Heartbreak quotes for the end of love and the way back.
Charles Dickens · Estella to Pip in the ruined garden of Satis House, eleven years on, in the novel's final chapter; the sentence before says "suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be."
Lord Byron · The closing lines of "When We Two Parted," about a parting whose wound has not healed, written about an affair he kept secret all his life.
Charlotte Brontë · Jane to Rochester in the orchard at Thornfield when she believes he is to marry Blanche Ingram and she must leave him; it is this outburst that draws his proposal.
Milan Kundera · The narrator on Franz and Sabina, whose love rests on the idea of the Grand March.
Catullus · The source reads: “Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.” · The whole of poem 85, two lines on Lesbia, the most famous couplet in Latin.
Seneca · Consoling Lucilius on the death of his friend Flaccus, in Richard Gummere's translation of the sixty-third letter, where he also says "Let us see to it that the recollection of those whom we have lost becomes a pleasant memory to us."
Alvy Singer · The comedian in Annie Hall (1977) · The source reads: “A relationship, I think is, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.” · Alvy to Annie on the plane home from Los Angeles, as they agree to part; the spoken line has his stammer and a "You know?" in it.
Christina Rossetti · The closing couplet of "Remember," which asks to be remembered after death and then gives the survivor leave to go on living.
John Green · Hazel Grace Lancaster's eulogy for Augustus Waters at the "pre-funeral" he stages in the Support Group room so he can hear it; the idea comes from their favourite author Peter Van Houten, and she ends "You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful."
Emily Brontë · Heathcliff to Nelly Dean on the night Catherine dies, dashing his head against a tree, the end of the speech that begins "Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living" and begs "Be with me always, take any form, drive me mad!"
William Shakespeare · Cymbeline (1609–1610), Sonnet 87
Jojo Moyes · The last words of Will Traynor's letter to Louisa Clark, which she reads at a café in Paris after his death at Dignitas, as he instructed; the lines before it say "Push yourself. Don't settle."
Jean Racine · Hermione on Pyrrhus.
Luis de Góngora y Argote · Sonnet LXXXII (1584)
Lord Byron · Sardanapalus (1821), act V
C. S. Lewis · On the death of his wife Joy Davidman in 1960, from the notebooks he published the next year under a pseudonym; the book opens "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear."
Emily Dickinson · The opening of "Heart, we will forget him!"; the speaker gives her heart orders to forget, and the poem ends admitting the mind will remember him first.
William Shakespeare · The source reads: “Then must you speak / Of one that loved not wisely but too well.” · Othello's own epitaph in his last speech, standing over Desdemona's body, telling the Venetians how to describe him when they report his end.
Margaret Atwood · Surfacing (1972)
Lloyd Dobler · John Cusack's kickboxing romantic in Say Anything (1989) · The source reads: “She gave me a pen. I gave her my heart and she gave me a pen.” · Lloyd to his sister after Diane Court breaks up with him in the car and hands him a pen so he can write to her.
Gabriel García Márquez · The source reads: “Fermina, he said, I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century, to repeat to you once again my vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love.” · Florentino Ariza to the newly widowed Fermina Daza on the night of her husband's funeral, fifty-one years, nine months and four days after she rejected him; she orders him out of the house. The English is Edith Grossman's 1988 translation, and the record's sentence opens "Fermina, he said".
Dixon Steele · Humphrey Bogart's screenwriter in In a Lonely Place (1950) · The source reads: “I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.” · The screenwriter Dixon Steele's lines for his own script, which he recites to Laurel and which end the film after she has left him; the popular form turns his "she" to "you."
Rick Blaine · Humphrey Bogart's nightclub owner in Casablanca (1942) · Rick drinking alone in the dark after closing time, the night Ilsa walked into his café on Laszlo's arm, when Sam tries to send him to bed; Bogart lands the stress on "walks into".
That is every quote on the shelf, all 68 of them.
68 quotes, dealt in a fresh order every day, so the page reads differently each morning, and every quote keeps its own page.
Every quote on GKBook is traced to the book, speech, letter or interview it came from before it is published. A famous line that cannot be traced is kept because people search for it, but it is labelled "Attributed to", and a line that belongs to someone else is labelled "Often credited to" with the real origin beside it.
The first pill opens the author's page with every quote of theirs on GKBook; the others open the categories the quote belongs to, such as Love Quotes or Wisdom Quotes.
Tap the quote to open its own page, which carries a share button and, where a quote card has been made, a Download button for the full-size picture.
Every general-knowledge topic and the A-to-Z lists.
The world A to Z: flags, countries, the sciences, places, people, subjects.
We Value Your Opinion Comments