Quotes about tears
page 6

Ignatius Sancho photo
William Carlos Williams photo

“Turmoil and revolution in their best guises serve to tear down ancient and meaningless customs, in favor of practical social reform.”

George Alec Effinger (1947–2002) Novelist, short story writer

Source: What Entropy Means to Me (1972), Chapter 10 “The Final Struggle” (p. 160).

John Vance Cheney photo
Mike Oldfield photo
Saki photo

“Mother, may I go and maffick,
Tear around and hinder traffic?”

Saki (1870–1916) British writer

"Reginald's Peace Poem"
Reginald (1904)

Torquato Tasso photo

“Already darkening night
had quenched all rays of daylight, and made truce,
in mere oblivion of all care and fright,
with tears and with laments.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Già la notte oscura
Avea tutti del giorno i raggj spenti;
E con l'oblío d'ogni nojosa cura
Ponea tregua alle lagrime, ai lamenti.
Canto III, stanza 71 (tr. Wickert)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
John Hall photo
Thomas Kyd photo
Edward Norris Kirk photo
Jean Paul Sartre photo
Gustave Courbet photo
Francois Rabelais photo
William Blake photo

“If you trap the moment before it's ripe,
The tears of repentance you'll certainly wipe;
But if once you let the ripe moment go
You can never wipe off the tears of woe.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

If You Trap the Moment
1790s, Poems from Blake's Notebook (c. 1791-1792)

Amitabh Bachchan photo
Salvador Dalí photo
Statius photo

“And now it was your purpose to weep Vesuvius' flames in pious melody and spend your tears on the losses of your native place, what time the Father took the mountain from earth and lifted it to the stars only to plunge it down upon the hapless cities far and wide.”
Jamque et flere pio Vesuvina incendia cantu mens erat et gemitum patriis impendere damnis, cum pater exemptum terris ad sidera montem sustulit et late miseras deiecit in urbes.

iii, line 205
Silvae, Book V

Arnaut Daniel photo

“Briefly bursteth season brisk,
Blasty north breeze racketh branch,
Branches rasp each branch on each
Tearing twig and tearing leafage.”

Arnaut Daniel (1150–1210) Occitan troubadour

En breu brizara'l temps braus
E'l biza, e'l brus e'l blancx
Qui s'entresenhon trastuig
De sobre claus ram de fuelha.
"En breu brizara'l temps braus", line 1; translation from Ezra Pound Instigations (1920) p. 309.

Alexander Maclaren photo
John Masefield photo
Bode Miller photo
William Allingham photo

“Scarcely a tear to shed;
Hardly a word to say;
The end of a Summer's day;
Sweet Love is dead.”

William Allingham (1824–1889) Irish man of letters and poet

An Evening; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Bob Dylan photo
William Blake photo

“For a tear is an intellectual thing,
And a sigh is the sword of an Angel King,
And the bitter groan of the martyr's woe
Is an arrow from the Almighty's bow.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

The Gray Monk, st. 8
1800s, Poems from the Pickering Manuscript (c. 1805)

Edward Thomson photo
John Keats photo

“Music's golden tongue
Flatter'd to tears this aged man and poor.”

Stanza 3
Poems (1820), The Eve of St. Agnes

Isaac Watts photo

“But, children, you should never let
Such angry passions rise;
Your little hands were never made
To tear each other's eyes.”

Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English hymnwriter, theologian and logician

Song 16: "Against Quarrelling and Fighting".
1710s, Divine Songs Attempted in the Easy Language of Children (1715)

Gabrielle Roy photo
Chuck Berry photo

“Just like a bolt of thunder and a streak of heat
Leo covered Jo Jo with all four feet
Jo Jo was screamin' with tears in his eyes
Said," Please Mr. Leo, I apologize"”

Chuck Berry (1926–2017) American rock-and-roll musician

"Joe Joe Gun" (1958)( aka "Jo Jo Gunne") *traditional, new lyrics by Chuck Berry
Song lyrics

Erwin Schrödinger photo
Marianne von Werefkin photo
Ludwig Feuerbach photo
James Anthony Froude photo
Jefferson Davis photo

“Thou water turn'st to wine, fair friend of life;
Thy foe, to cross the sweet arts of Thy reign,
Distils from thence the tears of wrath and strife,
And so turns wine to water back again.”

Richard Crashaw (1612–1649) British writer

Steps to the Temple, To Our Lord upon the Water Made Wine; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 516.

