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Anonymous06/22/25, 15:21No.24487495QUIZ — VALE OF TEARS
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Anon06/22/25, 15:22No.24487498
Jesus wept, Voltaire smiled; and who likes Voltaire? Literature is all about destructive-testing the human psyche, so tears are inevitable. One hundred appropriate extracts to identify. Some non-fiction. Translations marked (*) (in two such cases the translator rather than the original author is credited). Hints on request.The authors:Renata Adler, Dante Alighieri, Heloise d’Argenteuil, St. Augustine, Jane AustenJohn Barth, Samuel Beckett, Lucia Berlin, William Blake, John Braine, Charlotte Bronte, John Bunyan, Robert BurtonThomas Carlyle, Lewis Carroll, Raymond Carver, Geoffrey Chaucer, Wilkie CollinsKing David, Charles Dickens, Isak Dinesen, John Donne, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Charles M. Doughty, Arthur Conan Doyle, Lawrence DurrellGeorge EliotWilliam Faulkner, Edward Fitzgerald, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Friedrich de la Motte Fouque, John Fowles, Janet Frame, Robert FrostJohn Gardner, William Gibson, J. W. von Goethe, William Golding, Kenneth Grahame, Graham GreeneThomas Harris, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Hazlitt, Joseph Heller, Frank Herbert, Zbigniew Herbert, Patricia Highsmith, Homer, Ted HughesKazuo IshiguroHenry James, Tove Jansson, Robinson Jeffers, Jerome K. Jerome, James JoyceJohn Keats, Rudyard KiplingDiogenes Laertius, R. A. Lafferty, Pär Lagerkvist, Laurie Lee, D. H. Lawrence, Jack London, H. W. LongfellowDavid Markson, Cormac McCarthy, William McGonagall, Herman Melville, John Milton, Iris MurdochVladimir NabokovJohn OsborneMervyn Peake, Fernando Pessoa, Sylvia Plath, Plato, Terry Pratchett, Manuel PuigSamuel Richardson, Tom Robbins, P. J. O’Rourke, Damon RunyonWalter Scott, Anne Sexton, William Shakespeare, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Elizabeth Smart, Wallace StevensAlfred Lord Tennyson, W. M. Thackeray, Dylan Thomas, Mark TwainJohn UpdikeVirgil, William VollmannEvelyn Waugh, Edith Wharton, John Williams, Thomas Wolfe, Daniel Woodrell
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Anon06/22/25, 15:23No.24487501
1)
First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,Stitches to show something’s missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty?2)
If I have all the tears that are shed on Broadway by guys in love, I will have enough salt water to start an opposition ocean to the Atlantic and Pacific, with enough left over to run the Great Salt Lake out of business. But I wish to say I never shed any of these tears personally, because I am never in love, and furthermore, barring a bad break, I never expect to be in love, for the way I look at it, love is strictly the old phedinkus, and I tell the little guy as much.3)
— What manner o’ thing is your crocodile?— It is shap’d, sir, like itself, and it is as broad as it hath breadth; it is just so high as it is, and moves with it own organs. It lives by that which nourisheth it, and the elements once out of it, it transmigrates.— What colour is it of?— Of it own colour too.— ’Tis a strange serpent.— ’Tis so. And the tears of it are wet.4)
Nothing so common to this sex as oaths, vows, and protestations, and as I have already said, tears, which they have at command; for they can so weep, that one would think their very hearts were dissolved within them, and would come out in tears; their eyes are like rocks, which still drop water, ‘diariae lachrymae et sudoris in modum lurgeri promptae’, saith Aristaenetus, they wipe away their tears like sweat, weep with one eye, laugh with the other; or as children weep and cry, they can both together.Neve puellarum lachrymis moveare memento,
Ut flerent oculos erudiere suos.Care not for women’s tears, I counsel thee,
They teach their eyes as much to weep as see.And as much pity is to be taken of a woman weeping, as of a goose going barefoot.5)
“Oh, please forgive me, Tom; my heart will break,” said Maggie, shaking with sobs, clinging to Tom’s arm, and laying her wet cheek on his shoulder.Tom shook her off, and stopped again, saying in a peremptory tone, “Now, Maggie, you just listen. Aren’t I a good brother to you?”“Ye-ye-es,” sobbed Maggie, her chin rising and falling convulsedly.“Didn’t I think about your fish-line all this quarter, and mean to buy it, and saved my money o’ purpose, and wouldn’t go halves in the toffee, and Spouncer fought me because I wouldn’t?”“Ye-ye-es — and I — lo-lo-love you so, Tom.”“But you’re a naughty girl. Last holidays you licked the paint off my lozenge-box, and the holidays before that you let the boat drag my fish-line down when I’d set you to watch it, and you pushed your head through my kite, all for nothing.”“But I didn’t mean,” said Maggie; “I couldn’t help it.”
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Anon06/22/25, 15:25No.24487507
6)
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck by the difference between what things are and what they might have been.7)
I loved Jenny most when, sitting beside her at sentimental movies, I would look away from the big screen where the beautiful actress was about to leave her lover forever, and see Jenny sitting upright in her chair, her black button-eyes concentrating so hard on the film, while she chewed and chewed her gum so earnestly, and I ran my forefinger below her eyes to verify that her face was wet, that Jenny was crying for the people on the screen, crying in perfect placid happiness over this debacle that had never happened; and I knew that after the movie was over Jenny would forget that she had cried, but she would feel refreshed by her tears.8)
He placed his son then in his dear wife’s hands,
Where in her fragrant breast she nestled him,
Smiling through tears: at which, regarding her with pity,
Her husband soothed her with his touch and said:
“My dear, think no distressful thoughts for me;
No man shall send me to Hades before my time:
But fate’s a thing which none of woman born,
Be he brave or coward, can ever hope to escape.”[*]9)
The large-bodied Poet and the small, both large enough in soul, sat talking miscellaneously together, the present Editor being privileged to listen; and now Paul, in his serious way, was giving one of those inimitable “Extra-Harangues”; and, as it chanced, On the Proposal for a Cast-metal King: gradually a light kindled in our Professor’s eyes and face, a beaming, mantling, loveliest light; through those murky features, a radiant ever-young Apollo looked; and he burst forth like the neighing of all Tattersall’s, — tears streaming down his cheeks, pipe held aloft, foot clutched into the air, — loud, long-continuing, uncontrollable; a laugh not of the face and diaphragm only, but of the whole man from head to heel.10)
“Child, lie down and sleep,” I urged.“My bed is cold,” said she. “I can’t warm it.”I saw the little thing shiver. “Come to me,” I said, wishing, yet scarcely hoping, that she would comply: for she was a most strange, capricious, little creature, and especially whimsical with me. She came, however, instantly, like a small ghost gliding over the carpet. I took her in. She was chill: I warmed her in my arms. She trembled nervously; I soothed her. Thus tranquillized and cherished she at last slumbered.“A very unique child,” thought I, as I viewed her sleeping countenance by the fitful moonlight, and cautiously and softly wiped her glittering eyelids and her wet cheeks with my handkerchief. “How will she get through this world, or battle with this life? How will she bear the shocks and repulses, the humiliations and desolations, which books, and my own reason, tell me are prepared for all flesh?”
