Moving on from heartbreak always looks so easy in romantic movies. Sooner or later there’s the inevitable montage where the main character gets their life back on track. It’s all uplifting music, new outfits, exotic holidays, and getting back out there.
In real life, this montage still happens…it’s just that it happens in real-time. Often, this means that we all just need a little bit of self-love, support, and inspiration to get us through. To help you along the way, we’ve put together 100 of our favorite quotes about letting go, specially curated to help you get back on track.
Our selection of letting go quotes come from people from all different walks of life and stem from all different kinds of heartbreak, to show you that you’re truly not alone. We’ve split our list up into different categories too, so you can browse to find something that really gives you that extra bit of uplift and inspiration.
24 Quotes About Letting Go of the Past
Moving on from what’s happened in the past is never easy. But, figuring out a way to move beyond what’s happened before can really unlock the best in you. Check out these 24 quotes about letting go of the past that might just help you get there!
1. “Suffering is not holding you. You are holding suffering. When you become good at the art of letting sufferings go, then you’ll come to realize how unnecessary it was for you to drag those burdens around with you. You’ll see that no one else other than you was responsible. The truth is that existence wants your life to become a festival.”
– Osho
2. “There’s an important difference between giving up and letting go.”
– Jessica Hatchigan
3. “Letting go doesn’t mean that you don’t care about someone anymore. It’s just realizing that the only person you really have control over is yourself.”
– Deborah Reber
4. “She can’t say to herself that it is really over, even though anyone else would say it was over, since he has moved to another city, hasn’t been in touch with her in more than a year, and is married to another woman.”
– Lydia Davis
5. “Even bad times have good things in them to make you feel alive.”
– Nick Hornby
6. “Pain will leave you, when you let go.”
– Jeremy Aldana
7. “What’s the greater risk? Letting go of what people think – or letting go of how I feel, what I believe, and who I am?”
– Brené Brown
8. “So many people enter and leave your life! Hundreds of thousands of people! You have to keep the door open so they can come in! But it also means you have to let them go!”
– Jonathan Safran Foer
9. “If you want to fly in the sky, you need to leave the earth. If you want to move forward, you need to let go the past that drags you down.”
– Amit Ray
10. “To let go does not mean to get rid of. To let go means to let be. When we let be with compassion, things come and go on their own.”
– Jack Kornfield
11. “I let go. Lost in oblivion. Dark and silent and complete. I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.”
– Chuck Palahniuk
12. “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”
– Alexander Graham Bell
13. “I think that the power is the principle. The principle of moving forward, as though you have the confidence to move forward, eventually gives you confidence when you look back and see what you’ve done.”
– Robert Downey Jr.
14. “Holding on is believing that there’s only a past; letting go is knowing that there’s a future.”
– Daphne Rose Kingma
15. “Forgive the past. It is over. Learn from it and let go. People are constantly changing and growing. Do not cling to a limited, disconnected, negative image of a person in the past. See that person now. Your relationship is always alive and changing.”
– Brian L. Weiss
16. “I demolish my bridges behind me…then there is no choice but to move forward.”
– Fridtjof Nansen
17. “Anything I cannot transform into something marvelous, I let go.”
– Anais Nin
18. “People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.”
– Thich Nhat Hanh
19. “Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get. Life should be touched, not strangled. You’ve got to relax, let it happen at times, and at others move forward with it.”
– Ray Bradbury
20. “Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them. Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else.”
– Paulo Coelho
21. “Sooner or later we’ve all got to let go of our past.”
– Dan Brown
22. “Leaders spend 5% of their time on the problem and 95% of their time on the solution. Get over it and crush it.”
– Anthony Robbins
23. “I realize there’s something incredibly honest about trees in winter, how they’re experts at letting things go.”
– Jeffrey McDaniel
24. “In the process of letting go, you will lose many things from the past, but you will find yourself.”
– Deepak Chopra
7 Quotes About Letting Go of a Relationship
Anyone who’s experienced heartbreak knows how difficult letting go of a special connection can be. It takes courage, conviction, and bravery to move on from that deep connection you had with someone. Quotes about letting go of a relationship can really help with this process. Check out our top seven picks below!
25. “The most difficult aspect of moving on is accepting that the other person already did.”
