100+ Broken Heart Quotes That Prove You're Not Alone

What’s the worst feeling in the world? Lemon juice on a paper cut? Stubbing your toe really hard? A bad toothache? Those all suck for sure, but they are like a day at a carnival compared to a broken heart. It is complete and abject misery that never completely goes away, leaving scars that linger for a lifetime and impact all your relationships. The only comfort is that pretty much everyone has suffered from it at some point (breakup, anyone?), and some of those people are really great with words. Misery loves company, so try to console yourself with over 100 broken heart quotes from other people who’ve lived it.

And for people who don’t believe broken hearts are real, this part is for you. Did you know there’s actually a condition called broken heart syndrome, which is also known as takotsubo cardiomyopathy. This is when your heart exhibits bizarre behavior, resulting in heart failure due to stress hormones usually caused by an emotionally painful experience. The flurry of hormones can damage your heart and even disable it. Broken hearts don’t just exist in Nicholas Sparks’ novels. Love is a real and powerful emotion, so if you or someone you know is going through the breakup blues, look over these quotes to gather some strength and perspective.

RELATED: These 100 Love Messages Will Give You All The Feels

Goodbye Broken Heart Quotes

1. “Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go.” — Herman Hesse
2. “Has someone made you heartbroken? Then, why are you still thinking of him?” — Debra K. Messer
3. “There are many stages of grief. It’s sad, something coming to an end. It cracks you open. When you try to avoid the pain, it creates greater pain. I’m a human being, having a human experience in front of the world. I try really hard to rise above it.” — Jennifer Aniston
4. “Our bodies heal without permission, but our hearts need consent. Give it.” — Lauren Eden
5. “We draw maps of each other’s pasts. Heartbreaks colored in black. Grief outlined in purple. The happiest times shaded yellow. This is how we learn each other. We are so scared and brave. We are so terrified and willing. We rewrite the definition of brave and it is this: love again. Love again. Love again.” — Fortesa Latifi
6. “You can die of a broken heart — it’s scientific fact — and my heart has been breaking since that very first day we met. I can feel it now, aching deep behind my rib cage the way it does every time we’re together, beating a desperate rhythm: Love me. Love me. Love me.” — Abby McDonald
7. “God is closest to those with broken hearts.” — Jewish Proverb
8. “It is a curious sensation: The sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters anymore. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.” — George Bernard Shaw
9. “You’re leaving me. Then go in peace. And let your wish alone be lamp to light your path. And find tranquillity where’er you be.” — Chaim Nachman Bialik
10. “Human hearts are elastic. They have room for all sorts of passions, and they can break and heal and love again and again.” — Jodi Lynn Anderson
11. “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.” ― James Baldwin

