Parenting

100 Insightful Breakup Quotes To Heal Your Broken Heart

by Team Scary Mommy

Updated: June 10, 2021

Originally Published: Dec. 17, 2019

Kelly Sikkema/Unsplash

Have any of us really recovered from the Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt breakup? And raise your hand if you’re still reeling from the Brangelina split? A few other memorable and heart wrenching breakups that had us in our feelings include Prince Charles and Princess Diana, Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake, Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, and Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan. The point is, people break up, and sometimes it’s for the best, or it’s a major loss. In the words of Alfred Lord Tennyson, “‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” Unfortunately, finding love includes the risk of a broken heart, and breakups are just as essential to finding the one as having the first kiss.

A relationship ending is never easy. You’ve invested so much time and energy into building something with another person, only for it to come to a conclusion and be forced to start over. No wonder that heartache has inspired the most beautiful break up poems by literary giants. And let’s be honest, sometimes you just need to eat chocolate, read a bunch of break up quotes, and have a good cry to help you get through this tough time. You know you’re gonna emerge even stronger on the other side — you just need to read what others have written about going through a broken heart to help push you past yours.

And hey, once you’ve finished reading through these, you’ll be ready to look toward the future. We can help with that, too! Check out our quotes on motivation, self-care, confidence, and online dating tips.

Sad Breakup Quotes

“You can love someone so much… But you can never love people as much as you can miss them.” — John Green
“Lots of things can be fixed. Things can be fixed. But many times, relationships between people cannot be fixed, because they should not be fixed. You’re aboard a ship setting sail, and the other person has joined the inland circus, or is boarding a different ship, and you just can’t be with each other anymore. Because you shouldn’t be.” — C. JoyBell
“What plagues people is not those who don’t love them, but those who do.” — Michael Gilbert
“Sadly enough, the most painful goodbyes are the ones that are left unsaid and never explained.” — Jonathan Harnisch
“And that’s when I know it’s over. As soon as you start thinking about the beginning, it’s the end.” — Junot Díaz
“Moving on, is a simple thing, what it leaves behind is hard.” — Dave Mustaine
“Moving on is easy. It’s staying moved on that’s trickier.” — Katerina Stoykova Klemer
“I used to loathe ambivalence; now I adore it. Ambivalence is my new best friend.” — Suzanne Finnamore
“Bittersweet? No, just bitter, the taste of your tongue. Words you can’t have back, so they linger.” — Coco J. Ginger
“Every woman that finally figured out her worth has picked up her suitcases of pride and boarded a flight to freedom, which landed in the valley of change.” — Shannon L. Alder
“When your lover leaves… Cupid is summoned to reclaim his arrow. And he must pull the barbed arrowhead out backwards through the raw flesh of your heart.” — Kerry Cue
“Our time together was the best yet. But even in paradise, the sun must set.” — Anangsha Alammyan
“Sometimes we have to participate in our own rescue and choose to love some people at a distance.” — Kianu Starr
“I am done with you, couples. We are breaking up.” — Analicia Sotelo

