Quotes about crying
page 9

Tomas Kalnoky photo
Fernand Léger photo
Robert E. Howard photo
Mike Tyson photo
John Bradford photo
Michael Chabon photo
Richard Fuller (minister) photo
Carl Schurz photo
Helen Keller photo
Ryan Adams photo
William McGonagall photo
Tam Dalyell photo
Kid Cudi photo
Mike Oldfield photo

“Down to the River
Was this all some
Cry for love?
It's a cry for love:
Are you a victim of
That Money Bug
In your blood,
Mr. Shame?”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Heaven's Open (1991)

Richard Rodríguez photo
Conor Oberst photo

“And me I'm in the bathroom
crying out my eyelids because it's hard to be a man
when you're scared, just like a little kid.”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Saturday as Usual
A Collection of Songs Written and Recorded 1995-1997 (1998)

Lionel Richie photo
Buddy Holly photo
Hartley Coleridge photo
Roger Ebert photo
Olaudah Equiano photo

“Soon after this the blacks who brought me on board went off, and left me abandoned to despair. I now saw myself deprived of all chance of returning to my native country, or even the least glimpse of hope of gaining the shore, which I now considered as friendly; and I even wished for my former slavery in preference to my present situation, which was filled with horrors of every kind, still heightened by my ignorance of what I was to undergo. I was not long suffered to indulge my grief; I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life: so that, with the loathsomeness of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste any thing. I now wished for the last friend, death, to relieve me; but soon, to my grief, two of the white men offered me eatables; and, on my refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the hands, and laid me across I think the windlass, and tied my feet, while the other flogged me severely. I had never experienced any thing of this kind before; and although, not being used to the water, I naturally feared that element the first time I saw it, yet nevertheless, could I have got over the nettings, I would have jumped over the side, but I could not; and, besides, the crew used to watch us very closely who were not chained down to the decks, lest we should leap into the water: and I have seen some of these poor African prisoners most severely cut for attempting to do so, and hourly whipped for not eating. This indeed was often the case with myself.”

Olaudah Equiano (1745–1797) African abolitionist

Chap. II
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789)

Marcus Aurelius photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Thomas Guthrie photo

“Make them laugh, make them cry, or make them angry.”

Paul Dacre (1948) English journalist

Dacre's description of the best way to write for readers My Life in [the] Media: Des Kelly, The Independent, 12 December 2005 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/des-kelly-my-life-in-media-519169.html,

John Kennedy Toole photo
Ernesto Che Guevara photo
John Fante photo
Pablo Neruda photo

“If you should ask me where I've been all this time
I have to say "Things happen."
I have to dwell on stones darkening the earth,
on the river ruined in its own duration:
I know nothing save things the birds have lost,
the sea I left behind, or my sister crying.
Why this abundance of places? Why does day lock
with day? Why the dark night swilling round
in our mouths? And why the dead?”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Si me preguntáis en dónde he estado
debo decir "Sucede."
Debo de hablar del suelo que oscurecen las piedras,
del río que durando se destruye:
no sé sino las cosas que los pájaros pierden,
el mar dejado atrás, o mi hermana llorando.
¿Por qué tantas regiones, por qué un día
se junta con un día? ¿Por qué una negra noche
se acumula en la boca? ¿Por qué muertos?
No Hay Olvido (Sonata) (There's No Forgetting (Sonata) or There is No Oblivion (Sonata)), Residencia II (Residence II), VI, stanza 1.
Alternate translation by Donald D. Walsh:
If you ask me where I have been
I must say "It so happens."
I must speak of the ground darkened by stones,
of the river that enduring is destroyed:
I know only the things that the birds lose,
the sea left behind, or my sister weeping.
Why so many regions, why does a day
join a day? Why does a black night
gather in the mouth? Why dead people?
Residencia en la Tierra (Residence on Earth) (1933)

Michael Foot photo

“How long will it be before the cry goes up: "Let's kill all the judges?"”

