She Wept Quotes & Sayings

This is what I get very upset at ... ' Temple, who was driving suddenly faltered and wept. 'I've read that libraries are where immortality lies ... I don't want my thoughts to die with me ... I want to have done something ... I'm not interested in power, or piles of money. I want to leave something behind. I want to make a positive contribution - know that my life has meaning, Right now, I'm talking about things at the very core of my experience.' I was stunned. As I stepped out of the car to say goodbye, I said, 'I'm going to hug you. I hope you don't mind.' I hugged her - and (I think) she hugged me back. — Oliver Sacks

As he clutched her in his shaking hands and wept against her, he whispered into her ear, the words that made him believe. "Love bears all things. Endures all things," he said. "Ours has, hasn't it?" She nodded and held him tighter. "But can it endure this, Anais? This demon who holds me so mercilessly in its claws?"
She touched his face and kissed him. "My love can and will, Lindsay. I will be here when you open your eyes. I will give you whatever you need to make it more bearable. — Charlotte Featherstone

I have cried over myself a hundred times this summer, she thought, I have wept over my big feet and my skinny legs and my nose, I have even cried over my stupid shoes, and now when I have true sadness there are no tears left. — Betsy Byars

... But as soon as the dirty snow disappeared from the sidewalks and streets, as soon as the slightly rotten, disquieting spring breeze wafted through the window, Margarita Nikolaevna began to grieve more than in winter. She often wept in secret, a long and bitter weeping. She did not know who it was she loved: a living man or a dead one? And the longer the desperate days went on, the more often, especially at twilight, did the thought come to her that she was bound to a dead man.
She had either to forget him or to die herself. It was impossible to drag on with such a life. Impossible! Forget him, whatever the cost - forget him! But he would not be forgotten, that was the trouble. — Mikhail Bulgakov

This was what real grief felt like - she had never truly felt it before. All the times she had been sad, all the times she had wept in her life, all the glooms and melancholies were merely moods, mere passing whims. Grief was a different thing altogether. — Dan Chaon

Tears

The first woman who ever wept
was appalled at what stung
her eyes and ran down her cheeks.
Saltwater. Seawater.
How was it possible?
Hadn't she and the man
spent many days moving
upland to where the grass
flourished, where the stream
quenched their thirst with sweet water?
How could she have carried these sea drops
as if they were precious seeds;
where could she have stowed them?
She looked at the watchful gazelles
and the heavy-lidded frogs;
she looked at glass-eyed birds
and nervous, black-eyed mice.
None of them wept, not even the fish
that dripped in her hands when she caught them.
Not even the man. Only she
carried the sea inside her body. — Lisel Mueller

His grip firmed on her arms. "I'm here. You're not alone now."

Hardly poetry, those words. A simple statement of fact. They scarcely shared the same alphabet as kindness. If true comfort were a nourishing, wholemeal loaf, what he offered her were a few stale crumbs.

It didn't matter. It didn't matter. She was a starving girl, and she hadn't the dignity to refuse.

"I'm so sorry," she managed, choking back a sob. "You're not going to like this."

And with that, Kate fell into his immense, rigid, unwilling embrace - and wept. — Tessa Dare

Though this new forest grew mightily, elsewhere the mighty jungles fell. Elsewhere the coastal rain forests that furred the body of the world were torn and riven. Elsewhere the last of the old growth the last of the world's own garment were ripped away. It was in this time, now, that the mother of us all was stripped naked and left to die in shame of her children, she who had been robed in glory like this, adorned like this. I bent my head upon the roots and wept, sorrowing for the trees. — Sheri S. Tepper

Turning, she held her arms out to him in a maternal gesture. McKenna went to her at once, his black head lowering to her soft, round shoulder as he wept. — Lisa Kleypas

It was one of her delightful qualities; she wept with those who wept. — Karen Joy Fowler

Edain came out of Midhir's hill, and lay
Beside young Aengus in his tower of glass,
Where time is drowned in odour-laden winds
And Druid moons, and murmuring of boughs,
And sleepy boughs, and boughs where apples made
Of opal and ruhy and pale chrysolite
Awake unsleeping fires; and wove seven strings,
Sweet with all music, out of his long hair,
Because her hands had been made wild by love.
When Midhir's wife had changed her to a fly,
He made a harp with Druid apple-wood
That she among her winds might know he wept;
And from that hour he has watched over none
But faithful lovers. — W.B.Yeats

