Heartbreak And Loss Quotes & Sayings

When We Two Parted

When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow -
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o'er me -
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well:
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met -
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?
With silence and tears. — George Gordon Byron

My heart felt withered, a neglected fruit that would never again sweeten, now that my love was dead. — Cheryl R Cowtan

I looked inward at my heart. And indeed, there too, the criss-cross corsetry was slackened and gaping. I was all undone. Potentially, I could spill. Or tangle. And so I began to tug at my own heartstrings, pulling them up tight until there was just the right amount of tension at each criss and each cross. Then I bent down to my boots and laced them firmly too, first the left, then the right, finishing off on each side with a surgeon's shoelace knot. — Danielle Wood

People say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. They say that when you been through something terrible ... But it doesn't. It breaks your bones, leaving everything splintered and held together with grubby bandages and yellowing sticky tape. Creaking along the fault lines, Fragile and exhausting to hold together. Sometimes you wish it had killed you. — Fiona Barton

I know that a lot of songwriters write about a break up. It's a really popular topic. I think heartbreak is the number one thing people write about. I could say that's narcissistic somehow because they want everybody to admire how pained they are. But I actually do think there's something beautiful and uplifting about knowing that you're not the only one who is experiencing or has experienced that kind of devastating loss. Everyone's experienced that. — Mirah

I believe deeply that God does his best work in our lives during times of great heartbreak and loss, and I believe that much of that rich work is done by the hands of people who love us, who dive into the wreckage with us and show us who God is, over and over and over. There are years when the Christmas spirit is hard to come by, and it's in those seasons when I'm so thankful for Advent. Consider it a less flashy but still very beautiful way of being present to this season. Give up for a while your false and failing attempts at merriment, and thank God for thin places, and for Advent, for a season that understands longing and loneliness and long nights. Let yourself fall open to Advent, to anticipation, to the belief that what is empty will be filled, what is broken will be repaired, and what is lost can always be found, no matter how many times it's been lost. — Shauna Niequist

What's the difference? You ask me
The difference is, a smile touches my lips
When I remember both the memory of you entering my life
And the memory of you leaving my life — Tammy-Louise Wilkins

When I look back on all the past chapters of my life, I see all the pain I have endured. I see the mistakes and heartbreak, the horror and loss. But when I stand in front of the mirror now, I see all my scars and the strength I've found from them. I see the lessons I have learned about life and the wisdom I've gained from each of my experiences. I will be fine — Christine Zolendz

What was wrong with her? Why did things like this keep happening to her? Love wasn't supposed to hurt, yet it felt like all she knew when it came to love was pain. Every time she opened her heart, she just got burned. Or, in this case, frozen. And she was getting sick and tired of it. — Elizabeth Rudnick

Again and again a man would tell me about early childhood feelings of emotional exuberance, of unrepressed joy, of feeling connected to life and to other people, and then a rupture happened, a disconnect, and that feeling of being loved, of being embraced, was gone. Somehow the test of manhood, men told me, was the willingness to accept this loss, to not speak it even in private grief. Sadly, tragically, these men in great numbers were remembering a primal moment of heartbreak and heartache: the moment that they were compelled to give up their right to feel, to love, in order to take their place as patriarchal men. — Bell Hooks

I know I'll hold this loss in my heart forever. I know I'll hold, I'll hold. I know. — Sara Quin

Here are the things I want for you -
I want you to be happy. I want someone else to know the warmth of your smile, to feel the way I did when I was in your presence.
I want you to know how happy you once made me and though you really did hurt me, in the end, I was better for it. I don't know if what we had was love, but if it wasn't, I hope to never fall in love. Because of you, I know I am too fragile to bear it.
I want you to remember my lips beneath your fingers and how you told me things you never told another soul. I want you to know that I have kept sacred, everything you had entrusted in me and I always will.
Finally, I want you to know how sorry I am for pushing you away when I had only meant to bring you closer. And if I ever felt like home to you, it was because you were safe with me. - I want you to know that most of all. — Lang Leav

