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No radiant pearl which crested Fortune wears,
No gem that twinkling hangs from Beauty's ears,
Not the bright stars which Night's blue arch adorn,
Nor rising suns that gild the vernal morn,
Shine with such lustre as the tear that flows
Down Virtue's manly cheek for others' woes.

— Erasmus Darwin The Botanic Garden (1791)

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Sadness

More quotes by Erasmus Darwin

And hail their queen, fair regent of the night.

And the mass starts into a million suns;
Earths round each sun with quick explosions burst,
And second planets issue from the first.

The Botanic Garden (1791)

On the blasted heath
Fell Upas sits, the hydra-tree of death.

Fell Oestrus buries in her rapid course
Her countless brood in stag, or bull, or horse;
Whose hungry larva eats its living way,
Hatch'd by the warmth, and issues into day.

The Temple of Nature (1804)

The wing'd Ichneumon for her embryon young
Gores with sharp horn the caterpillar throng.
The cruel larva mines its silky course,
And tears the vitals of its fostering nurse.

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Life could not be lived wet, whether it be in rain or tears.

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In much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

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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.

Abraham Lincoln

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: Erasmus Darwin (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.