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Why wilt thou ever scare me with thy tears,
And make me tremble lest a saying learnt,
In days far-off, on that dark earth, be true?
The gods themselves cannot recall their gifts.

— Alfred, Lord Tennyson

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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.

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