Quotes & Sayings About Bittersweet Love

Perhaps you know someone whose heart clutches onto the bittersweet memory of the one who got away. Someone who secretly bears the weight of this imperceptible burden wherever he or she goes, every day of his or her life. Someone who'd gladly travel back in a time machine to a day when paths diverged, to mend together that which has been torn apart, setting destiny back on its rightful track - if only he or she could. Perhaps you know this someone better than you think. And should this someone happen to be you, may you find strength and support in the millions of others who shoulder this burden with you, and may you be reintroduced one day to true love ... in this lifetime and whatever comes after. — Sebastian Cole

It's the Longing that ultimately undoes you. When it finds you, it gnaws at your bones and tugs at your chest. It fills you up inside like rot and makes you dream dreams and it drowns you. The Longing keeps you in bed, clutching at your sheets while the world goes on outside. It smells like old leaves and cigarette smoke, mixed with the scent of far-off places you will hear of, but never see. It's the gloss on a lover's lips the moment you realize you will never kiss those lips again. It is the bittersweet, unrequited love of creation and it will break your heart again and again and again. If you know the Longing the way I do, then these words are redundant. We understand each other perfectly, you and I. — Matthew Sturges

You will lose touch with people you thought you wouldn't, watch from a distance while these people get married, gain weight, lose weight, move across the country, and get new sets of friends you will never meet. But you will look at your pictures of them and remember the nights you drank too much rum with them and you will enjoy those moments immensely. You will know what it is like to experience true nostalgia - the feelings a Hot Pocket can elicit will be astounding. It will not be a bittersweet kind of thing, because you know that it's not as much growing apart as it is growing up.
There will be successes, and failures, and a lot of good and bad things. You will watch yourself and the people you choose to be with fall in love and get married, get jobs, get fired, get a terrible tattoo, have babies, get sick, get better, get worse, lose parents, grow older, grow smarter. Things will flash forward, pass before your eyes like the lights at a terrible nightclub. — Alida Nugent

Novels institutionalize the ruse of eros. It becomes a narrative texture of sustained incongruence, emotional and cognitive. It permits the reader to stand in triangular relation to the characters in the story and reach into the text after the objects of their desire, sharing their longing but also detached from it, seeing their view of reality but also its mistakenness. It is almost like being in love. — Anne Carson

I'm not leaving you. Right here, right now is the happiest I've ever been. I love you. That means I don't leave. Sorry. — Debra Anastasia

My love, I'd volunteer to live a thousand lives if I got to spend any part of them with you. — Debra Anastasia

My rock candy passion is bittersweet
And armed to the teeth
Cuz she would rather fall in chocolate
Than fall in love.. Especially with me! — Owl City

Sentimental outbreaks are like liquorice; when first you suck it, it's not bad, but afterwards it leaves a very nasty taste in the mouth. — Ivan Turgenev

Wounds heal. Scars fade. Awful memories can be overwritten with better ones if given the chance. The little imperfections of our psyches become overshadowed by the people whose love we cherish because they cherish us despite our faults; physical, emotional, spiritual, or otherwise. This thing we call the human condition with all its bittersweet blind corners and senseless humor evolves from within ourselves and not because of some pre-ordained reverie we desire to cast in the constellations.
All in all it is what makes life worth living. — August Clearwing

I love you in such a greedy way, I'm guilty
about it." She tilted her head back as he moved his lips to her throat.
"Guilty is for crimes. Always is for love. — Debra Anastasia

The pill's bittersweet chaser is not that they can't love you back the same way. It's that they won't. They won't open their minds to the possibility. They won't expand their expectations of romantic love past their own predetermined boundaries - gender, age, [insert innumerable other unfair, random reasons here]. — Rachel Cohn

I wore you on me at all times
Like I now carry my pen.
Unlike your own opinion my
Belongings must have a function.
You bled through the ink of my lines and
To be my subject nursed your thirst.

