101 Inspirational Quotes To Strengthen You After A Break Up

Words that hold, heal, and comfort you while you put your pieces back together.

Reviewed by Sarah Kenville, MA (Marriage and Family Therapy)
Written by Sneha Tete, Certified Relationship Coach
Edited by Shatabdi Bhattacharya  • 

A breakup can be brutal to deal with. Your heart, body, and soul hurt. But, reading inspirational breakup quotes can help. You know you will recover from the heartache, but it is still hard to not see or talk to the person you thought was never going to leave you. At this low point of your life, it is natural to seek comfort in people you can confide in. Having heart-to-hearts with your friends or reading something to inspire you to keep going can also help you deal with the pain.

Of course, what you are going through is real. But, you are not alone in this. Words from a person who has survived heartbreak can be helpful and make you realize that this too shall pass. Their motivational words can help you hold steady and ride through the sadness that the end of a relationship can leave behind. A breakup is a painful experience that helps us learn from our mistakes. And like everyone else in the history of humankind, you will also get through it. Here are the best inspirational quotes to give you strength, encouragement and positivity after a breakup. Scroll down to check them out!

101 Breakup Quotes To Soothe Your Aching Heart

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  1. “Sometimes, good things fall apart so better things can fall together.” – Marilyn Monroe
  2. “You can love them, forgive them, want good things for them… but still move on without them.” — Mandy Hale
  3. “When someone leaves you, apart from missing them, apart from the fact that the whole little world you’ve created together collapses, and that everything you see or do reminds you of them, the worst is the thought that they tried you out and, in the end, the whole sum of parts adds up to you got stamped REJECT by the one you love. How can you not be left with the personal confidence of a passed-over British Rail sandwich?” – Helen Fielding
  4. “Just because a relationship ends, it doesn’t mean it’s not worth having.” – Sarah Mlynowski
  5. “Someday, it’s gonna make sense.” – Anonymous
  6. “Starting today, I need to forget what’s gone, appreciate what still remains, and look forward to what’s coming next.” – Anonymous
  7. “Life always waits for some crisis to occur before revealing itself at its most brilliant.” – Paulo Coelho
  8. “It just hurts a lot because it is healing.” – Anonymous
  9. “When you break up with someone, and I’m not talking casual breakups here, it’s hard to take the sudden absence of such an important person in your life. It reminded me of when I’d stopped going to school and the weird uneasy feeling I’d gotten afterward like I was forgetting to do something. My life until that point had pivoted around some form of education, and all of a sudden, it was gone. Homework, classes, running around, and then –bam – nothing but a life of work stretching out before you. No one prepares you for that feeling or even mentions it. You just suddenly have a gap and have to decide how to fill it. A break-up is like that gap, only much, much more painful. One day the person you talked to constantly or did stuff with is just absent. Gone. Poof. And even though I’m not one of those people who has to be in a relationship all the time, I was feeling at a loss.” – Lish McBride
  10. “Pain makes you stronger, fear makes you braver, heartbreak makes you wiser.” – Anonymous
  11. “I need to let go of this false hope that you will change your mind and come back to me.” – Anonymous
  12. “When I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead.” – Barney Stinson
  13. “Dear heart, this is what happens when you try to make decisions on your own. Sincerely, Brain.” – Anonymous
  14. “Take a step back today, look at all those beautiful things you have.” – Anonymous
  15. “It’s going to be okay, even if right now it feels like it the worst pain you have ever felt.” – Anonymous
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  1. “It hurts to let go. Sometimes, it seems the harder you try to hold on to something or someone, the more it wants to get away. You feel like some kind of criminal for having felt, for having wanted. For having wanted to be wanted. It confuses you because you think that your feelings were wrong and it makes you feel so small because it’s so hard to keep it inside when you let it out and it doesn’t come back. You’re left so alone that you can’t explain. Damn, there’s nothing like that, is there? I’ve been there and you have, too. You’re nodding your head.” – Henry Rollins
  2. “Nothing in the universe can stop you from letting go and starting over.” – Guy Finley
  3. “The course of true love did never run smooth.” – William Shakespeare
  4. “Hearts will never be practical until they are made unbreakable.” – L. Frank Baum
  5. “Ever has it been that loves knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.” – Khalil Gibran
  6. “It can be difficult to leave a long-term relationship, even when our inner-wisdom tells us it’s time to let go. At this point, we can choose to let go and endure the intense pain of leaving behind the familiar to make way for a new chapter in our life. Or we can stay and suffer a low-grade pain that slowly eats away at our heart and soul, like emotional cancer. Until we wake up one day and realize we are buried so deep in the dysfunction of the relationship that we scarcely remember who we were and what we wanted and needed to be.” – Jaeda DeWalt
  7. “Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.” – Mark Twain
  8. “If you have ever, sir, been through a breakup of a romantic relationship that involved great love, you will perhaps understand what I experienced. There is in such situations usually a moment of passion during which the unthinkable is said; this is followed by a sense of euphoria at finally being liberated; the world seems fresh as if seen for the first time, then comes the inevitable period of doubt, the desperate and doomed backpedaling of regret; and only later, once emotions have receded, is one able to view with equanimity the journey through which one has passed.” – Mohsin Hamid
  9. “I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.” – Carl Sagan
  10. “The hottest love has the coldest end.” – Socrates
  11. “What’s that line from T.S. Eliot? To arrive at the place where you started, but to know it for the first time. I’m able to write about a breakup from a different place. Same brokenness. Same rock-bottom. But a little more informed, now I’m older. Thank God for growing up.” – Alanis Morissette
  12. “The heart was made to be broken.” – Oscar Wilde
  13. “Failed relationships can be described as so much wasted make-up.” – Marian Keyes
  14. “Don’t cry when the sun is gone because the tears won’t let you see the stars.” – Violeta Para
  15. “It’s no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently or if your favorite films wouldn’t even speak to each other if they met at a party.” – Nick Hornby
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  1. “No matter how hard your heart is broken, the world doesn’t stop for your grief.” – Faraaz Kazi
  2. “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
  3. “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
