#unrequited

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

#beauty

What made you feel that stomach-churning agony for one person and not another? If Bridget were God, she would have made it against the law for you to feel that way about someone without them having to feel it for you right back. ↗

— Ann Brashares

#love

Every broken heart has screamed at one time or another: Why can't you see who I truly am? ↗

— Shannon L. Alder

#broken-hearts #love #relationships #unrequited-love #anger

The pain would not leave him. It came to him like the tide that hits the sea. ↗

— Faraaz Kazi

#tragic #unrequited-love #love

The night before, I'd gone overboard with my Lila poems, and maybe it's true that I was hoping that in them he'd see the genius of me, the beauty of my words in his hands. ↗

— Beth Kephart

#talent #unrequited-love #words #beauty

Unrequited love is the infinite curse of a lonely heart. ↗

— Christina Westover

#inspiration #life #lily-sauvage #love #muse

Let no one who loves be called altogether unhappy. Even love unreturned has its rainbow. ↗

— J.M. Barrie

#unrequited-love #love

If you don't receive love from the ones who are meant to love you, you will never stop looking for it. ↗

— Robert Goolrick

#love #sad #searching #unrequited-love #life

If there is pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, don't snuff it out, don't be brutal with it. Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night, and watching others forget us sooner than we'd want to be forgotten is no better. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything - what a waste! (p. 225) ↗

— André Aciman

#coming-out #love-and-loss #unrequited-love #age

The effect on Lucy was not bad, for the faint seemed to merge subtly into the narcotic sleep. It was with a feeling of personal pride that I could see a faint tinge of colour steal back into the pallid cheeks and lips. No man knows, till he experiences it, what it is to feel his own lifeblood drawn away into the veins of the woman he loves. The Professor watched me critically. "That will do," he said. "Already?" I remonstrated. "You took a great deal more from Art." To which he smiled a sad sort of smile as he replied, "He is her lover, her fiance. You have work, much work to do for her and for others, and the present will suffice. ↗

— Bram Stoker

#art