Breaking up is hard. Whether it’s a romantic relationship, a friendship, or any other type of bond, endings are tough to deal with.
That’s why sometimes, the right words can help us express what we’re feeling inside or even bring a little comfort during a tough time.
In this collection, we’ve gathered over 150 of the best breakup quotes to help you navigate the complex emotions of ending a relationship.
These quotes come from a variety of sources, including famous writers, artists, and thinkers, as well as original thoughts from “Attraction Diary”.
They capture the pain, the growth, and sometimes, the unexpected humor that can come from breakups.
Whether you’re looking for wisdom to share with a friend or something to reflect on personally, you’ll find a quote here that resonates.
[Also Read: 26 Quotes About Falling In Love With Your Best Friend]
Breakup Quotes
- “Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.” – Marilyn Monroe
- “Pain makes you stronger, fear makes you braver, heartbreak makes you wiser.” – Drake
- “Never regret. If it’s good, it’s wonderful. If it’s bad, it’s experience.” – Victoria Holt
- “It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.” – Theodore Roosevelt
- “It’s not the breakup that hurts the most. It’s the post-trauma that follows it. It is waking up and checking your phone for the message that isn’t there.”
- “One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can’t utter.” – James Earl Jones
- “Sometimes, the hardest part isn’t letting go but rather learning to start over.” – Nicole Sobon
- “The hottest love has the coldest end.” – Socrates
- “Sometimes two people have to fall apart to realize how much they need to fall back together.”
- “I think it’s important to realize you can miss something, but not want it back.” – Paulo Coelho
- “The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had.” – Roland Orzabal (Tears for Fears)
- “There are all kinds of ways for a relationship to be tested, even broken, some, irrevocably; it’s the endings we’re unprepared for.” – Katherine Owen
- “The art of letting go is simply about loving yourself more than the love you feel for another.”
- “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” – Alexander Graham Bell
- “The heart was made to be broken.” – Oscar Wilde
- “Just because a relationship ends, it doesn’t mean it’s not worth having.” – Sarah Mlynowski
- “Every time your heart is broken, a doorway cracks open to a world full of new beginnings, new opportunities.” – Patti Roberts
- “Breakups hurt, but losing someone who doesn’t respect and appreciate you is actually a gain, not a loss.”
- “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 long as I lived.” – Margaret Mitchell
- “It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” – Alfred Lord Tennyson
- “A breakup is like a broken mirror. It is better to leave it broken than hurt yourself trying to fix it.”
- “In some relationships, not saying goodbye is a quiet statement that you’re not saying goodbye at all.”
- “Letting go means to realize that some people are a part of your history, but not a part of your destiny.” – Steve Maraboli
- “Sometimes it takes a heartbreak to shake us awake & help us see we are worth so much more than we’re settling for.” – Mandy Hale
- “The end of a relationship is not always a failure. Sometimes all the love in the world is not enough to save something. In these cases, it is not a failure, but rather the completion of a story.”
- “Nothing in the universe can stop you from letting go and starting over.” – Guy Finley
- “It takes a strong heart to love, but it takes an even stronger heart to continue to love after it’s been hurt.”
- “Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go.” – Hermann Hesse
- “As soon as forever is through, I’ll be over you.” – Toto
- “The bravest thing I ever did was continuing my life when I wanted to die.” – Juliette Lewis
- “The rearview mirror is smaller than the windshield for a reason — where you’re headed is much more important than what you’ve left behind.”
- “I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.” – Edgar Allan Poe
- “Breaking up is just like having the worst nightmare after having the best dream.” – Unknown
- “The pain of a breakup is not on the day of the breakup. It’s when you feel the gap where they used to be in your daily life.”
- “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
- “Love is unconditional, relationships are not.” – Grant Gudmunson
- “A breakup is like a broken mirror. It is better to leave it than hurt yourself trying to pick up the shattered pieces.” – Unknown
- The hardest thing I ever did was walk away still madly in love with you.”
- “Sometimes the only way the good Lord can get into some hearts is to break them.” – Fulton Sheen
- “Every time you thought you couldn’t keep moving forward, you did. Take a moment to appreciate your strength.” – Karen Salmansohn
- “Hearts live by being wounded.” – Oscar Wilde
- “Sometimes, your heart needs more time to accept what your mind already knows.”
- “It’s amazing how someone can break your heart and you can still love them with all the little pieces.” – Ella Harper
- “When someone leaves, it’s because someone else is about to arrive.” – Paulo Coelho
- “The course of true love did never run smooth.” – William Shakespeare
- “Stab the body and it heals, but injure the heart and the wound lasts a lifetime.” – Mineko Iwasaki
- “Sometimes the person you want most is the person you’re best without.”
