Top 100 Sad Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life’s search for love and wisdom.”

— Rumi

Also featured in: Emotional Quotes, Poetry Quotes, Loss Quotes

2. “Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Also featured in: Depressing Quotes, Sad Quotes About Life, Suffering Quotes

3. “I let go. Lost in oblivion. Dark and silent and complete. I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

Also featured in: Giving Up Quotes, Depressing Quotes, Loss Quotes, Depression Quotes

4. “Later that night, I held an atlas on my lap, ran my fingers across the whole world, and whispered, ‘where does it hurt?’ It answered, everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.”

— Warsan Shire

Also featured in: Emotional Quotes, Quotes About Humanity, Sorrow Quotes, Pain Quotes

5. “I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it.”

— Franz Kafka

Also featured in: Mental Health Quotes, Desire Quotes, Depression Quotes

6. “Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.”

— William Shakespeare

Also featured in: Loss Quotes, Quotes About Feelings, Suffering Quotes

7. “Human life must be some form of mistake.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Also featured in: Depressing Quotes, Sad Quotes About Life, Depression Quotes

8. “I always like walking in the rain, so no one can see me crying.”

— Charlie Chaplin

Also featured in: Emotional Quotes, Emotion Quotes, Sorrow Quotes

9. “I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.”

— Pablo Neruda

Also featured in: Poetry Quotes, Sorrow Quotes, Heartbreak Quotes, Grief Quotes

10. “Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.”

— C.G. Jung

Also featured in: Psychology Quotes, Mental Health Quotes, Mind Quotes

11. “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Also featured in: Interesting Quotes, Meaningful Quotes, Fiction Quotes, Beautiful Quotes

12. “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Also featured in: Deep Quotes About Life, Sad Quotes About Life, Meaning of Life Quotes

13. “Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.”

— Haruki Murakami

Also featured in: Time Quotes, Depressing Quotes, Past Quotes

14. “Without literature, life is hell.”

— Charles Bukowski

Also featured in: Deep Quotes About Life, Fiction Quotes, Depressing Quotes

15. “The good times of today are the sad thoughts of tomorrow.”

— Bob Marley

Also featured in: Emotion Quotes

16. “You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

Also featured in: Happiness Quotes, Emotional Quotes, Life Lessons Quotes, Sorrow Quotes

17. “It has been said, ‘time heals all wounds.’ I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.”

— Rose Kennedy

Also featured in: Time Quotes, Loss Quotes, Pain Quotes, Grief Quotes

18. “And all I loved, I loved alone.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

Also featured in: Poetry Quotes, Loss Quotes, Loneliness Quotes

19. “The goal of all life is death.”

— Sigmund Freud

Also featured in: Goal Quotes

20. “There’s never a right time to say goodbye.”

— Chris Brown

Also featured in: Loss Quotes, Broken Heart Quotes, Heartbreak Quotes, Goodbye Quotes

21. “Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”

— Haruki Murakami

Also featured in: Deep Quotes About Life, Short Quotes About Life, Fiction Quotes

22. “The mirror is my best friend because when I cry it never laughs.”

— Charlie Chaplin

Also featured in: Sadness Quotes, Lonely Quotes, Emo Quotes

23. “Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering.”

— Paulo Coelho

Also featured in: Deep Quotes About Life, Emotional Quotes, Suffering Quotes

24. “Most people tiptoe their way through life, hoping they make it safely to death.”

— Earl Nightingale

Also featured in: Deep Quotes About Life, Short Quotes About Life, Live Life Quotes

25. “Every single day is a battle to stay strong.”

— Demi Lovato

Also featured in: Quotes About Strength, Strong Quotes, Emotion Quotes, Being Strong Quotes

26. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Also featured in: Deep Quotes About Life, Meaning of Life Quotes, Suffering Quotes

27. “Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.”

— Khalil Gibran

Also featured in: Emotion Quotes, Quotes About Feelings, Sorrow Quotes

28. “We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”

— Charles Bukowski

Also featured in: Life Is Short Quotes, Suffering Quotes, Quotes About Reality

29. “Embrace your grief. For there, your soul will grow.”

— C.G. Jung

Also featured in: Reflection Quotes, Loss Quotes, Soul Quotes

30. “Those who are heartless, once cared too much.”

— Frank Ocean

Also featured in: Emotion Quotes, Artist Quotes

31. “The meaning of life is that it stops.”

— Franz Kafka

Also featured in: Sad Quotes About Life, Demotivational Quotes

32. “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”

— Ernest Hemingway

Also featured in: Hard Hitting Quotes, Struggle Quotes, Suffering Quotes

33. “I’m half alive but I feel mostly dead.”

— Jewel

Also featured in: Quotes About Feelings

34. “Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Also featured in: Philosophical Quotes, Depressing Quotes, Sorrow Quotes, Pain Quotes

35. “The marks humans leave are too often scars.”

— John Green

Also featured in: Sad Quotes About Life

36. “All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That’s how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day.”

— Alan Moore

Also featured in: Crazy Quotes, Suffering Quotes, Bad Day Quotes

37. “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.”

— Albert Camus

Also featured in: Philosophical Quotes, Depressing Quotes, Existentialism Quotes

38. “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.”

— T. S. Eliot

Also featured in: Deep Quotes, Sad Quotes About Life

39. “The only thing harder than letting go is moving on.”

— Anonymous

Also featured in: Moving On Quotes, Different Quotes, Moving Quotes

40. “The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you’ll never have.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

Also featured in: Sad Quotes About Life, Existentialism Quotes, Pain Quotes, Sadness Quotes

41. “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”

— Samuel Beckett

Also featured in: Depressing Quotes, Existentialism Quotes, Not Giving Up Quotes, Moving Quotes

42. “Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”

— Pablo Neruda

Also featured in: Emotion Quotes, Love You Quotes, Quotes About Heart, Pain Quotes

43. “You can love someone so much... But you can never love people as much as you can miss them.”

— John Green

Also featured in: Real Quotes, Moving On Quotes, Loss Quotes, Quotes About Feelings

44. “And so being young and dipped in folly I fell in love with melancholy.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

Also featured in: Emotion Quotes, Sad Quotes About Life, Depression Quotes, Sadness Quotes

45. “I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”

— Franz Kafka

Also featured in: Mental Health Quotes, Depressing Quotes, Existentialism Quotes, Quotes About Feelings

46. “Nobody loves you when you’re down and out.”

— John Lennon

Also featured in: Sad Quotes About Life, Lonely Quotes

47. “The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”

— Omar Khayyam

Also featured in: Time Quotes, Moving On Quotes, Destiny Quotes, Past Quotes

48. “Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it.”

— J.K. Rowling

Also featured in: Sad Quotes About Life, Quotes About Feelings, Suffering Quotes

49. “I drank to drown my sorrows, but the damned things learned how to swim.”

— Frida Kahlo

Also featured in: Sad Quotes About Life, Sadness Quotes

50. “The most common form of despair is not being who you are.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

Also featured in: Self-Worth Quotes, Identity Quotes, Existentialism Quotes, Individuality Quotes