Sad Broken Heart Quotes

1. “My heart was broken so badly last time that it still hurts. Isn’t that crazy? To still have a broken heart almost two years after a love story ends?” — Elizabeth Gilbert
2. “Love is only made more valuable by the risk of heartbreak.” — Alessandra Torre
3. “If your heart is broken, do you have a phantom heart?” — Damon Suede
4. “He was acting like our kiss had broken him, and his reaction was breaking me.” — Shannon A. Thompson
5. “This is what it felt like to have a broken heart. It felt less like a cracking down the middle and more like she had swallowed it whole and it sat bruised and bleeding in the pit of her stomach.” ― Wendy Wunder
6. “I’ve been on the floor and I’ve been heartbroken. I didn’t know how I was going to stand up. But I just gave it time.” — Sandra Bullock
7. “Heartbreak could be lived with if it weren’t accompanied by regret.” — Laura Kasischke
8. “Our hearts will be broken a thousand times over, but who is to say that our hearts were ever perfect to begin with? Maybe they can withstand a few cracks. After all, the way that we love is not perfect. We love things to such an incomprehensible depth that these things become worn in. Wouldn’t the most beautiful thing in the world be a heart that has been through all of the wear and tear, as worn in as your favorite sweater that both keeps you warm and grants you a smile in return? That’s the kind of heart that I want. Bruises make for beautiful colors after all.” — Elizabeth Brooks
9. “Patience is key for getting over a breakup. That, and trailing off your interaction after the breakup.” — Drake
10. “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. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life…. You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness. So simple a phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.” — Neil Gaiman
11. “When your heart is broken, you plant seeds in the cracks and you pray for rain.” — Andrea Gibson
12. “Long time I have been on my own, but now really I’m alone. I survive the killing, the starving, all the hate of the Khmer Rouge, but I think maybe now I will die of this, of broken heart.” — Patricia McCormick
13. “The shattering of a heart when being broken is the loudest quiet ever.” — Carroll Bryant
14. “I loved you; and perhaps I love you still, the flame, perhaps, is not extinguished; yet it burns so quietly within my soul, no longer should you feel distressed by it.” — Alexander Pushkin
15. “The heart is the only broken instrument that works.” — T.E. Kalem
16. “You can’t buy love, but you can pay heavily for it.” — Henny Youngman
17. “The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength within you that survives all hurt.” — Max Lerner
18. “No matter how hard your heart is broken, the world doesn’t stop for your grief.” — Faraaz Kazi
19. “When you have your heart broken for the first time, you gain depth.” — Sienna Miller
20. “If you haven’t broken any heart yet, you never loved.” — M.F. Moonzajer
21. “Sometimes, all you can do is lie in bed, and hope to fall asleep before you fall apart.” — William C. Hannan
22. “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
23. “I’ve been heartbroken. I’ve broken hearts. That’s part of life, and it’s part of figuring out who you are so you can find the right partner.” — Heidi Klum
24. “If you are heartbroken and can’t face the world, you need something with a fantastic plot. You won’t be able to read anything boring because your attention span when you are heartbroken decreases by three-quarters.” — Isabel Gillies
25. “There were many ways of breaking a heart. Stories were full of hearts being broken by love, but what really broke a heart was taking away its dream — whatever that dream might be.” — Pearl Buck
26. “For my part, I prefer my heart to be broken. It is so lovely, dawn-kaleidoscopic within the crack.” — D.H. Lawrence
27. “I’d rather have a broken arm than a broken heart.” — Christie Brinkley
28. “The cure for a broken heart is simple, my lady. A hot bath and a good night’s sleep.” — Margaret George
29. “But a part of me lies buried in lace and roses on a riverbank in France-a part of me is broken off forever. A part of me will be unflyable, stuck in the climb.” — Elizabeth Wein
30. “Stab the body and it heals, but injure the heart and the wound lasts a lifetime.” — Mineko Iwasaki
31. “Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishing.” — Anais Nin
32. “Never love with all your heart, it only ends in aching.” — Countee Cullen
33. “Dancing with heartbreak is the strangest thing. It’s like playing with fire; you know you’ll get burnt but you are still captivated by the flickering flame and the magnetic heat.” — Aishabella Sheikh
34. “The broken heart. You think you will die, but you keep living, day after day after terrible day.” — Charles Dickens
35. “In life we don’t always get what we want; hopes and dreams get washed away so easily, hearts are broken, chances are missed, and we always seem to end up right back where we started.” — Rebecah McManus
36. “Love isn’t there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.” — Herman Hesse
37. “I was blind and heart broken and didn’t want to do anything and Gus burst into my room and shouted, ‘I have wonderful news!’ And I was like, ‘I don’t really want to hear wonderful news right now,’ and Gus said, ‘This is wonderful news you want to hear,’ and I asked him, ‘Fine, what is it?’ and he said, ‘You are going to live a good and long life filled with great and terrible moments that you cannot even imagine yet!’” — John Green
38. “There were many ways of breaking a heart. Stories were full of hearts being broken by love, but what really broke a heart was taking away its dream-whatever that dream might be.” — Pearl Buck
39. “It is a curious sensation: The sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters anymore. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.” — George Bernard Shaw
40. “For my part, I prefer my heart to be broken. It is so lovely, dawn-kaleidoscopic within the crack.” — D.H. Lawrence
41. “Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It’s like the tide going out, revealing whatever’s been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting pop cans, nibbled fish bodies, bones. This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes, not knowing the future. The ruin you’ve made.” — Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye
42. “The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength within you that survives all hurt.” — Max Lerner
43. “No matter how hard your heart is broken, the world doesn’t stop for your grief.” — Faraaz Kazi
44. “Every quote, every book, every film seemed to suggest that ‘one day’ someone would come into my life and love me with an intensity and a passion I had never experienced before. And to their credit they were right; It all came and went so fast it really did feel as if it were just ‘one day.'” — Ranata Suzuki
45. “Our emotions pull us in different directions. The stronger the emotion, the greater the pull. Feelings are not always practical, nor do they make any logical sense. That’s just the way it goes.”

