Ever heard the phrase “if it isn’t love, then what is?”
If you have, then let’s show you some of the best “when you love someone but can’t be with them” quotes.
You’ll also find a collection of short poems about loving someone who doesn’t love you back, funny unrequited love quotes, and when you love someone but can’t be with them quotes.
The same goes with “letting go of someone who doesn’t want you quotes,” which we’ve thrown into the mix to spice things up.
Generally, this page is meant to help you express how you feel when you think you have no words to relay your emotion.
Simply go through each phrase and see which best communicates your feelings.
If It Isn’t Love Famous Quotes and Sayings
The best if it isn’t love famous quotes and sayings include:
“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
“Because what’s worse than knowing you want something, besides knowing you can never have it?”
― James Patterson, The Angel Experiment
“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, City of Glass
“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
J.K. Rowling
“Snape’s patronus was a doe,’ said Harry, ‘the same as my mother’s because he loved her for nearly all of his life, from when they were children.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
“I wouldn’t change it,” Simon said. “I wouldn’t give up loving you. Not for anything. You know what Raphael told me? That I didn’t know how to be a good vampire, that vampires accept that they’re dead. But as long as I remember what it was like to love you, I’ll always feel like I’m alive.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Glass
Read Also: Best You Wouldn’t Get It Quotes
“…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
“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, Tell the Wolves I’m Home
“I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was hurricane.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska
“If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.”
― William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
“First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons — but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which had lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as best he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world — a world intense and strange, complete in himself. Let it be added here that this lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ring — this lover can be man, woman, child, or indeed any human creature on this earth.
Now, the beloved can also be of any description. The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. A man may be a doddering great-grandfather and still love only a strange girl he saw in the streets of Cheehaw one afternoon two decades past. The preacher may love a fallen woman. The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes, and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone else — but that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp. A good man may be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someone a tender and simple idyll. Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.
Read Also: Baby You Know That I Miss You Quotes
It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain.”
― carson mccullers, The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories
“Let no one who loves be called altogether unhappy. Even love unreturned has its rainbow.”
― J.M. Barrie, The Little Minister
“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
“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
“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
“Love Jo all your days, if you choose, but don’t let it spoil you, for it’s wicked to throw away so many good gifts because you can’t have the one you want.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
“I had to get over [him]. For months now, a stone had been sitting on my heart. I’d shed a lot of tears over [him], lost a lot of sleep, eaten a lot of cake batter. Somehow, I had to move on. [Life] would be hell if I didn’t shake loose from the grip he had on my heart. I most definitely didn’t want to keep feeling this way, alone in a love affair meant for two. Even if he’d felt like The One. Even if I’d always thought we’d end up together. Even if he still had a choke chain on my heart.”
― Kristan Higgins, All I Ever Wanted
“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
“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
“She hated that she was still so desperate for a glimpse of him, but it had been this way for years.”
― Julia Quinn, The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever
“the saddest thing is to be
a minute to someone,
when you’ve made them your eternity.”
― Sanober Khan
“If I said I was madly in love with you you’d know I was lying.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
“Nothing had changed. I was the stupid one again. I was the girl who never understood who she was to people.”
― Carol Rifka Brunt, Tell the Wolves I’m Home
“I thought of all the others who had tried to tie her to the ground and failed. So I resisted showing her the songs and poems I had written, knowing that too much truth can ruin a thing. And if that meant she wasn’t entirely mine, what of it? I would be the one she could always return to without fear of recrimination or question. So I did not try to win her and contented myself with playing a beautiful game. But there was always a part of me that hoped for more, and so there was a part of me that was always a fool.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s Fear
“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
“And on that evening when we grow older still we’ll speak about these two young men as though they were two strangers we met on the train and whom we admire and want to help along. And we’ll want to call it envy, because to call it regret would break our hearts.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name
“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, The Once and Future King
“Most of us can’t help but live as though we’ve got two lives to live, one is the mockup, the other the finished version, and then there are all those versions in between. But there’s only one, and before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now there’s sorrow. I don’t envy the pain. But I envy you the pain. (p. 225)”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name
“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
“I love you. I hate you. I like you. I hate you. I love you. I think you’re stupid. I think you’re a loser. I think you’re wonderful. I want to be with you. I don’t want to be with you. I would never date you. I hate you. I love you…..I think the madness started the moment we met and you shook my hand. Did you have a disease or something?”
― Shannon L. Alder
“…the sad part is, that I will probably end up loving you without you for much longer than I loved you when I knew you.
Some people might find that strange.
But the truth of it is that the amount of love you feel for someone and the impact they have on you as a person, is in no way relative to the amount of time you have known them.”
― Ranata Suzuki
“Your memory feels like home to me.
So whenever my mind wanders, it always finds it’s way back to you.”
― Ranata Suzuki
“Shut up…let me tell you, LET ME. Every time I look at your face or even remember it, it wrecks me. And the way you are with me and you’re just fun and you shit all over me and you make fun of me and you’re real. I don’t have enough time in any day to think about you enough…I don’t even think about women anymore. I think about you.”
― Louis C.K.
“There is an ocean of silence between us… and I am drowning in it.”
― Ranata Suzuki
“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
“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 oppostie. 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
“We’re cool,” I say calmly, although I feel something else. I feel… sad. Like I’ve lost something I never quite had.”
― Christine Seifert, The Predicteds
“She loved him. But he didn’t know how to love.
He could talk about love. He could see love and feel love. But he couldn’t give love.
He could make love. But he couldn’t make promises.
