Soulful Quotes
Quotes on Heartbreak, Abandonment and Betrayal
Every happiness is the child of a separation it did not think it could survive.—Rainer Maria Rilke
Now I know I’ve got a heart, because it’s breaking.―The Tin Man “The Wizard of Oz”
You don’t die from a broken heart. . . you only wish you did.―Unknown
Taming the mind of heartbreak is like taming a wild animal. ―Susan Piver
Betrayal is the only truth that sticks.―Arthur Miller
I don’t know why they call it heartbreak. It feels like every other part of my body is broken too.―Unknown
So this was betrayal. It was like being left alone in the desert at dusk without water or warmth. It left your mouth dry and will broken. It sapped your tears and made you hollow.―Anna Godbersen, “Rumors”
To betray you must first belong.—Harold Philby
Talk to anyone who has been betrayed—it is as if something physical has shattered within them: a visceral bewilderment. The disbelief over the fraying of this trust is so searing that it ruptures the scaffolding of faith on which we all stand. Underneath it all lurks the question of motive. What possessed them to rip a long, close relationship apart? How could they?—Tracey O’Shaughnessy, columnist
He, who had done more than any human being to draw her out of the caves of her secret, folded life, now threw her down into deeper recesses of fear and doubt. The fall was greater than she had ever known, because she had ventured so far into emotion with him and had abandoned herself to it.―Anaïs Nin
There were many ways of breaking a heart. But what really broke the heart was taking away its dream-whatever that dream might be.―Pearl Buck
My heart is the throne of the Beloved,
the Beloved the heart’s destiny:
Whoever breaks another’s heart will find no homecoming
in this world or any other.—Yunys Enre(1238-1320)
One should not underestimate the courage it takes to heal from a human betrayal. Betrayal invariably affects the psyche to its deepest roots. When it is made conscious, it is experienced as a threat to one’s own being, and the path toward healing is paved with pain.―Diane Courineau Brutsche, Jungian Analyst
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.——Plato
One is easily fooled by that which one loves.―Moliere
The cruelest lies are often told in silence.―Robert Louis Stevenson
Why shouldn’t I hate her? She did the worst thing to me that anyone can do to anyone else. Let them believe that they’re loved and wanted and then show them that it’s all a sham.―Agatha Christie
There’s a sort of rage a man feels when he’s been deceived where he most trusted. It compares to no other anger. —Orson Scott Card
One should rather die than be betrayed. There is no deceit in death. It delivers precisely what it has promised. Betrayal, though … betrayal is the willful slaughter of hope.―Steven Deitz, playwright
It was one thing to be attacked by someone you hated, but this was something else. This was the kind of hurt that could only be inflicted by someone you loved, who you thought loved you. It was sort of like being stabbed from the inside out. —Ethan Wate, “Beautiful Darkness”
Heartbreak has an archetypal core, all heartbroken individuals suffer from the same kind of torture. —Ginette Paris,”Heartbreak”
The psychic pain of mourning and heartbreak is truly unbearable, with all the neurobiological evidence of a stress similar to being submitted to torture… Physiologically, chemically, psychically, you are under attack. Biochemically, heartbreak is an assault. ―Ginette Paris,
Shattered legs may heal in time, but some betrayals fester and poison the soul.—George R.R. Martin
Betrayals haunt us (often haunting the betrayer as much as the betrayed) because they show us, in one painful flash, that this magnificent thing called civilization, the moral and collective bedrock on which we build our lives, is entirely flimsy, and that we are, at any moment, just inches from our fanged past. —Jennifer Vanderbes, bloggerSometimes, when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated.―Lamartine
The worst pain in the world goes beyond the physical. Even further beyond any other emotional pain one can feel. It is the betrayal of a friend.―Heather Brewer, “Ninth Grade Slays”
Spiteful words can hurt your feelings but silence breaks your heart. —Anonymous
Your betrayer will teach you about love by showing you that you never knew it, that you cannot tell a sinister enchantment from a divine light.—Alison Nappi, blogger
Death is not the worst that can happen to men. —Plato
The healthy man does not torture others. Generally, it is the tortured who turn into torturers.—Carl Jung
No one who has ever known what it is to lose faith in a fellow-man whom he has profoundly loved and reverenced, will lightly say that the shock can leave the faith in the Invisible Goodness unshaken. With the sinking of high human trust, the dignity of life sinks too; we cease to believe in our own better self, since that also is part of the common nature which is degraded in our thought; and all the finer impulses of the soul are dulled. ―George Eliot, “Romola”
Individual psychological birth is impossible without the experience of betrayal. —Aldo Carotenuto, analyst
There is no betrayal more wounding than the betrayal of love. It touches us in our most vulnerable spot, that of the helpless child who is totally dependent on another. This child always emerges in any relationship where the possibility of trusting in another person exists.―Jacqueline Wright
To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal. You see, I could conceive death, but I could not conceive betrayal.―Malcolm X
The biggest coward is a man who awakens a woman’s love with no intention of loving her. —Bob Marley
They talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond first. All a man can betray is his conscience…—Joseph Conrad
It is foolish to pretend that one is fully recovered from a disappointed passion. Such wounds always leave a scar.―Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love, never so helplessly unhappy as when we have lost our loved object or its love. Sigmund Freud
Stab the body and it heals, but injure the heart and the wound lasts a lifetime.