Was it my fault, or your own, that you forgot
- I do not deal in tender verse. — Mie Hansson

It was bittersweet and lovely how this thing called family could make you feel belonged, wanted and complete. — Diyar Harraz

I think mothers and daughters are meant to give birth to each other, over and over; that is why our challenges to each other are so fierce; that is why, when love and trust have not been too badly blemished or destroyed, the teaching and learning one from the other is so indelible and bittersweet. We daughters must risk losing the only love we instinctively feel we can't live without in order to be who we are, and I am convinced this sends a message to our mothers to break their own chains, though they may be anchored in prehistory and attached to their own great grandmothers' hearts. — Alice Walker

She opened her eyes with a gasp. "I love you." He had tears running a path down his face. He nodded. "Back at ya, pretty child. So, so much. — Debra Anastasia

I am forever grateful for not knowing - What would have been. WHAT WILL BE holds none of those bittersweet pangs and it is lit w joy. — Erica Goros

Love is just as much suffering as it is sweetness. If it was perfect, that's what they'd all it. They wouldn't call it bittersweet. — Nicole Williams

A day doesn't go by without me dreaming of your smile and your beautiful love

My heart aches everyday that goes by when your not at my side

It's a bittersweet feeling, because as long as I have tomorrow then I will always have a second chance at making you smile — Austin V. Songer

Okay, how's this? I've been to Heaven and Hell. I've seen the whole world, but the only thing that makes me want to live is this: being inside you. I love you so much. You're all I see. — Debra Anastasia

Had I only known my letters
Would be of such importance
I'd empty myself on paper
Every single morning'

And it was for such reason,
as she read his little stanza,
that she decided to stamp
one
final
letter:

'Every single morning
I'd empty myself on paper
You were my greater importance
That's why I wrote you letters. — Mie Hansson

To my amazement and great, bittersweet joy, I can hear in him every reason I feell in love with his father - everything, like a second sonata to a first. All the lovely unspoiled good of N, bubbling forth from his son, unlooked for, oozing up from a well of genealogy and fate. I can manage to misplace my husabnd, but this flesh is chained to mine. I will always be reminded of the marital loss, but I have the benefits of the entire play, the witness of the evolution, the new art. I see the magic every day; I live with the sorcerer in yellow pants. N gets pieces and stems of A, random and marred by guilty. — Suzanne Finnamore

Clearly it is not the lovelorn sufferer who seeks solace in chocolate, but rather the chocolate-deprived individual, who, desperate, seeks in mere love a pale approximation of bittersweet euphoria. — Sandra Boynton

I want each day to last forever . . . It's a peculiar kind of dissatisfaction, a bittersweet nostalgia for a moment not yet past. Even in the midst of a pleasurable outing I'm aware of how ephemeral it is. — Christina Baker Kline

Live a life abundant in love and rich in spirit, these are the seeds of a fulfilling existence. Be the safe harbor you seek in the world. Follow your dreams, not your fear.
Go into the New Year with an open mind and hopeful heart. Don't let the chains of unforgiveness weigh you down. Life is too short to live in a prison of past hurts. The futures is yours for the taking and creating.
Life is bittersweet, when we can let darkness and light co-exist as illumination, we can live in true happiness. When we live life at its best, it is a symphony of feelings, of high and low notes, of tragedy and comedy, love and loss, magic and the sublime. It can be quite a spectacular journey when we fully embrace and accept it. — Jaeda DeWalt

We quenched the bulging flame, amongst
the ashes embers of fire remain — Mie Hansson

The chilling thought occurred to me that breaking up with someone you love to criticize might be the only way to save yourself from becoming unlovable — Bob Smith

Our individuality is all, all, that we have. There are those who barter it for security, those who repress it for what they believe is the betterment of the whole society, but blessed in the twinkle of the morning star is the one who nurtures it and rides it in, in grace and love and wit, from peculiar station to peculiar station along life's bittersweet route. — Tom Robbins

We weren't that different after all, our souls laden with the same ache of loss, our hearts bursting with the same longing to save what remained of all we loved. — Rachel L. Schade

We thought humble and proud at the same time, all at once in love again with this painful bittersweet lovely thing called flight. — Richard Bach

Come with me outside," he says, and I feel his hand on mine. "We won't go far." I can't see him; but I hear a complicated mix of emotion in his voice and feel it in the way he touches me. Love, concern, and something unusual, something bittersweet. — Ally Condie