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Anon06/22/25, 15:26No.24487509
11)
My grandmother refused to concede that any member of the family died of natural causes. An uncle’s cancer in middle age occurred because all the suitcases fell off the luggage rack onto him when he was in his teens, and so forth. Death was an acquired characteristic. My grandmother, too, used to put other people’s ailments into the diminutive: strokelets were what her friends had. Aldo said he was bored to tearsies by my grandmother’s diminutives.12)
She took me to her Elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.13)
My chest was full of pain, my eyes smarted, and I was afraid — O monstrous trick against reason — I was afraid I was about to sob. I wanted to smash things, bring down the night with my howl of rage. But I kept still. She was beautiful, as innocent as dawn on winter hills. She tore me apart as once the Shaper’s song had done. As if for my benefit, as if in vicious scorn of me, children came from the meadhall and ran down to her, weeping, to snatch at her hands and dress.“Stop it!” I whispered. “Stupid!”She did not look at them, merely touched their heads. “Be still,” she said — hardly more than a whisper, but it carried across the crowd. They were still, as if her voice were magic. I clenched my teeth, tears streaming from my eyes. She was like a child, her sweet face paler than the moon.14)
“I wish I hadn’t cried so much!” said Alice, as she swam about, trying to find her way out. “I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears! That will be a queer thing, to be sure! However, everything is queer to-day.”15)
I drew aside my curtains before I went to bed and looked out from my window. It opened upon the grassy space which lay in front of the hall door. Beyond, two copses of trees moaned and swung in a rising wind. A half moon broke through the rifts of racing clouds. In its cold light I saw beyond the trees a broken fringe of rocks, and the long, low curve of the melancholy moor. I closed the curtain, feeling that my last impression was in keeping with the rest.And yet it was not quite the last. I found myself weary and yet wakeful, tossing restlessly from side to side, seeking for the sleep which would not come. Far away a chiming clock struck out the quarters of the hours, but otherwise a deathly silence lay upon the old house. And then suddenly, in the very dead of the night, there came a sound to my ears, clear, resonant, and unmistakable. It was the sob of a woman, the muffled, strangling gasp of one who is torn by an uncontrollable sorrow. I sat up in bed and listened intently. The noise could not have been far away and was certainly in the house. For half an hour I waited with every nerve on the alert, but there came no other sound save the chiming clock and the rustle of the ivy on the wall.
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Anon06/22/25, 15:27No.24487514
16)
You don’t need to be taught to cry.
The soul presses a button.
Is the cry saying something?
Does it mean help?
Or hello?
The cry of a gull is beautiful
and the cry of a crow is ugly
but what I want to know
is whether they mean the same thing.17)
He must have slept. When he woke he was lying in the grass looking up at the heavens. A cloudless night strewn with stars. Salt taste of sorrow in his throat. He saw a star spill across the sky, a light trail of fire and then nothing. Hot spalls of matter rifling through the icy ether. Misshapen globs of iron slag.The night had grown much colder. He lay in the grass shivering and he tried to sleep but he could not. After a while he rose and took the whisky and went to the rear door of the church and tried it and it opened.He was in a cellar. There were stacks of old newspapers and magazines along one wall and he stretched out on these and lay there. Then he sat up and took some to spread over him and lay down again. Then he started to cry again, lying there in the dark of the church cellar under the old newspapers.18)
Once while she was crying, Sally said, “I’ll never see donkeys again!” which struck us as hilariously funny. She became furious, smashed her cup and plates, our glasses and ashtray against the wall. She kicked over the table, screaming at us. Cold calculating bitches. Not a shred of compassion or pity.“One *pinche* tear. You don’t even look sad.” She was smiling by now. “You’re like police matrons. ‘Drink this. Here’s a tissue. Throw up in the basin.’”19)
So cheer’d he his fair Spouse, and she was cheer’d,
But silently a gentle tear let fall
From either eye, and wip’d them with her hair;
Two other precious drops that ready stood,
Each in their crystal sluice, he ere they fell
Kiss’d as the gracious signs of sweet remorse
And pious awe, that fear’d to have offended.20)
She came back, with some bread and meat and a little mug of beer. She put the mug down on the stones of the yard, and gave me the bread and meat without looking at me, as insolently as if I were a dog in disgrace. I was so humiliated, hurt, spurned, offended, angry, sorry, — I cannot hit upon the right name for the smart — God knows what its name was, — that tears started to my eyes. The moment they sprang there, the girl looked at me with a quick delight in having been the cause of them. This gave me power to keep them back and to look at her: so, she gave a contemptuous toss — but with a sense, I thought, of having made too sure that I was so wounded — and left me.But when she was gone, I looked about me for a place to hide my face in, and got behind one of the gates in the brewery-lane, and leaned my sleeve against the wall there, and leaned my forehead on it and cried. As I cried, I kicked the wall, and took a hard twist at my hair; so bitter were my feelings, and so sharp was the smart without a name, that needed counteraction.