―Mineko Iwasaki,”Geisha of Gion”
Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard
Some do it with a bitter look
Some with a flattering word
The coward does it with a kiss
The brave man with a sword.
―Oscar Wilde, “The Ballad Of Reading Gaol”
When you give someone your whole heart and he doesn’t want it, you cannot take it back. It’s gone forever.—Sylvia Plath
Rage is a protest against pain. —Susan Anderson
Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years
to understand that this too, was a gift. —Mary Oliver
Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them. —Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “The Idiot”
What are the lessons betrayal is supposed to teach us? To get up and carry on with dignity and strength? Well, yes. That we need to accept that this happens and shouldn’t focus only on the negative feelings…Perhaps. There are no easy answers, are there? There are just stories; many stories. —Claire Martens
The highest, most decisive experience is to be alone with one’s own self. You must be alone to find out what supports you, when you find that you can not support yourself. Only this experience can give you an indestructible foundation. —C.G. Jung
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Quotes on Love Human and Divine
For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation….It is work, day labor, day labor, God knows there is no other word for it.–Rainer Maria Rilke
Real love will take you far beyond yourself;and therefore real love will devastate you.—Ken Wilbur
Love and forgiveness is not for the faint-hearted. —Meher Baba
There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.—Martin Luther King Jr.
You know you have loved someone when you have glimpsed in them that which is too beautiful to die. —Gabriel Marcel
The way of love is not a subtle argument.
The door there is devastation.
Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom.
How do they learn it?
They fall, and falling, they’re given wings.
—Rumi
Those who love you are not fooled by mistakes you have made or dark images you hold about yourself. They remember your beauty when you feel ugly; your wholeness when you are broken; your innocence when you feel guilty;and your purpose when you are confused.—African saying
A soul connection is a resonance between two people who respond to the essential beauty of each other’s individual natures. . . It is a sacred alliance whose purpose is to help both partners discover and realize their deepest potentials.—John Welwood
Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism.
—Sigmund Freud
Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.
—Lao Tzu
To love at all is to be vulnerable.Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken—C.S. Lewis
Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.―Washington Irving
How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.—A.A. Milne, “Winnie-the-Pooh”
The coin that pays for ecstasy is always stamped despair.One cannot love empathically until one wanders there.—Jane Krainin (Dictated right before she died of ALS)
You will never know true happiness until you have truly loved and you will never understand what pain really is until you have lost it.—Anonymous
Trying to forget someone you love is like trying to remember someone you never knew.—Anonymous
Love is the sea where intellect drowns.—Rumi
The divine Lover is absolutely real, and for those willing to bear the wounds of intimacy,the knowledge of that underlying coherence – “ in which all things hold together”– is both possible and inevitable. —Cynthia Bourgeault
We may suffer and be left alone and feel like fools, but at the end of the day, when we look in the mirror, the question will always be, “How much did we love?”—Heide M Kolb, Jungian analyst
Nothing else wounds so deeply and irreparably. Nothing else robs us of hope so much as being unloved by one we love. —Clive Barker
When two people say ‘we’ because love has made them one in reality, a new sphere of existence is created.—Ladislaus Boros
To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise. —Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.
Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds,
Nor bends with the remover to remove.
Oh, no, it is an ever fixed mark
That shines on tempests and is never shaken.
—William Shakespeare
Difficulties arise whenever a committed relationship is succeeding. Love makes you vulnerable. . . . Your defenses relax and the dark side of your personality arises. . .
