Thought Catalog Tumblr

64 Heart Wrenching Quotes For When Love Feels Impossibly Bittersweet

Because real life isn't always sunshine and roses. 
Heidi Priebe
January 5, 2017
“I’m going to find a way to be happy, and I’d really love to be happy with you, but if I can’t be happy with you, then I’ll find a way to be happy without you.”
— Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture
Tagged: Happiness, Love, Self-Sufficiancy, Being Alone, Alone, Relationships, Self-Worth, Empowering
“I will love you if I never see you again and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday.”
— Lemony Snicket, A Series Of Unfortunate Events
Tagged: Love, Breakups, Change
“I wish I’d done everything on Earth with you.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Tagged: Love, Regret, Breakups, Change, Nostalgia
“There ain’t no way you can hold onto something that wants to go, you understand? You can only love what you got while you got it.”
— Kate DiCamillo, Because Of Winn-Dixie
Tagged: Love, Leaving, Saying Goodbye, Holding On, Relationships
“Love doesn’t conquer all.
Love ends.
And it begins again.”
— Dawson Leery, Dawson's Creek
Tagged: Love, Relationships, Breakups, Getting Back Together, Divorce, forgiveness
“Well, let it pass, he thought; April is over, April is over. There are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same love twice.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Sensible Thing
Tagged: Love, Relationships, Change, Seasons
“Some of the most told stories are the ones that don’t end well, the ones that are beautiful because someone laid it all on the line, was brave and vulnerable and submitted to the human condition. If that’s your story, its time to stop running from it and start taking pride in the fact that you were strong enough to let love through.”
— Brianna Wiest, Sadness Is Just Part Of The Story
Tagged: Love, Pain, Sadness, Acceptance, Broken Heart, strength
“With him I felt trapped, branded, held, and beloved. Like a daughter.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Tagged: Love, Relationships, Feeling Small, Unhealthy Love
“You are not weak just because your heart feels so heavy.”
— Andrea Gibson, The Nutritionist
Tagged: Love, Pain, Breakups, strength, Weakness
“If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven’t loved enough.”
— Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules Of Love
Tagged: Love, Change, Letting Love In, Relationships
“I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence, and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong.”
— Lemony Snicket, The Beatrice Letters
Tagged: Love, Humour, Relationships, Justice
“Sometimes what we want isn’t what’s best for us.”
— Abbi Glines, Simple Perfection
Tagged: Love, Relationships, Toxic Relationships, Healthy Love, Self-awareness, Desire, Lust
“I have seen the best of you and the worst of you, and I choose both.”
— Sarah Kay, Phil Kaye, An Origin Story
Tagged: Love, Relationships, Perfection, Imperfection, Choosing Love
“One day, whether you 
 are 14, 28 
 or 65 

you will stumble upon 
someone who will start 
a fire in you that cannot die. 

However, the saddest, 
 most awful truth 
 you will ever come to find–– 

 is they are not always 
with whom we spend our lives.”
— Beau Taplin, The Awful Truth
Tagged: Love, Relationships, The One, Falling In Love, Timing, Letting Go
“Sadness is knowing I cannot stay here forever, 
 no house to be found inside of love. 
It is nothing but open space, 
endless sky, 
shards of sun like rain.”
— Stephanie Barelman, Sunstruck
Tagged: Love, Safety, Home, Staying In Love
“Every love story is a ghost story.”
— David Foster Wallace, The Pale King
Tagged: Love, Love Stories, Nostalgia, Memories, Heartbreak
“You could come knocking on my door five years from now and I would open my arms wider and say ‘come here, it’s been too long, it felt like home with you.’”
— Azra T., My Heart Is Full Of Open Windows
Tagged: Love, Timing, Lost Love, Relationships, Moving On
“Baby, I have no idea how this will end. 
Maybe the equator will fall like a hula hoop from the Earth’s hips 
And our mouths will freeze mid-kiss on our 80th anniversary. 
Or maybe tomorrow my absolute insanity 
Combined with the absolute obstacle course of your communication skills 
Will leave us like a love letter 
In a landfill. 
But whatever 
However 
Whenever this ends I want you to know 
That right now 
I love you forever.”
— Andrea Gibson, How It Ends
Tagged: Love, Relationships, Beginnings, Endings, Passion
“Wouldn’t it be awful if we fell in love again?”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, Three Hours Between Planes
Tagged: Love, Relationships, Old Love, Past Loves
“Any fool can love somebody who’s perfect, somebody who does everything right. But that doesn’t stretch your soul. Your soul only gets stretched when you can still love somebody after they’ve hurt you.”
— Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Hot Shot
Tagged: Love, Relationships, Betrayal, Perserverance, Choosing Love, Pain, Heartbreak, Heartache
“I have a growing queue of things I know
will make you laugh and I don’t know where to put them.”
— Jon Sands, A Working List of Things I Will Never Tell You
Tagged: Love, Loss, Breakups, Change, Things I'll Never Tell You
“I like to think that somewhere out there, on a planet exactly like ours, two people exactly like you and me made totally different choices and that somewhere, we're still together.

That's enough for me. ”
— Iain Thomas, I Wrote
Tagged: Choices, Decisions, Love, Alternate Universes, Other Lives, Relationships, Falling In Love
“I wish I'd done everything on earth with you.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Tagged: Love, Regret, Relationships, Breakups, Change
“I read the last paragraph of my favorite book. I remind myself that some things I love end. And that’s okay.”
— Ari Eastman, Things I Do When I Start Thinking About You
Tagged: Endings, Acceptance, Moving On, Love
“Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby- awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess.”
— Lemony Snicket, A Series of Unfortunate Events (13 Book Series)
Tagged: Love, Change
“You know how they say you only hurt the ones you love? Well, it works both ways.”
— Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
Tagged: Pain, Love
“You still value the things you’ve lost the most. Because the things you’ve lost are still perfect in your head. They never rusted. They never broke. They are made of the memories you once had, which only grow rosier and brighter, day by day. They are made of the dreams of how wonderful things could have been and must never suffer the indignity of actually still existing. Of being real. Of having flaws. Of breaking and deteriorating. Only the things you no longer have will always be perfect.”
— Iain Thomas, I Wrote This For You: Just The Words
Tagged: Imagination, Perfection, Value, Love, Idealism, Memory, Nostalgia
“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”
— Pablo Neruda, Love: Ten Poems
Tagged: Love, Forgetting, Memory, Girl Who Cares Too Much
“There's one thing I want to say so I'll be brave
You were what I wanted
I gave what I gave
I'm not sorry I met you
I'm not sorry it's over
I'm not sorry, there's nothing to say. ”
— Stars, Stars - Your Ex-Lover Is Dead
Tagged: Girl Who Cares Too Much, Love, Relationships, Moving On
“We broke up but love doesn't go anywhere.”
— Ella Dawson, Romantic Gesturing
Tagged: Love, Breakups, Breaking Up, Lost Love