70+ Unrequited Love Quotes That Rightly Encapsulate Unsaid Emotions

Here’s our bank of unrequited love quotes that capture the essence of your feelings and thoughts during tough times. Reading a few will help you move on!

Anubhuti Mishra
Written by Anubhuti Mishra , Relationship Expert
Updated on Nov 14, 2024 | 12:18 PM IST | 9.3K
Unrequited Love Quotes
Unrequited Love Quotes

It is disheartening to accept the fact that the person whom you truly love doesn’t reciprocate the same kind of feelings. You might be falling in love secretly, but deep down the lane, you are dying to be together. Such unrequited love can be frustrating since the one who stole your heart doesn’t want to own it. To learn to take rejections or refusals in your stride, unrequited love quotes are the real saviors. Right from understanding your pain and loneliness to dealing with negative emotions maturely, the profound words will make you feel better from within. 

It is not just about learning to express your feelings correctly; it is more about accepting your emotions while holding onto hope for new beginnings. Quotes about unrequited love can provide clarity, helping you navigate through heartache, helplessness, sorrow, and despair. Such an understanding allows you to focus on fostering a healthy relationship in the future.

Whether you are feeling unappreciated or in search of solace, our compilation of quotes on unrequited love will surely uplift your spirits and aid in dealing with reality. 

 

Best Unrequited Love Quotes to Find Solace

Unrequited Love Quotes

1. “Unrequited love is the infinite curse of a lonely heart.” — Christina Westover
   
2. “Unrequited love does not die; it’s only beaten down to a secret place where it hides, curled and wounded.” — Elle Newmark
   
3. “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
   
4. “The only way to get rid of unrequited love is to give it to someone who can appreciate it.” ― Unknown
   
5. “Unrequited love is an opportunity to love yourself more.” ― Unknown
   
6. “Unrequited love is like trying to fill a heart-shaped hole with a square-shaped piece.” ― Unknown
   
7. “Unrequited love is like hitting your head against a wall that isn’t there.” — Shannon Wheeler
   
8. “Unrequited love is the greatest educator.” ― António Gedeão
   
9. “But that afternoon he asked himself, with his infinite capacity for illusion, if such pitiless indifference might not be a subterfuge for hiding the torments of love.” — Gabriel García Márquez

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10. “There is no greater sorrow than to recall, in misery, the time when we were happy.” — Dante Alighieri
 

Heart-touching Quotes About Unreturned Love That’ll Help You Move on

Unrequited Love Quotes

11. “Love unreturned is like a question without an answer.” — Unknown
    
12. “To love and be loved in return is the most beautiful thing in the world. To love and not be loved in return is the most painful.” ― Unknown
    
13. “Let no one who loves be called unhappy. Even love unreturned has its rainbow.” — James Matthew Barrie
    
14. “Unrequited love is a ridiculous state, and it makes those in it behave ridiculously.” ― Cassandra Clare
    
15. “To love someone who doesn’t love you is like shaking a tree to make the dew drops fall.” — Unknown
    
16. “Problems can be fixed. But unrequited love is a tragedy.” — Suzanne Harper
    
17. “The worst feeling is falling for someone and knowing that they won’t be there to catch you.” — Rashida Rowe
    
18. “Unrequited love is the epitome of selflessness, for you love without expecting anything in return.” ― Unknown
    
19. “Unfortunately, loving someone doesn’t obligate them to love you back.” — J. Matthew Nespoli
    
20. “Sometimes you grow to love the shadow that follows.” — Donna Lynn Hope

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Read More: 120 Romantic Things to Say to Your Boyfriend, Girlfriend, Or Lover

 

Sad Quotes About Unreciprocated Love to Console Your Heart

Unrequited Love Quotes

21. “The heart was made to be broken.” ― Oscar Wilde

22. “When you give someone your whole heart and he doesn’t want it, you cannot take it back. It’s gone forever.” — Sylvia Plath
    
23. “I knew you could never love me, but it was my bittersweet choice to continue loving you.” — Unknown
    
24. “The biggest curse in life is not losing your love, but not being loved by someone you love.” — Kiran Joshi
    
25. “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
    
26. “The saddest thing about unrequited love is that, no matter how much love you give, it will never be enough.” ― Unknown
    
27. “If you don’t love me, it does not matter, anyway I can love for both of us.” — Stendhal
    
28. “Every time you enter the melancholic tunnel of unrequited love, you will get out of that tunnel with a less cheerful heart but with a more mature mind!” ― Mehmet Murat ildan
    
29. “I didn’t want to fall in love with you. I knew the risk and understood the consequences. All the warning signs had been in bright blinking neon lights. Telling me to run before I even got near. But our hearts are animals driven by instinct: it only want and wants and wants. Mine simply wanted you.” — Theresa Mariz
    
30. “The pain of unrequited love is like an ocean, deep and unending, but sometimes, the waves become calm, and you find solace in the stillness.” ―  Unknown

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Read More: 21 Tips for Surviving a Long-distance Relationship Without Despair

 

Deep Quotes About Unattainable Love And Heartfelt Sentiments

Unrequited Love Quotes

31. “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
    
32. “To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.” — Federico García Lorca
    
33. “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
    
34. “The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing.” ― Blaise Pascal
    
35. “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
    
36. “He was both everything I could ever want…And nothing I could ever have…” — Ranata Suzuki
    
37. “I know I am but summer to your heart, And not the full four seasons of the year.” — Edna St. Vincent Millay
    
38. “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
    
39. “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
    
40. “I get what it’s like to want something, but to try and force yourself to really believe that you don’t.” — Cora Carmack
 

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One-sided Love Quotes And Sayings to Overcome Your Feelings

Unrequited Love Quotes

41. “To see you happy with someone else makes me smile, even if that person is not me” ― Unknown
    