—Thomas Keating
Love is the eternally burning fire in which humanity & all the world are being purified.—P.D. Ouspensky
Love’s true nature remains forever beyond the grasp of all our faculties. It is far greater than any feeling or emotion and completely surpasses any act of human kindness…. The realization of love always remains mysterious.—Gerald May
No one has been united to his Beloved through mirth.Whoever has attained communion with Him has done so after shedding many tears. —Hafiz
Love is the only reality and it is not a mere sentiment. It is the ultimate truth that lies at the heart of creation. —Rabindranath Tagore
Love is a serious mental disease. —Plato, “Phaedrus”
When I see that I am nothing, that is wisdom. When I see that I am everything, that is love. And between these two my life moves.” —Nisargadatta Majaraj
The flame called the moth but the glass pane was there. How many have died not in the fire but in the cold, crazed in longing? —St. John of the Cross
O Master, what kind of love is this? I am suffering from the pain of separation, yet I am so ecstatic. I am ecstatic and miserable at the same time. —Mirabai
If we turn to the heart each day, if we turn to the breath, if we turn to the feelings without names, we are turning to love. —Stephen Robbins Schwartz
If it were possible to meet the Beloved while laughing and in a state of comfort, why should one suffer the anguish of separation? —Kabir
And we are put on earth a little space, that we may learn to bear the beams of love.—William Blake
Quotes on Grief, Pain and Suffering
Pain is not a punishment; pleasure is not a reward.–Pema Chodron
It is easy to keep your equanimity in heaven; can you keep it in hell? —Zen story
When someone says to us, as Thich Nhat Hanh suggests, “Darling, I care about your suffering,” a deep healing begins. —Tara Brach
O Seeker, pain and suffering make one aware of God.—Rumi
If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering. —Victor Frankl
There is no birth of consciousness without pain.—C. G. Jung
Trials are not arbitrary. When I speak about them, I am referring to the mindful suffering.Man has come to his present development thanks to his hardships and trials.These are what prepare man for the Coming of Love.—Peter Deunov
Think of suffering as being washed.—Hafiz
Suffering is not a result of one’s bad Karma; it is divine grace bestowed upon man.
—Hindu Texts
Suffering …is not random; God has created it in precisely this way because it is precisely in these conditions and only these conditions that certain aspects of love shine forth so luminously—and it is precisely this luminosity which God is trying to reveal, the innermost self-disclosure of the heart of divine love.
—Cynthia Bourgeault
According to the law that governs the universe,all sufferings are your labor of love to unveil your real self.—Meher Baba
Suffering makes us aware of our need, our weakness….Itdrives us to God.–Jerry Sittser
The sweetness and delights of the resting-place are in proportion to the pain endured on the Journey. Only when you suffer the pangs and tribulations of exile will you truly enjoy your homecoming.–Rumi
What is to give light must endure burning. —Viktor Frankl
The period of greatest gain in knowledge and experience is the most difficult period in one’s life. —His Holiness the Dalai Lama
I do think it’s a romanticism to suggest that advanced spiritual masters do not suffer anguish at the human level. Suffering and anguish are an inevitable and deeply sacramental reality of the human condition….Equanimity is not a state, but the laser point of the will.—Cynthia Bourgeault
Do not grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.—Rumi
When inward tenderness finds the secret hurt,
Pain itself will crack the rock and
Ahhh! let the soul emerge.—Rumi
A deep seated trauma most of us share is abandonment. Being betrayed right from the start. Being born into a world that is not welcoming. Being born with a soul that remembers wholeness, but cannot find it in lived life. A soul that is subjected to terrible suffering if she does not remember her way back to the source of her belonging. –Heide Kolb, analyst
Trauma never goes away completely, it changes perhaps, softens some with time,
but never completely goes away. —Mark Epstein, MDThere is a sacredness in tears.
They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.
They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues.
They are messengers of overwhelming grief… and unspeakable love.-Washington Irving
When we mourn, we are in a state of freefall,our heart reaching out toward what we have seemingly lost but cannot help loving anyway.To mourn is by definition to live between the realms.–Cynthia Bourgeault
Mourning is indeed a brutal form of emptiness. But in this emptiness, if we can remain open, we discover that a mysterious ‘something’ does indeed reach back to comfort us. . .—Cynthia Bourgeault
With grief, you don’t get over it, you just get used to it.—Anonymous
From grief there was blossoming a completely unexpected sensual, erotic, and even sexual hunger for the world.—Robert Romanyshyn
An expansion of the soul’s capacity to love can be the gift of grief endured.—Robert Romanyshyn
Grief offers a wild alchemy that transmutes suffering into fertile ground.—Francis Weller
Catastrophic loss wreaks destruction like a massive flood. It is unrelenting, unforgiving, and uncontrollable. . .(it) leaves the landscape of one’s life forever changed.–Jerry Sittser
Once my bitterness
has found its way into words,
it dissipates,
Running deep into my heart
Anger replaced by sadness.
—Kyogk Tamkane
For only when faithfulness turns to betrayal
And betrayal into trust
Can any human being become part of the truth.—Rumi
When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. —Thich Naht Hanh
Love is the first ingredient in the relief of suffering. —Padre Pio
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Quotes on Dark Nights of the Soul
It is easy to keep your equanimity in heaven; can you keep it in hell?
