150 Meaningful Relationship Quotes That'll Give You All the Feels
You're guaranteed to relate to some of these beautiful relationship quotes for all kinds of couples and situations.
By Christy Piña and Elizabeth Berry
Throughout your life, relationships will come and go. There will be life-changing romances and meaningful friendships that last a lifetime. Of course, there will also be toxic situations, painful breakups, and grief after you fall out of touch with a friend. These relationships teach you more about yourself and about powerful, sometimes elusive, love. Relationship quotes can help you navigate these complex emotions and put into words how much a person means to you, whether you are dating someone new, looking for a sweet love message to celebrate a milestone anniversary, or searching for a way to tell a close friend, "I miss you."
No one said relationships are easy. You may feel nervous energy around a new person you have big feelings for. Your relationship may have just become long-distance and you are struggling to find ways to tell your significant other that you are thinking of them. Or maybe you are looking for the perfect Valentine's Day quote that encapsulates all you and your partner have been through and learned throughout the years (or even decades). That's where the best relationships quotes come in, to help you say the things you want to say but don't have the words for, as well as express your love in new and profound ways.
These relationship quotes are words to turn back to when you meet a new flame or are looking for sage advice about love. Let the words of poets, authors, philosophers, and actors help you feel seen, heard, comforted, and, most importantly, less alone.
Strong Relationship Quotes
- “When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.” — Paulo Coelho
- "We loved with a love that was more than love." — Edgar Allen Poe
- “You can talk with someone for years, everyday, and still, it won't mean as much as what you can have when you sit in front of someone, not saying a word, yet you feel that person with your heart, you feel like you have known the person for forever.” — C. JoyBell C.
- “A loving relationship is one in which the loved one is free to be himself — to laugh with me, but never at me; to cry with me, but never because of me; to love life, to love himself, to love being loved. Such a relationship is based upon freedom and can never grow in a jealous heart.” — Leo F. Buscaglia
- “Love that stammers, that stutters, is apt to be the love that loves best.” — Gabriela Mistral
- "I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close." — Pablo Neruda
- “We cannot really love anyone with whom we never laugh.” — Agnes Repplier
- “It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is.” — Hermann Hesse
- “Be honest, brutally honest. That is what's going to maintain relationships.” — Lauryn Hill
- "Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage." — Lao Tzu
- "There is no more lovely, friendly, and charming relationship, communion, or company than a good marriage." — Martin Luther
- "The secret of a happy marriage remains a secret." — Henny Youngman
- "I love you, and I will love you until I die, and if there's a life after that, I'll love you then." — Cassandra Clare
Meaningful Relationship Quotes
- "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” — Maya Angelou
- “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” — Carl Gustav Jung
- “The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.” — Ernest Hemingway
- “To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow — this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.” — Elizabeth Gilbert
- “To say that one waits a lifetime for his soulmate to come around is a paradox. People eventually get sick of waiting, take a chance on someone, and by the art of commitment become soulmates, which takes a lifetime to perfect.” — Criss Jami
- “I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart.” — Alice Walker
- “The love expressed between women is particular and powerful because we have had to love in order to live; love has been our survival.” — Audre Lorde
- "Perhaps we are in this world to search for love, find it and lose it, again and again. With each love, we are born anew, and with each love that ends, we collect a new wound. I am covered with proud scars." — Isabel Allende
- “Love is the absence of judgment.” — The 14th Dalai Lama
- “You open your heart knowing that there’s a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure that’s so real it scares you.” — Bob Marley
- “Truth is everybody is going to hurt you: you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.” — Bob Marley
- “I don't need anyone to rectify my existence. The most profound relationship we will ever have is the one with ourselves.” — Shirley MacLaine
- “Love sought is good, but given unsought, is better.” — William Shakespeare
- “We can improve our relationships with others by leaps and bounds if we become encouragers instead of critics.” — Joyce Meyer
- “Learn to be quiet enough to hear the genuine in yourself, so that you can hear it in others.”— Marian Wright Edelman
- “Don’t wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any Happiness you get you’ve got to make yourself.”— Alice Walker
- “Once we recognize what it is we are feeling, once we recognize we can feel deeply, love deeply, can feel joy, then we will demand that all parts of our lives produce that kind of joy.”— Audre Lorde
- “Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.” — Oprah Winfrey
- “You’ve got to learn to leave the table when love’s no longer being served.” — Nina Simone
- “Love is an endless act of forgiveness. Forgiveness is me giving up the right to hurt you for hurting me.“ — Beyoncé
- “When you take care of yourself, you’re a better person for others. When you feel good about yourself, you treat others better.” — Solange
- "Fall in love with someone who makes you glad to be different." — Sue Zhao
- "There is no love without forgiveness, and there is no forgiveness without love." — Bryant H. McGill
- "Treasure your relationships, not your possessions." — Anthony J. D'Angelo
- "The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing."