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Anon06/22/25, 15:28No.24487518
21)
FROM THE TECHNOLOGY OF TEARSIn our present state of knowledge only false tears are suitable for treatment and regular production. Genuine tears are hot, for which reason it is very difficult to remove them from the face. After their reduction to a solid state, they have proved to be extremely fragile. The problem of commercially exploiting genuine tears is a real headache for technologists.False tears before being quick-frozen are submitted to a process of distillation, since they are by nature impure, and they are reduced to a state in which, with respect to purity, they are hardly inferior to genuine tears. They are very hard, very durable and thus are suitable not only for ornamentation but also for cutting glass.[*]22)
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.23)
So he made him a purge, but it was too weak; it was said, it was made of the blood of a goat, the ashes of an heifer, and with some of the juice of hyssop, etc. When Mr. Skill had seen that that purge was too weak, he made him one to the purpose. It was made [the name was written in Latin] ex carne et sanguine Christi; (you know physicians give strange medicines to their patients) — and it was made up into pills, with a promise or two, and a proportionable quantity of salt. Now, he was to take them three at a time, fasting, in half a quarter of a pint of the tears of sorrow.24)
— And don’t you have any close friends? . . . good friends?— Oh, I have silly girlfriends like myself, but just in passing, good for a laugh once in a while, and that’s all. But as soon as we start getting a little dramatic . . . then we can’t stand the sight of each other. Because I already told you what it’s like; you see yourself in the other ones like so many mirrors and then you start running for your life.— Things could change for you once you’re outside.— No, they’ll never change . . .— Come on, don’t cry . . . don’t be that way . . . Look how many times you make me listen to you cry . . . Well, I suppose you had to put up with my blubbering that time, too . . . But enough is enough. God . . . you . . . you make me nervous with your crying.— I just can’t help it . . . I always have such rotten . . . luck . . .— Hey, they shut off the lights . . .— Of course they did, what do you think? It’s already eight-thirty. And just as well anyway, so you can’t see my face.[*]25)
WHERE IS THE BIGGEST DIAMOND IN THE WORLD?“The biggest? That’s easy. It’s the Tear of Offler, it’s in the innermost sanctuary of the Lost Jewelled Temple of Doom of Offler the Crocodile God in darkest Howandaland, and it weighs eight hundred and fifty carats. And, sir, to forestall your next question, I personally would go to bed with it.”
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Anon06/22/25, 15:29No.24487523
26)
“How do you cry, Molly? I see your eyes are walled away. I’m curious.” His eyes were red-rimmed, his forehead gleaming with sweat. He was very pale. Sick, Case decided. Or drugs.“I don’t cry, much.”“But how would you cry, if someone made you cry?”“I spit,” she said. “The ducts are routed back into my mouth.”“Then you’ve already learned an important lesson, for one so young.” He rested the hand with the pistol on his knee and took a bottle from the table beside him, without bothering to choose from the half-dozen different liquors. He drank. Brandy. A trickle of the stuff ran from the corner of his mouth. “That is the way to handle tears.”27)
At daybreak, on a bleak sea-beach,
A fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair
Lashed close to a drifting mast.The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes;
And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,
On the billows fall and rise.28)
For the first time in my life I was out of the sight of humans. For the first time in my life I was alone in a world whose behaviour I could neither predict nor fathom: a world of birds that squealed, of plants that stank, of insects that sprang about without warning. I was lost and I did not expect to be found again. I put back my head and howled, and the sun hit me smartly on the face, like a bully.29)
On a round ball
A workman that hath copies by, can lay
An Europe, Afric, and an Asia,
And quickly make that, which was nothing, all;
So doth each tear
Which thee doth wear,
A globe, yea world, by that impression grow,
Till thy tears mix’d with mine do overflow
This world; by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolved so.30)
The bell that had tinkled in the mist was silent again. The forest was asleep, and the black and empty window-panes of the little house in the glade stared sadly at them.But inside, a Fillyjonk was sitting, listening to the ticking of her clock and the passing of the time. Now and then she went over to the window and looked out into the fair June night, and every time she moved, there was a little tinkle from the jingle bell she carried on the tassel of her cap. This used to cheer up the Fillyjonk (that was why she had sewn it on), but tonight it only made her sadder. She sighed and wandered around, sat down, and got up again.She had laid the table with three plates and glasses and a vase of flowers, and on her stove was a pancake grown coal-black from waiting.The Fillyjonk looked at her clock, and at the garlands over the door, and at herself in the mirror on the wall — and then she buried her head in her arms on the table, and began to cry. Her cap slipped forward with a single melancholy, jingling plunk, and her tears rolled slowly down on to her empty plate.It isn’t always easy being a Fillyjonk.[*]
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Anon06/22/25, 15:30No.24487529
31)
“I don’t think I want to be married,” she said, and her naïve, troubled, puzzled eyes rested a moment on his, then travelled away, pre-occupied.“Do you mean never, or not just yet?” he asked.The knot in his throat grew harder, his face was drawn as if he were being strangled.“I mean never,” she said, out of some far self which spoke for once beyond her.His drawn, strangled face watched her blankly for a few moments, then a strange sound took place in his throat. She started, came to herself, and, horrified, saw him. His head made a queer motion, the chin jerked back against the throat, the curious, crowing, hiccupping sound came again, his face twisted like insanity, and he was crying, crying blind and twisted as if something were broken which kept him in control.“Tony — don’t,” she cried, starting up.32)
. . . And Dioscorides, in his Commentaries, says, that, when he was lamenting his son, who was dead (with whose name I am not acquainted), and when some one said to him, “You do no good by weeping,” he replied, “But that is the very reason why I weep, because I do no good.”[*]33)
We travelled further, coming to a new
Locale, in which the frozen people keep
An upturned stance, their visages in view.The very weeping here forbids them weep,
And all the grief their eyes will not allow
Twists inwards, bringing agony more deep:Because the earliest teardrops to endow
Their cheeks freeze on the instant, to become
Like crystal visors under every brow.[*]34)
Deep under the hills Oread was crying. She was weeping big hot tears. They weren’t, however, iron tears that she wept. That part is untrue.The tears were actually of that aromatic flux of salt and rosin that wrought-iron workers employ in their process.35)
I found also among these Beduins, that with difficulty they imagine any future life; they pray and they fast as main duties in religion, looking (as the Semitic Patriarchs before them) for the present life’s blessing. There is a sacrifice for the dead, which I have seen continued to the third generation. I have seen a sheykh come with devout remembrance, to slaughter his sacrifice and to pray at the heap where his father or his father’s father lies buried: and I have seen such to kiss his hand, in passing any time by the place where the sire is sleeping, and breathe out, with almost womanly tenderness, words of blessing and prayer; — and this is surely comfort in one’s dying, that he will be long-time so kindly had in his children’s mind. In the settled Semitic countries their hareem, and even Christian women, go out at certain days to the graves to weep. I have seen a widow woman lead her fatherless children thither, and they kneeled down together: I saw the mother teach them to weep, and she bewailed her dead with a forced suffocating voice and sobbing, *Ya habîby*, “Aha! aha! my beloved!”
