100 Quotes About Loving Someone Who Doesn’t Love You Back

It’s painful to look into someone’s eyes and not see your reflection in them. Unshared loved with someone who doesn’t seem to understand your feelings is heartbreaking, and we often need to find better ways to wrap thee pain with words.

Therefore, I’ve put together these quotes for loving someone who doesn’t love you in the hopes of easing your aching heart.

Finding the expression of unrequited love in a random quote is like seeing a friend who truly understands how you feel and holds your hand.

And learning to let go of someone who doesn’t feel the way you do is a tough and heartbreaking process where all you need is some self-love and self-understanding.

I already explained thoroughly how to stop loving someone who doesn’t want you in their life, but these quotes tap on the painful experience itself.

The most unbelievable thing that happens once we fall in love with someone who doesn’t care about us is that it doesn’t stop us from having an entire relationship with them in our hearts and minds. We imagine everything we would do with them but observe it all from a place of pain and unrequited love.

And in those very moments, we usually find out that our words aren’t enough to speak out the true absurdity and pain of the situation.

So, here they are – 100 quotes for the unrequited love that will help you speak your pain away.

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100 Quotes for Loving Someone Who Doesn’t Love You Back

1.”Unrequited love is the infinite curse of a lonely heart.”

2. “The worst thing: to give yourself away in exchange for not enough love.

3. “The way he looked at you. I got it then. He loved you, and it was killing him. He won’t get over you, Clary, he can’t.” – Cassandra Clare

4. “I had discovered that there was something more painful than falling in love with someone who hasn’t fallen for you; hurting that person-hurting him and not being able to do anything about it.” – Elizabeth Chandler

5. “The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person.”

6. “I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year.”

7. “Unrequited love is a ridiculous state, and it makes those in it behave ridiculously. “

8. ”You can close your eyes to the things you don’t want to see, but you can’t close your heart to the things you don’t want to feel.” ― Johnny Depp

9. “When you give someone your whole heart, and he doesn’t want it, you cannot take it back. It’s gone forever.” – Sylvia Plath

10. “The worst feeling is falling for someone and knowing that they won’t be there to catch you.” – Rashida Rowe

11. “Love may have the longest arms, but it can still fall short of an embrace.

12. “There’s nothing so mortifying as to fall in love with someone who does not share one’s sentiments.”

13. “Because, if you could love someone, and keep loving them, without being loved back . . . then that love had to be real. It hurt too much to be anything else.” – Sarah Cross

14. “Maybe I was destined to forever fall in love with people I couldn’t have. Maybe there’s a whole assortment of impossible people waiting for me to find them. Waiting to make me feel the same impossibility over and over again.”

Carol Rifka Brunt

15. “Unrequited love is violent.”

16. “How do you make yourself not like someone?” – Louise Rennison

Quotes For The Pain Of Loving Someone You Cannot Be With

17.  “I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms … on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.” – John Green

18. “Unrequited love does not die; it’s only beaten down to a secret place where it hides, curled and wounded. For some unfortunates, it turns bitter and means, and those who come after paying the price for the hurt done by the one who came before.”

19. “The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person.” – Chuck Palahniuk

20. “You lose yourself trying to hold on to someone who doesn’t care about losing you.” – Tablo

21. “Love unrequited is violent. He loves you so much that he’s turned it into hate.” –  Lauren DeStefano

22. “Let no one who loves is called altogether unhappy. Even love unreturned has its rainbow.” – J.M. Barrie

23. “I want him to see the flowers in my eyes and hear the songs in my hands.” – Francesca Lia Block

24. “Out of her favor, where I am in love.” ― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

25.  “I never expected you to love me, I didn’t see any reason that you should. I never thought myself very lovable. I was thankful to be allowed to love you and I was enraptured when now and then I thought you were pleased with me or when I noticed in your eyes a gleam of good-humored affection. I tried not to bore you with my love; I knew I couldn’t afford to do that, and I was always on the lookout for the first sign that you were impatient with my affection.” – W. Somerset Maugham

26.  “The worst thing: to give yourself away in exchange for not enough love.” – Joyce Carol Oates

27.  “As long as you’re neurotic and crazy, he’s great. But once he solves all your problems, he becomes the problem.” – Candace Bushnell

28.  “Too many of us are hung up on what we don’t have, can’t have, or won’t ever have. We spend too much energy being down when we could use that same energy — if not less of it — doing, or at least trying to do, some of the things we really want to do.” – Terry McMillan

29.  “She had the look in her eye when you kick and kick at the door, and it doesn’t open when you write boy letters and letters, and he never loves you, not ’til the day he dies. Not even then.” – Daniel Handler

Unrequited Love Quotes For The Moment You Feel Alone

30. “Every broken heart has screamed at one time or another: Why can’t you see who I truly am?” – Shannon L. Alder

31. “The biggest curse in life is not losing your love, but not being loved by someone you love.”