He held her and rocked her, believing, rightly or wrongly, that Ellie wept for the very intractability of death, its imperviousness to argument or to a little girl's tears; that she wept over its cruel unpredictability; and that she wept because of the human being's wonderful, deadly ability to translate symbols into conclusions that were either fine and noble or blackly terrifying. If all those animals had died and been buried, then Church could die
(any time!)
and be buried; and if that could happen to Church, it could happen to her mother, her father, her baby brother. To herself. Death was a vague idea; the Pet Sematary was real. In the texture of those rude markers were truths which even a child's hands could feel. — Stephen King

She wept for every person who had ever been in a war, and she prayed that someday there would be no more fighting, and people could finally live in peace. — Mark Nolan

Sitting on the divan, she touched a finger to the bullet wound in his chest. It seemed so small, so incapable of creating the exodus of blood which had drenched his clothes and skin as he lay in the hospital, waiting for her to claim him. Death has been instantaneous, they said, as if there were a relief in that. She did not want death to have been instantaneous; she wanted to have at least held his hand as he lay dying and said goodbye to him in terms other than the, 'Why are you doing again? You'll find nothing. Stay. Oh all right, go,' that had been her farewell to him that morning.

Stay. Stay. Stay. She should have repeated it like a madwoman, banged her head against the wall in a frenzy, hit him and wept. She should have said it just one more time, just a little more forcefully. She should have taken his dear, sweet head in her hands and kissed his eyes and forehead. Stay. — Kamila Shamsie

Then, just like that, Gaby remembered the real last time she had seen Alma cry. It was the day Mrs. Gomez had picked the girls up from school early to tell them that Gaby's mom had been arrested at work. Alma wept immediately. She seemed to know what it meant before Gaby could even grasp Mrs. Gomez's words. Two weeks later, when her mom was deported, Gaby cried for a week straight. It was Alma who finally dragged her outside and back into the world. — Angela Cervantes

And she wept as well for the others lost in the Dark War, and she wept for her mother and the loss she had endured, and she wept for Emma and the Blackthorns, remembering how they had fought back tears when she had told them that she had seen Mark in the tunnels of Faerie, and how he belonged to the Hunt now, and she wept for Simon and the hole in her heart where he had been, and the she would miss him every day until she died, and she wept for herself and the changes that had been wrought in her, because sometimes even change for the better felt like a little death. — Cassandra Clare

Our bodies aren't strangers,' he said, his voice ragged. 'Our spirits aren't strangers'. He held her face in his hands. 'Tell me what part of me is stranger to you and I'll destroy that part of me.'
And she wept to hear his words. — Melina Marchetta

I wept as I understood. Kill me now, she was saying. Do it fast. Don't make it hurt. Kill me now.
I couldn't do it.
But she held my gaze-held my gaze and nodded.
As I lifted the ash dagger, something inside me fractured so completely that there would be no hope of ever repairing it. No matter how many years passed, no matter how many times I might try to paint her face. — Sarah J. Maas

She wept over the vanity of her desires, which had so ardently flown to the blossoming flesh that now had already withered forever. — Marcel Proust

What is your name?' she asked.

The youth ignored her, lowering his eyelids against the sun. She repeated her question. Again he ignored her, so she touched his arm, and he turned his head and looked at her, suddenly back from his own world, his eyes wary, half afraid. But he saw no anger in her; only the stains of tears, and an awful despair. His face changed, and a look of profound sorrow and compassion came over him. Very slowly he lifted his hand and wiped the tears from her cheeks. No other man could have touched her that morning; but the mad youth, with his extraordinary tenderness, gave such a depth of consolation that she found herself leaning her cheek against his hand, and sobbing. He wept with her, and there wove between them an understanding, a unity deep and poignant and powerful. — Sherryl Jordan

Before she continued her search she sat in his revolving desk chair, and wept for the passing of time, and the necessary death of the well-loved, wise old man. — Robertson Davies

