Long Distance Relationship Love Quotes: 10 Sourced Lines, and Who Was Really Apart

How many of the long distance relationship love quotes you've seen were written by someone who was actually far from the person they loved? Fewer than you'd think. Look closely at the lines that get shared most and you find a sailor leaving an island, a young man saying goodbye to his mother, and a town seeing off its prophet. Not one of them is a lover. So this page does something most lists don't. It collects 10 long distance relationship love quotes, each traced to the book, poem or letter it comes from, and says who was apart from whom when it was written. Some are from real couples, the oldest of them nearly two thousand years old. Some are from writers who thought hard about what absence does to love. Three are famous lines that have been borrowed from other kinds of goodbye, and we tell you so, so you can decide whether they still fit. After the quotes there's a table to pick one for him, for her, for a miss-you text or a caption, a short list of popular lines we couldn't trace to anyone, and a few notes on sending a quote across a distance so it doesn't sound copied.

The first long-distance letters: a wife waiting, a husband pacing

The oldest long-distance love letter most readers know is one that was never sent, because it's fiction. In the Heroides, a book of verse letters Ovid wrote in the last decades BC, women from Greek myth write to the men who left them. The first letter is from Penelope, who has waited for Ulysses through ten years of the Trojan War and long after it ended, not knowing whether he's alive. Her opening couplet is the whole of long-distance love in two lines:

Haec tua Penelope lento tibi mittit, Ulixe; / nil mihi rescribas attinet: ipse veni! (Your Penelope sends this to you, Ulysses, you who are so slow to come. There's no point writing back to me: come yourself.)

— Ovid, Heroides I, "Penelope to Ulysses", lines 1–2 (our translation)

"Lento" means slow, and the word does a lot of work. She isn't only telling him she misses him. She's telling him she's tired of waiting and that letters aren't enough any more. Some editions print "attamen" instead of "attinet" ("write nothing back, but come yourself"); the meaning hardly changes. This is the line for the late stage of a long-distance relationship, when you've done the calls and the parcels and the countdowns and you just want them home. "Don't write back. Come yourself" is short enough for a text, and anyone who knows the story will hear twenty years of waiting behind it.

The next letter is real. Pliny the Younger, a Roman lawyer and senator, wrote it to his young wife Calpurnia early in the second century AD, while she was away and he was stuck in Rome working on court cases. It's in the seventh book of his collected letters, and it's only a few lines long:

Incredibile est quanto desiderio tui tenear. In causa amor primum, deinde quod non consuevimus abesse. Inde est quod magnam noctium partem in imagine tua vigil exigo; inde quod interdiu, quibus horis te visere solebam, ad diaetam tuam ipsi me, ut verissime dicitur, pedes ducunt; quod denique aeger et maestus ac similis excluso a vacuo limine recedo. (You can't believe how much I miss you. The reason is love, first, and then that we aren't used to being apart. So I lie awake for a great part of the night with your image in front of me. And by day, at the hours when I used to come and see you, my feet, as the saying very truly goes, take me to your room; and then, sick and sad, like a man shut out, I walk away from the empty doorway.)

— Pliny the Younger, Letters VII.5, to Calpurnia (our translation)

What makes Pliny's letter feel modern is the habit he describes. He knows she isn't there and his feet take him to her door anyway, at the old times. Anyone who has reached for their phone to tell someone something and remembered the time difference knows the feeling. He ends, in the lines after this, by saying the only time he isn't miserable is when he's worn out by work in the law courts. That's honest in a way most "miss you" quotes aren't. Use his first sentence for him or her when you've just been separated. "We aren't used to being apart" is a quietly loving thing to admit in a first-week message. If you want help turning a feeling like this into a whole letter, our guide to long distance love letters goes stage by stage, from the first week to the countdown.

Counting the miles: two English poets on the space between

Shakespeare's sonnets were printed in 1609. In a run of them (roughly 43 to 52) the speaker is travelling away from the person he loves and thinks about nothing else. Sonnet 44 is the one about distance itself. He wishes his body were made of thought, because thought can be anywhere in an instant:

If the dull substance of my flesh were thought, / Injurious distance should not stop my way; / For then despite of space I would be brought, / From limits far remote, where thou dost stay.

— William Shakespeare, Sonnet 44 (1609)

"Injurious distance" is the phrase to take away. Distance here isn't romantic. It does damage, and the speaker resents every mile of it. Later in the sonnet he says thought "can jump both sea and land" but his body has to "attend time's leisure", which is as good a description of waiting for a visa or the end of a deployment as you'll find. Most of the first 126 sonnets are addressed to a young man, so this one is a natural pick among long distance relationship quotes for him. The first two lines fit on a card or under a photo of a departures board. More of Shakespeare's love lines, with act and scene, are on our Shakespeare love quotes page.