- You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one.” – Michael McMillan
- “Breaking up is just like having the worst nightmare after the best dream.” – Unknown
- “It’s not the breakup that hurts the most. It’s the post-trauma that follows it. It is waking up and checking your phone for the message that isn’t there.”
- “It’s better to be healthy alone than sick with someone else.” – Dr. Phil
- “When you leave weary of me without a work, I shall gently let you go.” – Kim Sowol
- “No relationship is ever a waste of your time. If it didn’t bring you what you want, it taught you what you don’t want.”
- “I think every girl has that a guy she has trouble letting go of.” – Rashida Jones
- “Letting go does not mean you stop caring. It means you stop trying to force others to.” – Mandy Hale
- “The brightest future will always be based on a forgotten past, you can’t go on well in life until you let go of your past failures and heartaches.” – Unknown
- “Don’t cry when the sun is gone because the tears won’t let you see the stars.” – Violeta Parra
- “Breakups can be sad, but sometimes tears are the price we pay for a freedom we need.” – Steve Maraboli
- “It takes bravery to end a relationship.” – Leona Lewis
- “One of the most courageous decisions you’ll ever make is to finally let go of what is hurting your heart and soul.” – Brigitte Nicole
- “What we wait around a lifetime for with one person, we can find in a moment with someone else.” – Stephanie Klein
- “If you really love something set it free. If it comes back it’s yours, if not it wasn’t meant to be.” – Unknown
- “The people that are quick to walk away are the ones who never intended to stay.”
- “Every breakup gives you a chance to do it right the next time.” – Unknown
- “Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.” – Washington Irving
- “We must be willing to let go of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” – Joseph Campbell
- “Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.” – Marilyn Monroe
- “You can love them, forgive them, want good things for them … but still move on without them.” – Mandy Hale
- “Sometimes the door closes on a relationship, not because we failed but because something bigger than us says this no longer fits our life.” – Lee Goff
- “Growth is painful. Change is painful. But nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong.” – Mandy Hale
- “Sometimes, breaking up is the brave act of letting go.”
- “I used to think that the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone.” – Robin Williams
- “The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.” – Charles Dickens
- “Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.” – Hermann Hesse
- “There is an important difference between giving up and letting go.” – Jessica Hatchigan
- “Sometimes the hardest part isn’t letting go but rather learning to start over.” – Nicole Sobon
- “Letting go means to come to the realization that some people are a part of your history, but not a part of your destiny.” – Steve Maraboli
- “The hardest thing is not talking to someone you used to talk to every day.”
- “You never lose by loving. You always lose by holding back.” – Barbara De Angelis
- “One day they’ll realize they lost a diamond while playing with worthless stones.” – Turcois Ominek
- “Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.” – Marilyn Monroe
- “To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose, the next best.” – William Makepeace Thackeray
- “When you break up, your whole identity is shattered. It’s like death.” – Dennis Quaid
- “If someone makes you miserable more than they make you happy, it doesn’t matter how much you love them, you need to let them go.”
- “What do you do when the one who broke your heart is the only one who can fix it?” – Unknown
- “Breaking up is just like having the worst nightmare after the best dream.”
- “It’s amazing how someone can break your heart and you can still love them with all the little pieces.” – Ella Harper
- “No matter how hard your heart is broken, the world doesn’t stop for your grief.” – Faraaz Kazi
- “One of the hardest things to do in life is letting go of what you thought was real.” – Unknown
- “Just because a relationship ends, it doesn’t mean it’s not worth having.” – Sarah Mlynowski
- “Healing is an art. It takes time, it takes practice. It takes love.” – Maza-Dohta
- “Starting today, I need to forget what’s gone, appreciate what still remains, and look forward to what’s coming next.”
- “Breakups hurt, but losing someone who doesn’t respect and appreciate you is actually a gain, not a loss.”
- “A bridge can still be built, while the bitter waters are flowing beneath.” – Anthony Liccione
- “You can love someone so much…But you can never love people as much as you can miss them.” – John Green
- “Don’t be afraid to start over. It’s a chance to build something better this time.” – Unknown
- “When you leave, weave a blanket of my love behind you to shield you from the cold.”
- “Every breakup is an opportunity to do it right the next time.” – Unknown
- “The hardest thing about realizing you don’t love me, is that you spent so much time pretending that you did.” – Unknown
- “Breaking up is just like having the worst nightmare after the best dream.” – Unknown
- “It takes a couple of seconds to say Hello, but forever to say Goodbye.” – Unknown
- “One of the most difficult tasks in life is removing someone from your heart.”
