Quotes & Sayings About Unrequited Friendship

Most hate is more common and more complicated, with as many varieties as there are varieties of love. Just as there is possessive love and needy love; family love and friendship; romantic love and unrequited love; passion and respect, affection and obsession, so hatred has its shadings. There is hate that fears, and hate that merely feels contempt; there is hate that expresses power, and hate that comes from powerlessness; there is revenge, and there is hate that comes from envy. There is hate that was love, and hate that is a curious expression of love. There is hate of the other, and hate of something that reminds us too much of ourselves. There is the oppressor's hate, and the victim's hate. There is hate that burns slowly, and hate that fades. And there is hate that explodes, and hate that never catches fire. — Andrew Sullivan

Garrett has been the best friend a girl could want, so how could I be so stupid as to think about shutting him out for good? I've been so busy thinking about my unrequited love, I haven't even stopped to consider the other, more important part of our relationship.
Friendship.
Ignoring him now would make him think I don't care, that I don't want to be friends. I want to get over him, not lose him for good! How must he feel, with me not replying to his texts and e-mails like this? What kind of friend am I? — Abby McDonald

I've always loved you," he said, his eyes a blue that was almost violet. "You know this." She swallowed a lump in her throat. "I only wonder whether I deserve such devotion."
"Sometimes people fall in love with those who do not return the same strength of feelings. It is as it is," he said with a quiet intensity. "What I give, I give freely. You owe me nothing, not love, not friendship, not even obligation. — Sherry Thomas

I shall never love any as I love thee, Moonbrow!" she cried.
He nuzzled her, very gently. "Nor I you, Ryhenna," he said. "Tek is my mate. I love her. You are my shoulder-friend, and I love you. I love you both, but differently. And when in a year or two years' time, you dance court within this glade, it will be with one whom you love in a way entirely other than the way that you love me. I am your companion, your friend, Ryhenna, just as you are always and ever mine. Stand fast with me," he said, "and no foe shall ever part us. — Meredith Ann Pierce

Let's always love each other, and never be in love with each other. — David Levithan

I lent only half an ear to those well-intentioned folk who say that happiness is enervating, liberty too relaxing, and that kindness is a corruption for those upon whom it is practiced. That may be; but in the world as it is, such reasoning amounts to a refusal to nourish a starving man decently, for fear that in a few years he may suffer from overfeeding. When useless servitude has been alleviated as far as possible, and unnecessary misfortune avoided, there will remain as a test of man's fortitude that long series of veritable ills, death, old age, and incurable sickness, love unrequited and friendship rejected or betrayed, the mediocrity of a life less vast than our projects and duller than our dreams; in short, all the woes caused by the divine nature of things. — Marguerite Yourcenar

It's not the loving that hurts this girl; it's the understanding of it for what it is, that it will never be returned in the same way, that threatens to destroy her. But to unload the words - "I love you" - on an innocent party who didn't ask for it, to reach across the dark space and touch him - it's like the world she knows could end if she dared speak these words, dared make such a move. — Rachel Cohn

Soul connections are not often found and are worth every bit of fight left in you to keep. — Shannon L. Alder

I have known friendship love, parental love, romantic love, family love and unrequited love in my life time, but the only love that made a difference was self love. You don't need confirmation from the world or another person that you matter. You simply do matter. When you finally believe that truth and live it then you can do amazing things with your life! — Shannon L. Alder

Exemplary friendship embraces, in a resolutely unrequited way, an unwearied capacity for loving generously without being loved back. Marking the limit of possibility - the friend need not be there - this structure recapitulates in fact the Aristotelian values according to which acts and states of loving are preferred to the condition of being-loved, which depends for its vigor on a mere potentiality. Being loved by your friend just pins you to passivity. For Aristotle, loving on the contrary, constitutes an act. To the extent that loving is moved by a kind of disclosive energy, it puts itself out there, shows up for the other, even where the other proves to be a rigorous no-show. Among other things, loving has to be declared and known, and thus involves an element of risk for the one who loves and who, abandoning any guarantee of reciprocity, braves the consequences when naming that love. — Avital Ronell