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John Donne takes the opposite view. "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" was printed in 1633, two years after his death. Izaak Walton, his first biographer, printed it in his Life of Donne and connected it with a journey Donne made to the Continent, leaving his wife Anne in England. Whether or not Walton had the occasion right, the poem is a man telling the woman he loves not to cry when he goes, because their love doesn't depend on being in the same room:

Our two souls therefore, which are one, / Though I must go, endure not yet / A breach, but an expansion, / Like gold to airy thinness beat.

— John Donne, "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning", Poems (1633), spelling modernised

Gold can be hammered so thin it covers a huge area without breaking, and Donne says that's what happens to their love when he travels: it stretches, it doesn't snap. A few lines later comes the famous image of the lovers as the two legs of a drawing compass, one fixed at home and one travelling round it, which "makes me end, where I begun". This is the line for a hopeful send-off, for her or for him, and especially for the one staying behind. It's longer than a text, so use it in a card that goes into a suitcase, or as the opening of a letter.

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Does distance kill love or make it stronger? Three answers

The question every couple apart asks sooner or later had a famous answer in France in 1665, given twice in the same year by two different men. The duc de La Rochefoucauld published his Maxims, short, cool sentences about why people really do what they do. One of them, number 276 in the final edition of 1678, is about absence:

L'absence diminue les médiocres passions, et augmente les grandes, comme le vent éteint les bougies et allume le feu. (Absence lessens ordinary passions and increases great ones, as the wind blows out candles and kindles a fire.)

— François de La Rochefoucauld, Maximes, no. 276 (1665; our translation)

It's a test as much as a comfort. La Rochefoucauld isn't promising that distance will make your love stronger. He's saying distance shows you what kind of love it was. That makes it a more honest quote for a long-distance relationship than most, and a good one to send when you've come through a hard stretch apart and are still together. "Médiocres" here means middling or ordinary, not "mediocre" as an insult, so we've translated it that way.

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The same year, the comte de Bussy-Rabutin's Histoire amoureuse des Gaules circulated. It was a gossiping account of love affairs at the court of Louis XIV, and it landed its author in the Bastille and then in years of exile on his estates. Its "Maximes d'amour" include a rhymed version of the same idea:

L'absence est à l'amour ce qu'est au feu le vent; / Il éteint le petit, il allume le grand. (Absence is to love what wind is to fire: it puts out the small one and lights the great.)

— Roger de Bussy-Rabutin, "Maximes d'amour", Histoire amoureuse des Gaules (1665; our translation)

Which man had the image first is not something we can settle, and both may have taken it from conversation in the salons. The English versions you see online, "Absence is to love what wind is to fire", usually come from Bussy-Rabutin and are often credited to La Rochefoucauld. If you post it, the rhyme tells you which one you have. Bussy-Rabutin's version is the shorter, more romantic of the two and works well for an Instagram caption about distance.

The idea is much older than either Frenchman. The Roman poet Propertius, writing in the 20s BC, wrote this near the end of one of his elegies:

semper in absentis felicior aestus amantis (Passion always runs higher in lovers who are apart.)

— Propertius, Elegies II.33, line 43 (our translation)

The context is less sweet than the line. Propertius is complaining that his mistress Cynthia is spending nights away from him at a religious festival, and he consoles himself that her absence will make her keener when she returns. Collections of quotations sometimes print this line as the Latin source of "absence makes the heart grow fonder". That's fair as a matter of meaning, but the English proverb itself comes from a nineteenth-century song, which we come to next.

Three famous "distance" lines that were never about lovers

These three lines appear in almost every list of long distance relationship quotes. They are all real, and all correctly credited. What the lists leave out is who they were said to.

What would I not give to wander / Where my old companions dwell; / Absence makes the heart grow fonder, / Isle of Beauty—fare thee well!

— Thomas Haynes Bayly, "Isle of Beauty, Fare Thee Well!" (printed in the New-York American, 10 April 1829)

Bayly was an English songwriter, and "Isle of Beauty" is sung by someone on a ship, watching an island disappear and missing the friends left on it. The heart grows fonder of a place and its "old companions", not a sweetheart. The line has drifted a long way from the song, and that's fine: proverbs do. But if your partner loves knowing where things come from, this story is more interesting than the proverb.

The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.

— Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, chapter 3 (1838–39)

Nicholas says this to his widowed mother and his sister Kate, just before he leaves London for a teaching job in Yorkshire. He's imagining the day the family will be together and comfortable again. Then, Dickens writes, "the picture was too bright a one to bear", and he bursts into tears. It's a family goodbye, but the sentence works for any couple facing a long separation, and especially for the last message before a flight home. It's short and hopeful, and it's honest that the parting hurts.

And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.

— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (1923), "The Coming of the Ship"

These are the people of Orphalese speaking to Almustafa, the prophet who has lived among them for twelve years and whose ship has come to take him home. The love is a whole town's love for a teacher. Taken out of the book, it reads as one of the best lines about separation in English, and for a couple who only realised how much they meant to each other after one of them moved away, it's exactly right. Gibran's other love lines, from his chapter "On Love", are on our page of short love quotes for quiet moments.

Popular lines we couldn't trace

These two are shared constantly as long distance relationship quotes. We looked for a book, poem, speech, interview or date for each and found none. That doesn't make them bad things to say. It means you shouldn't put a famous name under them.

For the bigger names that get misquoted on love pages (Shakespeare, the Brontës, Marilyn Monroe and others), see our longer reference page on misattributed love quotes.

Which one to send: for him, for her, a miss-you text, a caption

Sending a quote across a distance without it sounding copied

A quote on its own can feel like something you found rather than something you meant. Three habits help when the other person is far away and can't hear your voice:

1. Add one line about where you are. The quote carries the feeling. Your line puts it in your evening. "It's 2 a.m. here and Pliny has the right idea" lands better than the quote alone.
2. Credit it and say why you picked it. "Donne wrote this before a trip, for the one staying home. That's you this time" turns a borrowed line into a message.
3. Match the line to the stage. Hopeful lines (Donne, Dickens) suit the start and the end of a stretch apart. Honest, tired lines (Penelope, Pliny) suit the long middle. Save the wind-and-fire maxims for when you've come through something, because sent at the start they can sound like a warning.

Here are three examples we wrote to show the pattern. They're ours, not quotations:

• "Pliny the Younger, nineteen centuries ago: 'We aren't used to being apart.' Me, tonight: same. Day four and I keep saving things to tell you."
• "Shakespeare called it 'injurious distance' and I'm with him. Thirty-one days. I'm counting."
• "Penelope to Ulysses: 'Don't write back. Come yourself.' I've bought the train ticket. You just have to be at the station."

If you're planning a set of letters for the weeks apart, our page on open when letters has label ideas for long distance, and the goodnight paragraphs page covers the time-zone texts at the end of the day.

Questions about long distance love quotes

What is a good quote for a long distance relationship?

For a hopeful message, John Donne's "A breach, but an expansion, / Like gold to airy thinness beat" says your love stretches instead of breaking. For a plain miss-you text, Pliny the Younger's "You can't believe how much I miss you" comes from a real letter to his wife. Both have a known author and source, which most viral long distance quotes don't.

Who said "absence makes the heart grow fonder"?

The English wording comes from Thomas Haynes Bayly's song "Isle of Beauty, Fare Thee Well!", printed in 1829, where a traveller misses the friends he left on an island. The idea is far older: the Roman poet Propertius wrote that passion always runs higher in lovers who are apart.

Is absence really good for love?

La Rochefoucauld's answer from 1665 is still the most honest one: absence weakens ordinary feelings and strengthens great ones, the way wind blows out a candle but fans a fire. Distance doesn't guarantee anything. It shows what was already there, which is why regular, specific contact matters more than grand quotes.

What can I say to my long-distance partner to show I miss them?

Name a habit the distance has broken, the way Pliny did when his feet kept taking him to his wife's empty room at the usual hours. "I still turn to tell you things" is more convincing than any general line. If you use a quote, add one sentence about your actual day.

Sources

• Ovid, Heroides I (Penelope Ulixi), lines 1–2, Latin text at The Latin Library (thelatinlibrary.com/ovid/ovid.her1.shtml). Translation ours.
• Pliny the Younger, Epistulae VII.5 (C. Plinius Calpurniae suae), Latin text at The Latin Library (thelatinlibrary.com/pliny.ep7.html). Translation ours.
• William Shakespeare, Sonnet 44, Shakespeare's Sonnets (1609), Project Gutenberg #1041.
• John Donne, "A Valediction: forbidding mourning", in The Poems of John Donne, ed. H. J. C. Grierson (1912), Project Gutenberg #48688, with Grierson's note that the poem also appears in Walton's Life of Donne (1675). Spelling modernised.
• François de La Rochefoucauld, Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales, maxim 276: French text as given by Wikiquote; English in the Bund and Friswell translation (1871), Project Gutenberg #9105. Our translation.
• Roger de Bussy-Rabutin, "Maximes d'amour", Histoire amoureuse des Gaules (1665): French text as given by Wikiquote, citing Amours des Dames (Cologne, 1717), p. 219, via W. F. H. King (1904). Our translation.
• Propertius, Elegies II.33, line 43, Latin text at The Latin Library (thelatinlibrary.com/prop2.html). Translation ours.
• Thomas Haynes Bayly, "Isle of Beauty, Fare Thee Well!", text as printed in the New-York American for the Country, 10 April 1829, p. 4, quoted by Barry Popik (barrypopik.com, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder").
• Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby (1838–39), chapter 3, Project Gutenberg #967.
• Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (1923), "The Coming of the Ship", Project Gutenberg #58585.