- “Sometimes the smallest step in the right direction ends up being the biggest step of your life. Tiptoe if you must, but take the step.” – Naeem Callaway
- “You can’t make homes out of human beings. Someone should have already told you that.” – Warsan Shire
- “The only whole heart is a broken one because it lets the light in.” – David J. Wolpe
- “It’s better to have loved and lost than to have to do forty pounds of laundry a week.” – Laurence J. Peter
- “Don’t cry when the sun is gone because the tears won’t let you see the stars.” – Violeta Parra
- “Your relationship might be painful at times, but the pain shouldn’t be permanent; sometimes, letting go is the kindest thing you can do.”
- “I cannot compromise my respect for your love. You can keep your love, I will keep my respect.” – Amit Kalantri
- “The art of moving forward lies in understanding what to leave behind.”
- “Letting go doesn’t mean giving up, but rather accepting that there are things that cannot be.” – Anon
- “Every exit is an entry somewhere else.” – Tom Stoppard
- “The act of forgiveness is the act of returning to present time. And that’s why when one has become a forgiving person, and has managed to let go of the past, what they’ve really done is they’ve shifted their relationship with time.” – Caroline Myss
- “The only real battle in life is between hanging on and letting go.” – Shannon L. Alder
- “Moving on, is a simple thing, what it leaves behind is hard.” – Dave Mustaine
- “You will evolve past certain people. Let yourself.” – Mandy Hale
- “One thing I’ve learned is that you can’t move on alone. You need someone to show you that behind all the clouds, the sun is still shining.”
- You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one.” – Michael McMillan
- “Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.” – C.S. Lewis
- “There is a time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go.” – Tennessee Williams
- “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” – Carl Jung
- “You cannot start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one.”
- “It is strange how often a heart must be broken before the years can make it wise.” – Sara Teasdale
- “It’s not about having the strength to go on. It’s going on when you don’t have strength.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
- “If you want to forget something or someone, never hate it, or never hate him/her. Everything and everyone that you hate is engraved upon your heart; if you want to let go of something, if you want to forget, you cannot hate.” – C. JoyBell C.
- “They say that time heals all wounds, but all it’s done so far is give me more time to think about how much I miss you.” – Ezbeth Wilder
- “The toughest part of letting go is realizing that the other person already did.”
- “The end of a relationship is not always a failure. Sometimes all the love in the world is not enough to save something. In these cases, it is not a failure, but rather the completion of a story.”
- “Sometimes, we must undergo hardships, breakups, and narcissistic wounds, which shatter the flattering image that we had of ourselves, in order to discover two truths: that we are not who we thought we were; and that the loss of a cherished pleasure is not necessarily the loss of true happiness and well-being.” – Jean-Yves Leloup
- “It’s sad how someone can go from being the reason you wake up smiling, to the reason you cry yourself to sleep.”
- “I’m thankful for my struggle because without it, I wouldn’t have stumbled across my strength.” – Alex Elle
- “What’s broken can be mended, what hurts can be healed, and no matter how dark it gets, the sun is going to rise again.” – Meredith Grey
- “The most difficult aspect of moving on is accepting that the other person already did.” – Faraaz Kazi
- “Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go and then do it.” – Ann Landers
- “The pain you feel today is the strength you feel tomorrow. For every challenge encountered there is opportunity for growth.” – Unknown
- “Sometimes you have to take a step back to move forward.” – Erika Taylor
- “Someday you’ll see the reason why there’s good in goodbye.”
- “Closure happens right after you accept that letting go and moving on is more important than projecting a fantasy of how the relationship could have been.” – Sylvester McNutt
- “Sometimes, we just fall in love with the wrong people.”
- “You can meet someone who’s just right, but he might not be meant for you. You break up, you lose things, you never feel the same again. But maybe you should stop questioning why. Maybe you should just accept it and move on.” – Winna Efendi
- “Breaking up with someone is the hardest thing to do, but it can be the best thing in the end.”
- “Don’t dwell on what went wrong. Instead, focus on what to do next. Spend your energies on moving forward toward finding the answer.” – Denis Waitley
- “Love sometimes wants to do us a great favor: hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out.” – Hafiz
- “There are far better things ahead than any we leave behind.” – C.S. Lewis
- “A relationship, I think, is like a shark. It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.” – Woody Allen
- “Life always waits for some crisis to occur before revealing itself at its most brilliant.” – Paulo Coelho
- “The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.” – Ben Okri
- “As long as you can find yourself, you’ll never starve.”
- “When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills.” – Chinese Proverb
- “It’s not the breakup that hurts the most. It’s the post-trauma that follows it.”
- “No matter how you feel, get up, dress up, show up, and never give up.” – Regina Brett
- “Letting go means to realize that some people are a part of your history, but not a part of your destiny.” – Steve Maraboli
