One of the worst things about heartbreak is that it can be so isolating. When you’re in the thick of it, it can feel like you’re the only one who’s ever experienced a broken heart and no one else can understand how much pain you’re in. The good news? That actually couldn’t be further from the truth. I don’t have the exact stats, but I think it’s fair to say the vast majority of people experience heartbreak at least once in their lives.
Even better news? Some of those people just so happen to be artists and writers and poets and philosophers and heartbroken creatives of all kinds who have left their lovelorn wisdom and musings behind. Hence, this list of some of the best quotes about heartbreak of all time. If you’re nursing a broken heart of your own, these relatable words can help you heal.
Whether you’re mourning the end of a long-term relationship, getting over an unrequited crush, or navigating the messy aftermath of a life-altering three-month situationship, these 31 broken heart quotes are here to remind you that you’re not alone. Cheers to getting through this—because, yes, you will get through it.
31 Broken Heart Quotes:
- “Throughout history, men have broken women’s hearts in a particular way. They love them or half-love them and then grow weary and spend weeks and months extricating themselves soundlessly, pulling their tails back into their doorways, drying themselves off, and never calling again. Meanwhile, women wait. The more in love they are and the fewer options they have, the longer they wait, hoping that he will return with a smashed phone, with a smashed face, and say, I’m sorry, I was buried alive and the only thing I thought of was you, and feared that you would think I’d forsaken you when the truth is only that I lost your number, it was stolen from me by the men who buried me alive, and I’ve spent three years looking in phone books and now I have found you. I didn’t disappear, everything I felt didn’t just leave. You were right to know that would be cruel, unconscionable, impossible. Marry me.” —Lisa Taddeo, Three Women
- “He was beautiful and, yes, I loved him, in one of infinite ways a person could love. I knew that I would wish a thousand times that things could have ended differently. But I also knew, somewhere in me, that there was no soft ending.” —Melissa Broder, The Pisces
- “And you call me up again just to break me like a promise, so casually cruel in the name of being honest. I'm a crumpled up piece of paper lying here, 'cause I remember it all, all, all too well.” —Taylor Swift “All Too Well”
- “The most terrible thing about it is not that it breaks one’s heart—hearts are made to be broken—but that it turns one’s heart to stone.” —Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
- “I have not broken your heart—you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.” —Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
- “Hearts can break. Yes, hearts can break. Sometimes I think it would be better if we died when they did, but we don’t.” ― Stephen King, Hearts in Atlantis
- “Loving you was like going to war; I never came back the same.” — Warsan Shire
- “I have a strange feeling with regard to you. As if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly knotted to a similar string in you. And if you were to leave I'm afraid that cord of communion would snap. And I have a notion that I'd take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, you'd forget me.” —Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
- “You can’t buy love, but you can pay heavily for it.” — Henny Youngman
- “There is something bleak and barren about a world that is missing the person who knows you best.” — Jodi Piccoult, The Book of Two Ways
- “And did the twin flame bruise paint you blue? Just between us, did the love affair maim you too?” —Taylor Swift, “All Too Well”
- “My heart no longer felt as if it belonged to me. It now felt as if it had been stolen, torn from my chest by someone who wanted no part of it.” — Meredith Taylor, Churning Water
- “Thinking of you is a poison I drink often.” — Atticus
- “The shattering of a heart when being broken is the loudest quiet ever.” — Carroll Bryant
- “Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.” ― Kahlil Gibran
- “Now I’ll go sit on the floor wearing your clothes. All that I know is I don't know how to be something you miss.” —Taylor Swift, “Last Kiss”
- “So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.” ― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
- “Stab the body and it heals, but injure the heart and the wound lasts a lifetime.”― Mineko Iwasaki
- “I think heartbreak is something you learn to live with as opposed to learn to forget.” — Kate Winslet
- “It is strange how often a heart must be broken. Before the years can make it wise.” ― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems
- “I wish I were a little girl again because skinned knees are easier to fix than a broken heart.” — Julia Roberts
- “My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, or else my heart, concealing it, will break.” — William Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew
- “Back then, in those first days, I was so alone that every day was like eating my own heart.” — Junot Diaz, This is How You Lose Her
- “Sometimes, when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated.” — Alphonse de Lamartine
- “The broken heart. You think you will die, but you keep living, day after day after terrible day.” — Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
- “My feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping but I shall go on living.” — Pablo Neruda
- “When your heart is broken, you plant seeds in the cracks and you pray for rain.” — Andrea Gibson
- “The greatest tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.” — W. Somerset Maugham
- “Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.” — Neil Gaiman
- “There is an ocean of silence between us… and I am drowning in it.”― Ranata Suzuki
- “Look at this godforsaken mess that you made me. You showed me colors you know I can’t see with anyone else.” —Taylor Swift, “Illicit Affairs”
