QUOTES ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS
Quotes about relationships capture the complexity of connection, love, and understanding between people. They reflect both the beauty and the challenges that come with sharing our lives with others. The following collection offers insights that may resonate, comfort, or inspire reflection on the bonds we form. Select Another Topic
To the immature, other people are not real.
- Harry and Bonaro Overstreet
The red firelight glowed on their two bonny heads and revealed their faces, animated with the eager interest of children; for, though he was twenty-three and she eighteen, each had so much of novelty to feel, and learn, that neither experienced nor evinced the sentiments of sober disenchanted maturity.
- Emily Brontë
Wuthering Heights
...Next thing I know you've run off to Paris and thrown yourself under the nearest Frenchman-
- Nicholls David
One Day
The self is constituted within a variety of arenas and in relation to multiple traditions. Self-hood, on this understanding, is both provisional and open-ended, and critically depends on the configuration of relationships between one’s own groups and those cultures and values that are deemed ‘other’. The regulation of alterity becomes a defining attribute of self-hood, as my sense of who I am is crucially mediated by an understanding of that which I am not (paraphrasing William Connolly).
- Michael Kenny
The Politics of Identity: Liberal Political Theory and the Dilemmas of Difference
If your blade were as sharp as your tongue, you'd have sliced my through years ago.
- Erica Goros
The Daisy Chain
Staying wasn’t declarations or grand gestures.
It was just showing up—again and again—when it was ordinary, unglamorous, and heavy.
It was just showing up—again and again—when it was ordinary, unglamorous, and heavy.
- Jack R. Colver
THE WEIGHT OF STAYING: An Emotionally Realistic Contemporary Romance About Love, Endurance, and Self-Choice
Some endings do not remove weight; they simply redistribute it.
- Adedotun Agbojo
The True Cost of Divorce: Generational Impact and Lasting Solutions
Transparency is not control; it is respect.
- Yahya Kasozi
How to Rebuild Trust in a Relationship: A Qur’an, Hadith, and Psychology-Based Guide to Healing Hearts
Feelings can grow, but they can also fade away. Those who like you care, and those who miss you seek you out. So learn to recognize in time who really makes a difference. Value those who respect you, take care of what is important, and try not to hurt those who really care, because we love when we want to, but we forget when it is necessary.
- Abraham Cezar
There’s a quiet, painful peace in finally accepting reality. You finally stop waiting for people to understand, to apologize, or to change. At first, it hurts, letting go of what you hoped they would be. But slowly, you realize peace doesn’t come from them. It comes from accepting reality as it is.
- Garima Soni
Life Simplified: Quote - Unquote
I know you will leave me one day… you will find a reason. People always do.And what hurts the most is knowing that I will still blame myself when it happens because that’s what life has taught me. You know love stays for a while, but the fear of losing it stays forever.
- Garima Soni
Life Simplified: Quote - Unquote
The land doesn’t forget who listened. Neither do people.
Love stops feeling like love when you keep explaining your pain, and they still don’t care. When every conversation turns into a fight, and silence starts feeling safer than their presence. You keep holding on, hoping they will understand, but they never do. And one day, you just stop talking… not because you are ok, but because you are done trying. That’s when you realize, love was never the problem, being unheard was.
- Garima Soni
Life Simplified: Quote - Unquote
Survival is just refined paranoia
- Abyssino
I didn’t force you to be with me. I opened my heart, I gave my time, I trusted you when no one was even ready to listen to you, and you wasted it all, ruined it all. I stayed through your selfishness, I hoped through your lies, I forgave through your carelessness, and not once did you ever deserve any of it. The truth is, losing me isn’t your loss, it’s just life finally showing you what you were never worthy of because you are worthless.
- Garima Soni
Life Simplified: Quote - Unquote
Stepping out of other people’s drama cycles was scary, weird, and difficult for me at first. I felt guilty for keeping the focus on myself, and I wondered how anyone could possibly survive without my overinvolvement in their lives. (Spoiler alert: They all survived. And I gradually started hanging out with healthier people.)