She sat down, grinned - and made her lip throb again. "I love you."
"Excellent news. You can prove it with lots of sex."
"We had sex a few hours ago."
"No, we made love a few hours ago - angels surely wept. I want sex for this job, as it's given me a buggering headache trying to straddle your far-famed line. I want mad sex, with costumes - maybe props - and an intriguing story line."
"Milking it, pal. — J.D. Robb

She was a fool. She wept like a helpless child that night at Chester's while the entire club watched. Not because you broke her finger or threatened her but because you were alive and she was that happy to see you. She was always happy to see you. She lit up inside. You lost her. You let her be lost. — Karen Marie Moning

Hyacinth, who wept before sleep, had wept that night; he had wept too - had wept in joy and pain, and in joy at his pain. When tears were done and their heads rested on one pillow, she had said that no man had ever wept with her before. Two floors below them, their reflected images knelt in the fishpond at Thelxiepeia's feet, subsistent but invisible. There she would weep for him longer than they lived. He lowered his naked body into a rising pool, warm and scarcely less romantic. Ermine — Gene Wolfe

O Time! consumer of all things; O envious age! thou dost destroy all things and devour all things with the relentless teeth of years, little by little in a slow death. Helen, when she looked in her mirror, seeing the withered wrinkles made in her face by old age, wept and wondered why she had twice been carried away. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Recuerdo
We were very tired, we were very merry
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.
We were very tired, we were very merry
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.
We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

It was no warning, no judgment, simply her name, and she could have wept at the recognition of it. — Patricia A. McKillip

The world wept a silent, windless downpour, a befitting accompaniment to the arrival of death.
However, Lady Brenna Hilliard, only daughter of the late Earl Lundsford, had yet to join in the weeping. Shock and disbelief kept her from the comfort of tears. The torrent would come, she knew, in a wave of sudden grief, but for now her emotions were elusive, too numb to be felt. — Cynthia Wicklund

I wept as I understood. >i< Kill me now, >/i< she was saying. >i< Do it fast. Don't make it hurt. Kill me now. >/i< — Sarah J. Maas

My bright and merry star,
Things I would tell our child if I could-

1. Love matters.
2. So does friendship.
3. Everyone makes mistakes, including you. Be generous with others' errors, and honest about your own.
4.Your mother is the truest, kindest, sweetest soul I've ever know. I love her. And I love you-for your own sake, not solely for your mother's.
Dominic
Only then did she break. sinking to the floor, covering her head with her arms, Minuette huddled and wept. — Laura Anderson

She was dressed in white, and her tunic had amazing flared sleeves which trailed on the ground behind her as she glided down the stairs. Her hair was a mass of dark curls tumbling around her face, and she had dark, dark eyes. Jack realized that this was what the chansons meant when they referred to a beautiful princess in a castle. No wonder the knights all wept when the princess died. — Ken Follett

And all you can do is just read," she said. She raised her voice an screamed, "You just read and read and read!" Then she threw herself down on the table and wept. — Tove Jansson

I was an infant when my mother went To see an atheist burned. She took me there. The dark-robed priests were met around the pile; The multitude was gazing silently; And as the culprit passed with dauntless mien, Tempered disdain in his unaltering eye, Mixed with a quiet smile, shone calmly forth; The thirsty fire crept round his manly limbs; His resolute eyes were scorched to blindness soon; His death-pang rent my heart! the insensate mob Uttered a cry of triumph, and I wept. Weep not, child! cried my mother, for that man Has said, 'There is no God.' — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Yea, she hath passed hereby, and blessed the sheaves,
And the great garths, and stacks, and quiet farms,
And all the tawny, and the crimson leaves.
Yea, she hath passed with poppies in her arms,
Under the star of dusk, through stealing mist,
And blessed the earth, and gone, while no man wist.
With slow, reluctant feet, and weary eyes,
And eye-lids heavy with the coming sleep,
With small breasts lifted up in stress of sighs,
She passed, as shadows pass, among the sheep;
While the earth dreamed, and only I was ware
Of that faint fragrance blown from her soft hair.
The land lay steeped in peace of silent dreams;
There was no sound amid the sacred boughs.
Nor any mournful music in her streams:
Only I saw the shadow on her brows,
Only I knew her for the yearly slain,
And wept, and weep until she come again. — Frederic Manning