I wanted to pretend for just a little longer that I was whole again. Happy. Then I'd figure out how to pick up the pieces and move on. — L.A. Fiore

Or, God, maybe this was just life. For everyone on the planet. Maybe the Survivor's Club wasn't something you "earned," but simply what you were born into when you came out of your mother's womb. Your heartbeat put you on the roster and then the rest of it was just a question of vocabulary: the nouns and verbs used to describe the events that rocked your foundation and sent you flailing were not always the same as other people's, but the random cruelties of disease and accident, and the malicious focus of evil men and nasty deeds, and the heartbreak of loss with all its stinging whips and rattling chains ... At the core, it was all the same. — J.R. Ward

He wondered what his heart would look like if he could pluck it from his chest and inspect it. — David Estes

I was the last of the four Dresden dolls. Only me... and I didn't want to be here. — V.C. Andrews

Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O Never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost. — W.B.Yeats

Heartbreak , death and loss were shared between us, but renewal, commitment and strength as well. — Laura Ward

On her new LP, Shatter, Jude Johnstone examines heartbreak and loss with such tender resignation that I wept in acknowledgement of its artful simplicity. A lesson in melodic grace delivered by as fine a singer-songwriter as any I know. — Rodney Crowell

Semrad taught us that most human suffering is related to love and loss and that the job of therapists is to help people "acknowledge, experience, and bear" the reality of life - with all its pleasures and heartbreak. "The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves," he'd say, urging us to be honest with ourselves about every facet of our experience. He often said that people can never get better without knowing what they know and feeling what they feel. I — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

He felt like his own heart might stop beating just from acknowledging the concept. The sadness, the sorrow, and the loss, they were living things, funnily enough. — Adam P. Knave

Now that he's gone, I feel like I'm a senior citizen who gave away her life savings over the phone.
And this is the crux: I never in my life believed in someone as much as I believed in him.
The shame is overwhelming. — Emma Forrest

When you lose someone, you get used to living day to day without them. But you'll never get used to the "10 second heartbreak." That's the time it takes to wake to full consciousness each day and remember ... — Nina Guilbeau

I was tired of well-meaning folks, telling me it was time I got over being heartbroke. When somebody tells you that, a little bell ought to ding in your mind. Some people don't know grief from garlic grits. There's somethings a body ain't meant to get over. No I'm not suggesting you wallow in sorrow, or let it drag on; no I am just saying it never really goes away. (A death in the family) is like having a pile of rocks dumped in your front yard. Every day you walk out and see them rocks. They're sharp and ugly and heavy. You just learn to live around them the best way you can. Some people plant moss or ivy; some leave it be. Some folks take the rocks one by one, and build a wall. — Michael Lee West

Every loss, every mistake, was seared into her soul, creating a different kind of tattoo, one made from rage and abandonment, heart break and tears — Kami Garcia

love can
embellish its beginning
sing its blossoming
and engrave its eternities

but can never
explain its loss. — Sanober Khan

She took a step and didn't want to take any more, but she did. — Markus Zusak

Compromise, communicate, and never go to bed angry - the three pieces of advice gifted and regifted to all newlyweds. — Gillian Flynn

The problem with love is this: It dies. And when it does, you die with it. — Apollo Blake

I really wish Hollywood would stop labeling movies, especially movies with predominantly black casts. Then, it makes others feel like, "Oh, well, that's not for me." At the end of the day, everybody understands love, loss, pain and heartbreak. That's not a color. — Taraji P. Henson

Once I was in the cold dim room, without furniture or carpet or rugs, only a dollhouse that wasn't as wonderful as the original, I opened the tall and narrow closet door and began my ascent up the steep and narrow stairs.
On my way to the attic.
On my way to where I'd find my Christopher, again... — V.C. Andrews