Charles Baudelaire photo

“It is at once by way of poetry and through poetry, as with music, that the soul glimpses splendors from beyond the tomb; and when an exquisite poem brings one’s eyes to the point of tears, those tears are not evidence of an excess of joy, they are witness far more to an exacerbated melancholy, a disposition of the nerves, a nature exiled among imperfect things, which would like to possess, without delay, a paradise revealed on this very same earth.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

C'est à la fois par la poésie et à travers la poésie, par et à travers la musique, que l'âme entrevoit les splendeurs situées derrière le tombeau; et, quand un poème exquis amène les larmes au bord des yeux, ces larmes ne sont pas la preuve d'un excès de jouissance, elles sont bien plutôt le témoignage d'une mélancolie irritée, d'une postulation des nerfs, d'une nature exilée dans l'imparfait et qui voudrait s'emparer immédiatement, sur cette terre même, d'un paradis révélé.
XI: "Notes nouvelles sur Edgar Poe III," IV
L'art romantique (1869)

Cao Xueqin photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Edward Everett photo

“When I am dead, no pageant train
Shall waste their sorrows at my bier,
Nor worthless pomp of homage vain
Stain it with hypocritic tear.”

Edward Everett (1794–1865) American politician, orator, statesman

"The Dirge of Alaric, the Visigoth" In The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal Vol. V, No. 25 (January-June 1823), p. 64.

Julian of Norwich photo
Frederick Douglass photo
Roger Ebert photo
James A. Garfield photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo

“Never listen to newscasts. Saves wear and tear on the nervous system.”

Source: Red Planet (1949), Chapter 2, “South Colony, Mars”, p. 17

Daniel Handler photo
Neil Gorsuch photo

“I immediately lost what breath I had left. And I am not embarrassed to admit that I couldn’t see the rest of the way down the mountain for the tears.”

Neil Gorsuch (1967) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Gorsuch describing his reaction after receiving a cell telephone call while skiing informing him that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had died. Quote from "In Judge Neil Gorsuch, an Echo of Scalia in Philosophy and Style." https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/us/politics/neil-gorsuch-supreme-court-nominee.html?_r=0 The New York Times. January 31, 2017.

Joseph Conrad photo
Octave Mirbeau photo
Gwendolyn Brooks photo
Sarah Chauncey Woolsey photo
Edward Andrade photo
Greil Marcus photo
James Macpherson photo
Homér photo
John Milton photo
Marcel Duchamp photo

“Now, if you [his sister, Suzanne Duchamp ] have been up to my place, you will have seen, in the studio, [his former studio in France, probably in Paris] a 'Bicycle Wheel' and a 'Bottle Rack'. [both art-works became later famous ready-mades of Duchamp] – I bought this as a ready-made sculpture [sculpture tout faite]. And I h have a plan concerning this so-called bottle rack. Listen to this. Here in N. Y., I have bought various objects in the same taste and I treat them as 'ready-mades'. You know enough English to understand the meaning of 'ready-made' [tour fait] that I give these objects. – I sign them and think of an inscription for them in English. I'll give you a few examples. I have, for example, a large snow shovel on which I have inscribed at the bottom: In advance of the broken arm, French translation: 'En avance dus bras cassé' – (Don't tear your hair out) trying to understand this in the Romantic or impressionist or Cubist sense – it has nothing to do with all that. Another 'readymade' is called: Emergency in favour of twice possible French translation: Danger \Crise \en favour de 2 fois. This long preamble just to say: Take this bottle rack for yourself. I'm making it a 'readymade' remotely. You are to inscribe it at the bottom and on the inside of the bottom circle, in small letters painted with a brush in oil, silver white colour, with an inscription which I will give you herewith, and then sign it, in the same handwriting, as follows: [after] Marcel Duchamp.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

long quote from Duchamp's letter to his sister Suzanne Duchamp, New York, c. 15 Jan. 1916; as quoted in The Duchamp Book, ed. Gavin Parkinson, Tate Publishing, London 2008 pp. 157-158
1915 - 1925

Sun Myung Moon photo
Paris Hilton photo
Edmund Spenser photo
Mike Oldfield photo
Steve Kilbey photo
Klaus Kinski photo
William Wordsworth photo
Albrecht Thaer photo