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Anon06/22/25, 15:31No.24487531
36)
I weep over my imperfect pages, but if future generations read them, they will be more touched by my weeping than by any perfection I might have achieved, since perfection would have kept me from weeping and, therefore, from writing. Perfection never materializes. The saint weeps, and is human. God is silent. That is why we can love the saint but cannot love God.[*]37)
Then he breathed his last with a gurgling sound,
And for the loss of the great hero the soldiers’ sorrow was profound,
Because he was always kind and served them well,
And as they thought of him tears down their cheeks trickling fell.38)
The Colonel was the first that took my attention, kneeling on the side of the bed, the lady’s right−hand in both his, which his face covered, bathing it with his tears; altho’ she had been comforting him, as the women since told him, in elevated strains, but broken accents.On the other side of the bed sat the good Widow; her face overwhelmed with tears, leaning her head against the bed’s head in a most disconsolate manner; and turning her face to me, as soon as she saw me, O Mr. Belford, cried she, with folded hands — The dear lady — a heavy sob not permitting her to say more.Mrs. Smith, with clasped fingers, and uplifted eyes, as if imploring help from the Only Power which could give it, was kneeling down at the bed’s feet, tears in large drops trickling down her cheeks.Her Nurse was kneeling between the widow and Mrs. Smith, her arms extended. In one hand she held an ineffectual cordial, which she had just been offering to her dying mistress; her face was swoln with weeping (tho’ used to such scenes as this) and she turned her eyes towards me, as if she called upon me by them to join in the helpless sorrow; a fresh stream bursting from them as I approached the bed.The maid of the house, with her face upon her folded arms, as she stood leaning against the wainscot, more audibly expressed her grief than any of the others.39)
Most musical of mourners, weep again!
Lament anew, Urania! He died,
Who was the Sire of an immortal strain,
Blind, old and lonely, when his country’s pride,
The priest, the slave and the liberticide,
Trampled and mock’d with many a loathed rite
Of lust and blood; he went, unterrified,
Into the gulf of death; but his clear Sprite
Yet reigns o’er earth; the third among the sons of light.40)
She delivered the paper to the night duty officer and fell into her grateful bed, the voices of the day still whispering, softer than Mapp’s breathing across the room. On the swarming dark she saw the moth’s wise little face. Those glowing eyes had looked at Buffalo Bill.Out of the cosmic hangover the Smithsonian leaves came her last thought and a coda for her day: *Over this odd world, this half of the world that’s dark now, I have to hunt a thing that lives on tears.*
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Anon06/22/25, 15:32No.24487537
41)
Ah yes, there’s great fun to be had from an eye. It weeps for the least little thing: a yes, a no. The yesses make it weep, the noes too. (The perhapses particularly.)42)
Sissy leapt from the vehicle and ran. Four or five blocks away, out of breath but safe in the neon aura of a just-closing working man’s luncheonette, she stopped to rest. The tears the rapist had longed for made their appearance, heavy and hot, just the way he would have liked them. The thought of it made her stop crying.She examined her thumb. Fresh bruises, like blue jellyfish, were floating lazily to the surface. Sore muscles twitched mechanically, as if typing an essay: “The Thumb As Weapon.”“Twice in one day,” Sissy sobbed. “Twice in one day.”43)
Blindly, he groped his way back to his place in the circle, sank to the rock floor.A voice hissed: “He sheds tears!”It was taken up around the ring: “Usul gives moisture to the dead!”He felt fingers touch his damp cheek, heard the awed whispers.44)
The earth gripped both her ankles as she prayed.
Roots forced from beneath her toenails, they burrowed
Among deep stones to the bedrock. She swayed,Living statuary on a tree’s foundations.
In that moment, her bones became grained wood,
Their marrow pith,Her blood sap, her arms boughs, her fingers twigs,
Her skin rough bark. And already
The gnarling crust has coffined her swollen womb.It swarms over her breasts. It warps upwards
Reaching for her eyes as she bows
Eagerly into it, hurrying the burialOf her face and her hair under thick-webbed bark.
Now all her feeling has gone into wood, with her body.
Yet she weeps,The warm drops ooze from her rind.
These tears are still treasured.
To this day they are known by her name — Myrrh.[*]45)
“Are you there? I say, are you there, woman?” he howled, barking his big knuckles in a furious bombardment.There was nothing but the white living silence.“Ah me! Ah me!” he sighed with strong self-pity, then burst into forced snuffling sobs, which furnished a running accompaniment to his denunciation. “Merciful God!” he wept, “it’s fearful, it’s awful, it’s croo-el. What have I ever done that God should punish me like this in my old age?”There was no answer.“Cynthia! Cynthia!” he howled suddenly, invoking the memory of his first wife, the gaunt tubercular spinstress whose life, it was said, his conduct had done nothing to prolong, but whom he was fond of supplicating now, realising the hurt, the anger he caused to Eliza by doing so. “Cynthia! O Cynthia! Look down upon me in my hour of need! Give me succour! Give me aid! Protect me against this fiend out of Hell!”And he continued, weeping in heavy snuffling burlesque: “O-boo-hoo-hoo! Come down and save me, I beg of you, I entreat you, I implore you, or I perish.”Silence answered.
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Anon06/22/25, 15:33No.24487539
46)
12/18/46Sometimes writing is like being seen crying at a friend’s funeral.47)
Poor Tchaikovsky, who once visited America and spent his first night in a hotel room weeping, because he was homesick.Even if his head at least did not come off.48)
You can never rouse Harris. There is no poetry about Harris — no wild yearning for the unattainable. Harris never “weeps, he knows not why”. If Harris’s eyes fill with tears, you can bet it is because Harris has been eating raw onions, or has put too much Worcester over his chop.49)
Pour the unhappiness out
From your too bitter heart,
Which grieving will not sweeten.Poison grows in this dark.