The warm bittersweet smell of clean Negro welcomed us as we entered the churchyard-Hearts of Love hairdressing mingled with asafoetida, snuff, Hoyt's Cologne, Brown's Mule, peppermint, and lilac talcum. — Harper Lee

To be running breathlessly, but not yet arrived, is itself delightful, a suspended moment of living hope. — Anne Carson

Eros, again now, the loosener of limbs troubles me,
Bittersweet, sly, uncontrollable creature ... . — Sappho

One of the things that we were trying to do with this show was the complexities of relationships and love. There is both passion and longing and a bittersweet quality to it that is a part of life. — Tim Burton

I'll fight it. I'll fight it for you. Don't you worry about me, Hazel Grace. I'm okay. I'll find a way to hang around and annoy you for a long time. — John Green

I can tell you this: there will be other girls, other disasters. And there will be nights to come, his life mostly behind him, when he will long to hurt like that again. — Michael Knight

With his venom irresistible and bittersweet that loosener of limbs, Love reptile-like strikes me down — Sappho

In life, there are those relationships where you really love someone, but they're just not right for you and there's a little bittersweet feel to it. — Jennifer Morrison

There are no words for how much I will miss her, but I try to kiss her so that she'll know. I try to kiss her to tell her the whole story of my love, the way I dreamed of her when she was dead, the way that every other girl seemed like a mirror that showed me her face. The way my skin ached for her. The way that kissing her made me feel like I was drowning and like I was being saved all at the same time. I hope she can taste all that, bittersweet, on my tongue. — Holly Black

I am happy with you." It was only a half-lie. In truth, being with him made me happier than anything. But it was a bittersweet happiness because from this moment on, it would be overshadowed with the wait and wonder of when and how our relationship would dissolve. — Alicia Kobishop

It's a bittersweet road we parents travel. We start with total commitment to a small, helpless human being. Over the years we worry, plan, comfort, and try to understand. We give our love, our labor, our knowledge, and our experience - so that one day he or she will have the inner strength and confidence to leave us. — Adele Faber

I envy the music lovers hear. I see them walking hand in hand, standing close to each other in a queue at a theater or subway station, heads touching while they sit on a park bench, and I ache to hear the song that plays between them: The stirring chords of romance's first bloom, the stately airs that whisper between a couple long in love. You can see it in the way they look at each other ... you can almost hear it. Almost, but not quite, because the music belongs to them and all you can have of it is a vague echo that rises up from the bittersweet murmur and shuffle of your own memories. — Charles De Lint

I would stay away from him and leave him to go his own road where there would be other women, countless other women, who would probably give him as much physical pleasure as he had had with me. I wouldn't care, or at least I told myself that I wouldn't care, because none of them would ever own him - own any larger piece of him than I now did. — Ian Fleming

I believe love is bittersweet, especially young love. — Aurora Guerrero

Life is "heavy" is it not? However, we lighten it with our love of it ... and I have found that whether returned or no ... that love is always worth it. It is the loving that is the gift of life, and whether bittersweet from loss, or returned in another's eyes, we are blessed to have had its presence in our lives ... — Gloria Smith

... love born of the worst kind of loss, of knowing you could lose, and of the sobering knowledge that these cherished moments they chose to grasp this night were stolen from the hands of time. — Susan Rodgers

Coffee and love taste the same, bittersweet! — Saravana Kumar Murugan

How unbearable, for women, is the tenderness which a man can give them without love. For men, how bittersweet this is. — Albert Camus

We wander in our thousands over the
face of the earth, the illustrious and the obscure, earning beyond the
seas our fame, our money, or only a crust of bread; but it seems to me
that for each of us going home must be like going to render an account.
We return to face our superiors, our kindred, our friends
those whom we
obey, and those whom we love; but even they who have neither, the most
free, lonely, irresponsible and bereft of ties,
even those for whom
home holds no dear face, no familiar voice,
even they have to meet the
spirit that dwells within the land, under its sky, in its air, in its
valleys, and on its rises, in its fields, in its waters and its trees
a
mute friend, judge, and inspirer. — Joseph Conrad