Once giving way to tears, she wept bitterly for all that she had lost, and all that she must lose so soon. Her mother had had the courage to leave everything she loved and to come out here with her father; she in turn ought to show just that same courage about going back, but she could not find it in her heart. — Willa Cather

It was the sound of Elide's weeping-that girl of quiet steel and quick-silver wit who had not wept for herself or her sorry life, only faced it with grim determination-that made Manon snap entirely.
She killed those guards in the hall.
She saw what they had been laughing at: the girl gripped between two other guards, her robe tugged opened to reveal her nakedness, the full extent of that ruined leg-
Her grandmother had sold them to these people.
She was a Blackbeak; she was no one's slave. No one's prize horse to breed.
Neither was Elide. — Sarah J. Maas

She seemed to have encompassed time. She postulated the elapsed years during which no honeymoon nor any change had taken place, out of which the (now) five faces looked with a sort of lifeless and perennial bloom like painted portraits hung in a vacuum, each taken at its forewarned peak and smoothed of all thought and experience, the originals of which had lived and died so long ago that their joys and griefs must now be forgotten even by the very boards on which they had strutted and postured and laughed and wept. — William Faulkner

So many, such mingled emotions, that no one of them was separable from the others! She could have wept for her mother, who was crying quietly back there ten feet and for the loveliness of the June sunlight flooding in at the windows. She was beyond all conscious perceptions. Only a sense, colored with delirious wild excitement, that the ultimately important was happening - and a trust, fierce and passionate, burning in her like a prayer, that in a moment she would be forever and securely safe. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Miss Clover," said Minister Fairweller to the Viscount after a long moment, "is not here. She has gone to a speech with her father, in Werttemberg. I could set you up with a carriage, if you'd like."
The girls' mouths dropped open. Viscount Duquette did not see.
"Well!" he said,clicking his heels together. "It is nice to see that someone behaves like a gentleman around here!"
The girls found Clover about an hour later, hidinga mong the untrimmed unicorn and lion topiaries, weeping on a stone bench. They flocked to her, wrapped an extra shawl around her shoulders, and told her the story.
"Werttemberg, though," said Eve. That's two countries away!"
Clover wept and laughed at the same time. — Heather Dixon

I'll tell you the story of the wave and the rock. It's an old story. Older than we are. Listen. Once upon a time there was a wave who loved a rock in the sea, let us say in the Bay of Capri. The wave foamed and swirled around the rock, she kissed him day and night, she embraced him with her white arms, she sighed and wept and besought him to come to her. She loved him and stormed about him and in that way slowly undermined him, and one day he yielded, completely undermined, and sank into her arms."
"And suddenly he was no longer a rock to be played with, to be loved, to be dreamed of. He was only a block of stone at the bottom of the sea, drowned in her. The wave felt disappointed and deceived and looked for another rock
"What does that mean? He should have remained a rock."
"The wave always says that. But things that move are stronger than immovable things. Water is stronger than rocks. — Erich Maria Remarque

When I got back to my office Tween was there. She rose from the foyer couch as I wheezed in off the ramp. I took one look at her and said, "Come inside." She followed me through the inner door. I waved my hand over the infra-red plate and it closed. Then I put out my arms.
She bleated like a new-born lamb and flew to me. Her tears were scalding, and I don't think human muscles are built for the wrenching those agonized sobs gave her. People should cry more. They ought to learn how to do it easily, like laughing or sweating. Crying piles up. In people like Tween, who do nothing if they can't smile and make a habit-pattern of it, it really piles up. With a reservoir like that, and no developed outlet, things get torn when the pressure builds too high.
I just held her tight so she wouldn't explode. The only thing I said to her was "sh-h-h" once when she tried to talk while she wept. One thing at a time. — Theodore Sturgeon