“I couldn’t sleep without you. Not because I needed you, but because your body was a temperature I was used to being next to.” — Dominic Riccitello
“We ruined each other by being together. We destroyed each other’s dreams.” — Kate Chisman
“Sometimes you’ll feel you’re the most luckiest person of the universe and in next minute you’ll feel like a trash.” — Wahid Bhat
“The snag about marriage is, it isn’t worth the divorce.” — Suzanne Finnamore
“The faster you search for a new partner, the faster you will get over your break-up blues… Love is nothing more than an illusion.” — Aman Jassal
“Two words. Three vowels. Four consonants. Seven letters. It can either cut you open to the core and leave you in ungodly pain or it can free your soul and lift a tremendous weight off your shoulders. The phrase is: It’s over.” — Maggi Richard
“Life always waits for some crisis to occur before revealing itself at its most brilliant.” — Paulo Coelho
“When we are in love, we are convinced nobody else will do. But as time goes, others do do, and often do do, much much better.” — Jamie Weise
“If you have to speculate if someone loves you and wants to be with you, chances are they don’t. It’s not that complicated. Love, in most cases, betrays the one feeling it. Don’t waste moments waiting and wondering. Don’t throw away your time dreaming of someone that doesn’t want you. No one is that amazing, certainly not the one who would pass you up.” — Donna Lynn Hope
“Always a trade. Always a compromise. Until there wasn’t anything left to bargain with, because neither one of us had any clue what to do.” — Stephanie Campbell,
“Surprises, I feel now, are primarily a form of violence.” — Suzanne Finnamore
“He looks like a runway model. How in the world am I going to be able to reject that? The world is so unfair. Seriously, it’s like turning Brad Pitt down for a date. The girl who could actually do it should win an award for idiot of the century.” — Colleen Houck
“I remember one desolate Sunday night, wondering: Is this how I’m going to spend the rest of my life? Married to someone who is perpetually distracted and somewhat wistful, as though a marvelous party is going on in the next room, which but for me he could be attending?” — Suzanne Finnamore
“Everything else has vanished, so you take them now. Maybe if you’re the one keeping them, I’ll be the one feeling better.” — Daniel Handler
“The hardest thing in life is letting go of the person whom you dearly love.” — Luffina Lourduraj
“It has been said that with every great love we have, a little piece of our souls is left behind after the cleaving.” — Emma Shane
“C’mon, you’re gonna get upset sometimes. Breaking up is a sh*tty business. Someone always gets hurt. This time it happens to be you.” — Alexandra Potter
“Screw the daring tough-guy image, what happened with us broke me.” — Stephanie Campbell
“I think you forget that I’m still alive. It’s like you don’t expect me to keep on existing now that I’m not in your life every day.” — Rachel Higginson
“Like wading through water; That hard, that slow.” — Lauren Henderson
“Life isn’t about falling in love as much as it is about learning to get over hatred.” — Sanhita Baruah
“When two people part it is the one who is not in love who makes the tender speeches.” — Marcel Proust
“The hard part wasn’t breaking up. The hard part is forcing myself to fall out of love with you.” — Dominic Riccitello
“People aren’t things; we cannot lose them nor someone can take them away from us. They choose to leave.” — Luigina Sgarro
“The actuality that the heart does not want to feel, doesn’t negate the certitude that it once felt and will still feel.” — Itohan Eghide
“Such a lie is neither forgettable nor forgivable that breaks and destroys the life of one’s else.” — Ehsan Sehgal
“Know this: Whenever you think of leaving, a part of you has already left. But it’s never too late to get it back.” — Kamand Kojouri
“It’s time for you to break away from the person that is breaking you.” — Napz Cherub Pellazo
“When you realize how much you’re worth, You’ll stop giving people discounts.” — Karen Salmansohn
“Maybe we needed to break a little, so we could put ourselves back together more beautifully than before.” — Leah Raeder
“Every time he left, I shattered apart.” — Rachel Higginson
“Habits are hard to let go, especially if they are human beings.” — Drishti Bablani
“Realize your true strength when people reject you. In actual fact, they do not reject you. They only show you your real strength.” — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
“I have been where you are now. I have felt the fears and resolved them. I have had the doubts and concerns and found the way forward. Lift up your head, and step ahead.” — Moutasem Algharati
“I do still love you. I don’t love you enough to be able to give you the things we dreamed about and planned.” — Catherine Sanderson
“The test of any relationship is, when the going gets tough, whether your partner stays with you or ‘gets going.’” — Kenneth Eade
“It is difficult to move on when your surroundings stay the same.” — Katja Michael
“Passivity means death, activity is living. If you are passive, you allow negative things to come into your life.” — Unknown
“I burned by bridges so the devil couldn’t follow me.” — L.M. Browning
“Love is the bee that carries the pollen from one heart to another.” — Slash Coleman
“It’s much more interesting to try and understand what binds two people together. Why we stay with each other is much more of a mystery than why we don’t.” — Jane Stanton Hitchcock
“A lot of the pain you are dealing with right now is really just your thoughts.” — Karen Salmansohn
“We’ve all loved someone way too freakin’ much.” — Karen Salmansohn
“The only person you should ever fear losing in a relationship is you yourself.” — Miya Yamanouchi
“The best way to get over someone is to get under someone else.” — Unknown
“Everybody that breaks up has a little tally of their victories which they count after the relationship to see how they did; cheating gives you a million tallies and more or less makes the entire relationship a lie.” — A.D. Aliwat
“I do. I still love him so much. And I feel so worthless because he doesn’t love me anymore.” — Daria Snadowsky
“I thought I lost something this summer, but I just realized, I never needed it.” — Nicole Christie
“Watch me go. Watch me. Because you said I couldn’t. Because you thought I wouldn’t. Go on, cry now. Cry.” — Kellie Elmore
“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.” — Unknown
“I am part of everyone I ever dated on OK Cupid.” — Slash Coleman
“Breaking up is a natural evolution when you try to figure out what you want in life. If you’re with an individual who isn’t moving in the same direction and at the same rate that you are, it ain’t going to work.” — Usher Raymond
“People give up on each other long before they give up on themselves, and they do that, too.” — Donna Lynn Hope