- Elizabeth Gilbert
All the Way to the River
My own sober dating plan is approximately three pages long, and it includes such items as “NO WEEKLONG FIRST DATES.” My plan also forbids me from texting obsessively between dates, dropping any existing plans or projects because of a new relationship, falling into fantasy with someone I have met in my travels (aka not in real life), moving virtual strangers into my home, trying to rescue unrecovered alcoholics or drug addicts; buying expensive gifts for new lovers; or sharing bank accounts with anyone, ever.
If all this sounds boring, or feels like it removes the spontaneity and intensity from romance, that is exactly the point. Spontaneity, for sex and love addicts, is exceedingly dangerous, and intensity is something I am wise to avoid.
If all this sounds boring, or feels like it removes the spontaneity and intensity from romance, that is exactly the point. Spontaneity, for sex and love addicts, is exceedingly dangerous, and intensity is something I am wise to avoid.
- Elizabeth Gilbert
All the Way to the River
As a sex and love addict in recovery, I define a “clean day” as any day where I have not used another human being—not as a stimulant, or a sedative; not as a badge of honor or a bodyguard; not as an emotional support animal, a sleeping pill, a sex toy, a babysitter, a parental-replacement figure, or a good-looking trophy; not as some infinitely wise Delphic oracle who is here to answer all my most challenging life questions; and certainly not as a mirror that I can stare into, searching for evidence that I am lovable, attractive, worthy, normal, respectable, special, desirable, valuable, irreplaceable, adored, secure, or good.
- Elizabeth Gilbert
All the Way to the River
You know, I used to feel proud after every argument. I used to think winning a fight meant I was strong. I used to think being right all the time would make me happy. But now I understand… every time you try to prove someone close to you wrong, you don’t win respect, you lose it. You don’t become stronger, you just become someone others want to avoid. Because sometimes it's about losing the argument, but winning the relationship.
- Garima Soni
Life Simplified: Quote - Unquote
I couldn’t stop; I couldn’t stay stopped; I kept doing that thing.
No matter how costly the consequences, I kept acting out. One disastrous encounter after another left me shattered, guilt-ridden, shamed, and exhausted. Lessons kept piling up, but I was never able to act differently, despite being a trustworthy and disciplined person in every other realm of my life.
No matter how costly the consequences, I kept acting out. One disastrous encounter after another left me shattered, guilt-ridden, shamed, and exhausted. Lessons kept piling up, but I was never able to act differently, despite being a trustworthy and disciplined person in every other realm of my life.
- Elizabeth Gilbert
All the Way to the River
I dreamed I called you on the telephone
to say: Be kinder to yourself
but you were sick and would not answer
The waste of my love goes on this way
trying to save you from yourself
to say: Be kinder to yourself
but you were sick and would not answer
The waste of my love goes on this way
trying to save you from yourself
- Adrienne Rich
Diving Into the Wreck
The pact that we made was the ordinary pact
of men & women in those days
I don't know who we thought we were
that our personalities
could resist the failures of the race
Lucky or unlucky, we didn't know
the race had failures of that order
and that we were going to share them
Like everybody else, we thought of ourselves as special
of men & women in those days
I don't know who we thought we were
that our personalities
could resist the failures of the race
Lucky or unlucky, we didn't know
the race had failures of that order
and that we were going to share them
Like everybody else, we thought of ourselves as special
- Adrienne Rich
Diving Into the Wreck
Next year it would have been 20 years
and you are wastefully dead
who might have made the leap
we talked, too late, of making
which I live now
not as a leap
but a succession of brief, amazing movements
each one making possible the next
and you are wastefully dead
who might have made the leap
we talked, too late, of making
which I live now
not as a leap
but a succession of brief, amazing movements
each one making possible the next
- Adrienne Rich
Diving Into the Wreck
If the relationship requires you to become smaller, quieter, or less yourself, it’s not a relationship—it’s a performance.