–Zen story
A Dark Night is . . . a mental and emotional state of despair that arises when something is so painful that it blots out all other considerations and makes carrying on as usual out of the question. —Susan Piver
Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight.—Joan Chittister
A dark night is not primarily something but a someone, a presence that leaves an indelible imprint on the human spirit, on one’s life.
The dark night is a profoundly good thing. It is an ongoing spiritual process in which we are liberated from attachments and compulsions and empowered to live and love more freely.
The night is the means by which we find our heart’s desire, our freedom for love. It works to heal our blindness, our “slavery to attachment and delusion.
To be darkened is to be emptied of the ‘false gods’ we cling to.
—Above quotes from —Gerard May,”Dark Night of the Soul”The night sea journey takes you back to your primordial self, not the heroic self that burns out and falls to judgment, but to your original self, yourself as a sea of possibility,
your greater and deeper being. —Thomas Moore
The fact that grief takes so long to resolve is not a sign of inadequacy, but betokens depth of soul. —D.W. Winnicott
The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.
—Nikos Kazantzakis
Catastrophe is the essence of the spiritual path, a series of breakdowns allowing us to discover the threads that weave all of life into a whole cloth. —Roshi Joan Halifax
…an encounter with god or with the transcendent, per se, can only occur when we experience the violent side of god.—Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig
Life is so generous a giver. But we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love by wisdom, with power. Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel’s hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty, believe me, that angel’s hand is there. —Fra Giovanni (1513)
In a very real sense, the dark night of the soul is just one long ego tantrum.—Jessica Davidson
Your separation from God is the hardest work you will ever do. —Hafiz
Quotes on Spirit, Prayer, Joy and Light
Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and the heart has turned to stone.—Thomas Merton
Prayer is sitting in the silence until it silences us, choosing gratitude until we are grateful, praising God until we ourselves are a constant act of praise. —Fr. Richard Rohr
Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it. —Mark Twain
The difference between you and God is that God doesn’t think He’s you. —Anne Lamott
Expect to have hope rekindled. Expect your prayers to be answered in wondrous ways.
The dry seasons in life do not last. The spring rains will come again.—Sarah Ban BreathnachIt is unanimous where I come from.
Everyone agrees on one thing:
It’s no fun when God is not near.—Hafiz
Find the sweetness in your own heart that you may find the sweetness in every heart.—Jelaluddin Rumi
The mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses it. —Sri Nisargadatta
If outer events bring you to a position where you can bear them no longer and force you to cry out to the higher power in helplessness for relief, or if inner feelings bring humiliation and recognition of your dependence on that power, this crushing of the ego may open the door to grace.–Paul Brunton
“Help” is a prayer that is always answered. —Anne Lamott
Refuse to fall down.
If you cannot refuse to fall down, refuse to stay down.
If you cannot refuse to stay down, lift your heart toward heaven,
and like a hungry beggar, ask that it be filled, and it will be filled.
You may be pushed down. You may be kept from rising.
But no one can keep you from lifting your heart toward heaven.
–Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Desperation is the first and primary condition for true prayer…. It is pray or go under, pray or despair, pray or die.–Jerry Sittser
We wake, if ever at all, to mystery. —Annie Dillard
As a reflex, prayer seems to run deep in human nature, as if we have no choice in the matter. Facing danger or difficulty, opportunity or challenge, we feel compelled to pray, even if we are not sure there is a God out there to whom we are praying.–Jerry Sittser
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.—C.S. Lewis
Facing loneliness teaches us what it means to pray.To pray means entering into the sphere of Love. —Stephen R. Schwartz
We pray because what we really want in the deepest places in ourselves is to know God. That is or heart’s desire whether we know it consciously or feel it deeply.–Jerry Sittser
The main thing in one’s own private world is to try to laugh as much as you cry.
—Maya Angelou
If we turn to the heart each day, if we turn to the breath, if we turn to the feelings without names, we are turning to love. —Stephen Robbins Schwartz
When the soul betrays itself and loses the blessed and longed-for fervor, let it carefully investigate the reason for losing it. And let it arm itself with all its longing and zeal against whatever caused this. For the former fervor can return only through the same door through which it was lost.—St. John ClimacusThe Ladder of Divine Ascent
—Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.—Joseph Campbell
In many shamanic societies, if you came to a medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited or depressed, they would ask one of four questions: When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence? —Gabrielle Roth
In my deepest wound I saw your glory, and it dazzled me.—St. Augustine
There is a crack in everything,that is how the light gets in.—Leonard Cohen
When the waves close over me, I dive down to fish for pearls.—Masha Kaleko
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