jodi Picoult

57. “If we can’t repair things with the Romans—well, the two sets of demigods have never gotten along. That’s why the gods kept us separate. I don’t know if we could ever belong there.”Percy didn’t want to argue, but he couldn’t let go of the hope. It felt important—not just for him, but for all the other demigods. It had to be possible to belong in two different worlds at once. After all, that’s what being a demigod was all about—not quite belonging in the mortal world or on Mount Olympus, but trying to make peace with both sides of their nature.” - Rick Riordan

58. “Annabeth,” he said hesitantly, “in New Rome, demigods can live their whole lives in peace.” Her expression turned guarded. “Reyna explained it to me. But, Percy, you belong at Camp Half-Blood. That other life—”“I know,” Percy said. “But while I was there, I saw so many demigods living without fear: kids going to college, couples getting married and raising families. There’s nothing like that at Camp Half-Blood. I kept thinking about you and me…and maybe someday when this war with the giants is over…”It was hard to tell in the golden light, but he thought Annabeth was blushing. “Oh,” she said…“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just…I had to think of that to keep going. To give me hope. Forget I mentioned—”“No!” she said. “Gods, Percy, that’s so sweet.” - Rick Riordan

59. “Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.” - Socrates

60. “If the ties that bind ever do come looseIf forever ever ends for youIf that ring gets a little too tightYou might as well read me my last rights.” - The Band Perry

61. “If you first take a minute, an hour or a month to let go of feeling annoyed, frustrated or critical of the person or situation that may be driving you crazy, you set yourself up for much greater leadership and personal success.” - John Kuypers

62. “I need to figure out the secret. I need to work out how to keep things flying back to me instead of always flying away.” - Carol Rifka Brunt

63. “I was very happy in both my marriages. I was unfaithful and so were they, just like any other normal couple.” - Paulo Coelho

64. “The manlier you are, the harder it is to understand what a woman wants: there is not a hint of female brain in you.” - Criss Jami

65. “The discovery of her life was that she herself didn't actually need money, apart from a little cash for those relationships with taxi drivers and officials of the Great Western Railway which can only be expressed financially.” - Elizabeth Ironside

66. “As he stood up and gathered his attaché case and notebook, I reminded him that it had already been three weeks -- and counting.” - Jevon L. Mack

67. “And the game of dominoes is much like life: You gotta play the bones you’ve pulled. It don’t matter if you got seven doubles in your damn hand.” - S.B. Redd

68. “Nothing changes if nothing changes.” - Donna Barnes

69. “We affect one another quite enough merely by existing. Whenever the stars cross, or is it comets? fragments pass briefly from one orbit to another. On rare occasions there is total collision, but most often the two simply continue without incident, neither losing more than a particle to the other, in passing.” - Gore Vidal

70. “Dubai is... after all,a lonely, transitory place.It's hard to maintain relationshipswhen people are always coming and going.” - Ameera Al Hakawati

71. “Cruelty is a language that the blind can see, the deaf can hear, and the heart feels forever.” - Shannon L. Alder

72. “Secrets and deceptions are the best foundation for a relationship, I don't care what anyone says.” - Jason Krumbine

73. “Love encompasses so much, reaches so far, and heals so deeply, that any attempt to describe it, no matter how poetic, only dilutes it.” - Steve Maraboli

74. “Sometimes I think together we are the worst kind of calamity." Thayer grinned back. Severine's lips burned. "Then I've never wanted to be destroyed so bad.” - Calia Read

75. “I'm in a foreign land, trying to explain myself, trying to make myself known. Because isn't that the point of every relationship: to be known by someone else, to be understood? He gets me. She gets me. Isn't that the simple magic phrase?” - Gillian Flynn

76. “Me being in love with a girl and wanting her to be with me, doing what I need to do to make her stay with me; it affects no one, yet it’s terrifying to people and they think you’re a monster.” - Sara Quin

77. “I think there were times when I was so afraid of losing you that I forgot I even had you at all.” - Ashly Lorenzana

