“Haven't people learned yet that the time of superficial intellectual games is over, that agony is infinitely more important than syllogism, that a cry of despair is more revealing than the most subtle thought, and that tears always have deeper roots than smiles?”

— Emil M. Cioran

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

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Emil M. Cioran 531

Romanian philosopher and essayist 1911–1995

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Más llanto que llorar es ver llorar.
Voces (1943)

“Our human nature likes more to destroy than to build, more to cry than to smile, and more to correct the world than to love and embrace the world.”

Sri Chinmoy (1931–2007) Indian writer and guru

April 25
Meditations: Food For The Soul (1970)

“The problems of deafness are deeper and more complex, if not more important, than those of blindness.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Letter to Dr. James Kerr Love (1910), published in Helen Keller in Scotland: a personal record written by herself (1933), edited by James Kerr Love. Paraphrasing of this statement may have been the origin of a similar one which has become attributed to her:
Context: The problems of deafness are deeper and more complex, if not more important, than those of blindness. Deafness is a much worse misfortune. For it means the loss of the most vital stimulus — the sound of the voice that brings language, sets thoughts astir and keeps us in the intellectual company of man.

“…any move made in a state of tension will be of more important, and will have more results, than it would have made in a state of eqilibrium. In times of maximum tension this importance will rise to an infinite degree.”

Carl von Clausewitz book On War

On War (1832), Book 3

“Smiling always seems to annoy people more than actually insulting them. Or maybe I just have an annoying smile.”

Jim Butcher book Storm Front

Source: Storm Front

“The most important thing in this world is liberty. More important than food or clothes — more important than gold or houses or lands — more important than art or science — more important than all religions, is the liberty of man.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)
Context: I want you to understand what has been done in the world to force men to think alike. It seems to me that if there is some infinite being who wants us to think alike he would have made us alike. Why did he not do so? Why did he make your brain so that you could not by any possibility be a Methodist? Why did he make yours so that you could not be a Catholic? And why did he make the brain of another so that he is an unbeliever — why the brain of another so that he became a Mohammedan — if he wanted us all to believe alike?
After all, maybe Nature is good enough and grand enough and broad enough to give us the diversity born of liberty. Maybe, after all, it would not be best for us all to be just the same. What a stupid world, if everybody said yes to everything that everybody else might say.
The most important thing in this world is liberty. More important than food or clothes — more important than gold or houses or lands — more important than art or science — more important than all religions, is the liberty of man.

“More high-reaching, subtle, many-sided, curious and profound than the Greek, more noble and humane than the Roman, more large and spiritual than the old Egyptian, more vast and original than any other Asiatic civilization, more intellectual than the European prior to the 18th century, possessing all that these had and more, it was the most powerful, self-possessed, stimulating and wide in influence of all past human cultures.”

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

The Foundations of Indian Culture (1953), p. 31

“I thought of love as a game. It is not a game. It is more serious than death.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Vampires, Scones, and Edmund Herondale

“There are more important things in life than winning or losing a game.”

Lionel Messi (1987) Argentine association football player

“There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered ones.”

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint

Attributed to Teresa by Truman Capote in "An Interview with Truman Capote" by Don Lee Keith, in Contempora (October/November 1970), p. 40, as the source of the title of a work in progress which he intended as a novel, to be called Answered Prayers; no earlier publications of such an attribution has yet been located.
Variants:
There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers.
Attributed in The Last Word: A Treasury of Women's Quotes (1992) by Carolyn Warner
Disputed

“Haven't people learned yet that the time of superficial intellectual games is over, that agony is infinitely more important than syllogism, that a cry of despair is more revealing than the most subtle thought, and that tears always have deeper roots than smiles?”

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Emil M. Cioran 531

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