Being single on Valentine’s Day doesn’t have to be a drag. It could even be—dare I say—celebrated?! The depressed single’s trope has become stale, in my honest opinion. Whether it’s mom asking when you’re getting married or the fact that Valentine’s Day’s rebrand, Singles Awareness Day, spells out S.A.D., there is a criminal lack of attention given to those single, satisfied, and thriving among us. It’s time the heart’s celebration day gets a rebrand to incorporate the most important love of all (self-love, duh!). And while we at Tawkify are huge proponents of partnered love, we wanted to take some time to acknowledge that sometimes being single can be its own awesome love-adventure.
So whether you’re feeling yourself a little extra this Valentine’s Day or just trying to get by (check out our Valentine’s Survival Guide), we’ve compiled 30 of the most inspiring quotes to help you love the most important person in your life—you! Curl up with the best looking person in the room (hint: they’re in the mirror), binge whatever dang show you want, and put on your favorite outfit, because you’ve already got all the love you need.
Here are 30 of the most inspiring Valentine’s Day quotes to kick off your self-love fest:
- “She liked being lonesome for a change. This freedom feeling was fine. These men didn’t represent a thing she wanted to know about. She had already experienced them.” — Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
- “Comfortable in my skin. Cozy with who I am.” — Beyoncé
- “I cannot tell what you and other men Think of this life; but, for my single self, I had as lief not be as live to be In awe of such a thing as I myself.” — William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
- “The thing about being single is you should cherish it—because in a week or a lifetime of being alone, you may only get one moment. One moment when you’re not tied up in a relationship with anyone. One moment when you stand on your own.” — How to Be Single
- “You can have love all around you without being in love, and find romance in your everyday life without being in a romantic relationship. That can be just as fulfilling.” — Taylor Swift
- “I’ve been in some relationships where I’ve felt terribly alone. Just because you’re with someone it doesn’t mean you’re incredibly happy and complete.” — George Clooney
- “Love is how excited your dog gets when you get home” — Anonymous
- “Lot of times love doesn’t work out. Yet even when it fails, it connects you to others and, in the end, that is all you have, the connections.” — Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing
- “Yeah, I’m my own soulmate. No, I’m never lonely. I know I’m a queen but I don’t need no crown. Look up in the mirror like, ‘Damn she the one!’” — Lizzo, Soulmate
- “You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.” — Maya Angelou
- “My mom said to me, ‘You know sweetheart, one day you should settle down and marry a rich man.’ And I said, ‘Mom, I am a rich man.'” — Cher
- “I don’t care whether I’m alone or not! It’s my right.” — 12 Angry Men
- “You are responsible for your own happiness.” — Gigi Engle, All The F*cking Mistakes: A Guide To Sex, Love, And Life
- “How you love yourself is how you teach others to love you.” — Rupi Kaur
- “I wound up happily married because I lived in an era in which I could be happily single.” — Rebecca Traister, All The Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation
- “In order to eventually succeed, you have to bomb.” — Issa Rae
- “Just because at this stage my life doesn’t have the traditional framework to it—the husband and the two kids and the house in Connecticut—it’s mine. I don’t feel like I’m supposed to be any further along or somewhere that I’m not. I’m right where I’m supposed to be.” — Jennifer Aniston
- “Don’t be scared to walk alone. Don’t be scared to like it.” — John Mayer
- “For now she need not think of anybody. She could be herself, by herself… and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures.” — Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse
- “I’m single because I was born that way.” — Mae West
- “So distracting, so complete is she that she is gone before many realize that she had no escort, she was alone, a parade of one.” — Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl
- “We tend to think of being single as a matter of being alone rather than a matter of choosing the types of relationships we want to be in—including the relationship we have with ourselves.” — Esther Perel
- “Being single used to mean that nobody wanted you. Now it means you’re pretty, sexy and you’re taking your time deciding how you want your life to be and who you want to spend it with.” — Carrie Bradshaw, Sex and the City
- “I haven’t met her yet.” — George Clooney to W Magazine, regarding the greatest love of his life (Dec 2013)
- “We have become the men we wanted to marry.” — Gloria Steinem
- “Being single is getting over the illusion that there is somebody out there to complete you and taking charge of your own life.” — Omkar Phatakc
- “We are our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.” — Tom Robbins, Still Life With Woodpecker
- “I don’t like to gamble, but if there’s one thing I’m willing to bet on, it’s myself.” — Beyoncé
- “I’m in a space where I’ve never been before in my life and I don’t know anything about myself, so I’m learning about myself. And honestly I think I was in a lot of these unhealthy relationships because I didn’t have enough self-love built up and I fixed the way I felt about myself so these situations didn’t happen to me anymore. You can’t be scared to be lonely.” — SZA
- “Single and fabulous, exclamation point.” — Carrie Bradshaw, Sex and the City