78. “Nothing we can do together is ever going to be embarrassing.” - Rebecca York

79. “I was hoping that perhaps I could roll with you...""You cannot roll with me," said the Big O, "but perhaps you can roll by yourself.” - Shel Silverstein

80. “No one else should see him like that, ever. Not my Rue. And he was mine, as much as I was his. I knew that now, just from the way he looked at me after I kissed him. Everything I felt for him, every ounce of yearning and desire and need, had shone out of his eyes as he stared up at me. And I knew right then, I knew… he belonged to me.” - Piper Vaughn

81. “Because isn’t that the point of every relationship: to be known by someone else, to be understood? He gets me. She gets me. Isn’t that the simple magic phrase?” - Gillian Flynn

82. “The only thing they've ever wanted, every relationship, was someone i wasn't.” - Darnell Lamont Walker

83. “Having love and not giving it is just as difficult as not having love and needing it” - Katerina Stoykova Klemer

84. “Well, I had the other problem," I told him. "I had the heart of the relationship, and no body to grow it in.""What happened then?""What else," I said. "It broke.” - Jodi Picoult

85. “A respectful woman is a righteous woman.” - Habeeb Akande

86. “Our inner male and female sides are expressed on the outside as relationships. Often our longer and deeper relationships with an outer man or woman are a mirror of our own inner man or woman.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

87. “Relationships are a development and a dance between our inner male and female sides. A one-sided development of the male side leads to ego, struggle, destructivity and a separation from life. A one-sided development of our female side leads to dependence and passivity. It is when we have developed a balance and harmony between both our male and female side that a new spark of joy, creativity and wholeness arises within ourselves.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

88. “When we embrace the opposites within ourselves and understand that inner harmony arises when they mature, we find the love, joy, silence and freedom that are hidden in every moment. It is my experience that it is through the inner female side that we find the depth within ourselves – independent of if we are a man or a woman. It is through the female side that we find the inner source of love and truth. It is through the female side that we lit the light of our own consciousness. The more we learn to know the inner man and woman and the more we accept their different visions of life, the more a meeting happens between them that makes us happy and satisfied. Through embracing both these sides in ourselves, we realize that we really lack nothing – but that we already are love. When both the male and female side is capable of living in trust, a love begins to flow between them – a love that was always possible, but not realized. The inner woman is the meditative quality within ourselves. The inner woman is the source of love and truth. The inner woman is the capacity to surrender to life. It is through the inner woman that we are in contact with life. It is the inner woman that is the door to belongingness with the Whole.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

89. “People don't want words, as seductive, pleasant and warming as they can be. People want to see that they're worth some sacrifice or some great deed. And it's not that people are always worth it, it's that love is.” - Donna Lynn Hope

90. “KM: Yes. Mrs. Lopez, she's human. And you know, clearly, she'd like people to show some appreciation for her hard work. But if people just, you know, take her pie and don't even say, "Hey, nice pie," they just scarf it down or whatever-MH: I could see how that would get to be annoying. I mean, if you're constantly providing...pie. And getting no positive feedback-KM: Right! And what about your future? I mean, how do you know people are still going to want your pie in the future? Supposing they become a famous rock star or something. People are going to be offering them pie all over the place. If they haven't promised only to eat your pie, well, where does that leave you?” - Meg Cabot

91. “She told me she loved me. She told me a lot of things. Some of those things were true, and some of those may or may not have been true. It’s kind of hard to tell, because to be honest, I wasn’t listening.
” - Dark Jar Tin Zoo

92. “Being with you today is worth all the broken hearts of yesterday.” - Steve Maraboli

93. “Life is too short to not kick fear in the ass and allow yourself to love again.” - Steve Maraboli

94. “Ah, sweetie. If the poets couldn’t unriddle them, then you certainly can’t. Be kind, and keep your ears on offer if she wants to talk. But you can’t draw out the strangeness, Edgar. It’s not a poison.” - Allyse Near