  4. “It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.” – Anthony Robbins
  5. “Love is unconditional. Relationships are not.” – Grant Gudmunson
  6. “When we’re incomplete, we’re always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we’re still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on — series polygamy — until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimensions to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter.” – Tom Robbins
  7. “I never hated a man enough to give his diamonds back.” – Zsa Zsa Gabor
  8. “Cheating and lying aren’t struggles. They’re reasons to break up.” – Patti Callahan Henry
  9. “One day, they’ll realize they lost a diamond while playing with worthless stones.” – Turcois Ominek
  10. “I like my relationships like I like my eggs – over easy.” – Jared Kintz
  11. “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” – M. Kathleen Casey
  12. “Be in love with your life. Every minute of it.” – Jack Kerouac
  13. “Never love anybody that treats you like you’re ordinary.” – Oscar Wilde
  14. “When you leave, weary of me, without a word, I shall gently let you go.” – Kim Sowol​
  15. “He’s going to be sorry he lost you, so stop worrying. Forget the past, forget the pain, and remember what an incredible woman you are.” – Anonymous
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  1. “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
  2. “I didn’t lose you. You lost me. You’ll search for me inside of everyone you’re with and I won’t be found.” – R.H. Sin
  3. “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 C.
  4. “One day, I hope you look back at what we had and regret every single thing you did to let it end.” – Anonymous
  5. “I’m thankful for my struggle because without it I wouldn’t have stumbled across my strength.” – Alex Elle
  6. “The hardest thing is not talking to someone you used to talk to every day.” – Anonymous
  7. “I’m tired of fighting. For once, I want to be fought for.” – Anonymous
  8. “Cheer up, sweet, beautiful girl. You are going to be in love again and it will be magnificent.” – Anonymous
  9. “You made me feel like I was hard to love, and I will never forgive you for that.” – Anonymous
  10. “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
  11. “Even on my weakest days I get a little bit stronger” – Sarah Evans
  12. “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
  13. “Sometimes, you just have to accept the fact that some people only enter your life as a temporary happiness.” – Anonymous
  14. “I didn’t stop loving you. I decided to stop showing it because no matter how hard I tried, you wouldn’t get it.” – Anonymous
  15. “Every single day, do something that makes your heart sing.” – Marcia Wieder
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  1. “The hardest thing I’ll ever do is walk away still loving you.” – Anonymous
  2. “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
  3. “My life has become this one big ‘I don’t know.’ ” – Anonymous
  4. “Get up, dress up, show up, and never give up.” – Genevieve Rhode
  5. “You’ll always be my favorite ‘what if.’ ” – Anonymous
  6. “Trust that an ending is followed by a beginning.” – Anonymous
  7. “I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes, so live not in your yesterdays, nor just for tomorrow, but in the here and now. Keep moving and forget the post mortems; and remember, no one can get the jump on the future.” – Carl Sandburg
  8. “The way they leave tells you everything.” – Anonymous
  9. “The toughest part of letting go is realizing the other person already did.” – Anonymous
  10. “Things to know about life: ‘No’ is a complete sentence. It does not require justification or explanation.” – Anonymous
  11. “I can feel myself slowly fading from your mind.” – Anonymous
  12. “One makes mistakes; that is life. But it is never a mistake to have loved.” – Romain Rolland
  13. “And one day, your name didn’t make me smile anymore.” – Anonymous
  14. “No more tears, because I didn’t lose you. You lost me.” – Anonymous
  15. “I wore your promise on my finger for one year, I’ll wear your name on my heart till I die. Because you were my boy, you were my only boy forever.” – Coco J. Ginger
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  1. “Let it hurt. Let it bleed. Let it heal. And let it go.” — Nikita Gill
  2. “That’s what happens. You let people in, and they destroy you.” – Anonymous
  3. “We started with a simple hello but ended with a complicated goodbye.” – Anonymous
  4. “I felt so much that I started to feel nothing.” – Anonymous
  5. “Don’t be sorry. I trusted you. My fault, not yours.” – Anonymous
  6. “He put me through hell, and I called it love.” – Anonymous
  7. “The only thing I’m committed to right now is bettering myself.” – Anonymous
  8. “Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have – life itself.” – Walter Anderson
  9. “Passivity means death, activity is living. If you are passive, you allow negative things to come into your life.” – Anonymous
  10. “Moving on, is a simple thing, what it leaves behind is hard.” – Dave Mustaine
  11. “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
  12. “Ask yourself, who would Columbus be today if he hadn’t had the courage to lose sight of the shore back then?” – Anonymous
  13. “Watching you walk out of my life does not make me bitter or cynical about love. It 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.” – Anonymous
  14. “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” – Albert Einstein
  15. “In order to grow and to experience, one must leave his comfort zone. Very often this means that you have to do what you are afraid of in order to find what you didn’t know you were looking for. This takes a lot of courage.” – Anonymous
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  1. “Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.” – Washington Irving
  2. “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 pieces as long as I lived.” – Margaret Mitchell
  3. “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.” – Anonymous
  4. “Letting go has never been easy, but holding on can be as difficult. Yet strength is measured not by holding on, but by letting go.” – Len Santos
  5. “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
  6. “Was I bitter? Absolutely. Hurt? You bet your sweet ass I was hurt. Who doesn’t feel a part of their heart break at rejection. You ask yourself every question you can think of, what, why, how come, and then your sadness turns to anger. That’s my favorite part. It drives me, feeds me, and makes one hell of a story.” – Jennifer Salaiz
  7. “The 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
  8. “I’m pretty horrible at relationships and haven’t been in many long-term ones. Leaving and moving on – returning to a familiar sense of self-reliance and autonomy – is what I know; that feeling is as comfortable and comforting as it might be for a different kind of person to stay.” – Carrie Brownstein
  9. “I think a spiritual journey is not so much a journey of discovery. It’s a journey of recovery. It’s a journey of uncovering your own inner nature. It’s already there.” – Billy Corgan
  10. “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
  11. “In order to truly value loyalty, you must first endure the affliction of betrayal.” – Thomas Merritt

