Sometimes when going through an absolutely wretched time, quotes on loss can be comforting. When words fail and the effort of attempting to express inner despair seems too great, here are some breakup quotes to help you feel less alone. Part of the human condition is to suffer through loss. Sending lots of caring to you now if this describes you. Hang in there.
“remember you
are not you, now. you are you
a year from now. how does that
woman walk? she is not sick or sad.
doesn’t even remember today.
has been to Europe. what song
is she humming? now. right now.
that’s it.” ― Marty McConnell
“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” ― Ernest Hemingway
“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” ― Albert Camus
“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.” ― Corrie Ten Boom,
“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.” ― Louise Erdrich
“It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.” ― Vincent van Gogh
“Courage isn't having the strength to go on - it is going on when you don't have strength.” ― Napoleon Bonaparte
“Listen to the people who love you. Believe that they are worth living for even when you don't believe it. Seek out the memories depression takes away and project them into the future. Be brave; be strong; take your pills. Exercise because it's good for you even if every step weighs a thousand pounds. Eat when food itself disgusts you. Reason with yourself when you have lost your reason.” ― Andrew Solomon
“It's not that you should never love something so much that it can control you.
It's that you need to love something that much so you can never be controlled.
It's not a weakness.
It's your best strength.” ― Patrick Ness,
“Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke
“Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be...” ― William Wordsworth
“I think that we are like stars. Something happens to burst us open; but when we burst open and think we are dying; we’re actually turning into a supernova. And then when we look at ourselves again, we see that we’re suddenly more beautiful than we ever were before.” ― C. JoyBell C.
“I can bench press steam, but not fog. I just have to wait until the fog lifts itself. ” ― Jarod Kintz
“Strength isn't about bearing a cross of grief or shame. Strength comes from choosing your own path, and living with the consequences.” ― Jennifer Armintrout
“Life is filled with unanswered questions, but it is the courage to seek those answers that continues to give meaning to life. You can spend your life wallowing in despair, wondering why you were the one who was led towards the road strewn with pain, or you can be grateful that you are strong enough to survive it.” ― J.D. Stroube
“Does anything in nature despair except man? An animal with a foot caught in a trap does not seem to despair. It is too busy trying to survive. It is a ll closed in, to a kind of still, intense waiting. Is this a key? Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go. ” ― May Sarton
“Most people carry that pain around inside them their whole lives, until they kill the pain by other means, or until it kills them. But you, my friends, you found another way: a way to use the pain. To burn it as fuel, for light and warmth. You have learned to break the world that has tried to break you. ” ― Lev Grossman
“The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn and feel and change and grow and love and live.” ― Leo F. Buscaglia
“You almost have to step outside yourself and look at you as if you were someone else you really care about and really want to protect. Would you let someone take advantage of that person? Would you let someone use that person you really care about? Or would you speak up for them? If it was someone else you care about, you'd say something. I know you would. Okay, now put yourself back in that body. That person is you. Stand up and tell 'em, "Enough!” ― Queen Latifah
“You're going to meet many people with domineering personalities: the loud, the obnoxious, those that noisily stake their claims in your territory and everywhere else they set foot on. This is the blueprint of a predator. Predators prey on gentleness, peace, calmness, sweetness and any positivity that they sniff out as weakness. Anything that is happy and at peace they mistake for weakness. It's not your job to change these people, but it's your job to show them that your peace and gentleness do not equate to weakness. I have always appeared to be fragile and delicate but the thing is, I am not fragile and I am not delicate. I am very gentle but I can show you that the gentle also possess a poison. I compare myself to silk. People mistake silk to be weak but a silk handkerchief can protect the wearer from a gunshot. There are many more predators in this world, so I want you to be made of silk. You are silk.” ― C. JoyBell C.
"I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me." ― Anna Quindlen
“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.” ― William Shakespeare
"When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be." ― Lao Tzu
“Let us forget with generosity those who cannot love us” ― Pablo Neruda
“I must learn to love the fool in me the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries.” ― Theodore Isaac Rubin quotes
“Watching you walk out of my life does not make me bitter or cynical about love. But rather makes me realize that if I wanted so much to be with the wrong person how beautiful it will be when the right one comes along.” ― Anonymous
"There’s a trick to the 'graceful exit.' It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, or a relationship is over — and let it go. It means leaving what’s over without denying its validity or its past importance to our lives. It involves a sense of future, a belief that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving up, rather than out." — Ellen Goodman
"If you're worthless because one person doesn't want to date you anymore, then pretty much everybody on Earth is worthless. . . . in the meantime, stop blaming yourself. . . and place this whole disappointment in the "[Stuff] happens" file. It's the fattest one in the drawer." ― Carolyn Hax.
"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another." ― Anatole France
“Everything has a gestation period, a time period that must pass before things will come into form. If you plant a carrot seed, it takes about seven weeks for the sprout to make its above-dirt entrance. Bamboo, which can grow up to thirteen feet in as little as one week, takes up to seven years to break through the surface of the ground. But for seven long years it looks like absolutely nothing’s happening. Now that takes some commitment.” ― James Arthur Ray
"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense." ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
"When one door closes, another one opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see
the one which has been opened for us." ― Helen Keller
“Do not wait; the time will never be ‘just right.’ Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.” ― Napoleon Hill
“Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.” ― Carl Bard
"Don't let success go to your head or failure go to your heart." ― Anonymous
"
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment." ― Marcus Aurelius Antonius
“Sorrow happens, hardship happens, the hell with it, who never knew the price of happiness, will not be happy” ― Yevgeny Yevtushenko
“Sorrows cannot all be explained away in a life truly lived, grief and loss accumulate like possessions.” ― Stefan Kanfer
"Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it." ― Talmud
"Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment." ― Dale Carnegie
“A small trouble is like a pebble. Hold it too close to your eye and it fills the whole world and puts everything out of focus. Hold it at a proper distance and it can be examined and properly classified. Throw it at your feet and it can be seen in its true setting, just one more tiny bump on the pathway of life.” ― Celia Luce
"Most of the shadows of this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine." ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Forgiveness is not an emotion, it's a decision." ― Randall Worley
"To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you." ― Lewis B. Smedes
"When guilt rears its ugly head confront it, discuss it and let it go. The past is over. It is time to ask what can we do right, not what did we do wrong. Forgive yourself and move on. Have the courage to reach out for help." ― Bernie S. Siegel, MD
"The art of being yourself at your best is the art of unfolding your personality into the man you want to be . . . Be gentle with yourself, learn to love yourself, to forgive yourself, for only as we have the right attitude toward ourselves can we have the right attitude toward others." ― Wilfred Peterson
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” ― Oscar Wilde
"You need to explain some shit to mother fuckers right now, and I hate to go back to this well, but the metaphor is apt: when you break a bone or have major surgery, you must be allowed time to heal. That's why an end to a relationship is called "BREAKING up," because you are breaking the part of yourself that was created in that relationship. You have to you heal that self next. When someone sees someone fresh out of a cast or with stitches from heart surgery, their first response generally isn't "Let's run a goddamned marathon." People need to understand that they are asking you to run a marathon when they insist on a committed relationship. You have healing to do. When a bone is broken, you have to rehabilitate it. The muscles are weakened and atrophied, and have to be taught to bear weight again. I'm not saying tell people "I'll never run again," I'm saying tell them you're not even out of the cast yet."
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