“There is a sacredness in tears…. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition and of unspeakable love.”

“Waste not fresh tears over old griefs.”

Euripidés (-480–-406 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

“Unhappiness is selfish, grief is selfish. For whom are the tears?”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

“Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state.”

George Eliot book Adam Bede

“Our “Theories of Taste,” as they are called, wherein the deep, infinite, unspeakable Love of Wisdom and Beauty, which dwells in all men, is “explained,” made mechanically visible, from “Association” and the like, …”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

“Thus the more readily we accept grief, the deeper in us the awakening of the love which is not attachment but a positive serenity, pure and full of faith, the infinite in a loving act, even though in bitterness and tears.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

“Love and grief our hearts dividing,
With our tears His feet we bathe;
Constant still, in faith abiding,
Life deriving from His death.”

James Allen (1864–1912) British philosophical writer

“And let these tears, distilling from mine eyes,
Be proof of my grief and innocency.”

Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) English dramatist, poet and translator

“A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear,
A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet or relief,
In word, or sigh, or tear.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

“My one, my one, my only love,
Hide, hide your face in a leaf,
And let the hot tear falling burn
The stupid heart that will not learn
The everywhere of grief.”

George Barker (1913–1991) British poet