Positive Breakup Quotes

“Never love anybody that treats you like you’re ordinary.” — Oscar Wilde
“Be in love with your life. Every minute of it.” — Jack Kerouac
“Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.” — Washington Irving
“Breakups have a way of shaking us awake and helping us see what we really want vs. what we are willing to settle for.” — Mandy Hale
“He was acting like our kiss had broken him, and his reaction was breaking me.” — Shannon A. Thompson
“You were only there to be a healer. A fixer. To prepare them for the next love. Not yours.” — Darnell Lamont Walker
“A lot of people will break your heart, but if you look at the bright side, only one will be the worst.” — Dominic Riccitello
“One of the best times for figuring out who you are and what you really want out of life? Right after a break-up.” — Mandy Hale
“Even on my weakest days, I get a little bit stronger.” — Sara Evans
“They feel life is for the taking, and that everyone deserves happiness no matter what the cost. I must remember these tricks if I ever decide to have my soul surgically removed.” — Suzanne Finnamore
“We’re both whisper-screaming at each other. All I can think is ‘this is the worst possible way to break up with somebody.’” — Andrea Portes
“Undeniable chemistry and horrific timing. They love each other.” — Darnell Lamont Walker
“At your absolute best, you still won’t be good enough for the wrong person. At your worst, you’ll still be worth it to the right person.” — Karen Salmansohn
“Letting go doesn’t mean that you don’t care about someone anymore. It’s just realizing that the only person you really have control over is yourself.” — Deborah Reber
“Just because a relationship ends, it doesn’t mean it’s not worth having.” — Sarah Mlynowski
“Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.” — Marilyn Monroe

Breakup Quotes for Him

“When I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead.” — Barney Stinson
“Love is messy — like chicken wings.” — Unknown
“When things break, it’s not the actual breaking that prevents them from getting back together again. It’s because a little piece gets lost — the two remaining ends couldn’t fit together even if they wanted to. The whole shape has changed.” — David Levithan

Breakup Quotes for Her

“Tough break-up? Trash stinks, which is why you toss it.” — Donna Lynn Hope
“But then you left exactly how all the sad songs said you would.” — Andrew Faulkner
“I loved you when I left you.” — Abby Norman
“If I wasn’t so phenomenal. I would go back to you.” — Coco J. Ginger
“People don’t need nice; they need the truth. I find it ridiculous that a guy has this kind of hold on you. Have some self-respect. It’s insane to give full control of your emotions to someone who doesn’t give a damn about you.” — Brittainy C. Cherry
“I miss your smile… but I miss mine more.” — Laurel House
“To love someone enough to let them go, you had to let them go forever or you did not love them that much.” — Diana Wynne Jones
“Either give me your hand, or end it now, and put us both out of our misery.” — Judith McNaught
“I cannot compromise my respect for your love. You can keep your love, I will keep my respect.” — Amit Kalantri
“That feeling you get when you want to tell someone you love them, and there is no one there..” — Melody Carstairs
“I once broke up with a boy because he wrote me an awful poem.” — Karen Joy Fowler
“Almost ninety-nine percent of relationships break because at least one of the two shows dishonesty — in whatever form or degree — towards it.” — Novoneel Chakraborty
“But every spiteful word she ever wrote him was effortless love clenched in her fists. Her heart screaming for stability in this fiery game of desire.” — Jamie Weise
“There is no need for hyperbole. I did NOT dump you. I peeled your mask off like a banana peel, did not like what was inside, and tossed it in the trash.” — Donna Lynn Hope

This article was originally published on Dec. 17, 2019