- "People should fall in love with their eyes closed." — Andy Warhol
- "The greatest thing you'll ever learn is to love and be loved in return." — Natalie Cole
- "You don't love someone because they're perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that they're not." — Jodi Picoult
- "The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves." — Victor Hugo
- "The only thing we never get enough of is love; and the only thing we never give enough of is love." — Henry Miller
- "I have decided to stick to love; hate is too great a burden to bear." — Martin Luther King, Jr.
- "The giving of love is an education in itself." — Eleanor Roosevelt
Long-Distance Relationship Quotes
- "There are no goodbyes for us. Wherever you are, you will always be in my heart." — Mahatma Gandhi
- “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
- “It was almost as if she had willed him into existence, into standing before her at the precise moment she was willing to accommodate him, arriving not a minute too early or too late.” — Roy L. Pickering Jr
- “Assumptions are the termites of relationships.” — Henry Winkler
- “I believe that two people are connected at the heart, and it doesn't matter what you do, or who you are or where you live; there are no boundaries or barriers if two people are destined to be together.” — Julia Roberts
- “Nothing is perfect. Life is messy. Relationships are complex. Outcomes are uncertain. People are irrational.” — Hugh Mackay
- “Never above you. Never below you. Always beside you.” — Walter Winchell
- “Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.” — Washington Irving
- "It isn't possible to love and to part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal." — E.M. Forster
- “It is only when we no longer compulsively need someone that we can have a real relationship with them.” — Anthony Storr
- "If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they're yours; if they don't they never were." — Richard Bach
- "You know it's love when all you want is that person to be happy, even if you're not part of their happiness." — Julia Roberts
- "Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within." — James Baldwin
- "The best thing to hold onto in life is each other." — Audrey Hepburn
- "How lucky I am to have something that makes saying good by so hard." — A.A. Milne, Winnie The Pooh
- "Absence sharpens love, presence strengthens it." — Thomas Fuller
- "Distance teaches us to appreciate the days that we are able to spend together and distance teaches us the definition of patience. It is a reminder that every moment together is special, and every second should be cherished." — Unknown
- "I don't miss you and you alone — I miss you and me together." — Unknown
- "If love cannot stand the test of time, then it has failed the test of love." — Bernard Byer
- "Distance is not for the fearful, it is for the bold. It's for those who are willing to spending a lot of time alone in exchange for a little time with the one they love. It's for those knowing a good thing when they see it, even if they don't see it nearly enough." — Meghan Daum
- "I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart.)" — E.E. Cummings
New Relationship Quotes
- "To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god." — Jorge Luis Borges
- “In a relationship each person should support the other; they should lift each other up.” — Taylor Swift
- “We've got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You can't just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it's going to get on by itself. You've got to keep watering it. You've got to really look after it and nurture it.” — John Lennon
- “The times may have changed, but the people are still the same. We’re still looking for love, and that will always be our struggle as human beings.” — Halle Berry
- “Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.”— Maya Angelou
- "I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best." — Marilyn Monroe
- "There is no remedy for love but to love more." — Henry David Thoreau
- "Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable." — Bruce Lee
- "In the end there doesn't have to be anyone who understands you. There just has to be someone who wants to." — Robert Brault
- "Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love." — Mother Teresa
- "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." — Maya Angelou
- "Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love." — Albert Einstein
- "I look at you and see the rest of my life in front of my eyes" — Unknown
- "For you see, each day I love you more, today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow." — Rosemonde Gérard
- "When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible." — Harry Burns
- "Love is when you meet someone who tells you something new about yourself." — Andrew Breton
- "The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in." — Morrie Schwartz
- "I want you to know that I'm not like the women in your past. I see the real you, and I wake up every day excited to know more about you." — Barrie Davenport
- "When I saw you, I fell in love, and you smiled because you knew it." — Arrigo Boito
- "You make me feel like I am everywhere when I am right here, completely still with you." — Crystal Woods
- "Love is the beginning of the journey, its end, and the journey itself." — Deepak Chopra
- "I still haven't figured out how to sit across from you, and not be madly in love with everything you do." — William C. Hannan
- "It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight." — Vladimir Nabokov
- "You might not have been my first love, but you were the love that made all other loves irrelevant." — Rupi Kaur
Cute Relationship Quotes
- "If I had a flower for every time I thought of you... I could walk through my garden forever." — Alfred Tennyson
- “I was born when you kissed me. I died when you left me. I lived a few weeks while you loved me.” — Humphrey Bogart
- "I love her and that's the beginning and end of everything." — F. Scott Fitzgerald
- "Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same." — Emily Brontë
- "Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering." — Nicole Krauss
- "The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard — they must be felt with the heart." — Helen Keller
