25 Saddest Fading Love Quotes for the Soon-To-Be Ex-Lovers

Romantic relationships are the most powerful driving force in life; something we all strive toward and do our utmost to maintain. We have all been there — the butterflies in the stomach, the glassy-eyed looks, the quintessential love birds.

But often, there comes a time when relationships turn sour and must come to an end. The following fading love quotes are for all of you out there who are realizing that what you have with your partners will never be the same again and that breaking up is inevitable.

25 Fading Love Quotes for Those Wallowing in Sadness

The Most Heartbreaking Fading Love Quotes

#1. “We always thought we’d look back on our tears and laugh, but we never thought we’d look back on our laughter and cry.” — Anonymous

#2. “None of us knew how terribly these two fine people suffered in secret. I do not think that they ever stopped loving each other, but deep down in their nature, they did not belong to one another.” ― Hermann Hesse, Gertrude

#3. “‘Why are you sad?’ ‘Because you speak to me with words, and I look at you with feelings.’” — Pierrot le Fou (movie)

#4. “It’s funny how we feel so much, but we cannot say a word. We are screaming inside, but we can’t be heard.” — Sarah McLachlan

#5. “What hurts more than losing you is knowing that you’re not fighting to keep me.” — Anonymous

#6. “The flame of love is now just a cold loneliness.” — Uniek Swain

#7. “That’s how it started: a series of small hurts and excuses between two people that built up slowly, widening over time to form a vast and yawning divide.” ― Nenia Campbell, Terrorscape

#8. “Part of me aches at the thought of her being so close yet so untouchable.” ― Nicholas Sparks, Dear John

#9. “If we must part forever, give me but one kind word to think upon and please myself with while my heart’s breaking.” — Thomas Otway, The Orphan

#10. “It ended sadly. The kind of ending where you wait together, holding hands and weeping, while off in another room, love slowly dies.” ― Abigail Thomas, What Comes Next and How to Like It

Quotes on Realizing the Love Has Ended

#11. “‘How do you know when it’s over?’ ‘Maybe when you feel more in love with your memories than with the person standing in front of you.’” ― Gunnar Ardelius, I Need You More Than I Love You and I Love You to Bits

#12. “Apparently, something can happen inside someone you love — it can just happen somehow — and like magic, she thinks that she’s had enough and that the way the two of you have been for a really long time is no longer worth the effort.” ― Meg Wolitzer, The Uncoupling

#13. “It’s sad when someone you know becomes someone you knew.” — Anonymous

#14. “He loved her; in some ways, he was devoted to her. But he couldn’t reach her, and it was the same on her side. It was as if they’d drunk some fatal potion that would keep them forever apart, even though they lived in the same house, ate at the same table, slept in the same bed.” ― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

#15. “You can close your eyes to things you don’t want to see, but you can’t close your heart to things you don’t want to feel.” — Johnny Depp

#16. “I’m always looking for what will make me whole. What will make me happy? Somewhere along the way, I started to think it wasn’t Helen anymore. She hasn’t changed. Her laugh is still the one I remember. Her finger is still the one I put the ring on all those years ago. I can’t understand why I don’t want to curve next to her, keep her back warm anymore. Surely you don’t lose love like keys?” ― Cath Crowley, The Life and Times of Gracie Faltrain

Fading Love Quotes That Will Hit Close to Home

#17. “She was convinced a word existed, a noun, that meant the loss of feelings for someone who was formerly loved — a word for the act of falling out of love. I said I couldn’t think of it. It wasn’t in the dictionary either, not the one she wanted.” ― Olivia Sudjic, Sympathy

#18. “When two people part, it is the one who is not in love who makes the tender speeches.” ― Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

#19. “Walking alone is not difficult, but when we have walked a mile worth a thousand years with someone, then coming back alone is what is difficult.” ― Faraaz Kazi, Truly, Madly, Deeply

#20. “There is a time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go.” — Tennessee Williams, Camino Real

#21. “Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds. It dies of weariness, of withering, of tarnishing.” — Anonymous

#22. “Sometimes the comfort of being in a relationship lulls you into mundane complacency; you become irrelevant in each other’s lives. We call this phenomenon ‘growing apart.’” ― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

#23. “For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these: ‘It might have been.’” — John Greenleaf Whittier, Maud Muller

#24. “To meet, to know, to love, and then to part is the sad tale of many a heart.” — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

#25. “It is better to have loved and lost, then never to have loved at all.” — Lord Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H.

Final Thoughts

When your relationship has been on the rocks for some time and you know it is not going to work out, you feel dejected and empty inside. Your friends will surely be there to comfort you through the blues. But what is most likely to resonate with you are the words from people who have gone through the same.

I hope that my collection of fading love quotes will help you cry your heart out and heal. Remember that letting go may be heart-wrenching, but holding on is even more painful.