- Louise Fields
Stop Dating the Wrong Letters Companion Guide: Decode Love, One Letter at a Time
To the immature, other people are not real.
- Harry and Bonaro Overstreet
The red firelight glowed on their two bonny heads and revealed their faces, animated with the eager interest of children; for, though he was twenty-three and she eighteen, each had so much of novelty to feel, and learn, that neither experienced nor evinced the sentiments of sober disenchanted maturity.
- Emily Brontë
Wuthering Heights
...Next thing I know you've run off to Paris and thrown yourself under the nearest Frenchman-
- Nicholls David
One Day
The self is constituted within a variety of arenas and in relation to multiple traditions. Self-hood, on this understanding, is both provisional and open-ended, and critically depends on the configuration of relationships between one’s own groups and those cultures and values that are deemed ‘other’. The regulation of alterity becomes a defining attribute of self-hood, as my sense of who I am is crucially mediated by an understanding of that which I am not (paraphrasing William Connolly).
- Michael Kenny
The Politics of Identity: Liberal Political Theory and the Dilemmas of Difference
If your blade were as sharp as your tongue, you'd have sliced my through years ago.
- Erica Goros
The Daisy Chain
Staying wasn’t declarations or grand gestures.
It was just showing up—again and again—when it was ordinary, unglamorous, and heavy.
It was just showing up—again and again—when it was ordinary, unglamorous, and heavy.
- Jack R. Colver
THE WEIGHT OF STAYING: An Emotionally Realistic Contemporary Romance About Love, Endurance, and Self-Choice
Some endings do not remove weight; they simply redistribute it.
- Adedotun Agbojo
The True Cost of Divorce: Generational Impact and Lasting Solutions
Transparency is not control; it is respect.
- Yahya Kasozi
How to Rebuild Trust in a Relationship: A Qur’an, Hadith, and Psychology-Based Guide to Healing Hearts
Feelings can grow, but they can also fade away. Those who like you care, and those who miss you seek you out. So learn to recognize in time who really makes a difference. Value those who respect you, take care of what is important, and try not to hurt those who really care, because we love when we want to, but we forget when it is necessary.
- Abraham Cezar
There’s a quiet, painful peace in finally accepting reality. You finally stop waiting for people to understand, to apologize, or to change. At first, it hurts, letting go of what you hoped they would be. But slowly, you realize peace doesn’t come from them. It comes from accepting reality as it is.
- Garima Soni
Life Simplified: Quote - Unquote
I know you will leave me one day… you will find a reason. People always do.And what hurts the most is knowing that I will still blame myself when it happens because that’s what life has taught me. You know love stays for a while, but the fear of losing it stays forever.
- Garima Soni
Life Simplified: Quote - Unquote
The land doesn’t forget who listened. Neither do people.
Love stops feeling like love when you keep explaining your pain, and they still don’t care. When every conversation turns into a fight, and silence starts feeling safer than their presence. You keep holding on, hoping they will understand, but they never do. And one day, you just stop talking… not because you are ok, but because you are done trying. That’s when you realize, love was never the problem, being unheard was.
- Garima Soni
Life Simplified: Quote - Unquote
Survival is just refined paranoia
- Abyssino
I didn’t force you to be with me. I opened my heart, I gave my time, I trusted you when no one was even ready to listen to you, and you wasted it all, ruined it all. I stayed through your selfishness, I hoped through your lies, I forgave through your carelessness, and not once did you ever deserve any of it. The truth is, losing me isn’t your loss, it’s just life finally showing you what you were never worthy of because you are worthless.
- Garima Soni
Life Simplified: Quote - Unquote
Stepping out of other people’s drama cycles was scary, weird, and difficult for me at first. I felt guilty for keeping the focus on myself, and I wondered how anyone could possibly survive without my overinvolvement in their lives. (Spoiler alert: They all survived. And I gradually started hanging out with healthier people.)