- "At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet." — Plato
- "Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold." — Zelda Fitzgerald
- "True love stories never have endings." — Richard Bach
- "I love you the more in that I believe you had liked me for my own sake and for nothing else." — John Keats
- "There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved." — George Sand
- "A flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and man cannot live without love." — Max Muller
- "Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye." — H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
- “Love is sharing your popcorn.” — Charles Schultz
- "I would rather spend one lifetime with you, than face all the ages of this world alone." — J.R.R. Tolkien
- "I choose you. And I'll choose you over and over and over. Without pause, without a doubt, in a heartbeat. I'll keep choosing you." — Unknown
- "I'm much more me when I'm with you." — Unknown
- "I saw that you were perfect, and so I loved you. Then I saw that you were not perfect and I loved you even more." — Angelita Lim
- "You are my best friend, my human dairy, and my other half. You mean the world to me and I love you." — Unknown
- "If I know what love is, it is because of you." — Herman Hesse
- "You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear." — Oscar Wilde
- "I want you. All of you. Your flaws. Your mistakes. Your imperfections. I want you, and only you." — John Legend
- "When I saw you, I was afraid to meet you. When I met you I was afraid to kiss you. When I kissed you, I was afraid to love you. Now that I love you, I am afraid to lose you." — Unknown
- "But I love you I'm totally and completely in love with you and I don't care if you think it's too late. I'm telling you anyway." — Natalie Portman
- "I love you. I am at rest with you. I have come home." — Dorothy L. Sayers
- "Loved you yesterday, love you still, always have, always will." — Elaine Davis
- "You know you're in love when you don't want to fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams." — Dr. Seuss
- "A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous." — Ingrid Bergman
- "Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit." — Khalil Gibran
- "Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead." — Oscar Wilde
- "Love is a friendship set to music." — Joseph Campbell
- "My heart is, and always will be, yours." — Jane Austen
Funny Relationship Quotes
- “Before you marry a person, you should first make them use a computer with slow Internet service to see who they really are.” — Will Ferrell
- “I love being married. It’s so great to find one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.” — Rita Rudner
- “Sexy is the thing I try to get them to see me as after I win them over with my personality.” — Miranda, Sexy and the City
- “I miss crawling into a man’s arm, kissing his neck, saying those three little words into his ear, ‘And another thing…’” — Felicia Michaels
- “A guy knows he’s in love when he loses interest in his car for a couple of days.” — Tim Allen
- “If you love them in the morning with their eyes full of crust; if you love them at night with their hair full of rollers, chances are, you’re in love.” — Miles Davis
- “If love is the answer, could you please rephrase the question?” — Lily Tomlin
- “Being a good husband is like being a stand-up comic. You need 10 years before you can call yourself a beginner.” — Jerry Seinfeld
- “Love conquers all things except poverty and toothache.” — Mae West
- “The best way to get most husbands to do something is to suggest that perhaps they’re too old to do it.” — Shirley MacLaine
- “Love is a lot like a backache: it doesn’t show up on X-rays, but you know it’s there.” — George Burns
- “You can’t put a price tag on love, but you can on all its accessories.” — Melanie Clark
- “I like a woman with a head on her shoulders. I hate necks.” — Steven Martin
- “Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties.” — Jules Renard
- “Love is a two-way street constantly under construction.” — Carroll Bryant
- “Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.” — Joan Crawford
- “True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights. If you hear bells, get your ears checked.” — Erich Segal
- “True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.” — François de la Rochefoucauld
- “It wasn’t love at first sight. It took a full five minutes.” — Lucille Ball
- “Marriage is like vitamins: we supplement each other’s minimum daily requirements.” — Kathy Mohnke
- “All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.” — Charles M. Schulz
- “I say if you love something, set it in a small cage and pester and smother it with love until it either loves you back or dies.” — Mindy Kaling
- “Love is the same as like except you feel sexier.” — Judith Viorst
- “A girl can wait for the right man to come along but in the meantime that doesn’t mean she can’t have a wonderful time with all the wrong ones.” — Cher
- “If she happens to fall, I’ll be there to laugh at first and then help her up afterwards.” — J.A. Redmerski
- “Love is sharing your popcorn.” — Charles Schultz
- “Marriage has no guarantees. If that’s what you’re looking for, go live with a car battery.” — Erma Bombeck
- “An archaeologist is the best husband any woman can have; the older she gets the more interested he is in her.” — Agatha Christie
Digital Fellow
Christy Piña is the digital fellow at WomansDay.com, where she covers women’s issues, lifestyle, and entertainment. When she’s not writing about everything under the sun, she’s probably marathoning her newest streaming obsession, reading fiction, or making brunch plans with her friends. She speaks fluent Spanglish and drinks way too much iced coffee.
Updates Editor
Elizabeth Berry (she/her) is the Updates Editor at the Good Housekeeping Institute where she optimizes lifestyle content across verticals. Prior to this role, she was an Editorial Assistant for Woman’s Day where she covered everything from gift guides to recipes. She also has experience fact checking commerce articles and holds a B.A. in English and Italian Studies from Connecticut College.
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