Going through a breakup can be challenging, but it can also be a time for new beginnings and provide an opportunity for empowerment, self-growth, and self-discovery. Taking care of yourself is important during this time as is incorporating self-love and self-care practices that can help you feel more confident and resilient. It’s a chance to rediscover yourself, build your self-esteem and self-confidence, and create the life you want for yourself. These inspirational words have the magic to help you get rid of your pain. So, if you are feeling restless and low, go through the inspirational quotes listed above and see what they do to you. Remember, healing takes time and patience, but practicing self-awareness can inspire self-acceptance and self-improvement and help you grow and come out stronger on the other side.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I get my power back after a breakup?

Here are a few things you can do to bounce back from a breakup:
• Try the things that you have wanted to do for so long.
• Read a few quotes after a breakup to heal faster.
• Put your focus on worthwhile causes.
• Remind yourself that you deserve so much better.
• Spend more time with the people you love.
• Don’t linger on the past.
• Get excited about what lies ahead.

Is silence the best revenge after a breakup?

Yes, silence is indeed the best revenge after a breakup. It shows that you won’t let the breakup control your life and gives you time to heal and move past the breakup.

Should I post quotes after a breakup?

Posting quotes on social media after the breakup may not be helpful. It is a passive-aggressive way to cope with your emotions and seek validation from others. It might make you appear needy and weak. It is better to talk to a close group of friends or family members who really understand your pain. You will feel heard and they will actually be able to help you.

How do I motivate my friend after a breakup?

Breakups can be brutal. Help your friend cope with the pain of a breakup by letting them share their side of the story. During this time they are in need of a listener and empathizer rather than a know-it-all guide. When they seem to get better, you can help them see the bigger picture. After they are a bit in control you can cheer them up with uplifting breakup quotes, good movies, books, and friend-dates.

Can reading inspirational quotes really make me feel better after a breakup?

Reading inspirational quotes can help a great deal to cope with the initial stages of grief for your loss. Some inspirational quotes will speak to your heart and open your eyes to a new understanding of your situation. It can make you feel understood and empowered.

How do I know if an inspirational quote is actually helpful or just cheesy?

Inspirational quotes should make you feel powerful and motivated. Cheesy inspirational quotes are too generic and might make you cringe. If they make you feel bad about yourself, angry, or hold grudges with other people, they are not good.

Can inspirational quotes really help me find love again after a breakup?

Inspirational quotes can indirectly help you evolve and find better love. They can nudge you towards self-improvement and liberation from attachments. When you are happy alone, you will surely attract like-minded partners.

Feeling down after a breakup? Check out this video that features 10 breakup quotes to help you feel better and get back on track.

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