- Elizabeth Gilbert
All the Way to the River
My own sober dating plan is approximately three pages long, and it includes such items as “NO WEEKLONG FIRST DATES.” My plan also forbids me from texting obsessively between dates, dropping any existing plans or projects because of a new relationship, falling into fantasy with someone I have met in my travels (aka not in real life), moving virtual strangers into my home, trying to rescue unrecovered alcoholics or drug addicts; buying expensive gifts for new lovers; or sharing bank accounts with anyone, ever.
If all this sounds boring, or feels like it removes the spontaneity and intensity from romance, that is exactly the point. Spontaneity, for sex and love addicts, is exceedingly dangerous, and intensity is something I am wise to avoid.
If all this sounds boring, or feels like it removes the spontaneity and intensity from romance, that is exactly the point. Spontaneity, for sex and love addicts, is exceedingly dangerous, and intensity is something I am wise to avoid.
- Elizabeth Gilbert
All the Way to the River
As a sex and love addict in recovery, I define a “clean day” as any day where I have not used another human being—not as a stimulant, or a sedative; not as a badge of honor or a bodyguard; not as an emotional support animal, a sleeping pill, a sex toy, a babysitter, a parental-replacement figure, or a good-looking trophy; not as some infinitely wise Delphic oracle who is here to answer all my most challenging life questions; and certainly not as a mirror that I can stare into, searching for evidence that I am lovable, attractive, worthy, normal, respectable, special, desirable, valuable, irreplaceable, adored, secure, or good.
- Elizabeth Gilbert
All the Way to the River
You know, I used to feel proud after every argument. I used to think winning a fight meant I was strong. I used to think being right all the time would make me happy. But now I understand… every time you try to prove someone close to you wrong, you don’t win respect, you lose it. You don’t become stronger, you just become someone others want to avoid. Because sometimes it's about losing the argument, but winning the relationship.
- Garima Soni
Life Simplified: Quote - Unquote
I couldn’t stop; I couldn’t stay stopped; I kept doing that thing.
No matter how costly the consequences, I kept acting out. One disastrous encounter after another left me shattered, guilt-ridden, shamed, and exhausted. Lessons kept piling up, but I was never able to act differently, despite being a trustworthy and disciplined person in every other realm of my life.
No matter how costly the consequences, I kept acting out. One disastrous encounter after another left me shattered, guilt-ridden, shamed, and exhausted. Lessons kept piling up, but I was never able to act differently, despite being a trustworthy and disciplined person in every other realm of my life.
- Elizabeth Gilbert
All the Way to the River
I dreamed I called you on the telephone
to say: Be kinder to yourself
but you were sick and would not answer
The waste of my love goes on this way
trying to save you from yourself
to say: Be kinder to yourself
but you were sick and would not answer
The waste of my love goes on this way
trying to save you from yourself
- Adrienne Rich
Diving Into the Wreck
The pact that we made was the ordinary pact
of men & women in those days
I don't know who we thought we were
that our personalities
could resist the failures of the race
Lucky or unlucky, we didn't know
the race had failures of that order
and that we were going to share them
Like everybody else, we thought of ourselves as special
of men & women in those days
I don't know who we thought we were
that our personalities
could resist the failures of the race
Lucky or unlucky, we didn't know
the race had failures of that order
and that we were going to share them
Like everybody else, we thought of ourselves as special
- Adrienne Rich
Diving Into the Wreck
Next year it would have been 20 years
and you are wastefully dead
who might have made the leap
we talked, too late, of making
which I live now
not as a leap
but a succession of brief, amazing movements
each one making possible the next
and you are wastefully dead
who might have made the leap
we talked, too late, of making
which I live now
not as a leap
but a succession of brief, amazing movements
each one making possible the next
- Adrienne Rich
Diving Into the Wreck
If the relationship requires you to become smaller, quieter, or less yourself, it’s not a relationship—it’s a performance.
