Love can be both beautiful and haunting. It has the power to lift us to dizzying heights and plunge us into the darkest depths. Sometimes, the shadowy side of love speaks the loudest, capturing emotions in raw, powerful quotes.
In this article, we share a collection of dark love quotes. These words express the intense, and often painful, side of love. They remind us that love is not always light, but it’s always impactful.
Dark Love Quotes for the Heartbroken
“The heart was made to be broken.” – Oscar Wilde
“Sometimes, the person you’d take a bullet for ends up being the one behind the gun.” – Tupac Shakur
“It’s amazing how someone can break your heart, and you can still love them with all the little pieces.” – Ella Harper
“we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
“Every heart sings a song incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.” – Plato
“To love is to destroy, and to be loved is to be the one destroyed.” – Cassandra Clare
“With every heartbeat, I fall deeper into the void you’ve left behind.” – Unknown
“There is a time for departure, even when there’s no certain place to go.” – Tennessee Williams
“Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.” – William Shakespeare
“Love is a piano dropped from a fourth story window, and you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.” – Ani DiFranco
“The scariest thing about distance is you don’t know whether they’ll miss you or forget you.” – Nicholas Sparks
“Sometimes I wish I were a little kid again, skinned knees are easier to fix than broken hearts.” – Unknown
“When you have seen as much of life as I have, you will not underestimate the power of obsessive love.” – J.K. Rowling, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”
“The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving.” – Elizabeth Gilbert, “Eat, Pray, Love”
“There is something bleak and barren about a world where love only flows one way.” – Libba Bray
“The heart is a muscle, and what do muscles do when they are torn? They grow back stronger.” – Unknown
“Hearts will never be practical until they are made unbreakable.” – L. Frank Baum, “The Wizard of Oz”
“Trying to forget someone you loved is like trying to remember someone you never met.” – Unknown
“A broken heart bleeds tears that no one can see or feel except the one who broke it.” – Unknown
“I gave you my heart, I just didn’t expect to get it back in pieces.” – Unknown
“When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.” – Kahlil Gibran
“It’s like a dull knife, it just makes the pain last longer.” – Bob Dylan
“Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.” – Joan Crawford
“The hottest love has the coldest end.” – Socrates
“Hearts aren’t as smart as they’d like to be. Sometimes they break just to see if they can.” – Unknown
“Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.” – From a headstone in Ireland
“You can love someone so much… But you can never love people as much as you can miss them.” – John Green
“The saddest thing about love is that not only that it cannot last forever, but that heartbreak is soon forgotten.” – William Faulkner
“Sometimes, all you can do is lie in bed and hope to fall asleep before you fall apart.” – William C. Hannan
“You never really stop loving someone. You just learn to try to live without them.” – Unknown
“Your absence has gone through me like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.” – W.S. Merwin
“I never knew until that moment how bad it could hurt to lose something you never really had.” – From the TV show “The Wonder Years”
Symbolic Dark Love Quotes
“Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.” – William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
“I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.” – Humphrey Bogart, In a Lonely Place
“For when the heart goes before like a lamp and illumines the pathway, many things are made clear that else lie hidden in darkness.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“Love, when all is said and done, is not enough to make a relationship last. It is like a dark thread binding two halves of a broken soul.” – Unknown
“I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.” – Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
“Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness.” – E.E. Cummings
“In the darkest hours, love becomes the most inhospitable place of all.” – Unknown
“There is no love without forgiveness, and there is no forgiveness without love – but the shadows of our past make it a maze without an exit.” – My Own Creation
“Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being ‘in love,’ which any of us can convince ourselves we are.” – C.S. Lewis
“And I should have known, it would end this way. The ‘forever’ we promised, is lost in the disarray.” – Unknown
“We loved with a love that was more than love.” – Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee
“You always hurt the one you love, the one you shouldn’t hurt at all.” – The Mills Brothers
“Though lovers be lost, love shall not; And death shall have no dominion.” – Dylan Thomas
“It’s the broken heart that keeps breaking till it finds someone to mend it.” – Unknown
“Hearts aren’t meant to be watched, they’re meant to be fought for and often broken in the process.” – Unknown
“For the wayward heart that knows no boundaries, love is but a fleeting shadow in the moonlight.” – My Own Creation