It is in the water of tears
Its black blooms rise.50)
Death had brought the women into their kingdom, and made them free to deliver each her inheritance of sorrow. They crept forward in a body, gathering speed as they mounted the staircases, their faces rapt and transfigured now as they uttered the first terrible screaming. Their fingers were turned into hooks now, tearing at their own flesh, their breasts, their cheeks, with a lustful abandon as they moved swiftly up the staircase. They were uttering that curious and thrilling ululation which is called the zagreet, their tongues rippling on their palates like mandolines. An ear-splitting chorus of tongue trills in various keys.The old house echoed to the shrieks of these harpies as they took possession of it and invaded the room of death to circle round the silent corpse, still repeating the blood-curdling signal of death, full of an unbearable animal abandon. They began the dances of ritual grief while Nessim and Balthazar sat silent upon their chairs, their heads sunk upon their breasts, their hands clasped — the very picture of human failure. They allowed these fierce quivering screams to pierce them to the very quick of their beings. Only submission now to the ritual of this ancient sorrow was permissible: and sorrow had become an orgiastic frenzy which bordered on madness. The women were dancing now as they circled the body, striking their breasts and howling, but dancing in the slow measured figures of a dance recaptured from longforgotten friezes upon the tombs of the ancient world. They moved and swayed, quivering from throat to ankles, and they twisted and turned calling upon the dead man to rise. ‘Rise, my despair! Rise, my death! Rise, my golden one, my death, my camel, my protector! O beloved body full of seed, arise!’ And then the ghastly ululations torn from their throats, the bitter tears streaming from their torn minds. Round and round they moved, hypnotized by their own lamentations, infecting the whole house with their sorrow while from the dark courtyard below came the deeper, darker hum of their menfolk sobbing as they touched hands in consolation and repeated, to comfort one another: ‘Ma-a-lesh! Let it be forgiven! Nothing avails our grief!’
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Anon06/22/25, 15:34No.24487541
51)
“You haven’t said when,” she said.In six weeks, I said.She just turned away again.Five weeks then, I said after a bit.“I’ll stay here a week and not a day more.”Well, I said I couldn’t agree to that and she turned away again. Then she was crying. I could see her shoulders moving, I wanted to go up to her, I did near the bed but she turned so sharp I think she thought I was going to attack her. Full of tears her eyes were. Cheeks wet. It really upset me to see her like that.“I hate you, I hate you.”I’ll give you my word, I said. When the time’s up you can go as soon as you like.She wouldn’t have it. It was funny, she sat there crying and staring at me, her face was all pink. I thought she was going to come at me again, she looked as if she wanted to. But then she began to dry her eyes. Then she lit a cigarette. And then she said, “Two weeks.”52)
His mistress cried big: with thrilling swiftness her face dissolved and, her mouth smeared out of all shape, she lurched against him with an awkward bump and soaked his throat in abusive sobs. Whereas his wife wept like a miraculous icon, her face immobile while the tears ran, and so silently that as they lay together in bed at night he would have to ask her, “Are you crying?”53)
Perhaps, one day, you may want to come back, I shall wait for that day. I want to stand up in your tears, and splash about in them, and sing. I want to be there when you grovel. I want to be there, I want to watch it, I want the front seat.54)
‘Alas!’ quod she, ‘out of this regioun
I, woful wrecche and infortuned wight,
And born in corsed constellacioun,
Mot goon, and thus departen fro my knight;
Wo worth, allas! That ilke dayes light
On which I saw him first with eyen tweyne,
That causeth me, and I him, al this peyne!’Therwith the teres from hir eyen two
Doun fille, as shour in Aperill ful swythe;
Hir whyte brest she bet, and for the wo
After the deeth she cryed a thousand sythe,
Sin he that wont hir wo was for to lythe,
She mot for-goon; for which disaventure
She held hir-self a forlost creature.55)
It only needs time, he thought. A season, a spring or summer.His head felt unearthed, ancient, like the skull of a mammoth. Drums beat in the sky; his skin was too tight, it would not fit.At three o’clock the next afternoon when the man from the Self-Drive Hire Company called, knocked, and got no answer, when neighbours saw the accumulating milk bottles outside the door and the paper boy found his papers not collected, when the world, as it does in a feat of intensely interested arithmetic, put two and two together, the police were called. They forced an entry to the house. They searched. When they came to his room they found his mother lying on the bed, laced with wires and switches. He was leaning over the transmitting set in the corner of the room. Tears were streaming down his face. He was trying to get in touch with Persia.
A
Anon06/22/25, 15:36No.24487543
56)
“Well?” she said. “Well? Make haste!”I looked at her in perplexity.“Well, where is the letter? Have you brought the letter?” she repeated, clutching at the railing.“No, there is no letter,” I said at last. “Hasn’t he been to you yet?” She turned fearfully pale and looked at me for a long time without moving. I had shattered her last hope.“Well, God be with him,” she said at last in a breaking voice; “God be with him if he leaves me like that.”She dropped her eyes, then tried to look at me and could not. For several minutes she was struggling with her emotion. All at once she turned away, leaning her elbows against the railing, and burst into tears.[*]57)
I shall take care that you find out what I have done for you, when I am past telling you of it myself. Will you say something kind of me then — in the same gentle way that you have when you speak to Miss Rachel? If you do that, and if there are such things as ghosts, I believe my ghost will hear it, and tremble with the pleasure of it.It’s time I left off. I am making myself cry. How am I to see my way to the hiding-place if I let these useless tears come and blind me?58)
She cried all the way into Dorchester. I held her tightly, her face against mine; I remember the smell of her hair, brine and olives and sweat. We hardly spoke; I kept staring outside at the rolling downs, at the wheat that seemed to have the dark glitter of pyrites, at the stretches of heath as theatrically bleak as the farmland was theatrically opulent, taking in great gulps of scenery like brandy against my mounting guilt and emptiness.59)
Whatever it is catches my heart in its hands, whatever it is makes me shudder with love
And painful joy and the tears prickle . . . the Greeks were not its inventors. The Greeks were not the inventorsOf shining clarity and jewel-sharp form and the beauty of God. He was free with men before the Greeks came:
He is here naked on the shining water. Every eye that has a man’s nerves behind it has known him.60)
‘Let her have her Catholic funeral. She would have liked it.’‘What earthly difference does it make.’‘I don’t suppose any for her. But it always pays us to be generous.’‘And what have I to do with it?’‘She always said that her husband had a great respect for you.’He was turning the screw of absurdity too far. I wished to shatter the deadness of this buried room with laughter. I sat down on the sofa and began to shake with it. I thought of Sarah dead upstairs and Henry asleep with a silly smile on his face, and the lover with the strawberry mark discussing the funeral with the lover who had employed Mr Parkis to sprinkle his door-bell with powder. The tears ran down my cheeks as I laughed. Once in the blitz I saw a man laughing outside his house where his wife and child were buried.‘I don’t understand,’ Smythe said.