“In the second year of my residence in Gottingen, I entered my name for a course of lectures on practical physics, against the advice of all my friends, but I have never regretted so doing, as there never has been, and probably never will be, a greater man at the university than Doctor Schroder, physician to the king, who gave, at that period, his celebrated lectures on practical physics. Schroder himself was astonished at the step I had taken; but when he perceived that I fully understood him, I became one of his favourite pupils; nor had I the advantage alone of receiving private lessons gratis, but he took me with him in most of his professional visits, where I had all the advantages of his great practice. Thus I caught a putrid fever which was then very prevalent; Schroeder attended me day and night, and giving up all hopes of my recovery, he observed to one of his friends, not thinking that I understood what he said, "The expansion of the sinews increases." "Then," answered I, in a quiet manner, "I shall die in four days, according to such and such a rule of Hippocrates: pray, prepare my father to receive the news of my death." However, immediately after, a sudden turn in the disorder taking place, I soon recovered; not so my memory, which I lost for a time, so that I had forgotten the names of my best friends; my nerves were so completely shaken, that I had no wish to recover. After my recovery, Professor Schroeder being himself attacked with the same fever, requested of his wife that no other physician than myself should attend him; but when he became light-headed, she called in all the physicians of Gottingen, and these gentlemen not agreeing in opinion respecting the treatment of the patient, this great and learned man fell a victim to ignorance and jealousy, April 21, 1772. I cannot think of this celebrated and good man without shedding tears of regret and gratitude.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Tawakkol Karman photo
Suzanne Collins photo

“Among Noah's sons was one who covered the shame of his father, but the Hegelians are still tearing away the cloak which time and oblivion had sympathetically thrown over the shame of their Master.”

Heinrich Christian Friedrich Schumacher (1757–1830) Danish scientist

In a letter to Gauss. As quoted in Carl Friedrich Gauss: Titan of Science (2004) by Guy Waldo Dunnington. p. 361-362
Quoted

Octave Mirbeau photo

“When one tears away the veils and shows them naked, people’s souls give off such a pungent smell of decay.”

Octave Mirbeau (1848–1917) French journalist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, novelist, and playwright

Diary ot a Chambermaid

Smokey Robinson photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
John Ogilby photo

“Having drown'd her sparkling Eyes in tears.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Æneis

Dinah Craik photo
Sarada Devi photo

“Pray to God with tears in your eyes whenever you want illumination or find yourself faced with any doubt or difficulty. The Lord will remove all your impurities, assuage your mental anguish, and give you enlightenment.”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

[Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations, 344]

“I bet there's a tear in your eye wherever you're watching this. There's nothing wrong with tears; tears are often shed in joy.”

Jimmy Magee (1935–2017) Gaelic games commentatot

As Katie Taylor triumphed at the 2012 Summer Olympics. irishtimes.com http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/0811/1224321996178.html
Olympic Games

Desmond Tutu photo

“We who advocate peace are becoming an irrelevance when we speak peace. The government speaks rubber bullets, live bullets, tear gas, police dogs, detention, and death.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

As quoted in Sunday Times Magazine (8 June 1986).

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Elie Wiesel photo

“I have been strongly influenced by the Mahabharata, discourses of the Buddha, Sri Aurobindo and Plato. My masters have been Vyasa, Buddha and Sri Aurobindo, as elucidated by Ram Swarup. … Paganism was a term of contempt invented by Christianity for people in the countryside who lived close to and in harmony with Nature, and whose ways of worship were spontaneous as opposed to the contrived though-categories constructed by Christianity’s city-based manipulators of human minds. In due course, the term was extended to cover all spiritually spontaneous culture of the world – Greek, Roman, Iranian, Indian, Chinese, native American. It became a respectable term for those who revolted against Christianity in the modern West. But it has yet to recover its spiritual dimension which Christianity had eclipsed. For me, Hinduism preserves ancient Paganism in all its dimensions. In that sense, I am a Pagan. The term "Polytheism' comes from Biblical discourse, which has the term 'theism' as its starting point. I have no use for these terms. They create confusion. I dwell in a different universe of discourse which starts with 'know thyself' and ends with the discovery, 'thou art that'…
I met her [Mother Theresa] briefly in Calcutta in 1954 or 1955 when she was unknown. I had gone to see an American journalist who was a friend and had fallen ill, when she came to his house asking for money for her charity set-up. The friend went inside to get some cash, leaving his five or six year old daughter in the drawing room. Teresa told her, "He is not your real father. Your real father is in heaven." The girl said, "He is very ill." Theresa commented, "If he dies, your father does not die. For your real father who is in heaven never 'dies."”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

The girl was in tears.
Interview, The Observer. Date : February 22, 1997. http://sathyavaadi.tripod.com/truthisgod/Articles/goel.htm https://egregores.blogspot.com/2009/10/buddha-sri-aurobindo-and-plato.html https://egregores.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/hindus-and-pagans-a-return-to-the-time-of-the-gods/

Edgar Guest photo
Charles Dickens photo

“Goul or ghul, in Arabic, signifies any terrifying object which deprives people of the use of their senses; hence it became the appellative of that species of monster which was supposed to haunt forests, cemeteries, and other lonely places, and believed not only to tear in pieces the living, but to dig up and devour the dead.”