“When you are sorrowful, look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.” – Khalil Gibran
“I have loved to the point of madness; that which is called madness, that which to me, is the only sensible way to love.” – François Sagan
“Among all the lies in love, it’s the truth that hurts the most.” – My Own Creation
“The more one judges, the less one loves.” – Honoré de Balzac
“Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.” – James Baldwin
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only love can do that. But who is to save us when love itself turns dark?” – Unknown
“And we were all just humans, drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
“For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul, and now it bleeds.” – Judy Garland
“The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds. And yet, it is this very fire that burns us to ash.” – Nicholas Sparks
“To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose, the next best.” – William Makepeace Thackeray
“In secret we met – In silence I grieve, That thy heart could forget, Thy spirit deceive.” – George Gordon Byron, When We Two Parted
“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.” – William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
“We accept the love we think we deserve.” – Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good, and yet love will still find faults and flaws.” – John Steinbeck
“It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, but the loss is a burden that scars the soul.” – My Own Creation
“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you…I could walk through my garden forever.” – Alfred Lord Tennyson
Literary Dark Love Quotes
“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” – Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
“We loved with a love that was more than love.” – Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee
“I am yours. Don’t give myself back to me.” – Rumi
“And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“I have you and even if you are not with me, I know you will always be mine.” – Karl Marx
“For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams of the beautiful Annabel Lee.” – Edgar Allan Poe
“Who, being loved, is poor?” – Oscar Wilde
“The darkness doesn’t comprehend the light. It simply absorbs it, until it becomes its own.” – Unknown
“In secret we met, In silence I grieve, That thy heart could forget, Thy spirit deceive.” – Lord Byron
“When love is not madness, it is not love.” – Pedro Calderón de la Barca
“The heart wants what it wants – or else it does not care.” – Emily Dickinson
“The bright day is done, and we are for the dark.” – William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra
“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.” – William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
“There is a dark side to every love, a shadow where it grows and a depth where it drowns.” – Unknown
“I am two fools, I know, for loving, and for saying so.” – John Donne
“To love is to destroy, and that to be loved is to be the one destroyed.” – Cassandra Clare
“we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
“With every heartbeat, I draw you deeper into the labyrinth of my love.” – Unknown
“I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow, than a man swear he loves me.” – William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
“Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear.” – E.E. Cummings
“This love that we have, it is the love of two intricately entwined souls, too dark to be seen, too deep to forget.” – Unknown
“All love that has not friendship for its base, is like a mansion built upon the sand.” – Ella Wheeler Wilcox
“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.” – Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
“To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.” – Federico García Lorca
“Love sought is good, but given unsought, is better.” – William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
“There is no love without forgiveness, and there is no forgiveness without love.” – Bryant H. McGill
“Love is a smoke and is made with the fume of sighs.” – William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
“I am haunted by humans.” – Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
“The soul that can speak with its eyes, can also kiss with a gaze.” – Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
Dark Love Quotes from Famous Figures
“So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.” — Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.” — Pablo Neruda
“I have learned now that while those who speak about one’s miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.” — C.S. Lewis
“You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.” — John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
“The heart was made to be broken.” — Oscar Wilde
“It’s a blessing and a curse to feel everything so deeply.” — David Jones
“I finally understood what true love meant…love meant that you care for another person’s happiness more than your own, no matter how painful the choices you face might be.” — Nicholas Sparks, Dear John
“Every heart has its own skeletons.” — Leo Tolstoy
“Love, like a shadow, flies when substance love pursues; Pursuing that that flies, and flying what pursues.” — William Shakespeare