I am starting to accept
that you never loved me.
And it's sad
because I don't think you see
how beautiful you are to me.
Your face was the light
that chased away the shadows,
every nightmare, every fear.
But you burned out and now
I'm learning to be afraid
of the dark once again. — Sade Andria Zabala

Never far from a dining table, the characters in Heather A. Slomski's limpid and elegant debut collection are not given to melodramatics. Civility reigns, voices are not raised, much goes unsaid. But just beneath the sophisticated composure are longing, loss, heartbreak. And how intensely familiar is the table itself, which made this reader suddenly understand how much of our real life takes place there. Heather A. Slomski is truly a fresh voice on the scene, and The Lovers Set Down Their Spoons is that rare thing, a new book as innovative in its design as it is compulsively readable. — Jaimy Gordon

I knew it would be all of those things and so much more to me, but it was his heart I was yanking from his chest with my decision, and that's what mattered to me. I was giving up a piece of my own as well, but it was a choice.
His was just collateral. — Rachael Wade

I am not a broken heart.
I am not collarbones or drunken letters never sent. I am not the way I leave or left or didn't know how to handle anything,
at any time,
and I am not your fault. — Charlotte Eriksson

This was another item about growing up: you encountered all the cliches of love and loss and heartbreak. — Sylvia Brownrigg

That sense of loss is exactly what we must anticipate, prepare for, and cherish to the last of our days; for it is only our heartbreak that finally refutes all that is ephemeral in love. The — Amor Towles

You are afraid to let anyone in, but you still leave the door open, hoping someone good will shut the door behind him and throw away the keys. — Jenim Dibie

She had never looked as well. She had entered her room as just an impossibly lovely girl. The woman who emerged was a trifle thinner, a great deal wiser, an ocean sadder. This one understood the nature of pain, and beneath the glory of her features, there was character, and a sure knowledge of suffering. — William Goldman

The sun was hot and bright. A day for fishing, for swimming, for playing tennis and having fun, and they put my Christopher in the ground. — V.C. Andrews

What happens when you return
and find nothing
but a hollowed shell,
shingles and floor,
walls and echoes
and the light that lead you here
has now burned out
and the ones who built it
have traveled afar
and you cant go to them,
no matter what shoes you wear. — Kellie Elmore

I have suffered through enough illnesses, trauma and heartbreak to finally understand that life will keep moving forward inexorably, if terribly at times. I am starting to realize that it can be delightful too, if I let it. My love is not diminished if I let go of sorrow. I almost believe that. — Jenny Qi

Never feel lonely with you," said Bean when they stopped kissing. "I keep expecting to feel lonely or shut out or irritated, but the more we are together, the more right it feels, the more we seem to belong together." Isadora felt the same, but she feared admitting it. She feared the commitment it implied, she feared the heartbreak, the entanglement that leads to bitter loss. Bean waited for her to pledge herself to him in turn, but she remained silent through fear and the recentness of her heartbreak. — Erica Jong

Being Lulu, it made me realize that all my life I've been living in a small, square room, with no windows and no doors. And I was fine. I was happy, even. I thought. Then someone came along and showed me there was a door in the room. One that I'd never even seen before. Then he opened it for me. Held my hand as I walked through it. And for one perfect day, I was on the other side. I was somewhere else. Someone else. And then he was gone, and I was thrown back into my little room. And now, no matter what I do, I can't seem to find that door. — Gayle Forman

He felt something trickle down his face and he wiped it away irritably. When he looked at the back of his hand, he found trails of red. He had never cried in his life; in fact, he could not cry with no tear ducts. But now, at last, he was. He was crying tears of blood. For her. — Phillip W. Simpson

When he asked if he was mine, tears in his eyes,
I think he knew what he would do,
what he would have to do,
and he was mourning us.
He was mourning us the whole time. — Emma Forrest

