Broken heart

Broken heart (also known as a heartbreak or heartache) is a metaphor for the intense emotional—and sometimes physical—stress or pain one feels at experiencing great and deep longing.

A paper-made symbolisation of a broken heart

Quotes

• Insults have broken my heart and left me weak
  • The Bible, Psalm 69:20

• Who needs a heart, when a heart can be broken?
  • Terry Britten and Graham Lyle, What's Love Got to Do with It, from the album Private Dancer (1984).

• Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before, I have it in my heart. [...] Hear me, my Chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the Sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.
  • Chief Joseph, speech in surrendering to General Nelson Appleton Miles after long evading a pursuit nearly to the border of Canada (5 October 1877).

• Doch ein gekränktes Herz erholt sich schwer.
  • A wounded heart can with difficulty be cured.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Torquato Tasso, IV. 4. 24.

• I’ve climbed up here holding the hilt of time’s sword after driving it into my tender heart.
  • Suman Pokhrel, While Parting

• Whether anybody comes to convince me or not, a part of my life does always ache arresting my chest.
  • Suman Pokhrel, While Parting

• My heart didn't want to believe it, but the truth was right in front of me.
  • Sanu Sharma, Inaam

• Never morning wore
  To evening, but some heart did break.
  • Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849), Part VI. Same idea in Lucretius, II. 579.

• I'll break your heart
  to keep you far from where
  all danger starts
  • Warpaint, Elephants, Exquisite Corpse (2008)

Proverb

• May Inana pour oil on my heart that aches.
  • Sumerian proverb, Collection III at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, 3rd millennium BCE.

See also

• Depression
• Grief
• Loneliness
• Love
• Sadness

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Broken heart on Wikipedia
• Media related to Broken hearts on Wikimedia Commons
• The dictionary definition of broken heart on Wiktionary