Michael Foot (1913–2010) British politician

Attacking the National Industrial Relations Court and its President, Sir John Donaldson, in a speech at the Scottish Miners' Gala in Edinburgh (3 June 1972)
1970s

Joseph Goebbels photo
Richard Cobden photo
Muhammad Ali photo

“All kinds of things set us back, but life goes on. You don’t shoot yourself. Soon this will be old news. People got lives to live, bills to pay, mouths to feed. Maybe a plane will go down with ninety people on it. Or a great man will be assassinated. That will be more important than Ali losing. I never wanted to lose, never thought I would, but the thing that matters is how you lose. I’m not crying. My friends should not cry.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

Press conference, March 9, 1971, following his defeat by Joe Frazier, quoted in The Intercept, June 6, 2016 https://theintercept.com/2016/06/06/in-1971-muhammad-ali-helped-undermine-the-fbis-illegal-spying-on-americans/

Antonio Negri photo
Martin Amis photo
Conrad Aiken photo
Thérèse of Lisieux photo
Plutarch photo

“And Archimedes, as he was washing, thought of a manner of computing the proportion of gold in King Hiero's crown by seeing the water flowing over the bathing-stool. He leaped up as one possessed or inspired, crying, "I have found it! Eureka!"”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Pleasure not attainable according to Epicurus, 11
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Évariste Galois photo

“Don't cry, Alfred! I need all my courage to die at twenty.”

Évariste Galois (1811–1832) French mathematician, founder of group theory

Ne pleure pas, Alfred ! J'ai besoin de tout mon courage pour mourir à vingt ans !
Quoted in: Léopold Infeld (1978) Whom the gods love: the story of Évariste Galois. p. 299.

Stanisław Lem photo
Siobhan Fahey photo
Sania Mirza photo

“I think people tend to forget that as celebrities we are still human. We have the same emotions - we cry, we have fun, we laugh, we get sad, and we get hurt. When something is written about you, which millions of people are reading, and it is not true, imagine how hurtful it can be.”

Sania Mirza (1986) Indian tennis player

Source: Garima Sharma My husband is very calm and that is very annoying, says Sania Mirza http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/sports/tennis/interviews/My-husband-is-very-calm-and-that-is-very-annoying-says-Sania-Mirza/articleshow/17533676.cms, The Times of India, 8 December 2012

Nasreddin photo
Amir Khusrow photo
Benjamin N. Cardozo photo
Thomas Hood photo

“Oh would I were dead now,
Or up in my bed now,
To cover my head now,
And have a good cry!”

Thomas Hood (1799–1845) British writer

A Table of Errata; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
20th century

Toni Morrison photo
Jack Vance photo

“Prior to his introduction to combat, the average flier possesses a series of intellectual and emotional attitudes regarding his relation to the war. The intellectual attitudes comprise his opinon concerning the necessity of the war and the merits of our cause. Here the American soldier is in a peculiarly disadvantageous position compared with his enemies and most of his Allies. Although attitudes vary from strong conviction to profound cynicism, the most usual reaction is one of passive acceptance of our part in the conflict. Behind this acceptance there is little real conviction. The political, economic or even military justifications for our involvement in the war are not apprehended except in a vague way. The men feel that, if our leaders, the “big-shots,” could not keep us out, then there is no help for it; we have to fight. There is much danger for the future in this attitude, since the responsibility is not personally accepted but is displaced to the leaders. If these should lose face or the men find themselves in economic difficulties in the postwar world, the attitude can easily shift to one of blame of the leaders. The the cry will rise: “We were betrayed—the politicians got us in for their own gain. The militarists made us suffer for it.”

Roy R. Grinker, Sr. (1900–1993) American psychiatrist and neurologist

Source: Men Under Stress, 1945, p. 38-39 cited in: The Clare Spark Blog (2009) Strategic Regression in “the greatest generation” http://clarespark.com/2009/12/09/strategic-regression-in-the-greatest-generation/ December 9, 2009

William Sharp (writer) photo

“I hear the little children of the wind
Crying solitary in lonely places.”

William Sharp (writer) (1855–1905) Scottish writer

Little Children of the Wind, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Mitch Fatel photo
Kerli photo

“Let the butterflies cry
Let them cry for you
And you just dry your eyes
Because the world is wonderful.”

