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They’ll be no tears out of me for this poxy life. Rab C Nesbitt, Mother, BBC 1994
What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears. Seneca
Don’t shed a tear, Momma. I ain’t happy here. Tupac Shakur, music video released day after death
The tears of the world are a constant quantity. Samuel Beckett, Waiting For Godot starring Stephen Brennan & Barry McGovern & Johnny Murphy & Sam McGovern et al, director Michael Lindsay-Hogg
The tears stream down my cheeks from my unblinking eyes. What makes me weep so? There is nothing saddening here. Perhaps it is liquefied brain. Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable
Waste not fresh tears over old griefs. Euripides
Oh, I am very weary,
Though tears no longer flow;
My eyes are tired of weeping,
My heart is sick of woe. Anne Bronte
There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love. Washington Irving
The bitterest tear shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone. Harriet Beecher Stowe
I didn’t want my picture taken because I was going to cry. I didn’t know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of my throat and I’d cry for a week. I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full. Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Never did anybody look so sad. Bitter and black, halfway down, in the darkness, in the shaft which ran from the sunlight to the depths, perhaps a tear formed; a tear fell; the waves swayed this way and that, received it, and were at rest. Never did anybody look so sad. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
I am easily moved to tears and rarely survive a visit to the cinema without shedding them, racked, as I am, by the most perfunctory, meretricious or even callously sentimental attempts at poignancy (something about the exterior of the human face, so vast and palpable, with the eyes and the lips: it is all writ too large for me, too immediate for me.) Martin Amis, Experience: A Memoir
Lips that taste of tears, they say,
Are the best for kissing. Dorothy Parker
Why, I have not another tear to shed.
Besides, this sorrow is an enemy,
And would usurp upon my what’re eyes
And make them blind with tributary tears.
The which way will I find Revenge’s cave? William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, III i 265-269
Shall we play the wantons with our woes,
And make some pretty match with shedding tears? William Shakespeare, Richard II III iii 164
With tears augmenting the fresh morning’s dew. William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, I i 129
These foolish drops do something drown my manly spirit. William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice II iii 13-14, Lancelot to Jessica
If you have tears prepare to shed them now. William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar III ii 167, Anthony
And how mightily some other times we drown our gain in tears. William Shakespeare, All’s Well That End’s Well IV iii 68-69
O, let not women’s weapons, water-drops,
Stain my man’s cheeks! William Shakespeare, The History of King Lear II ii 436-437, Lear
Smiling through her tears. Homer, The Iliad
Tears, idle tears I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more. Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Princess, 1847
Let your tears come. Let them water your soul. Eileen Mayhew
Tearless grief bleeds inwardly. Christian Nestell Bovee
Tears for souvenirs are all you’ve left me
Memories of a love you never meant
I just can’t believe you could forget me
After all those happy hours we spent (together). Frank Capano lyrics, sung Ken Dodd 1965 & Rudy Vallee 1929 et al
Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before – more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle. Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Let the tears which fell, and the broken words which were exchanged in the long close embrace between the orphans, be sacred. A father, sister, and mother, were gained, and lost, in that one moment. Joy and grief were mingled in the cup; but there were no bitter tears: for even grief arose so softened, and clothed in such sweet and tender recollections, that it became a solemn pleasure, and lost all character of pain. Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
My eyes were glued on life
and they were full of tears. Jack Kerouac
I remember one day sitting at the pool and suddenly the tears were streaming down my cheeks. Why was I so unhappy? I had success. I had security. But it wasn’t enough. I was exploding inside. Ingrid Bergman
Tears at times have the weight of speech. Ovid
They’ll take everything. Even your tears. George Foreman
Tears are the silent language of grief. Voltaire
She was a good deal shock’d; not shock’d at tears,
For women shed and use them at their liking;
But there is something when man’s eye appears
Wet, still more disagreeable and striking. Lord Byron, Don Juan
What precious drops are those,
Which silently each other’s track pursue,
Bright as young diamonds in their infant dew? John Dryden, The Conquest of Grenada II iii 1
E’en like the passage of an angel’s tear
That falls through the clear ether silently. John Keats, To One Who Has Been Long in City Pent