I once had a love who folded secrets between her thighs like napkins
and concealed memories in the valley of her breasts.
There was no match for the freckles on her chest,
and no one could mistake them for a field of honeysuckles.
Upon her lips, a thousand lies were spread in sweet gloss.
Her kiss was like a storybook from ancient history.
She was at home with the body of a man inside her, beside her.
At night, when she lay in bed crying,
no one could mistake the tears she wept for a summer shower
She is gone, my love. She was a wanderess, a wildflower. — Roman Payne

Now from his breast into the eyes the ache
of longing mounted, and he wept at last,
his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms,
longed for as the sunwarmed earth is longed for by a swimmer
spent in rough water where his ship went down
under Poseidon's blows, gale winds and tons of sea.
Few men can keep alive through a big serf
to crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches
in joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind:
and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband,
her white arms round him pressed as though forever. — Homer

She wept easily. This did not mean that she felt things more deeply than others did. It certainly did not mean that she was fragile or sentimental or ready to bring that sodden leverage to bear on the slights that came with being the baby of the family. — Marilynne Robinson

For a long time, she wept, not so much for him and not at all for herself, but for the condition of all things and for the way the world could be but is not. — Dean Koontz

hurt, Hannah prayed to the Lord and wept with many tears. 11 Making a vow, she pleaded, "Lord of Hosts, if You will take notice of Your servant's affliction, remember and not forget me, and give Your servant a son, I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and his hair will never be cut. — Anonymous

Then she took the heart and liver of the little girl, and she stewed them and brought them into the house for supper. The husband tasted them and shook his head. He said they tasted very strangely. She gave some to the little boy, but he would not eat. She tried to force him, but he refused, and ran out into the garden, and took up his little sister, and put her in a box, and buried the box under a rose-tree; and every day he went to the tree and wept, till his tears ran down on the box. — Joseph Jacobs

Sally wasn't crying about their dead mother or her cancer. She was crying because her husband, Alfonso, had left her after twenty years for a young woman. It seemed a brutal thing to do, just after her mastectomy. She was devastated, but no, she wouldn't ever divorce him, even though the woman was pregnant and he wanted to marry her.

"They can just wait until I die. I'll be dead soon, probably next year..." Sally wept but the ocean drowned out the sound. — Lucia Berlin

That's enough Susy, nuff, nuff.'
'No, no I just want to say this,' she gasped, on the brink of incoherence. 'His eyes, his face, it's not ugly, and I know if I go back that he'll come and get some more of me ... Even when he has drained all I know and when he ... God, God, he came at me, at my throat and even then, I couldn't stop him, didn't want to even when I felt his mouth ... '
She reached to her throat, where her hands fluttered. Her eyes, clear and cornflower blue when they had been so serene a few minutes ago, were stark and tormented. Suddenly she buckled toward him from her propped position, sobbing. He caught her and she wept into his chest.
'And the worst thing ... the worst thing ... is that I want to see him again ... Harry, he wanted me to take that cross off, and I did, and I've felt him wanting me now, even now, with blessed Jesus over my bed. — Leslie H. Whitten Jr.

Immediately after Mrs. Carey's death Emma had ordered from the florist masses of white flowers for the room in which the dead woman lay. It was sheer waste of money. Emma took far too much upon herself. Even if there had been no financial necessity, he would have dismissed her. But Philip went to her, and hid his face in her bosom, and wept as though his heart would break. And she, feeling that he was almost her own son - she had taken him when he was a month old - consoled him with soft words. She promised that she would come and see him sometimes, and that she would never forget him; and — William Somerset Maugham

He heard a soft voice calling him and turned towards it, trying to focus the vision before him. It wasn't his mother. If he weren't so tired, he would have smiled. He hadn't expected to find an angel in Hell.
The angel, her image blurred, a whiteness surrounding her, would understand. The angel would know.
"Why couldn't she love me?" he asked. The angel's answer was garbled. He strained to understand the words, not all his senses failed him as he slipped back into the abyss on the edge of Hell.
And the angel knelt down beside the bed and wept. — Lorraine Heath

