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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 Tears, Idle Tears (1850)

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Sadness

More quotes by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.

Acting the law we live by without fear;
And, because right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.

Where love could walk with banish'd Hope no more.

The Lover's Tale (1879)

Love lieth deep; Love dwells not in lip-depths.

The Lover's Tale (1879)

Thou that singest wheat and woodland, tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd;
All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely word.

All Alfred, Lord Tennyson quotes →

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In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares.

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Every joy that some experience is paid for by the sorrow of others.

Kaneko Fumiko The Prison Memoirs of a Japanese Woman (1991)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Alfred, Lord Tennyson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.