32. “There comes a time in your life when you have to choose to turn the page, write another book or simply close it.” –  Shannon L. Alder

33. “The knowledge that she would never be loved in return acted upon her ideas as a tide acts upon cliffs.” – Thornton Wilder

34. I was even a little glad that if it wasn’t going to be me she wanted, it was going to be someone who really deserved her.” – Cassandra Clare

35.  “The knowledge that she would never be loved in return acted upon her ideas as a tide acts upon cliffs.” – Thornton Wilder

36. “With women who do not love us, as with the ‘dear departed,’ the knowledge that there is no hope left does not prevent us from continuing to wait.”  – Marcel Proust

37. “Unrequited love is so boring. Weeping under a blue-black sky is for suckers or maniacs.” – Alice Hoffman

38. “And then it happens, the most dreaded response in the world, terser than any word, more withholding than a no, and strictly verboten for someone as in love with language and me as you claim to be. You: K.” – Caroline Kepnes

39. “You have never loved me as I love you – never – never! Yours is not a passionate heart – your heart does not burn in a flame! You are, upon the whole, a sort of fay, or sprite – not a woman!” – Thomas Hardy

40. ”Perhaps a great love is never returned.” – Dag Hammarskjold

41. “I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year.” – Edna St. Vincent Millay

42. “I have to admit, unrequited love is so much better than a real one. I mean, it’s perfect… As long as something is never even started, you never have to worry about it ending. It has endless potential.”

Sarah Dessen

43. “Soul connections are not often found and are worth every bit of fight left in you to keep.” – Shannon Alder

44. “All these years, I’ve had a story in my mind, the story about us that never really existed. And because of that story, I’ve kept you framed up on the wall in a little box of nostalgic moonlight.” – Cathleen Schine

45. “I did not know how long it took to get over such a love, and that even when you did, when you loved again, you would always carry a sliver of it in your stitched-together heart.” – Christina Haag

Painful Unrequited Love Quotes

46. “Maybe I was destined to forever fall in love with people I couldn’t have. Maybe there’s a whole assortment of impossible people waiting for me to find them. Waiting to make me feel the same impossibility over and over again.”
– Carol Rifka Brunt

47. “I want him to see the flowers in my eyes and hear the songs in my hands.” – Francesca Lia Block

48. “When you loved someone and had to let them go, there will always be that small part of yourself that whispers, “What was it that you wanted and why didn’t you fight for it?”
– Shannon L. Alder

49. “I know that’s what people say– you’ll get over it. I’d say it, too. But I know it’s not true. Oh, you’ll be happy again, never fear. But you won’t forget. Every time you fall in love, it will be because something in the man reminds you of him.” – Betty Smith

50. ”Sometimes life sends us people who don’t love us enough, to remind us of what we’re worthy of.” – Mandy Hale

51. “The hardest thing about being broken isn’t the love you don’t receive; it’s the love you long to give that nobody wants.

52. “If you don’t receive love from the ones who are meant to love you, you will never stop looking for it.”
– Robert Goolrick

53. “There was a man who loved the moon, but whenever he tried to embrace her, she broke into a thousand pieces and left him drenched, with empty arms.” – Laini Taylor

54. “I realized that one might love him secretly with no hope of encouragement, which can be very enjoyable for the young or inexperienced.” ― Barbara Pym

55. “How much of life could he spend aching? Aching is not a stable condition; it must resolve into something.”
– Arthur Phillips

56. “The wait is long; my dream of you does not end.” – Nuala O’Faolain

57. “She hardly ever thought of him. He had worn a place for himself in some corner of her heart, as a sea shell, always boring against the rock, might do. The making of the place had been her pain. But now, the shell was safely in the rock. It was lodged, and ground no longer.” – T.H. White

58. “Yet my longing for her was like a bad cold that had hung on for years despite my conviction that I was sure to get over it at any moment.” – Donna Tartt

59. “But why, she thought wryly, did a man seem more attractive as he became less available? How humbling to think one had so much in common with a cow stretching its neck through a gate for better grass.” – Mary Jo Putney

60. “Unrequited love is a ridiculous state, and it makes those in it behave ridiculously.

Quotes For When You Can’t Stop Loving Who Doesn’t Love You

61. “People do incredible things for love, particularly for unrequited love.” – Daniel Radcliffe

62. “When you loved someone and had to let them go, there will always be that small part of yourself that whispers, “What was it that you wanted and why didn’t you fight for it?” – Shannon L. Alder

63. “Never fall in love with someone that won’t fight for you because when the real battles begin, they won’t pull your heart to safety, but they will their own.” – Shannon L. Alder

64. “Winter is much like unrequited love; cold and merciless.” – Kellie Elmore

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

66. “The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd – The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.” – Fernando Pessoa

67. “Desiring another person is perhaps the riskiest endeavor of all. As soon as you want somebody – really want him – it is as though you have taken a surgical needle and sutured your happiness to the skin of that person so that any separation will now cause a lacerating injury.” – Elizabeth Gilbert

