90 Sad Love Phrases to Express the Pain of a Breakup

Usually when we talk about love, conversations focus on soulmate, true love, and idealized romance. But as many have experienced, opening your heart to love can also result in frustration. Prepare your heart — these 90 sad love quotes are sure to stir up a lot of feelings regardless of your current relationship status.

Ending a relationship, unrequited love, getting dumped, losing someone too soon, having a secret crush, divorce, unmet expectations in a relationship – there are many examples of attachment and tender affections coming to an end. And when the attraction we feel for someone is unrequited, stops abruptly, or disappears, it can lead to a lot of questions and a lot of emotional pain.

Memories of what was and dreams of what you expected may flood your mind incessantly or come up unexpectedly even years later. Sometimes, after going through such an ordeal, the best thing is to vent and cry and open up to those closest to you. Other times, it seems impossible to find words to explain how you are feeling and what you are going through at the moment.

But while sadness and heartbreak may seem like they will never end, you are not alone – these 90 sad love quotes will speak to your soul and give you words to express your pain that arises from the absence of what was once yours. And in time, you will be able to take steps forward to heal and start over!

SEE ALSO: 59 Phrases of Longing for Someone Who’s Gone

Sad love quotes

“You kept me as a secret, but I kept you as an oath.” – Taylor Swift

“When you loved someone and had to let them go, there will always be that little part of you that whispers, ‘What did you want and why didn’t you fight for it? — Shannon L. Alder

“My heart may be hurting, but it will recover and be able to see the beauty of life once more. It’s happened before, it will happen again, I’m sure. When someone leaves, it’s because someone else is about to arrive — I will find love again.” -Paulo Coelho

“I was heartbroken. I broke hearts. That’s part of life, and it’s part of figuring out who you are to find the right partner.” – Heidi Klum

“Maybe true love doesn’t exist for me, but I can sublimate my loneliness with the notion that true love exists for someone else.” -Roxane Gay

“It hurts to let go. Sometimes it seems like the more you try to hold on to something or someone, the more they want to run away. You feel like a criminal for having felt it, for having wanted it. For wanting to be. It confuses you because you think your feelings were wrong and it makes you feel so small because it’s so hard to keep him in when you let him out and he doesn’t come back. You get so alone you can’t explain it.” — Henry Rollins

“I’m so afraid of dying without ever really being loved. Can you understand?” – David Foster Wallace

“Maybe we tried to leave so many memories of ourselves with each other because we knew that one day we wouldn’t be together anymore.” – Makoto Shinkai

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source.” — Anaïs Nin

“I know my heart will never be the same, but I’m telling myself I’ll be fine.” -Sara Evans

“After this breakup, I just want to be a ghost, completely anonymous.” – Before sunrise

“The scariest thing about distance is that you don’t know if they’re going to miss you or forget about you.” – Nicholas Sparks

“’You see,’ she concluded miserably, ‘when I can call him that across space – I belong to him. He doesn’t love me – he never will – but I belong to him.’ ” – LM Montgomery

“All intimacy secretly carries somewhere beneath its beautiful surfaces, the ever-rolling ingredients of a complete catastrophe.” -Elizabete Gilberto

“’I told him I loved him,’ she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. ‘And he just said it wasn’t enough.’ Her eyes were wide and dark. ‘How am I going to live with this?’” – Jojo Moyes

“You can’t convince people to love you. This is an absolute rule. No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give it to you. True love moves freely in both directions.” — Cheryl Strayed

“I got my heart’s desire and that’s when my troubles began.” – Lev Grossman

“Dreams break into a million tiny pieces. The dream dies. Which leaves you with a choice: you can settle for reality, or you can go off, like a fool, and dream another dream.” — Nora Ephron

SEE ALSO: 31 Phrases of longing for love. Your longing has a name!

sad love phrases

“Hearts are always being hurt.” — Oscar Wilde

“The pleasure of love lasts but a moment. The pain of love lasts a lifetime.” -Bete Davis

“It’s so hard in the world for people to find love, true love.” — La Toya Jackson

“It is not the lack of love, but the lack of friendship that makes marriages unhappy.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