—Faraaz Kazi
26. “Letting go of someone we love is the hardest thing we will ever do. Some people never surrender to love for the fear of being hurt. But to not have loved, to not have felt the immense joy it brings, would have been a far worse kind of death.”
– Goldie Hawn
27. “When we go back in to the past and rake up all the troubles we’ve had, we end up reeling and staggering through life. Stability and peace of mind come by living in the moment.”
– Pam W. Vredevelt
28. “Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it’s all over.”
– Octavia Butler
29. “There’s a trick to the Graceful Exit. It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, a relationship is over – and to let go. It means leaving what’s over without denying its value.”
– Ellen Goodman
30. “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. When I let go of what I have, I receive what I need.”
– Tao Te Ching
31. “You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.”
– Johnny Cash
28 Quotes About Letting Go of Someone You Love
What is the secret to moving on from someone you truly felt like you were meant to be with? There’s no single definitive answer to this but the best quotes about letting go of someone you love can really help you on your journey.
32. “Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.”
– William Faulkner
33. “Renew, release, let go. Yesterday’s gone. There’s nothing you can do to bring it back. You can’t “should’ve” done something. You can only DO something. Renew yourself. Release that attachment. Today is a new day!”
– Steve Maraboli
34. “It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.”
– Theodore Roosevelt
35. “The thing everyone should realize is that the key to happiness is being happy by yourself and for yourself.”
– Ellen Degeneres
36. “You are never stronger than when you land on the other side of despair.”
– Zadie Smith
37. “I think that what I have been truly searching for as a person, as a writer, as a thinker, as a daughter, is freedom. That is my mission. A sense of liberty, the liberty that comes not only from self-awareness but also from letting go of many things. Many things that weigh us down.”
– Jhumpa Lahiri
38. “There was a time when I thought I loved my first wife more than life itself. But now I hate her guts. I do. How do you explain that? What happened to that love? What happened to it, is what I’d like to know. I wish someone could tell me.”
– Raymond Carver
39. “It is by giving the freedom to the other, that is by letting go, we gain our own freedom back.”
– Aleksandra Ninkovic
40. “Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go and then do it.”
– Ann Lander
41. “The truth was, he now belonged only to my past, and it was time I begin to accept it, as much as it hurt to do so.”
– Tammara Webber
42. “Letting go may sound so simple, but rarely is it a one-time thing. Just keep letting go, until one day it’s gone for good.”
– Eleanor Brownn
43. “Nothing in the universe can stop you from letting go and starting over.”
– Guy Finley
44. “The heart will break, but broken live on.”
– Lord Byron
45. “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”
– Samuel Beckett
46. “Letting go is the willingness to change your beliefs in order to bring more peace and joy into your life instead of holding onto beliefs that bring pain and suffering…”
– Hal Tipper
47. “You can’t move forward if you’re still hanging on.”
– Sue Fitzmaurice
48. “She took a step and didn’t want to take any more, but she did.”
– Markus Zusak
49. “I want to be able to be alone, to find it nourishing, not just a waiting.”
– Susan Sontag
50. “Listen, I’m going to give you some advice, not because I think you need it, but because I feel like I’ve earned it. The right, I mean. To give advice. Here it is: don’t hold onto things. It’s a problem the men in my family have. It’s taken me a long time to figure this out. Me, my father, my grandfather, we collect things. We collect miseries. It’s what we do. But sometimes the best thing to do is to just let things go. To let them pass.”
– Joe Meno
51. “Look closely at the present you are constructing: it should look like the future you’re dreaming.”
– Alice Walker
52. “This is what happens. You put it away for a little while, and now and again you look in the closet for something else and you remember, and you think, soon. Then it becomes something that is just there, in the closet, and other things get crowded in front of it and on top of it and finally you don’t think about it at all.
The thing that was your bright treasure. You don’t think about it. A loss you could not contemplate at one time, and now it becomes something you can barely remember.
This is what happens.”
– Alice Munro
53. “You can spend minutes, hours, days, weeks, or even months over-analyzing a situation; trying to put the pieces together, justifying what could’ve, would’ve happened… or you can just leave the pieces on the floor and move on.”
― Tupac Shakur
54. “Letting go means to come to the realization that some people are a part of your history, but not a part of your destiny.”
― Steve Maraboli
55. “I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.”
― Beryl Markham
56. “We are all failures- at least the best of us are.”