I say, "Well then I don't know if it was real,
and that makes me feel like I'm going insane again."
"Absolutely it was real. It was a real, partial picture. Because it ended preemptively, things you would have learned about him in the relationship, you are instead learning in the breakup. You have learned that he has a desperate desire for intimacy
and then a desperate desire for the cave.
He will get lonely there eventually and come back."
"To me?"
He doesn't pause. "To someone new."
"And I'll have to watch another girl?"
"You will have to, but you will also know
what lies ahead for that poor girl. — Emma Forrest

You've left me with a kaleidoscope of broken smiles and shattered dreams. — Karen Quan

She put her head in her hands and began to cry softly. He felt confused and bitterly unhappy. A part of him wanted to go to her, to hold and comfort her, but he wasn't prepared to be pushed away in cold anger all over again. He waited in his chair and felt the room expand until there was an emptiness the size of the desert between them. — Michelle Frost

It's like he has emotional amnesia ... I think you have to accept that the person you knew isn't there at the moment. I was witness to how much he loved you. I have the photos. This isn't the person we knew. I don't recognize this person. He's shed his skin. Her heart is broken too. She has to say the thing that will give me back my life. She draws on every reserve. I see how much it hurts her and it hurts me too. I came from her joy and her pain, I lived in it and I live in it now. — Emma Forrest

I'd breathe for her. I'd see for her, hear for her, and feel for her. I'd even die for her. Thousands of times. If I could see her smile at me one more time, it would all be worth it. Just one more time. Before I completely fell apart. — Tiana Dalichov

I realised I really didn't know what I was doing and I felt her trace drowning in the middle of the cars and the people, in the middle of the streets and far away, in the secrets she so jealously kept.
I felt it. We were ever so close, ever so far. — Emiliano Campuzano

Sometimes you're going to have to let one person go a thousand different times, a thousand different ways, and there's nothing pathetic or abnormal about that. You are human. — Heidi Priebe

I needed light. I needed vision. I needed something other than loss and heartbreak and late nights and your grandmother is in the hospital and you're dehydrated and your cat isn't coming home and your knees will never get better and he doesn't want you and you need to work less and he doesn't love you and you need to work harder and you this that and the other. I needed to wear heels. I needed to put on fuchsia lipstick and blow kisses at the mirror. I needed to eat something. I needed to get it the fuck together. — Kelton Wright

I stand, and wait among the sea foam. I swim in my own tears-I sing without my voice. I do not reach for higher ground, because I have lapped in the churning waters. — Meredith T. Taylor

Heartbreak is an altogether different thing. Disappointment doesn't grow into heartbreak, nor does failure...It comes form the loss of love or the perceived loss of love...Heartbreak is what happens when love is lost. — Brene Brown

Shed the tears.
Shed the blame and guilt too.
So that your heart mends and heals. — Khang Kijarro Nguyen

Someday you will wake up feeling 51 percent happy and slowly, molecule by molecule, you will feel like yourself again. — Amy Poehler

Closure. That's probably the most unrealistic word in the English vocabulary. It's up there with heartbreak, pain, loss, and abandonment, all these things that you're supposed to get over and mend and heal but really, do you ever get over those moments? — Katie Kacvinsky

I stood in your doorway this morning
dreaming you'd turn around
you'd tilt your head
you'd softly whisper "stay"

or that you'd grab my arms
to shake me while asking
what the hell are we doing
we love
each other
and this is not right
so we will make this work
now stay!

You poured your coffee. Stirred the spoon like a crystal man
with your back to me and not a sound. the fridge humming elegies while the clock ticked on
and the streets are so clean here people rushing to work
and maybe I should be too
by now
at this age
this stage
this town.