He looked at her in bittersweet despair. "Sometimes, Kate, when I'm inside you and your arms are around me, I'm human again. There's a beginning and an end to my life again. And all because of your love. It's been a gift to me, one I've never deserved. But I cherished it."
And maybe he'd destroyed it with the ungodly truth. He didn't know. He drew
a shaky breath, battered by a fresh wave of regret, and his voice trembled. "I thought I had broken your heart a while ago. I didn't know how to make you hear me, and I knew that by telling you the truth, I'd lose you. But here you sit. You haven't flipped out, not visibly anyway, nor accused me of being a liar. And you haven't run in terror, now that you're truly free to go. I don't know what to think. Tell me, Kate ... have I lost you? — Shelby Reed

Grief, unresisted, is grace. It doesn't mean it doesn't hurt anymore, it doesn't mean it doesn't rip your heart out ... In great grief, there's an incredible love in it. In love there's a tinge of bitter. In true love. My teacher used to say 'all love is bittersweet'. All things experienced fully, reveal their opposite. — Adyashanti

I will feel the pang of separation when she is two, when she is twelve, when she is twenty. My daughter will tackle other more important milestones, other more difficult accomplishments that she must achieve on her own. And I, who once shared a blood supply with her, who once had her all to myself, must wait and watch and smile, and continue this exploration of motherhood, this bittersweet experience of maternal love, this continual process of bravely saying goodbye. — Andrea J. Buchanan

I wanted it, I wanted it all. All the ardent beginnings and the confused between-times and the bittersweet dregs.
All of the aches and sorrows, all of the soaring joys.
All of it. — Jacqueline Carey

The best part about being a matchmaker is you are getting credits in heaven, as I really believe I work for God. The worst part is that matchmakers can often fix everyone up, all the way to the altar, but cannot find love themselves, so it is bittersweet. — Patti Stanger

I love that, even after jumping through hoops forever, I can still get that buzz, that hook. That's very healthy, but it's bittersweet, too, because if you don't get the part, you have to deal with the disappointment. I don't think I'll ever negotiate those peaks and troughs wholly healthily. — Gina McKee

She clasped his hands and pressed her lips to them. 'I want you to be proud of me,' he repeated. She dropped his hands, feeling defeated. — Natasha Farrant

We have travelled this world to a bittersweet love song:
Take my hand and lets carry on ...
Do my eyes deceive me or do you grow more wonderful each day?
After all these years of love you're more fantastic today than the day we met.
And ... you were quite fantastic then ...
I Love you still — Michelle Geaney

How can it be wrong? Love picks the right path, not the one of least resistance. — Debra Anastasia

We are meant to love. We are meant to lose. Love is our promise of a bittersweet end, and our desperate, hopeless struggle not to hurt anyone along the way. — Courtney M. Privett

Forgiveness can be bittersweet. It contains the sweetness of the release of a story that has caused us pain, but also the poignant reminder that even our dearest relationships change over the course of a lifetime. — Sharon Salzberg

Nostalgia is, by its very nature, bittersweet, the happiest memories laced with melancholy. It's that combination, that opposition of forces, that makes it so compelling. People, places, events, times: we miss them, and there's a pleasure in the missing and a sadness in the love.
The feeling is most acute, sometimes cripplingly so, when we find ourselves longing for the moment we're in, the people we're actually with.
That nameless feeling, that sense of excruciating beauty, of pained happiness, is at the core of 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy). — Robert J. Wiersema

I don't want this. I've never wanted this. What is the point in dredging up a past that no longer serves any purpose? A past that's no longer connected to the present or the future. A past that is bittersweet because the love we shared was doomed from the outset - a stolen love that was never meant to be.
Why would I want to relive that? — Siobhan Davis

Love - bittersweet, irrepressible - loosens my limbs and I tremble. — Sappho

No fairy tale, this. This was by no stretch of the imagination a polished fantasy. This was a searing, living force, rough around the edges, unfamiliar and bittersweet.
And precious. — V.S. Carnes

Bittersweet? No, just bitter, the taste of your tongue.
Words you can't have back, so they linger. — Coco J. Ginger

With you I'd dance in the rain in my best dress, fearless — Taylor Swift

Once again Love, that loosener of limbs,
bittersweet and inescapable, crawling thing,
seizes me. — Sappho

Once again love drives me on, that loosener of limbs, bittersweet creature against which nothing can be done. — Sappho