Kerli (1987) Estonian singer

Butterfly Cry
Love is Dead (2008)

John Fante photo
Wallace Stevens photo
Joe Biden photo

“For too long in this society, we have celebrated unrestrained individualism over common community. For too long as a nation, we have been lulled by the anthem of self-interest. For a decade, led by Ronald Reagan, self-aggrandizement has been the full-throated cry of this society: 'I've got mine, so why don't you get yours' and 'What's in it for me?”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Speech http://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/10/us/biden-joins-campaign-for-the-presidency.html announcing entry into 1988 presidential race, Wilmington, Delaware (June 10, 1987)
1980s

Sara Bareilles photo

“Maybe nobody loved you when you were young
Maybe, boy, when you cry nobody ever comes
Will you try it once?
Give up the machine gun”

Sara Bareilles (1979) American pop rock singer-songwriter and pianist

"Machine Gun"
Lyrics, Kaleidoscope Heart (2009)

Peter Porter photo

“We cannot know what John of Leyden felt
Under the Bishop's tongs – we can only
Walk in temperate London, our educated city,
Wishing to cry as freely as they did who died
In the Age of Faith. We have our loneliness
And our regret with which to build an eschatology.”

Peter Porter (1929–2010) British poet

"The Historians Call Up Pain", first collected in Once Bitten, Twice Bitten (1961); cited from Edward Lucie-Smith and Philip Hobsbaum (eds.) A Group Anthology (London: Oxford University Press, 1963) p. 83.

Joe Strummer photo
Tom Stoppard photo

“What do I want from this life? What makes you happy is not enough. All the things that satisfy our instincts only satisfy the animal in us. I want to be proud of myself. I want more. I want to look up to myself and when I die, I want to smile because of the things I have done, not cry for the things I haven't done.”

Tom Hurndall (1981–2004) British activist

Diary, (November 2001) Memorial Address by Jocelyn Hurndall (PDF) https://web.archive.org/web/20060108221709/http://www.tomhurndall.co.uk/memorial/Address%20at%20Memorial%20Westminster%20Cathedral%20_2_.pdf

Wilhelm Liebknecht photo
Olaudah Equiano photo
Ray Charles photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Philip Larkin photo
Thomas Chalmers photo

“A lot of the things you cry about in the present are the things you will laugh about in the future.”

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 155

William Morris photo
Samuel Beckett photo
Tracey Ullman photo
Sri Aurobindo photo

“Our actual enemy is not any force exterior to ourselves, but our own crying weaknesses, our cowardice, our selfishness, our hypocrisy, our purblind sentimentalism.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

21 August 1893
New Lamps for Old (1893)

Dafydd ap Gwilym photo

“Matins, he reads the lesson,
A chasuble of plumage on.
His cry from a grove, his brightshout
Over countrysides rings out,
Hill prophet, maker of moods,
Passion's bright bard of glenwoods.”

Dafydd ap Gwilym (1320–1380) Welsh poet

Plygain y darllain deirllith,
Plu yw ei gasul i'n plith.
Pell y clywir uwch tiroedd
Ei lef o lwyn a'i loyw floedd.
Proffwyd rhiw, praff awdur hoed,
Pencerdd gloyw angerdd glyngoed.
"Y Ceiliog Bronfraith" (The Thrush), line 7; translation from Anthony Conran and J. E. Caerwyn Williams (trans.) The Penguin Book of Welsh Verse (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967) p. 145.

Randolph Bourne photo
Theodore L. Cuyler photo
William Wordsworth photo

“Earth helped him with the cry of blood.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Song at the Feast of Broughton Castle.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Sri Chinmoy photo

“Wee Willie Winkie rins through the town,
Up stairs and doon stairs in his nicht-gown,
Tirling at the window, crying at the lock,
"Are the weans in their bed, for it's now ten o'clock?"”

"Wee Willie Winkie" (1841). The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, 2nd ed. 1997, page 511. ISBN 0-19-860088-7.

Rajendra Prasad photo
Laurell K. Hamilton photo
Norman Borlaug photo

“The bareness and cruelty and misery of this generation now cry aloud for God-saturated and Jesus-challenged deliverers.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

The Personality of Jesus (1932)

Wang Wei photo
Kate Bush photo

“Lying in my tent
I can hear your cry
Echoing round the mountainside
You sound lonely”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, 50 Words for Snow (2011)

Han-shan photo
Daniel Webster photo
John Crowe Ransom photo
Mika Waltari photo
George Steiner photo