- Louise Fields
Stop Dating the Wrong Letters Companion Guide: Decode Love, One Letter at a Time
To the immature, other people are not real.
- Harry and Bonaro Overstreet
The red firelight glowed on their two bonny heads and revealed their faces, animated with the eager interest of children; for, though he was twenty-three and she eighteen, each had so much of novelty to feel, and learn, that neither experienced nor evinced the sentiments of sober disenchanted maturity.
- Emily Brontë
Wuthering Heights
...Next thing I know you've run off to Paris and thrown yourself under the nearest Frenchman-
- Nicholls David
One Day
The self is constituted within a variety of arenas and in relation to multiple traditions. Self-hood, on this understanding, is both provisional and open-ended, and critically depends on the configuration of relationships between one’s own groups and those cultures and values that are deemed ‘other’. The regulation of alterity becomes a defining attribute of self-hood, as my sense of who I am is crucially mediated by an understanding of that which I am not (paraphrasing William Connolly).
- Michael Kenny
The Politics of Identity: Liberal Political Theory and the Dilemmas of Difference
If your blade were as sharp as your tongue, you'd have sliced my through years ago.
- Erica Goros
The Daisy Chain
Staying wasn’t declarations or grand gestures.
It was just showing up—again and again—when it was ordinary, unglamorous, and heavy.
It was just showing up—again and again—when it was ordinary, unglamorous, and heavy.
- Jack R. Colver
THE WEIGHT OF STAYING: An Emotionally Realistic Contemporary Romance About Love, Endurance, and Self-Choice
Some endings do not remove weight; they simply redistribute it.
- Adedotun Agbojo
The True Cost of Divorce: Generational Impact and Lasting Solutions
Transparency is not control; it is respect.
- Yahya Kasozi
How to Rebuild Trust in a Relationship: A Qur’an, Hadith, and Psychology-Based Guide to Healing Hearts
Feelings can grow, but they can also fade away. Those who like you care, and those who miss you seek you out. So learn to recognize in time who really makes a difference. Value those who respect you, take care of what is important, and try not to hurt those who really care, because we love when we want to, but we forget when it is necessary.
- Abraham Cezar
There’s a quiet, painful peace in finally accepting reality. You finally stop waiting for people to understand, to apologize, or to change. At first, it hurts, letting go of what you hoped they would be. But slowly, you realize peace doesn’t come from them. It comes from accepting reality as it is.
- Garima Soni
Life Simplified: Quote - Unquote
I know you will leave me one day… you will find a reason. People always do.And what hurts the most is knowing that I will still blame myself when it happens because that’s what life has taught me. You know love stays for a while, but the fear of losing it stays forever.
- Garima Soni
Life Simplified: Quote - Unquote
The land doesn’t forget who listened. Neither do people.
Love stops feeling like love when you keep explaining your pain, and they still don’t care. When every conversation turns into a fight, and silence starts feeling safer than their presence. You keep holding on, hoping they will understand, but they never do. And one day, you just stop talking… not because you are ok, but because you are done trying. That’s when you realize, love was never the problem, being unheard was.
- Garima Soni
Life Simplified: Quote - Unquote
Survival is just refined paranoia
- Abyssino
I didn’t force you to be with me. I opened my heart, I gave my time, I trusted you when no one was even ready to listen to you, and you wasted it all, ruined it all. I stayed through your selfishness, I hoped through your lies, I forgave through your carelessness, and not once did you ever deserve any of it. The truth is, losing me isn’t your loss, it’s just life finally showing you what you were never worthy of because you are worthless.
- Garima Soni
Life Simplified: Quote - Unquote
Stepping out of other people’s drama cycles was scary, weird, and difficult for me at first. I felt guilty for keeping the focus on myself, and I wondered how anyone could possibly survive without my overinvolvement in their lives. (Spoiler alert: They all survived. And I gradually started hanging out with healthier people.)