Never had he thought, never once, that such a woman existed, one who stood so close to God that God's own voice poured from her. How far she must have gone inside herself to call up that voice. It was as if the voice came from the center part of the earth and by the sheer effort and diligence of her will she had pulled it up through the dirt and rock and through the floorboards of the house, up into her feet, where it pulled through her, reaching, lifting, warmed by her, and then out of the white lily of her throat and straight to God in heaven. It was a miracle and he wept for the gift of bearing witness. — Ann Patchett

at last tears were all wept out and the little patient ache that was to be in her heart until she died took their place. — L.M. Montgomery

Oh, mother! since thy son To early death by destiny is doom'd, I might have hop'd the Thunderer on high, Olympian Jove, with honour would have crown'd My little space; but now disgrace is mine; Since Agamemnon, the wide-ruling King, Hath wrested from me, and still holds, my prize. Weeping, he spoke; his Goddess-mother heard, Beside her aged father where she sat In the deep ocean-caves: ascending quick Through the dark waves, like to a misty cloud, Beside her son she stood; and as he wept, She — Homer

I never got to be in the driver's seat of my own life," she'd wept to me once, in the days after she learned she was going to die. "I always did what someone else wanted me to do. I've always been someone's daughter or mother or wife. I've never just been me." "Oh, Mom," was all I could say as I stroked her hand. I was too young to say anything else. — Cheryl Strayed

She did not know it, but she was actually in despair at the poverty of human emotions. Was it not irrational that there was nothing to do except weep when ten people died, just as one wept for but a single person? — Yukio Mishima

Besides, as much as she loved Bruckner's symphonies, he just couldn't touch a man who had painted his bedroom walls with views of the sea to please her, who gave his precious smiles to her alone, who wept when he watched his daughter sleep. — Lynn Kurland

I held her as she wept. I stroked her hair, loose and slightly matted. 'Stay here with me. Or let me come with you.' She pulled me down to kiss her. Warm. Briny. 'I love you,' she said, her lips still against mine. But it meant no. — Lily King

Then he gave her a kiss on the forehead that felt like a baptism and she wept like a baby. — Zadie Smith

There was no apology in her posture, no fear or regret in her soft eyes. The sword flashed in a silvery arc, and her head tumbled onto the straw mat. The ivory comb slid out, freeing her hair, and her lifeless eyes stared, wide open.
Yamazato wept. She'd done it all for love, and so - just now - had he. — Kenneth Edward Lim

I gave myself to you sooner than I ever did to any man, I swear to you; and do you know why? Because when you saw me spitting blood you took my hand; because you wept; because you are the only human being who has ever pitied me. I am going to say a mad thing to you: I once had a little dog who looked at me with a sad look when I coughed; that is the only creature I ever loved. When he died I cried more than when my mother died. It is true that for twelve years of her life she used to beat me. Well, I loved you all at once, as much as my dog. If men knew what they can have for a tear, they would be better loved and we should be less ruinous to them. — Alexandre Dumas-fils

But I've wept so much,' she said to Delay. 'Now I don't cry any more. When you don't cry it's because you no longer believe in happiness. — Justine Picardie

That circular loop was fatal. Patsy giving them their Latin name, herpes zoster, describing how the pain attacked the line of the nerves, something Dilly knew beyond the Latin words when she had wept night after night, as they oozed and bled, when nothing, no tablet, no prayer, no interceding, could do anything for her, a punishment so acute that she often felt one half of her body was in mutiny against — Edna O'Brien

Home they brought her warrior dead: She nor swooned, nor uttered cry: All her maidens, watching, said, 'She must weep or she will die.' Then they praised him, soft and low, Called him worthy to be loved, Truest friend and noblest foe; Yet she neither spoke nor moved. Stole a maiden from her place, Lightly to the warrior stepped, Took the face-cloth from the face; Yet she neither moved nor wept. Rose a nurse of ninety years, Set his child upon her knee- Like summer tempest came her tears- 'Sweet my child, I live for thee.' -Alfred Lord Tennyson — Colleen Houck

The brown-eyes angel was weeping over the demon. The angel wept because she was grieved at the mere thought of someone hurting him — Sylvain Reynard

She went to the public school that the three youngest girls attended and in halting English told the teacher that the children must be encouraged to speak only English; they were not to use a German word or phrase ever. In that way, she protected them against their father. She grieved when her children had to leave school after the sixth grade and go out working. She grieved when they married no-account men. She wept when they gave birth to daughters, knowing that to be born a woman meant a life of humble hardship. Each — Betty Smith

Why did no one tell him that loving someone who does not love him back is like him jumping stupidly off a cliff, knowing that there is no one waiting below to catch him?