Brian McNaughton (1935–2004) US author

Attributed to McNaughton online, this actually is a quote from an English edition of The History of the Caliph Vathek (1786) by William Thomas Beckford, as translated by Samuel Henley.
Misattributed

Aldo Capitini photo
Bill Whittle photo

“It's always such a pleasure to have Germans enlighten us on the best way to move large groups of sick, downtrodden people by rail. The only motivation I can ascribe to such behavior is that same one that propels young dim boys to tear the wings off flies.”

Bill Whittle (1959) author, director, screenwriter, editor

TRIBES https://web.archive.org/web/20050912004041/http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000129.html (5 September 2005)
2000s

James Morris III photo

“O Nation, collect your compassion. Weep! For one of your shining lights is entombed in darkness. Weep! O ye officers and soldiers, whom he loved and led to military glory. Weep! O ye farmers and ye Poor, for your improver and benefactor has become a prey to worms. Come water his tomb with your tears.”

James Morris III (1752–1820) American writer

Memorial service for George Washington held in South Farms, Connecticut, 22 February 1880. As quoted in [Strong, Barbara Nolen, The Morris Academy: Pioneer in Coeducation, Morris Bicentennial Committee, 1976, Torrington, 31, http://books.google.com/books?id=nrCYGQAACAAJ&dq]

Babe Ruth photo

“Pitchers—real pitchers— know that their job isn't so much to keep opposing batsmen from hitting as it is to make them hit it at someone. The trouble with most kid pitchers is that they forget there are eight other men on the team to help them. They just blunder ahead, putting everything they have on every pitch and trying to carry the weight of the whole game on their shoulders. The result is that they tire out and go bad along in the middle of the game, and then the wise old heads have to hurry out and rescue them. I've seen a lot of young fellows come up, and they all had the same trouble. Take Lefty Grove over at Philadelphia, for instance. There isn't a pitcher in the league who has more speed or stuff than Lefty. He can do things with a baseball that make you dizzy. But when he first came into the league he seemed to think that he had to strike out every batter as he came up. The result was he'd go along great for five or six innings, and them blow. And he's just now learning to conserve his strength. In other words, he's learning that a little exercise of the noodle will save a lot of wear and tear on his arm.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

"Chapter III," Babe Ruth's Own Book of Baseball (1928), pp. 32-33; reprinted as "Babe Ruth's Own Story — Chapter III: Pitching the Keynote of Defense; The Pitcher's Job; Why Young Hurlers Fail," https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=r0sbAAAAIBAJ&sjid=J0sEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6011%2C3899916 in The Pittsburgh Press (December 23, 1928), p. 52

Michael Moore photo

“I forgot out there on the stage to thank my cast. So if I could do that now, I want to thank Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld. I thought the love scene between Cheney and Rumsfeld brought a tear to my eye.”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

Statement after winning the top prize at the Cannes film festival for Fahrenheit 9/11, quoted Reuters reports (22 May 2004), partly quoted in [Moore scoops Palme d'Or with attack on US president, Patrick, Barkham, The Guardian, 24 May 2004, http://film.guardian.co.uk/cannes2004/story/0,,1223156,00.html]
2004

George Holmes Howison photo

“Judged by the light of this "vale of tears" alone, there is no evidence that good will toward us is the chief or the permanent aim of the eternal Lord or lords.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Human Immortality: its Positive Argument, p.295

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“For human tears are lava-drops,
That scorch and wither as they flow;
Then let them flow for those who live,
And not for those who sleep below.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Churchyard from The London Literary Gazette (3rd January 1829)
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Joni Mitchell photo
George William Russell photo
Philip José Farmer photo

“Prometheus, I have no Titan's might,
Yet I, too, must each dusk renew my heart,
For daytime's vulture talons tear apart
The tender alcoves built by love at night.”

Philip José Farmer (1918–2009) American science fiction writer

"In Common" in Starlanes #14 (April 1954); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)

Bob Dylan photo

“When I saw you break down in front of the judge and cry real tears, it was the best damn thing I saw anybody do.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Knocked Out Loaded (1986), Brownsville Girl (with Sam Shepard)