- Elizabeth Gilbert
All the Way to the River
My own sober dating plan is approximately three pages long, and it includes such items as “NO WEEKLONG FIRST DATES.” My plan also forbids me from texting obsessively between dates, dropping any existing plans or projects because of a new relationship, falling into fantasy with someone I have met in my travels (aka not in real life), moving virtual strangers into my home, trying to rescue unrecovered alcoholics or drug addicts; buying expensive gifts for new lovers; or sharing bank accounts with anyone, ever.
If all this sounds boring, or feels like it removes the spontaneity and intensity from romance, that is exactly the point. Spontaneity, for sex and love addicts, is exceedingly dangerous, and intensity is something I am wise to avoid.
If all this sounds boring, or feels like it removes the spontaneity and intensity from romance, that is exactly the point. Spontaneity, for sex and love addicts, is exceedingly dangerous, and intensity is something I am wise to avoid.
- Elizabeth Gilbert
All the Way to the River
As a sex and love addict in recovery, I define a “clean day” as any day where I have not used another human being—not as a stimulant, or a sedative; not as a badge of honor or a bodyguard; not as an emotional support animal, a sleeping pill, a sex toy, a babysitter, a parental-replacement figure, or a good-looking trophy; not as some infinitely wise Delphic oracle who is here to answer all my most challenging life questions; and certainly not as a mirror that I can stare into, searching for evidence that I am lovable, attractive, worthy, normal, respectable, special, desirable, valuable, irreplaceable, adored, secure, or good.
- Elizabeth Gilbert
All the Way to the River
You know, I used to feel proud after every argument. I used to think winning a fight meant I was strong. I used to think being right all the time would make me happy. But now I understand… every time you try to prove someone close to you wrong, you don’t win respect, you lose it. You don’t become stronger, you just become someone others want to avoid. Because sometimes it's about losing the argument, but winning the relationship.
- Garima Soni
Life Simplified: Quote - Unquote
I couldn’t stop; I couldn’t stay stopped; I kept doing that thing.
No matter how costly the consequences, I kept acting out. One disastrous encounter after another left me shattered, guilt-ridden, shamed, and exhausted. Lessons kept piling up, but I was never able to act differently, despite being a trustworthy and disciplined person in every other realm of my life.
No matter how costly the consequences, I kept acting out. One disastrous encounter after another left me shattered, guilt-ridden, shamed, and exhausted. Lessons kept piling up, but I was never able to act differently, despite being a trustworthy and disciplined person in every other realm of my life.
- Elizabeth Gilbert
All the Way to the River
I dreamed I called you on the telephone
to say: Be kinder to yourself
but you were sick and would not answer
The waste of my love goes on this way
trying to save you from yourself
to say: Be kinder to yourself
but you were sick and would not answer
The waste of my love goes on this way
trying to save you from yourself
- Adrienne Rich
Diving Into the Wreck
The pact that we made was the ordinary pact
of men & women in those days
I don't know who we thought we were
that our personalities
could resist the failures of the race
Lucky or unlucky, we didn't know
the race had failures of that order
and that we were going to share them
Like everybody else, we thought of ourselves as special
of men & women in those days
I don't know who we thought we were
that our personalities
could resist the failures of the race
Lucky or unlucky, we didn't know
the race had failures of that order
and that we were going to share them
Like everybody else, we thought of ourselves as special
- Adrienne Rich
Diving Into the Wreck
Next year it would have been 20 years
and you are wastefully dead
who might have made the leap
we talked, too late, of making
which I live now
not as a leap
but a succession of brief, amazing movements
each one making possible the next
and you are wastefully dead
who might have made the leap
we talked, too late, of making
which I live now
not as a leap
but a succession of brief, amazing movements
each one making possible the next
- Adrienne Rich
Diving Into the Wreck
If the relationship requires you to become smaller, quieter, or less yourself, it’s not a relationship—it’s a performance.
- Louise Fields
Stop Dating the Wrong Letters Companion Guide: Decode Love, One Letter at a Time