— Lang Leav

1. “How frail the human heart must be — a mirrored pool of thought. So deep and tremulous an instrument of glass that it can either sing, or weep.” — Sylvia Plath
2. “I don’t know why they call it heartbreak. It feels like every other part of my body is broken too.” — Terri Guillemets
3. “A broken heart is what makes life so wonderful five years later when you see that special guy in an elevator and he is fat and smoking and saying ‘Long time no see’.” — Phyllis Batelle
4. “I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together again and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken — and I’d rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as I lived.” — Margaret Mitchell
5. “Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.” — Wallace Stegner
6. “The human heart has a way of making itself large again even after it’s been broken into a million pieces.” — Robert James Waller
7. “Hearts can break. Yes, hearts can break. I think it would be better if we died when they did, but we don’t.” — Stephen King
8. “Perhaps this is what the stories meant when they called somebody heartsick. Your heart and your stomach and your whole insides felt hollow and empty and aching.” — Juliet Marillier
9. “This time I wouldn’t forget him, because I couldn’t ever forgive him — for breaking my heart twice.” — James Patterson
10. “Given enough time and distance, the heart will always heal.” — Laura Fitzgerald
11. “Sometimes a broken heart can mend something else’s brokenness.” — Munia Khan
12. “When you have your heart broken for the first time, you gain depth.” — Sienna Miller
13. “If you haven’t broken any heart yet, you never loved.” — M.F. Moonzajer
14. “Sometimes, all you can do is lie in bed, and hope to fall asleep before you fall apart.” — William C. Hannan
15. “I’ve been heartbroken. I’ve broken hearts. That’s part of life, and it’s part of figuring out who you are so you can find the right partner.” — Heidi Klum
16. “If you are heartbroken and can’t face the world, you need something with a fantastic plot. You won’t be able to read anything boring because your attention span when you are heartbroken decreases by three-quarters.” — Isabel Gillies
17. “God is closest to those with broken hearts.” — Jewish Proverb
18. “To meet, to know, to love — and then to part, Is the sad tale of many a heart.” — Samuel Taylor Coleridge
19. “What is the opposite of two? A lonely me, a lonely you.” — Richard Wilbur
20. “Pleasure of love lasts but a moment. Pain of love lasts a lifetime.” — Bette Davis
21. “You can’t buy love, but you can pay heavily for it.” — Henry Youngman
22. “Don’t tie your heart to a person that has nothing left to offer you. Let it go. It might hurt for a while, but when you get over it, you’ll see that it’s better.” — Orebela Gibenga
23. “I know that’s what people say – you’ll get over it. I’d say it, too. But I know it’s not true. Oh, you’ll be happy again, never fear. But you won’t forget. Every time you fall in love it will be because something in the man reminds you of him.” — Betty Smith
24. “He loved me. He loved me, but he doesn’t love me anymore, and it’s not the end of the world.” — Jennifer Weiner
25. “Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.” — Marilyn Monroe
26. “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
27. “Hearts live by being wounded.” — Oscar Wilde
28. “Never regret. If it’s good, it’s wonderful. If it’s bad, it’s experience.” — Victoria Holt
29. “Love is blind, but a broken heart sees everything.” — Matshona Dhliwayo
30. “A broken heart is what makes life so wonderful five years later, when you see that special guy in an elevator and he is fat and smoking and saying ‘Long time no see.'” — Phyllis Batelle
31. “I know what it’s like to have a broken heart. I know what it’s like to feel pain: When my songs don’t become hits, it breaks my heart. There are a million ways to break a heart. I can relate.”

— Diane Warren

1. “When you go through heartbreak, you just do the things that get you by. Eventually, you realize it’s about making the most of life.” — Britney Spears
2. “Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.” — Edna St. Vincent Millay
3. “Sometimes a little heartbreak is a lesson, and the best thing to do is just learn the lesson.” — Jon Voight
4. “She broke her own heart, holding onto him.” — R.H. Sin
5. “Someday you’re gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You’ll see that you were in mourning and your heart was broken, but your life was changing.” — Elizabeth Gilbert
6. “Perhaps someday I’ll crawl back home, beaten, defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorrow.” — Sylvia Plath
7. “Heartbreak is funny to everyone but the heartbroken.” — Jeffery Eugenides
8. “This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.” — Elizabeth Gilbert
9. “It’s funny how artistic we become when our hearts are broken.” — Hotel Books
10. “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
11. “Only time can heal your broken heart. Just as only time can heal his broken arms and legs.” — Jim Henson
12. “I often say, my last relationship failed and didn’t paralyze me. My last heartache didn’t kill me. Why would this one? I will not break.” — Sujeiry Gonzalez
13. “It is a dull sensation, your heart breaking, like the sound of a pebble dropping on the sand. Not a shattering, not a tearing apart. There is nothing shrill or grandiose about the sensation. It is merely an internal realization that something treasured you never knew you had is leaving forever.” — Samantha Bruce-Benjamin
14. “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 that it can hold evermore wonders.” — Andrew Harvey
15. “I have not broken your heart… you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.” — Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
16. “You can’t buy love, but you can pay heavily for it.” — Henny Youngman