A
Anon06/22/25, 15:37No.24487550
61)
The grandeur of the house astonished, but could not console her. The rooms were too large for her to move in with ease: whatever she touched she expected to injure, and she crept about in constant terror of something or other; often retreating towards her own chamber to cry; and the little girl who was spoken of in the drawing-room when she left it at night as seeming so desirably sensible of her peculiar good fortune, ended every day’s sorrows by sobbing herself to sleep.62)
There is no tomorrow, not reason’s nor any other. And today, my only today, I spill uselessly into my ten-cent notebook, my eyes used up with tears. This is the hour I once rose up, and beautifully equipped with scorn, commanded the sun to rise. Now this is no hour and it leads nowhere. It dangles meaninglessly.Who shuffles by me gripping chairs for support? I do. I myself. I reel round the café, solicited by the prostitute sleep. Every tear is wept and lies staining its falling place. I am without words. I am without thoughts. But *quia amore langueo*. I am dying for love. This is the language of love.63)
I told her that the affair was temporary, that my love for her was temporary, and doubtless her love for me was temporary. I spoke of mortality and the fragile and shadowy nature of human arrangements and the jumbled unreality of human minds, while her large light brown eyes spoke to me of the eternal. She said, I want to be perfect for you so that you can leave me without pain, and this perfect expression of love simply irritated me. She said, I will wait forever, although I know . . . I am not . . . waiting for . . . anything. What a love duet, and how much I enjoyed it although in her suffering I suffered a little too. Certainly she concealed her pain as much as she could; but towards the end it was impossible. She cried before me with wide open eyes, not staunching the tears. Her tears fell on my sleeve, on my hand like storm rain. And when at last I told her to go she went like a shadow, with silent swift obedience. After that I went on my second visit to Japan. The taste of sake still makes me remember Lizzie’s tears.64)
“ . . . How can I hope to be ever set at large again” (he said), “who have been imprisoned so justly for stealing so handsome a motor-car in such an audacious manner, and for such lurid and imaginative cheek, bestowed upon such a number of fat, red-faced policemen!” (Here his sobs choked him.)65)
“Fuck you,” I tell her.“You’re just no good, are you?”“I told you. I warned you. Don’t you ever to say that to me again.”“I’ll say anything I want,” she shouts back at me heatedly. “I’m not afraid of you.”“Yes, you say that to me often,” I remind her. “And then you sober up, and discover that you are.”She shatters. “You bastard.” The tears form quickly and are streaming down her face. “You won another argument, didn’t you?”
A
Anon06/22/25, 15:38No.24487555
66)
AUGUST 21.In vain do I stretch out my arms toward her when I awaken in the morning from my weary slumbers. In vain do I seek for her at night in my bed, when some innocent dream has happily deceived me, and placed her near me in the fields, when I have seized her hand and covered it with countless kisses. And when I feel for her in the half confusion of sleep, with the happy sense that she is near, tears flow from my oppressed heart; and, bereft of all comfort, I weep over my future woes.[*]67)
“Leave me alone! Oh, you infernal bullies, leave me alone! Haven’t I had enough?”“He says we must leave him alone,” said McTurk.“He says we are bullies, an’ we haven’t even begun yet,” said Beetle. “You’re ungrateful, Seffy. Golly! You do look an atrocity and a half!”“He says he has had enough,” said Stalky. “He errs!”“Well, to work, to work!” chanted McTurk, waving a stump. “Come on, my giddy Narcissus. Don’t fall in love with your own reflection!”“Oh, let him off,” said Campbell from his corner; “he’s blubbing, too.”Sefton cried like a twelve-year-old with pain, shame, wounded vanity, and utter helplessness.68)
Hillsides knit with ice came apart. Ice slipped from everything, limb, twig, stump, rock, and cascaded chinking to ground. Mist lifted from the bottoms to lie over the tracks but did not lift much above her head. Mist smeared like tears squashed on her cheeks. She could see the sky but her feet were cloudy. The stout ties, moistened, released their tar smell, and she kicked from one wet tie to the next, sniffing tar in the mist and listening to ice chime in the trees or slip loose to shatter. She wiped the mist that felt like tears on her cheeks and pulled her hood tight. Larger ice shapes fell thudding. Runnels of high melt cut wee downhill gutters in the snow. Ice sounds and trickle sounds and her boots thumping. At a bridge across a frozen creek she paused to stare down. She tried to see past the pocked skin of ice to the depths of flowing water. She was strangely still and staring, still and staring on the bridge until she understood that her eyes searched for a body beneath that ice, and she crouched to her knees and cried, cried until tears ran down her chest.69)
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.[*]70)
He made a last effort to collect himself. “But that was a fortnight ago, wasn’t it? I thought you said you weren’t sure till today.”Her colour burned deeper, but she held his gaze. “No; I wasn’t sure then — but I told her I was. And you see I was right!” she exclaimed, her blue eyes wet with victory.
A
Anon06/22/25, 15:39No.24487557
71)
“You must understand that Beryl is a woman of strict Catholic principle fortified by the prejudices of the middle class. I couldn’t possibly bring her here. It is a matter of indifference whether you choose to live in sin with Rex or Charles or both — I have always avoided enquiry into the details of your ménage — but in no case would Beryl consent to be your guest.”Julia rose. “Why, you pompous ass . . . ” she said, stopped, and turned towards the door.At first I thought she was overcome by laughter; then, as I opened the door to her, I saw with consternation that she was in tears. I hesitated. She slipped past me without a glance.72)
Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps.73)
Soon the two ships diverged their wakes; and long as the strange vessel was in view, she was seen to yaw hither and thither at every dark spot, however small, on the sea. This way and that her yards were swung round; starboard and larboard, she continued to tack; now she beat against a head sea; and again it pushed her before it; while all the while, her masts and yards were thickly clustered with men, as three tall cherry trees, when the boys are cherrying among the boughs.But by her still halting course and winding, woeful way, you plainly saw that this ship that so wept with spray, still remained without comfort. She was Rachel, weeping for her children, because they were not.74)
As I approached Miss Kenton’s door, I saw from the light seeping around its edges that she was still within. And that was the moment, I am now sure, that has remained so persistently lodged in my memory — that moment as I paused in the dimness of the corridor, the tray in my hands, an ever-growing conviction mounting within me that just a few yards away, on the other side of that door, Miss Kenton was at that moment crying. As I recall, there was no real evidence to account for this conviction — I had certainly not heard any sounds of crying — and yet I remember being quite certain that were I to knock and enter, I would discover her in tears. I do not know how long I remained standing there; at the time it seemed a significant period, but in reality, I suspect, it was only a matter of a few seconds. For, of course, I was required to hurry upstairs to serve some of the most distinguished gentlemen of the land and I cannot imagine I would have delayed unduly.75)
CHILD:
Look,FIRST VOICE:
says a child to her mother as they pass by the window of Schooner House,CHILD:
Captain Cat is crying.FIRST VOICE:
Captain Cat is cryingCAPTAIN CAT
Come back, come back,FIRST VOICE:
up the silences and echoes of the passages of the eternal night.CHILD:
He’s crying all over his nose,FIRST VOICE:
says the child. Mother and child move on down the street.CHILD:
He’s got a nose like strawberries,FIRST VOICE:
the child says; and then she forgets him too.