I will stand in that doorway
dreaming
for many nights to come. — Charlotte Eriksson

I think falling in love should come with a warning label: CAUTION - side effects may include breaking up, accompanied by heartache, severe mood swings, withdrawal from people and life itself, wasted hours obsessing over bitter reflections, a need to destroy something (preferably something expensive that shatters), uncontrollable tear ducts, stress, a loss of appetite (Cheetos and Dr. Pepper exempt), a bleak and narrow outlook on the future, and an overall hatred of everyone and everything (especially all the happy couples you see strolling hand-in-hand, placed on your path only to exacerbate your isolation and misery). All above reactions will be intensified with the consumption of one or more alcoholic beverages. — Katie Kacvinsky

If you're really listening, if you're awake to the poignant beauty of the world, your heart breaks regularly. In fact, your heart is made to break; its purpose is to burst open again and again so it can hold evermore wonders. -Andrew Harvey — Rob Brezsny

You see, because [Norfolk is] stuck out here on the east, on this hump jutting into the sea, it's not on the way to anywhere. People going north and south, they bypass it altogether. For that reason, it's a peaceful corner of England, rather nice. But it's also something of a lost corner.'
Someone claimed after the lesson that Miss Emily had said Norfolk was England's 'lost corner' because that was were all the lost property found in the country ended up.
Ruth said one evening, looking out at the sunset, that 'when we lost something precious, and we'd looked and looked and still couldn't find it, then we didn't have to be completely heartbroken. We still had that last bit of comfort, thinking one day, when we were grown up, and we were free to travel the country, we could always go and find it again in Norfolk. — Kazuo Ishiguro

One can't run in a park without a dog or make angels in the snow without a child and there are things one can't do without a lover, so the loss of the lover is like an amputation and the patient goes into shock. — Merle Shain

Life provides losses and heartbreak for all of us-but the greatest tragedy is to have the experience and miss the meaning. — Robin Roberts

Of course he freaked me out.
Of course it's nothing to do with me.
But none of that matters.
He loved me and now he doesn't.
I was everything to him and now I am nothing. — Emma Forrest

My heart broke when he died, split in half and fell down into my stomach or somewhere deep and muddy, and I'm still not sure where it is now. I hear it beating sometimes in my ears, or feel its fast pulse in my neck, like I do now; but in my chest, where it should be, it mostly just feels empty. — Jen Violi

HOW TO REFUSE DEFEAT Life is fragile and uncertain. Sooner or later, you will experience a great loss in life, when suffering reveals that the world is not the place you think it is, and that your dreams will not come true after all. What then? Don't blame others for what happened to you, even if it might well be their fault. This is a dead end. And don't settle for stoic acceptance of your fate. Merely bearing up under strain is noble, but it's wasting an opportunity for transformation. You have the power to turn your burden into a blessing. What if this pain, this heartbreak, this failure, was given to you to help you find your true self? Make adversity work for you by launching a quest inside your own heart. Find the dragons hiding there, slay them, and bring back the treasure that will help you live well. — Rod Dreher

There is a blessing in losing the one we love. It's the blessing of self-transformation. You don't have to who you were anymore. You've struggled. And now you can change. It doesn't mean that bits of that person won't cling to you, they will throughout your life, but they are now subsumed into something greater. That person has given you, in fact, the most important blessing, which is they gave you the blessing of transforming your soul into
something better, something more beautiful. — Emma Forrest

Sink into morbid, cynical reflection on how much romantic heartbreak is to do with ego and miffed pride rather than actual loss — Helen Fielding

I'm passing the bar
Where you first got in my car
I'm not ashamed to admit
That it's you I won't forget

I saved your cigarettes and
Bad habits I regret
But the hours flew by like clouds
Whenever I had you around

Parachute lover
Take me away
From the plane that went crashing
And the earth that's in flames

Saving you is saving me
High above the redwood trees
But down below I see shadows
And parachute debris

We're drifting like children
Along for the ride
Each time we find love
Another parachute arrives

Our madness will burn
As bright as the sun
And I'll keep finding lovers
But you were the one — Crystal Woods