68. “You just know something is amiss when you look at someone and long for something that is not yours or you cannot have. It’s an absence–a loss of a heartbeat.” – Nadège Richards

69. “To want and not to have, sent all up to her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want and not to have- to want and want- how that wrung the heart, and wrung it again and again! – Virginia Woolf

70. “Unrequited love differs from mutual love, just like delusion differs from the truth.” – George Sand

71. “My heart no longer felt as if it belonged to me. It now felt as it had been stolen, torn from my chest by someone who wanted no part of it.” – Meredith T. Taylor

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

73. “Dignity will only happen when you realize that having someone in your life doesn’t validate your worth.” – Shannon L. Alder

74. “Sometimes you grow to love the shadow that follows.” – Donna Lynn Hope

Sad Love Quotes When They Don’t Love You

75. “I was in love with unavailable man, an old, sad story. When I first started to fall for him months before, my feelings gave me pleasure and hope. I would wait for him, as lovers had waited for each other since the beginning of time. But as the months passed and he didn’t come around, something inside me shifted. My unrequited love became obsessive.” ― Lisa M Phillips

76. “And how do you really feel?’
‘Like I’ll never recover. Like I’ll never draw another breath without half of it being a wish for him.’” –  Jane Seville

77. “Because what’s worse than knowing you want something, besides knowing you can never have it?” – James Patterson

78. “I know this sounds crazy to say after one encounter, but I kind of fell for you pretty hard, and it has been forever since I’ve connected to anyone like this, and my heart is kind of broken in a million pieces.” – BJ Novak

79. “She’d been in love with the man, and love is a scary thing. If not reciprocated, it can turn a person into a monster.” – Michele Young-Stone

80. “When unrequited love is the most expensive thing on the menu, sometimes you settle for the daily special.” – Miranda Kenneally

81. “My heart no longer felt as if it belonged to me. It now felt as it had been stolen, torn from my chest by someone who wanted no part of it.” – Meredith T. Taylor

82. “The most confused you will ever get is when you try to convince your heart and spirit of something your mind knows is a lie.” – Shannon L. Alder

83. “Even before you touched me, I belonged to you; all you had to do was look at me.” – Louise Glück

84. “You and I

Again and again

Always almost

Never enough.

– A world of almosts

Ayushee Ghoshal

85. “It’s more like every electron in every atom in the universe paused, breathed in deeply, assessed the situation, and then reversed its course, spinning backward, or the other way, which was the right way all along. And afterward, the universe was exactly the same, but infinitely more right.” – Lydia Netzer, How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky

Quotes For Bein In Love With Someone Who Doesn’t Know You Exist

86. “Being in love with someone who doesn’t even know you exist isn’t the worst thing in the world. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Almost like passing in a term paper that you know sucked, but having that period of time where you haven’t gotten your grade back yet – that kind of exhale where you haven’t been rejected, although you pretty much know how it’s going to turn out.” – Tonya Hurley

87. “…as long as nothing happens between them, the memory is cursed with what hasn’t happened.”- Marguerite Duras

88. “Isn’t that how falling in love so often works? Some stranger appears out of nowhere and becomes a fixed star in your universe.” – Kate Bolick

89. “…it just reinforced that they were over. They’d been apart too long this time. There was nothing left.” – H.S Howe

90. “There’s something funny about unrequited love — I suppose it’s because we can all identify with it.” – Charles Schulz

91. “To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.” – Federico García Lorca

92. “A person doesn’t know true hurt and suffering until they’ve felt the pain of falling in love with someone whose affections lie elsewhere.” – Rose Gordon

93. “When the person you love can’t see your love for them beneath the painful things you say when they reject you, remember this: Love is blind.” – Shannon L. Alder

94. “It was hard to pour endless love into someone who wouldn’t love you back. No one could do it forever” – Zoje Stage

95. “I love you. I always have. No matter how much you wish I didn’t.”

Colleen Hoover

96. “Your love is an addiction. It is destroying my life, but I can’t live without it.” – Shon Mehta

97. “The heart is stubborn. It holds onto love despite what sense and emotion tell it. And it is often, in the battle of those three, the most brilliant of all.” – Alessandra Torre

98. “If I said I was madly in love with you, you’d know I was lying.” – Margaret Mitchell

99. “Because what’s worse than knowing you want something, besides knowing you can never have it?” – James Patterson

100. “One of the greatest pain and agony is being in one-sided love with someone.”

Conclusion on 100 Deep Quotes On Unrequited Love

Loving someone who doesn’t answer to your feelings is an opportunity to find strength and build a self-loving place for yourself, by yourself. Once you do that, the magic will happen, and you will welcome in your life someone who will love you back more than you could ever imagine.

Unrequited love hurts, but don’t allow it to become more important than your happiness. Pursue it and give yourself time to recover. Then go on and find true love.

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100 Quotes for Loving Someone Who Doesn’t Love You Back