“When you’re dreaming with a broken heart, the waking up is the hardest part.” — John Mayer
“We loved with a love that was more than love.” — Edgar Allan Poe
“Sometimes the person you’d take a bullet for ends up being the one behind the gun.” — Tupac Shakur
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but it sure makes the rest of you lonely.” — Charles M. Schulz
“There is no remedy for love but to love more.” — Henry David Thoreau
“It is both a blessing and a curse to feel everything so very deeply.” — David Jones
“The hottest love has the coldest end.” — Socrates
“Love is the most beautiful of dreams and the worst of nightmares.” — Aman Jassal
“For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.'” — John Greenleaf Whittier
“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.” — William Shakespeare
“To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose is the next best.” — William Makepeace Thackeray
“It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” — Alfred Lord Tennyson
“Every time I think of you, I feel a little bit of pain.” — Anonymous
“We’re in the same game, just different levels. Dealing with the same hell, just different devils.” — Anonymous
“You never lose by loving. You always lose by holding back.” — Barbara De Angelis
“The love that lasts the longest is the love that is never returned.” — W. Somerset Maugham
“Sometimes, when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated.” — Alphonse de Lamartine
“Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us.” — Marcel Proust
“The worst feeling is when someone makes you feel special, then suddenly leaves you hanging, and you have to act like you don’t care at all.” — Drake
“Loving you destroyed me, but liking you kills me.” — Anonymous
“It’s amazing how someone can break your heart but you still love them with all the little pieces.” — Ella Harper
“Sometimes loving someone means letting them go.” — Anonymous
Dark Love Quotes for the Lovesick
“Love is the kindest curse that renders one powerless yet invincible.” – Anonymous
“The heart was made to be broken.” – Oscar Wilde
“Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.” – William Shakespeare, ‘Romeo and Juliet’
“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.” – Gabriel Garcia Marquez, ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’
“Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“In the darkness, I wither, not knowing your touch.” – Anonymous
“He loved her, and sometimes she loved him too.” – Ernest Hemingway, ‘The Sun Also Rises’
“The saddest thing about love is that not only that it cannot last forever, but that heartbreak is soon forgotten.” – William Faulkner
“To love is to destroy, and that to be loved is to be the one destroyed.” – Cassandra Clare, ‘The Mortal Instruments’
“Love is a serious mental disease.” – Plato
“I am terrified by the dark, vast silence that follows your absence.” – Anonymous
“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
“For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.” – Judy Garland
“Yet, mad I am not…and very surely do I not dream.” – Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Black Cat’
“If I can’t have you, no one can.” – Anonymous
“The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person.” – Chuck Palahniuk
“Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back.” – Plato
“I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.” – Charles Dickens, ‘Great Expectations’
“But never have I been a blue calm sea. I have always been a storm.” – Stevie Nicks
“There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.” – Mark Twain
“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope.” – Jane Austen, ‘Persuasion’
“We loved with a love that was more than love.” – Edgar Allan Poe
“I have to remind myself that some birds aren’t meant to be caged.” – Stephen King, ‘Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption’
“You cannot save people. You can only love them.” – Anonymous
“I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.” – Mother Teresa
“I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, ‘The Great Gatsby’
“All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.” – Tahereh Mafi, ‘Shatter Me’
“Love is like a shadow, something that seems so close yet so out of reach.” – Anonymous
“And when I shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars.” – William Shakespeare, ‘Romeo and Juliet’
“The heart is a lonely hunter with only one desire.” – Carson McCullers
“They’ll tell you I loved you too much, but never will they understand how much you destroyed me.” – Anonymous
“Love is a rose that never grows without thorns.” – Anonymous
Cinematic Dark Love Quotes
“We accept the love we think we deserve.” – Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
“I never wished to be parted from you, from this day on.” – Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.” – Pablo Neruda
“In my dreams, I could be with you forever. In reality, it’s our demons that keep us apart.” – Anonymous
“The heart was made to be broken.” – Oscar Wilde
“No measure of time with you will be long enough, but let’s start with forever.” – Stephenie Meyer, Twilight
“You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.” – John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
“It’s a knife that cuts both ways, love and pain intertwine in the dark.” – Author Unknown
“I am yours, don’t give myself back to me.” – Rumi
