Errotic love, affectionate love, playful love, unconditional love…There are many types of love but of all of them, the unrequited one is the most painful.
If you’re loving someone who doesn’t love you back, you understand the pain of having so much love for one person that remains unreciprocated.
There is something beautiful in all of this that has inspired some of us to write the most heartwarming quotes one could ever read.
And these quotes have helped them get rid of their emotional burdens just as they might help you.
And that’s the beauty of the world we live in. We convert everything into the positive.
Even when we’re sad, we find time to write about our feelings and enrich the world with our unique words.
We find time to describe our strong hearts, dealing with the pain of the unrequited love.
Related: 10 Ways To Stop Loving Someone Who Doesn’t Love You Back
68 quotes about loving someone who doesn’t love you back
1. “To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.” ― Federico García Lorca, Blood Wedding and Yerma
2. “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, Kill Me Softly
3. “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 mean, and those who come after, pay the price for the hurt done by the one who came before.” ― Elle Newmark, The Book of Unholy Mischief
4. “Let no one who loves be called altogether unhappy. Even love unreturned has its rainbow.” ― J.M. Barrie, The Little Minister
5. “I have to admit, an 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, The Truth About Forever
6. “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
7. “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, Her Imperfect Groom
8. “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
9. “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, Ghostgirl
10. “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, Legacy of Lies & Don’t Tell
11. “Loving someone who doesn’t love you back is like hugging a cactus. The tighter you hold on, the more it hurts.” – Unknown
12. “It’s all right to love someone who doesn’t love you back, as long as they’re worth you loving them. As long as they deserve it.” – Cassandra Clare
13. “Don’t waste your time loving someone who doesn’t love you back.” – Unknown
14. “If we don’t feel love with our heart, then how come that’s where it hurts when someone doesn’t love you back?” – Unknown
15. “The saddest thing is to be a minute to someone, when you’ve made them your eternity.” ― Sanober Khan
16. “There is nothing so mortifying as to fall in love with someone who does not share one’s sentiments.” ― Georgette Heyer, Venetia
17. “I’d always secretly believed that a love as fierce and true as mine would be rewarded in the end, and now I was being forced to accept the bitter truth.” ― Alma Katsu, The Taker
18. “My heart no longer felt as if it belonged to me. It now felt as if it had been stolen, torn from my chest by someone who wanted no part of it.” ― Meredith Taylor, Churning Waters
19. “I get what it’s like to want something, but to try and force yourself to really believe that you don’t.” ― Cora Carmack, Losing It
See also: 120 Inspirational Keep Your Head Up Quotes And Sayings
20. “The heart is stubborn. It holds onto love despite what sense and emotion tells it. And it is often, in the battle of those three, the most brilliant of all.” ― Alessandra Torre
21. “What makes you vulnerable, makes you beautiful.” – Brene Brown
22. “We accept the love we think we deserve.” – Stephen Chbosky
23. “You know, unrequited love is very difficult. It’s not just having this one-sided love of someone who’s far away. Being close, talking daily, liking a guy who’s constantly near me is harder than it would be under different circumstances.” ― Park So Hee
24. “Every broken heart has screamed at one time or another: Why can’t you see who I truly am?” ― Shannon L. Alder
25. “If you’re searching for a quote that puts your feelings into words – you won’t find it. You can learn every language and read every word ever written – but you’ll never find what’s in your heart. How can you? He has it.” ― Ranata Suzuki
26. “Winter is much like unrequited love; cold and merciless.” ― Kellie Elmore
27. “And yet, because I love thee, I obtain
From that same love this vindicating grace,
To live on, still in love, and yet in vain” ― Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese
28. “But, here was a curious thing. The more I tried to give up thinking of her, the more I said to myself, ‘She’s nothing to you’, the harder I tried to pluck the idea of her out of my heart, the more she stayed there.” ― Sarah Waters, Fingersmith
See also: Waiting For Love Quotes: 130 Sayings That Show That Love Is Worth Waiting For
29. “It’s painful, loving someone from afar. Watching them – from the outside. The once familiar elements of their life reduced to nothing more than occasional mentions in conversations and faces changing in photographs. They exist to you now as nothing more than living proof that something can still hurt you… with no contact at all.” ― Ranata Suzuki
30. “Never make someone a priority, when all you are to them is an option.” – Maya Angelou
31. “Loving someone who doesn’t love you back is like waiting for a boat at the airport. Hopeless and disappointing.” – Unknown
32. “There are 6,775,235,842 people in the world. Why are you letting one of them ruin your life?” – Unknown
33. “That physical feeling of extreme pain; like you just got a bullet, you get in your chest when you see the person you love, love someone else.” – Unknown