A
Anon06/22/25, 15:41No.24487560
76)
“Has your suit, then, been unsuccessfully paid to the Saxon heiress?” said the Templar.“By the bones of Thomas a Becket,” answered De Bracy, “the Lady Rowena must have heard that I cannot endure the sight of women’s tears.”“Away!” said the Templar; “thou a leader of a Free Company, and regard a woman’s tears! A few drops sprinkled on the torch of love, make the flame blaze the brighter.”77)
And now, Lord, these things are passed by, and time hath assuaged my wound. May I learn from Thee, who art Truth, and approach the ear of my heart unto Thy mouth, that Thou mayest tell me why weeping is sweet to the miserable?[*]78)
She threw back her veil; heavenly fair shone forth her pure countenance. Trembling with love and the awe of approaching death, the knight leant towards her. She kissed him with a holy kiss; but she relaxed not her hold, pressing him more closely in her arms, and weeping as if she would weep away her soul. Tears rushed into the knight’s eyes, while a thrill both of bliss and agony shot through his heart, until he at last expired, sinking softly back from her fair arms upon the pillow of his couch a corpse.“I have wept him to death!” said she to some domestics, who met her in the ante-chamber; and passing through the terrified group, she went slowly out, and disappeared in the fountain.[*]79)
At the door he stopped with his hand on the knob. “I shall leave Florence to-morrow,” he said without a quaver.“I’m delighted to hear it!” she answered passionately. Five minutes after he had gone out she burst into tears.80)
Quite deliberately, realizing that if he did not act at once he would never act again, he lifted a large stone bottle of red ink from the table at his side and, on reaching Mr Fluke and finding his head thrown back, his eyes closed, and his strong jaws wide open in a paroxysm of seismic laughter, Mr Bellgrove poured the entire contents down the funnel of Fluke’s throat in one movement of the wrist. Turning to the staff, ‘Perch-Prism,’ he said, in a voice of such patriarchal authority as startled the professors almost as much as the ink-pouring, ‘you will set about organizing the search for his Lordship. Take the staff with you to the red-stone yard. Flannelcat, you will get Mr Fluke removed to the sick-room. Fetch the doctor for him. Report progress this evening. I shall be found in the Headmaster’s study. Good morning. Gentlemen.’As he swept out of the room with a bellying sweep of his gown and a toss of his silver hair, his old heart was beating madly. Oh, the joy of giving orders! Oh, the joy of it! Once he had closed the door behind him, he ran, with high monstrous bounds, to the Headmaster’s study and collapsed into the Headmaster’s chair — *his* chair from now onwards. He hugged his knees against his chin, flopped over on his side, and wept with the first real sense of happiness he had known for many years.
A
Anon06/22/25, 15:42No.24487563
81)
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader. For me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn’t know I knew.82)
She looked pleadingly and hopelessly at me and asked if I could give her no consolation. What could she do to make Christ have mercy upon her? I answered that it was presumptuous of her to ask such a thing, for she was so full of sin that it was natural that the Savior should not listen to her prayers. He had not been crucified for the redemption of such as she. She listened meekly and said that she felt that too. She was not worthly that He should listen to her. She was aware of this in her innermost consciousness when she knelt praying before his image. She sat down sighing, but somewhat calmer, and began to talk about herself as the most depraved of all mankind, and that she never could share in the heavenly grace. “I have loved much,” she said, “but I have not loved God and His Son, and so my punishment is only just.”Then she thanked me for my kindness. It was a relief to be able to confess, even if, as she well understood, she could not hope for any absolution. And it was the first time she had been able to weep.[*]83)
She reaches for his hand, and he lets her
take it. Why not? Where’s the harm?
Let her. His mind’s made up. She covers his
fingers with kisses, tears fall onto his wrist.He draws on his cigarette and looks at her
as a man would look indifferently on
a cloud, a tree, or a field of oats at sunset.
He narrows his eyes against the smoke. From time
to time he uses the ashtray as he waits
for her to finish weeping.84)
The tears began to flow and sobs shook him. He gave himself up to them now for the first time on the island; great, shuddering spasms of grief that seemed to wrench his whole body. His voice rose under the black smoke before the burning wreckage of the island; and infected by that emotion, the other little boys began to shake and sob too.85)
“I’ve got a man in England who buys me clothes. He sends over a selection of things at the beginning of each season, spring and fall.”He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one, before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel, which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-coloured disarray. While we admired he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher — shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange, with monograms of indian blue. Suddenly, with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily.“They’re such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. “It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such — such beautiful shirts before.”
A
Anon06/22/25, 15:43No.24487565
86)
‘I am unhappy, Father,’ I said. ‘I have loved this town and the people in it. I have drunk them down with delight. But they have some poison in them which I cannot stand. If I think of them now, I vomit up my soul. Do you know of a cure for me?’‘Why, yes,’ he said, ‘I know of a cure for everything: salt water.’‘Salt water?’ I asked him.‘Yes,’ he said, ‘in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea.’87)
A spell was broken. The great scene of grief, in which the wild infant bore a part, had developed all her sympathies; and as her tears fell upon her father’s cheek, they were the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor forever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it.88)
One more paragraph:“Then once more I bowed my head. It is no shame to have wept in Palestine. I wept, when I saw Jerusalem, I wept when I lay in the starlight at Bethlehem. I wept on the blessed shores of Galilee. My hand was no less firm on the rein, my anger did not tremble on the trigger of my pistol when I rode with it in my right hand along the shore of the blue sea” (weeping.) “My eye was not dimmed by those tears nor my heart in aught weakened. Let him who would sneer at my emotion close this volume here, for he will find little to his taste in my journeyings through Holy Land.”He never bored but he struck water.89)
Men gasped and began to breathe again, unaware that for a moment they had ceased to breathe. Thornton was running behind, encouraging Buck with short, cheery words. The distance had been measured off, and as he neared the pile of firewood which marked the end of the hundred yards, a cheer began to grow and grow, which burst into a roar as he passed the firewood and halted at command. Every man was tearing himself loose, even Matthewson. Hats and mittens were flying in the air. Men were shaking hands, it did not matter with whom, and bubbling over in a general incoherent babel.But Thornton fell on his knees beside Buck. Head was against head, and he was shaking him back and forth. Those who hurried up heard him cursing Buck, and he cursed him long and fervently, and softly and lovingly.“Gad, sir! Gad, sir!” spluttered the Skookum Bench king. “I’ll give you a thousand for him, sir, a thousand, sir — twelve hundred, sir.”Thornton rose to his feet. His eyes were wet. The tears were streaming frankly down his cheeks. “Sir,” he said to the Skookum Bench king, “no, sir. You can go to hell, sir. It’s the best I can do for you, sir.”90)
We had been everywhere. We had really seen nothing. And I catch myself thinking today that our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country that by then, in retrospect, was no more to us than a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour books, old tyres, and her sobs in the night — every night, every night — the moment I feigned sleep.