"If you shall leave, then leave knowing that you are, and will always be...my life's best part."

Alynna wept as she kissed Cullan, and he kissed her back in equal fire, as if it was their last. — Nicholaa Spencer

Then Jackson himself wept openly for the first time since Rachel's death. Looking around him, he seemed embarrassed and explained: "I know it's unmanly, but these tears are due her virtues. She has shed many for me." He paused. "In the presence of this saint, I can and do forgive my enemies." And his voice rose. "But those vile wretches who have slandered her must look to God for mercy! — Peter J. Marshall

Naomi knew she should pray... Instead, she put her face in her hands and wept with all the force of a bursting dam. — Heather Blanton

A hidden mussel was blowing bubbles like a spring through the sand where his boot was teasing the water. It was the little pulse of bubbles and not himself or herself that was the moment for her then; and he could have already departed and she could have already wept, and it would have been the same, as she stared at the little fountain rising so gently out of the shimmering sand. A clear love is in the world - this came to her as insistently as the mussel's bubbles through the water. There it was, existing there where they came and were beside it now. It is in the bubble in the water in the river, and it has its own changing and its mysteries of days and nights, and it does not care how we come and go. — Eudora Welty

For some reason, she thought of how the old people wept when they played fado music at the annual Portuguese Festival. Saudade , her great-aunt Del called it: homesick music. But according to her father, the emotion was about more than place. It was a profound longing for everything that was lost and would never be regained. — Patry Francis

I have not had one word from her
Frankly I wish I were dead
When she left, she wept
a great deal; she said to me, "This parting must be
endured, Sappho. I go unwillingly."
I said, "Go, and be happy
but remember (you know
well) whom you leave shackled by love
"If you forget me, think
of our gifts to Aphrodite
and all the loveliness that we shared
"all the violet tiaras,
braided rosebuds, dill and
crocus twined around your young neck
"myrrh poured on your head
and on soft mats girls with
all that they most wished for beside them
"while no voices chanted
choruses without ours,
no woodlot bloomed in spring without song ... — Sappho

Taking her hand he led her out into a broad stretch of hard sandy soil that the moon flooded with great splendor. They floated out like drifting moths under the rich hazy light, and as the fantastic symphony wept and exulted and wavered and despaired, Ardita's last sense of reality dropped away, and she abandonded her imagination to the dreamy summer scents of tropial flowers and the infinite starry spaces overhead, feeling that if she opened her eyes it would be to find herself dancing with a ghost in a land created by her own fantasy. — F Scott Fitzgerald

A dark hand had let go its lifelong hold upon her heart. But she did not feel joy, as she had in the mountains. She put her head down in her arms and cried, and her cheeks were salt and wet. She cried for the waste of her years in bondage to a useless evil. She wept in pain, because she was free. — Ursula K. Le Guin

She was alone with beauty. She was passionately realizing the moment, its fleeting exquisiteness, its still, fragile beauty. So exquisite it was, so frail and so transitory, that she could have wept, even as she clasped it close. To savor the loveliness of moments, to bathe in them as in a wine-gold, sun-warmed sea, and then to pass on to the next - that was life. — Rose Macaulay

The sacred rowan is a woman born long, long ago, a woman whose refusal to see love cost first her lover's life, then the lives of her family, her clan, her people.
But not her own life. Not quite.
In pity and punishment she was turned into an undying tree, a rowan that weeps only in the presence of transcendent love; and the tears of the rowan are blossoms that confer extraordinary grace upon those who can see them.
When enough tears are wept, the rowan will be free. She waits inside a sacred ring that can be neither weighed or measured nor touched. She waits for love that is worth her tears.
The rowan is waiting still. — Elizabeth Lowell

She wept with shame for her lack of will and with fear for a love she couldn't control. — Judith McNaught