She had desperately wanted his promises.
She wanted his heart, knew she couldn’t have it so she took what she could get.
Temporary bliss. Passionate highs and lows. Withdrawal and manipulation.
He only stayed long enough to take what he needed and keep moving.
If he stopped moving, he would self-destruct.
If he stopped wandering, he would have to face himself.
He chose to stay in the dark where he couldn’t see.
If he exposed himself and the sun came out, he’d see his shadow.
He was deathly afraid of his shadow.
She saw his shadow, loved it, understood it. Saw potential in it.
She thought her love would change him.
He pushed and he pulled, tested boundaries, thinking she would never leave.
He knew he was hurting her, but didn’t know how to share anything but pain.
He was only comfortable in chaos. Claiming souls before they could claim him.
Her love, her body, she had given to him and he’d taken with such feigned sincerity, absorbing every drop of her.
His dark heart concealed.
She’d let him enter her spirit and stroke her soul where everything is love and sensation and surrender.
Wide open, exposed to deception.
It had never occurred to her that this desire was not love.
It was blinding the way she wanted him.
She couldn’t see what was really happening, only what she wanted to happen.
She suspected that he would always seek to minimize the risk of being split open, his secrets revealed.
He valued his soul’s privacy far more than he valued the intimacy of sincere connection so he kept his distance at any and all costs.
Intimacy would lead to his undoing—in his mind, an irrational and indulgent mistake.
When she discovered his indiscretions, she threw love in his face and beat him with it.
Somewhere deep down, in her labyrinth, her intricacy, the darkest part of her soul, she relished the mayhem.
She felt a sense of privilege for having such passion in her life.
He stirred her core.
The place she dared not enter.
The place she could not stir for herself.
But something wasn’t right.
His eyes were cold and dark.
His energy, unaffected.
He laughed at her and her antics, told her she was a mess.
Frantic, she looked for love hiding in his eyes, in his face, in his stance, and she found nothing but disdain.
And her heart stopped.”
― G.G. Renee Hill, The Beautiful Disruption
“Everyone goes through a period of Traviamento – when we take, say, a different turn in life, the other via. Dante himself did. Some recover, some pretend to recover, some never come back, some chicken out before even starting, and some, for fear of taking any turns, find themselves leading the wrong life all life long.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name
“I was trying to make you jealous!” Simon screamed, right back. His hands were fisted at his sides. “You’re so stupid, Clary. You’re so stupid, can’t you see anything?”
She stared at him in bewilderment. What on earth did he mean? “Trying to make me jealous? Why would you try to do that?”
She saw immediately that this was the worst thing she could have asked him.
“Because,” he said, so bitterly that it shocked her, “I’ve been in love with you for ten years, so I thought it seemed like the time to find out whether you felt the same about me. Which, I guess you don’t.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Bones
“Vanity was stronger than love at sixteen and there was no room in her hot heart now for anything but hate.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
“His hands are saying that he wants to hold her. His feet are saying that he wants to chase after her… He’s probably forgotten that I’m here, beside him”
― Ai Yazawa, 天使なんかじゃない―完全版 1 [Tenshi nanka janai – Kanzenban 1]
“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, Dark Secrets 1
“Do people always fall in love with things they can’t have?’
‘Always,’ Carol said, smiling, too.”
― Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt
“There is nothing so mortifying as to fall in love with someone who does not share one’s sentiments.”
― Georgette Heyer, Venetia
“When unrequited love is the most expensive thing on the menu, sometimes you settle for the daily special.”
― Miranda Kenneally, Catching Jordan
“You loved me-then what right had you to leave me? What right-answer me-for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart- you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.”
~Heathcliff”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
“Unrequited love is a ridiculous state, and it makes those in it behave ridiculously.”
― Cassandra Clare
“If you cannot hold me in your arms, then hold my memory in high regard.
And if I cannot be in your life, then at least let me live in your heart.”
― Ranata Suzuki
“Its been six weeks,” he murmured. “Six weeks I’ve wanted you. I know how you move, and how the sunlight makes a shadow on the curve of your cheek, and the shape of your ear.” He chucked harshly then turned his head on the pillow to look at her. “I’m dying,” he said. He dropped his fist against his chest. “Right here, you’re killing me.”
― Laura Kinsale, The Prince of Midnight
“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
“He shrank from hearing Margaret’s very name mentioned; he, while he blamed her – while he was jealous of her – while he renounced her – he loved her sorely, in spite of himself.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South
“When you experience loss, people say you’ll move through the 5 stages of grief….
Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance
….. What they don’t tell you is that you’ll cycle through them all every day.”
― Ranata Suzuki
“I think perhaps I will always hold a candle for you – even until it burns my hand.
And when the light has long since gone …. I will be there in the darkness holding what remains, quite simply because I cannot let go.”
― Ranata Suzuki
“I want him to see the flowers in my eyes and hear the songs in my hands.”
― Francesca Lia Block, Dangerous Angels
“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.”
“The knowledge that she would never be loved in return acted upon her ideas as a tide acts upon cliffs.”
― Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey
“No.” Magnus strode toward him. “I didn’t call you because I’m tired of you only wanting me around when you need something. I’m tired of watching you be in love with someone else-someone, incidentally, who will never love you back. Not the way I do.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Glass
Conclusion
Your quest to find “if it isn’t love famous quotes and sayings” has been met with the best funny unrequited love quotes above.
There are quotes tailored to, “love isn’t real” and “I love you but we can’t be together.”
Carefully go through our selections to see which works best for you.