“When we are in love, we are convinced nobody else will do. But as time goes, others do do, and often do do, much much better.” – Coco J. Ginger
“To love is to destroy, and to be loved is to be the one destroyed.” – Cassandra Clare, City of Bones
“There is a reason why we don’t see the world in black and white but in shades of gray.” – Anonymous
“I gave him everything I was, and he took it, leaving the darkness in its place.” – Anonymous
“You meet someone and your whole world changes, but sometimes it’s the shadow that stays.” – Unknown
“My soul will find yours.” – Jude Deveraux
“The scariest thing about distance is you don’t know whether they’ll miss you or forget you.” – Nicholas Sparks
“I belong to the shadows now, but once, I belonged to you.” – Anonymous
“It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” – Alfred Lord Tennyson
“We are all searching for someone whose demons play well with ours.” – Unknown
“You’ll always be my favorite what-if.” – Unknown
“Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye.” – H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
“It’s not love unless it’s a little bit insane.” – Anonymous
“All the best people have some kind of scar.” – Kiera Cass
“A darkness has settled over my heart, and it’s you.” – Anonymous
“Love is a battleground where the mind and heart are left in ashes.” – Unknown
“I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.” – Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
“I knew I’d never be able to remember what Nina wore that day. But I also knew I’d never forget the way she made me feel.” – David Levithan, The Lover’s Dictionary
“We are made of all those who have built and broken us.” – Atticus
“To die by your hand would be a pleasure I could bear.” – William Shakespeare
“Some people are meant to fall in love, but not meant to be together.” – Unknown
“Every relationship I’ve ever had has ended in the dark.” – Anonymous
Unexpected Dark Love Quotes
“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.” ― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
“The soul that can speak through the eyes can also kiss with a gaze.” ― Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
“I knew the second I met you that there was something about you I needed. Turns out, it wasn’t something about you at all. It was just you.” ― Jamie McGuire, Beautiful Disaster
“You make me feel like a firefly. Trapped in a bell jar; starved for love.” ― Ayushee Ghoshal
“Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us.” ― Marcel Proust
“Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche
“I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.” ― Mother Teresa
“When I am with you, the only place I want to be is closer.” ― Ritu Ghatourey
“Love is the answer to a question that I have forgotten.” ― Unknown
“I was born when you kissed me. I died when you left me. I lived a few weeks while you loved me.” ― Humphrey Bogart
“Love is a sweet poison. A beautiful nightmare.” ― Unknown
“I wish I were your mirror so that I could look at you every morning.” ― Unknown
“Love insists the loved loves back.” ― Dante Alighieri
“My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep; the more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.” ― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
“The heart was made to be broken.” ― Oscar Wilde
“To die by your side is such a heavenly way to die.” ― The Smiths
“The scariest thing about distance is you don’t know whether they’ll miss you or forget you.” ― Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook
“It is easy to love people in memory; the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you.” ― John Updike
“We are all mortal until the first kiss and the second glass of wine.” ― Eduardo Galeano
“When love is not madness, it is not love.” ― Pedro Calderon de la Barca
“If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn’t be filled?” ― Jodi Picoult
“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope.” ― Jane Austen, Persuasion
“There is a madness in loving you, a lack of reason that makes it feel so flawless.” ― Leo Christopher
“I wonder how many people never get the one they want, but end up with the one they’re supposed to have.” ― Fannie Flagg
“Hell is loving you in my sleep and waking up alone.” ― Unknown
“Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.” ― Helen Keller
“I miss you like a pattern misses its symmetry.” ― Unknown
“I knew that somewhere in the universe it must exist, the perfect gravity that would balance me, and I would float in a state of grace, no longer afraid of falling.” ― Shannon Hale
“You don’t marry someone you can live with, you marry the person who you cannot live without.” ― Unknown
“It’s better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all.” — Alfred Lord Tennyson
“When someone loves you, the way they talk about you is different. You feel safe and comfortable.” — Jess C. Scott
Final Words
Dark love quotes touch on the complex and intense sides of love. They show how love can be both beautiful and painful. These quotes remind us that love isn’t always perfect; it has many layers.
Exploring these darker emotions can make us appreciate the lighter moments even more. Whether you’re going through a tough time or just curious, these quotes offer a deeper look into the human heart. Keep them in mind, and let them inspire a better understanding of love’s many forms.