― J.M. Barrie
57. “We turned at a dozen paces, for love is a duel, and looked at each other for the last time.”
— Jack Kerouac
58. “My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness.”
– Maya Angelou
59. “You are allowed to let go of all those that do not set you free anymore.”
– Dhiman
60. “Keep planting and sowing, living and knowing: beautiful things take time, and that is okay.”
– Morgan Harper Nichols
25 Moving Forward Letting Go Quotes
Getting over a previous relationship is only half the battle. Knowing how to move on from that and step into life’s next adventures is something else entirely. Check out these 25 moving forward letting go quotes to help get you started!
61. “Life is tough, but so are you.”
– Carmi Grau
62. “Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”
– Winston Churchill
63. “All human wisdom is contained in these two words – Wait and Hope.”
– Alexandre Dumas
64. “My mission in life is not merely to survive but to thrive and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor and some style.”
– Maya Angelou
65. “I don’t think man was meant to attain happiness so easily. Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.”
– Alexandre Dumas
66. “Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
– Terry Pratchett
67. “Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.”
– Terry Pratchett
68. “There is no passion to be found playing small—in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”
– Nelson Mandela
69. “You are allowed to be both a masterpiece and a work in progress simultaneously.”
– Sophia Bush
70. “Owning your story is the bravest thing you’ll ever do.”
– Brené Brown
71. “I have found that when you love life, life will love you back.”
– Arthur Rubinstein
72. “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.”
– Helen Keller
73. “For what it’s worth it’s never too late to be whoever you want to be. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start over.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
74. “Sometimes your only available transportation is a leap of faith.”
– Margaret Shepard
75. “There are far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”
– C.S. Lewis
76. “Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.”
– Lyndon B. Johnson
77. “You don’t have to let that one thing be the thing that defines you.”
– Jojo Moyes
78. “Life becomes easier when you learn to accept an apology you never got.”
– Robert Brault
79. “The only way to go on is to go on. To say ‘I can do this’ even when you know you can’t.”
– Stephen King
80. “You will find that it is necessary to let things go; simply for the reason that they are heavy. So let them go, let go of them. I tie no weights to my ankles.”
– C. JoyBell C.
81. “Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go.”
– Hermann Hesse
82. “Sometimes we can only find our true direction when we let the wind of change carry us.”
– Mimi Novic
83. “You will evolve past certain people. Let yourself.”
– Mandy Hale
84. “Letting go means to come to the realization that some people are a part of your history, but not part of your destiny.”
– Steve Maraboli
85. “There ain’t no way you can hold onto something that wants to go, you understand? You can only love what you got while you got it.”
– Kate DiCamillo
15 Inspirational Quotes About Letting Go
These 15 quotes about letting go are particularly inspirational, and might just help you feel a little bolder. Combine them with a bit of positive self-talk to help make that difficult process of letting go a bit easier.
86. “Last night I lost the world, and gained the universe.”
– C. JoyBell C.
87. “Get mad, then get over it.”
– Colin Powell
88. “Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today.”
– Cherokee Proverb
89. “Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
90. “The art of letting go is art in its purest form.”
– Meredith Pence
91. “Our scars make us who we are. Wear them proudly, and move forward.”
– Jane Linfoot
92. “Thank you for the tragedy. I need it for my art.”
― Kurt Cobain
93. “We are healed from suffering only by experiencing it to the full.”
– Marcel Proust
94. “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
– Alfred Lord Tennyson
95. “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”
– Ernest Hemingway
96. “Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you’ll start to see a big difference in your life.”
– Yoko Ono
97. “I must be careful not to get trapped in the past. That’s why I tend to forget my songs.”
– Mick Jagger
98. “Perhaps someday I’ll crawl back home, beaten, defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorrow.”
– Sylvia Plath
99. “Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”
– Marilyn Monroe
100. “Every time your heart is broken, a doorway cracks open to a world full of new beginnings, new opportunities.”
– Patti Roberts
Take a Breath — You’ve Got This!
And there you have it: 100 quotes about letting go to calm you as you take the next steps on your journey. Remember, you’re not alone. So many of us have been through what you’re currently going through, so lean on your friends and family around you for support.
Heartbreak is a part of being human, and when you emerge on the other side, you’ll be brighter and happier than ever before. Take a breath, you’ve got this!