34. “If I could have had him, I could have let him go. But without the having there was nothing— so to the nothing I hold.” ― Coco J. Ginger
35. “It was hard to pour endless love into someone who wouldn’t love you back. No one could do it forever” ― Zoje Stage, Baby Teeth
36. “You are the best worst thing to ever happen to me.” ― A.H. Lueders
37. “I feel this very bittersweet moment so well, and so clearly, and so fondly, especially since to feel the bittersweet moments of life is to feel the best of it all.” ― Michael Whone, Winter Lyric
38. “Your love for me does not exist in the real world. Yes, it is love, I do not deny it. But not every love has a course to run, smooth or otherwise, and this love has no course at all . . . But that is remote from love and remote from ordinary life. As real people we do not exist for each other.” ― Iris Murdoch, A Severed Head
39. “The real horror of my life is not that I’ve killed some terrible people. The real horror is that the people I’ve loved didn’t love me back.” ― Caroline Kepnes, Hidden Bodies
40. “It is our desire, not need, to be loved (back).” ― Mokokoma Mokhonoana
41. “Deep yearning isn’t deep love; it is all the unmet expectations rising to the surface of your soul.” ― J. Autherine, Wild Heart
42. “When you learn to let go of what you hold so close to your heart yet keep sending unconditional love its way, you must know that you have mastered the art of living.” ― Shreya Naik
43. “Unfortunately, loving someone doesn’t obligate them to love you back.” – J. Matthew Nespoli
44. “Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck. – Dalai Lama
45. “If you don’t love me, it does not matter, anyway I can love for both of us.” – Stendhal
46. “It hurts to love someone and not be loved in return but what is the most painful is to love someone and never find the courage to let the person know how you feel.” – Unknown
47. “If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they’re yours; if they don’t they never were.” – Richard Bach
48. “I may always miss you, need you and want you… I may always remember you, think of you and wish you well… I may always respect you, admire you and speak highly of you… And I will certainly always love you… But that doesn’t necessarily mean I’d take you back.” – Ranata Suzuki
49. “Love can sometimes be magic. But magic can sometimes…just be an illusion.” – Javan
50. “Some of us will never know we’d owned someone’s heart for a season.” ― Joyce Rachelle
51. “It is a terrible, wretched thing to love someone whom you know cannot love you. There are things that are more dreadful. There are many human pains more grievous. And yet it remains both terrible and wretched. Like so many things, it is insoluble.”― Naomi Alderman, Disobedience
52. “A big issue that some empaths face is unrequited love and all the grief that accompanies this experience. If someone truly is your soulmate or twin flame, the relationship will happen sooner or later. … Don’t put your life on hold for another person, no matter how badly you want to be with them. If it’s meant to be, it will be.” ― Mateo Sol, Awakened Empath: The Ultimate Guide to Emotional, Psychological and Spiritual Healing
53. “…and she loved him in that hidden place, where only the Soul knows the secrets of the heart…” ― Eily Nash
54. “You can give birth to a beautiful, perfect human being, but requited love isn’t guaranteed for her—or for any of us.” ― Elin Hilderbrand, Winter Street
55. “I love and I lust and it really doesn’t matter if they love me back because sometimes that’s what love is.” ― Dominic Riccitello
56. “They say the truth hurts. And these words hurt more than any I have ever written. But they are the truth – The cold, hard, undeniable truth. Not letting go doesn’t keep him with you. It’s still over. He’s still gone. … And nothing will ever change that.” ― Ranata Suzuki
57. “I’ve decided to take this unrequited love, and quietly put it away in a corner of my heart as a bittersweet page of my youth.” ― Shuu Maiko, Nisekoi
58. “It hurts that I was just one page in the book of your life…But what hurts more is knowing you’ll revise that chapter someday….and you’ll erase me completely.” ― Ranata Suzuki
59. “We are way less likely to love someone just because they love us than we are to hate someone just because they hate us.” ― Mokokoma Mokhonoana
60. “There is something strangely ecstatic, oddly fascinating and infinitely magnetic about unrequited love.” ― Arshpreet Kaur
61. “You’re hung up on something that’s never going to love you back.” ― Garth Risk Hallberg, City on Fire
62. “I’m starting to learn that if things are messy, or pieces don’t get put back right, they are going to hurt, either way.” ― R. YS Perez, I Hope You Fall in Love: Poetry Collection
63. “Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” – Maria Robinson
64. “A mighty pain to love it is, And ‘tis a pain that pain to miss; But of all pains, the greatest pain, It is to love, but love in vain.” – Abraham Cowley
65. “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
66. “Because nothing hurts more than knowing if the world were ending in five minutes, I would call you to tell you I love you, but the line would be busy because you’d be on the phone with someone else.” – Unknown
67. “Problems can be fixed. But unrequited love is a tragedy.” – Suzanne Harper
68. “I brought you here to tell you this: sometimes what we are searching for does not exist. We may sacrifice for it, even bleed for it, but it was never meant to be ours.” ― Esther Dalseno, Drown