A
Anon06/22/25, 15:44No.24487566
91)
My tears, which I could not restrain, have blotted half your letter: I wish they had effaced the whole and that I had returned it to you in that condition. I should then have been satisfied with the little time I kept it, but it was demanded of me too soon.[*]92)
See Priam! Even here there are renown’s rewards;
There are the tears of things, that touch the mortal mind.[*]93)
The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover’s eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.Generous tears filled Gabriel’s eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. . . .94)
“He sho a preacher, mon! He didn’t look like much at first, but hush!”“He seed de power en de glory.”“Yes, suh. He seed hit. Face to face he seed hit.”Dilsey made no sound, her face did not quiver as the tears took their sunken and devious courses, walking with her head up, making no effort to dry them away even.“Whyn’t you quit dat, mammy?” Frony said. “Wid all dese people lookin. We be passin white folks soon.”“I’ve seed de first en de last,” Dilsey said. “Never you mind me.”95)
The crowd began singing “Bayan Ko” (“My Country”), the anthem of the campaign, written in the 1930s, during American rule. They sang in the clear, harmonious voice that seems to be given to all the world’s put-upon people. The words, in Tagalog, mean:My country was seized and driven to misery.
Birds were given the freedom of flight.
Cage them and they will cry
Just like a beautiful country
That has no freedom. . . .
Philippines that I adore,
Nest of tears and suffering,
My ambition is to see you free.
If our people will unite,
Then this will come to be.Standing there by the altar with the rest of the press corps, looking out at these nice, determined faces, feeling this appetite for hope, I began to cry. I was standing there like a big fool with tears running down my face. I remember it all from twenty years ago when I was in a crowd like this — the meetings, the marches, the joy of moral certitude, romance amidst the tear gas. I remember the wonderful fight against prejudice, poverty, injustice, a new day dawning. . . . And I remember how it all slipped away and came to shit.
A
Anon06/22/25, 15:45No.24487571
96)
Emmy’s head sank down, and for almost the last time in which she shall be called upon to weep in this history, she commenced that work.97)
“Thou’rt guilty of nothing,” Mrs. Russecks said, looking past him to her daughter. “’Tis *you* that have been naughty, Henrietta, to tell tales out of school — ” She got no farther, for Henrietta ran weeping to embrace her mother and beg forgiveness; yet it was clear that the girl’s emotion was not contrition for any misdemeanor, but sympathy and love inspired by what she had learned. Mrs. Russecks kissed her forehead and turned her eyes for the first time, eager and yet pained, to the twins; she managed to control her feelings until Anna too was moved to embrace her, whereupon she cried “Sweet babes!” and surrendered to her tears.There ensued such a general chorus of weeping that for some minutes no other sound was heard in the millhouse. Everyone embraced everyone else in the spirit summed up by Ebenezer, the first to speak when the crest of the flood had passed and everyone was sniffling privately.“*Sunt lacrimae rerum*,” he declared, wiping his eyes.98)
Then raising the cup to his lips, quite readily and cheerfully he drank off the poison. And hitherto most of us had been able to control our sorrow; but now when we saw him drinking, and saw too that he had finished the draught, we could no longer forbear, and in spite of myself my own tears were flowing fast; so that I covered my face and wept, not for him, but at the thought of my own calamity in having to part from such a friend.[*]99)
He said at last, heavily and slowly, “In many ways I am an ignorant man; it is I who am foolish, not you. I have not come to see you because I thought — I felt that I was becoming a nuisance. Maybe that was not true.”“No,” she said. “No, it wasn’t true.”Still not looking at her, he continued, “And I didn’t want to cause you the discomfort of having to deal with — with my feelings for you, which, I knew, sooner or later, would become obvious if I kept seeing you.”She did not move; two tears welled over her lashes and ran down her cheeks; she did not brush them away.“I was perhaps selfish. I felt that nothing could come of this except awkwardness for you and unhappiness for me. You know my — circumstances. It seemed to me impossible that you could — that you could feel for me anything but — ”“Shut up,” she said softly, fiercely. “Oh, my dear, shut up and come over here.”100)
Sing unto the LORD, O ye saints of his, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness.For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.[*]
A
Anon06/22/25, 16:31No.24487661
12 is keats belle dam sans mercie
15 is doyle hound baskervilles
17 im guessing cormac mccarthy idk which book
27 is longfellow the ballad about the fisherman and his daughter getting caught in a storm
54 is chaucer im guessing
76 is scott ivanhoe
78 is la motte foque undine
A
Anon06/22/25, 18:17No.24487879
8) Is this Hector in the Iliad?
14) Assuming (mostly via name drop) that this is Alice in Wonderland.
19) Paradise Lost
26) This is either Neuromancer or one of the sequels.
44) Metamorphoses?
51) I'm coming far out of left field, but could this be The Magus? I want to say the main character upset his girlfriend in a similar way.
48) Three Men in a Boat
64) Wind in the Willows
73) Moby Dick (the Rachel seeking the captain's son)
74) Remains of the Day
84) Lord of the Flies?
85) Great Gatsby
92) The Aeneid (also quoted by whatever 97 is)
A
Anon06/22/25, 22:53No.24488550
33. Dante, Commedia
66. Goethe, Werther
98. Plato, Apology
A
Anon06/23/25, 05:39No.24489220
39 From near the beginning of Shelley's elegy to Keats, Adonais
A
Anon06/23/25, 05:46No.24489230
35 guessing Douty, somewhere in Arabia Deserta
A
Anon06/23/25, 20:25No.24490759
where does quiz anon get all his material from
is he incredibly well read or does he just crawl the internet for exceprts