“Everyone wanted to believe that endless love was possible. She also believed in him once, when she was eighteen. But she knew love was messy, just like life. These were shifts that people could not foresee or even understand, leaving a long trail of regret in their wake. And almost always, those regrets led to the kinds of questions that could never be answered.” – Nicholas Sparks

“Maybe one day I’ll come home crawling, defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sadness.” — Sylvia Plath

“You know it’s love when all you want is for that person to be happy, even if you’re not a part of their happiness.” – Julia Roberts

“I know I’m just summer to your heart, not the full four seasons of the year.” — Edna St. Vincent Millay

“Real relationships are the product of time spent, which is why so many of us have so few of them.” ― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“I think you have to pay for love with bitter tears.” – Edith Piaf

“We are all very close together, but we are all dying of loneliness.” -Albert Schweitzer

“Women explore for eternity in the vast garden of sacrifice.” – Before midnight

“Loss is but the wounding of a heart; it is the memory that makes it our downfall.” — Brian Ruckley

“This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we try something.” -Elizabete Gilberto

“The breaking of a heart when it is broken is the loudest silence ever.” — Carroll Bryant

“I’d rather love a million times and have my heart broken every time, than keep a heart permanently empty forever.” — HC

“That’s all you can do in this world, no matter how strong the current is against you, or how heavy your burden, or how tragic your love story. You keep going.” – Robyn Schneider

“There are many ways to break a heart. The stories were full of heartbreak for love, but what really broke a heart was taking away your dream — whatever that dream was.” — Pearl S. Buck

“Love is the hardest habit to break and the hardest to satisfy.” – Drew Barrymore

“I know one day you’ll have a beautiful life, I know you’ll be a star in someone else’s sky – but why, why, why can’t it be, can’t it be mine?” – Pearl Jam

“Looking back, I have this to regret, that many times when I loved, I didn’t say it.” — Ray Stanard Baker

“He shakes his head, as if acknowledging that endings are almost always a little sad, even when there’s something to look forward to on the other side.” — Emily Giffin

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” — Elie Wiesel

“The most painful thing is getting lost in the process of loving someone too much and forgetting that you are special too.” — Ernest Hemingway

SEE ALSO: 70 phrases I miss you to SHOW YOUR LOVE

sad love quotes for status

“I hope you’re happy, but not like you were with me. I’m selfish, I know. So find someone great, but don’t find someone better. I hope you’re happy, but don’t be happier.” — Olivia Rodrigo

“When you fight with your partner, you are fighting with yourself. Every flaw you see in him touches a negated weakness in yourself.” – Deepak Chopra

“Even being alone – it’s better than being with a lover and feeling lonely.” – Before sunset

“Change is not always for the best.” – Nicholas Sparks

“Yes, I was in love with you: I still am. No one has ever increased such a heightened capacity for physical sensation in me. I cut you out of my life because I couldn’t stand to be a passing fantasy. Before I give my body, I must give my thoughts, my mind, my dreams. And you weren’t having any of that.” — Sylvia Plath

“Unrequited love is the infinite curse of a lonely heart.” – Christina Westover

“There are so many things that need to be said. Where did you go? Do you think about me? You ruined me. Are you okay? But of course I can’t say any of that.” -Gayle Forman

“I used to think you were the best thing that ever happened, but now I think maybe you’re the worst thing.” – Silver linings Playbook

“That’s when I finally understood. I finally understood. It wasn’t the thought that counted. It was the actual execution that mattered, showing up for someone. The intention behind it was not enough. Not for me. No more. It wasn’t enough to know that deep down, he loved me. You had to really tell someone that, show that person that you cared. And he just didn’t. Not enough. – Jenny Han

“You don’t need these people. By walking away, they did you a favor. Because what’s left after the fools are gone are old souls and true hearts.” — Cheryl Strayed

“Failed relationships can be described as wasted makeup.” – Mariana Keyes

“Love is never lost. If unrequited, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.” -Washington Irving

“Loneliness is proof that your innate quest for connection is intact.” — Martha Beck

“Tell me, do you feel the pain of my past? When you lay on me, you can…