42. “You don’t look at me like how you look at her. That is all I need to understand what I am to you.” ― Unknown
    
43. “Love unrequited is violent. He loves you so much that he’s turned it into hate.” — Lauren DeStefano
    
44. “Loving someone who doesn’t love you back is like hugging a cactus. The tighter you hold on, the more it hurts.” ― Unknown
    
45. “Unrequited love differs from mutual love, just like delusion differs from the truth.” — George Sand
    
46. “Living with someone you love can be lonelier than living entirely alone if the one that you love doesn’t love you.” — Tennessee Williams
    
47. “It is our desire, not need, to be loved (back).” — Mokokoma Mokhonoana
    
48. “Never make someone a priority, when all you are to them is an option.” — Maya Angelou
    
49. “Unrequited love was, at that period of my life, the only kind I seemed to be capable of feeling. This caused me much pain, but in retrospect, I see it had advantages. It provided all the emotional jolts of the other kind without any of the risks, it did not interfere with my life, which, although meager, was mine and predictable, and it involved no decisions.” — Margaret Atwood
    
50. “It’s as if I’ve stepped off the edge of a cliff, and even though my heart’s in my mouth and my stomach is in knots, I’m the most excited I’ve ever been in my life. I’m totally enthralled by him. I want him, every part of him, and I desperately want him to feel the same way about me.” — Serena Grey

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Read More: 110 Quotes About Happiness That Radiate Positivity, Love, And Joy

 

Thought-provoking Quotes on Unreciprocated Love from Literature

Unrequited Love Quotes

51. “To want and not to have, sent all up 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, To the Lighthouse
    
52. “…as long as nothing happens between them, the memory is cursed with what hasn’t happened.” — Marguerite Duras, Blue Eyes, Black Hair
    
53. “If you don’t receive love from the ones who are meant to love you, you will never stop looking for it.” — Robert Goolrick, The End of the World as We Know It: Scenes from a Life
    
54. “A mighty pain to love it is, And ‘t is a pain that pain to miss; But of all pains, the greatest pain It is to love, but love in vain.” — Abraham Cowley, The Poems of Abraham Cowley
    
55. “There’s nothing quite so humbling as thinking you’re completely over someone, then realizing you’re not even close.” — Brian Strause, Maybe a Miracle
    
56. “It’s bad enough to love someone who doesn’t love you, but to have them told of it is perfectly awful. It makes me wild just to think of it. Ah, Fan, I’m getting so ill-tempered and envious and wicked, I don’t know what will happen to me.” ― Louisa May Alcott, An Old-Fashioned Girl
    
57.  “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, Disappearing Acts
    
58. “Sometimes, no matter how many eyelashes or dandelion seeds you blow, no matter how much of your heart you tear out and slap on your sleeve, it just ain’t gonna happen.” — Melissa Jensen, The Fine Art of Truth or Dare
    
59. “Only time can heal your broken heart, just as only time can heal his broken arms and legs.” — Miss Piggy, Miss Piggy’s Guide to Life
    
60. “‘Love?’ he asked himself, giving no sense of recognition for that word in the dictionary of his mind. It was the only battle he had lost in life, the only thing that had been snatched away from him before he could even claim it.’” — Faraaz Kazi, Truly, Madly, Deeply

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Read More: 210+ Quotes About Feelings And Emotions That’ll Tug Your Heartstrings

 

Profound Sayings About Unrequited Love to Feel a Lot Better

Unrequited Love Quotes

61. “It hurts when you have someone in your heart but you can’t have them in your arms.”

62. “If only life was fair, but I understand it’s not, that’s why you cannot love me.”
    
63. “If someone doesn’t fight to keep you, never fight yourself to stay.”
    
64. “I’m tired of loving you and hoping you’ll do the same.” 
    
65. “There are all kinds of love in this world, but never the same love twice.”
    
66. “I love you, and it kills me each day to see that you do not feel the same way too.”
    
67. “I’m not saying that I think of you constantly, but I can’t deny the fact that each time my mind wanders, it always finds some way back to you.”
    
68. “Would it be inhumane to wish you sadness, that I may bring me happiness?”
    
69. “It’s hard to wait around for something that you know might never happen. But it’s even harder to give up when you know it’s everything you want.”
    
70. “There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired.” 
    
71. “For a while, these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy’s wing.”
    
72. “I find myself wishing every time if only you knew you are the reason.”

As long as you keep such a collection of unrequited love quotes handy, you will be able to move on quickly and console your heart. Hoping to connect with someone you love can leave you feeling vulnerable. Hence, to sink in the sentiments of one-sided love and navigate through the bittersweet symphony of thoughts, bookmarking a few love quotes can be a wise decision. Read a few every day and don’t let the despair affect your mental peace. 

FAQs

Is it possible to turn unrequited love into real love?
It is rare to turn unrequited love into real love as it depends on the intensity and emotional investment of the people involved.

Can unrequited love be harmful?
Yes, unrequited love can be harmful as it can increase your stress and create feelings of unhappiness.

Why do people turn to emotional love quotes to confess their unrequited love?
People turn to emotional love quotes to confess their unrequited love because quotes are profound words that capture the depth of unspoken feelings.

Can unrequited love quotes be a form of closure for some people?
Yes, unrequited love quotes are a form of closure for some people as they give each one the necessary space to accept reality and move on.

What can unrequited love do to a person?
It can lead to sadness, anger, and sometimes depression.

Can unrequited love quotes inspire one to move on?
Yes, unrequited love quotes can make one learn how to get over unrequited love.

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About The Author
Anubhuti Mishra
Anubhuti Mishra
Relationship Expert

A marked inclination toward understanding human emotions and relationships led Anubhuti to become a certified Relationship Expert. With dual

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