One of the bonds between Lily and me is that we both suffer with our teeth. She is twenty years my junior but we wear bridges, each of us. Mine are at the sides, hers are in front. She has lost the four upper incisors. It happened while she was still in high school, out playing golf with her father, whom she adored. The poor old guy was a lush and far too drunk to be out on a golf course that day. Without looking or given warning, he drove from the first tee and on the backswing struck his daughter. It always kills me to think of that cursed hot July golf course, and this drunk from the plumbing supply business, and the girl of fifteen bleeding. Damn these weak drunks! Damn these unsteady men! I can't stand these clowns who go out in public as soon as they get swacked to show how broken-hearted they are. But Lily would never hear a single word against him and wept for him sooner than for herself. She carries his photo in her wallet. — Saul Bellow

Margaret herself hadn't known her body was a parish bell tolling at every heartbreak she heard of, and that night with Pete calmly sitting on the edge of her favorite chair, invading her private room with words this room was sealed from, she felt it just as a bell would. It struck her right inside, until her bronze skin rang out the news. Not of Pete's story, which had not even made him cry, but some other story she'd been trying not to tell herself. So she sat stiffly there and wept, clanging and clanging like a thing that tested its own breaking. — Andrew Sean Greer

How Adewen stuffed her braid in her mouth at that! Or she'd cover her mirth with her hands and shake till you'd think that the fit was upon her. She did the same too when she wept so you'd never be sure which she hid with her hands, her tears or her cackling. I think there were times she herself didn't know, nor does anyone know at times. Laugh till you weep. Weep till there's nothing left but to laugh at your weeping. In the end it's all one. — Frederick Buechner

There had been a quarrel, she had been hurt, had wept. Now it was over; now she sat still and waited. Life would go on. As with children. As with animals. If only you did not talk, did not make simple things complicated, did not turn your soul inside out. — Hermann Hesse

How do I know that loving life is not a delusion? How do I know that in hating death I am not like a man who, having left home in his youth, has forgotten the way back?
Lady Li was the daughter of the border guard of Ai. When she was first taken captive and brought to the state of Jin, she wept until her tears drenched the collar of her robe. But later, when she went to live in the palace of the ruler, shared his couch with him, and ate the delicious meats of his table, she wondered why she had ever wept. How do I know that the dead do not wonder why they ever longed for life? — Zhuangzi

Hanna reached for Margaret's hand, knowing nothing she could say would bring comfort. Margaret would never see her grandmother again. Nor would Hanna see her Oma, who had wept when Hanna boarded the ship for America, waving goodbye for the last time. Only the elderly and frail were left behind. And letters from home were not the same as a warm laugh or a cup of tea shared on a cold day. — Meredith Jaeger

Catherine wished to discover whether her son were really ill or
feigning. But he, worthy son of such a mother, played his part
to perfection. She had wept, he had a fever. — Alexandre Dumas

She did feel it. A dark hand had let go its lifelong hold upon her heart. But she did not feel joy, as she had in the mountains. She put her head down in her arms and cried, and her cheeks were salt and wet. She cried for the waste of her years in bondage to a useless evil. She wept in pain, because she was free. What she had begun to learn was the weight of liberty. Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveller may never reach the end of it. — Ursula K. Le Guin

But now she could not bear the way she sounded. She was not a person anyone could love.
...
And thus fled to her room. There she wept, bitterly, an ugly sound punctuated by great gulps. She could not stop herself. She could hear his footsteps in the passage outside. He walked up and down, up and down.
'Come in,' she prayed. 'Oh dearest, do come in.'
But he did not come in. He would not come in. This was the man she had practically contracted to give away her fortune to. He offered to marry her as a favour and then he would not even come into her room.
Later, she could smell him make himself a sweet pancake for his lunch. She thought this a childish thing to eat, and selfish, too. If he were a gentleman he would now come to her room and save her from the prison her foolishness had made for her. He did not come. She heard him pacing in his room. — Peter Carey

A ghost grew out of the shadowy air,
And sat in the midst of her moony hair.

In her gleamy hair she sat and wept;
In the dreamful moon they lay and slept;

The shadows above, and the bodies below,
Lay and slept in the moonbeams slow.

And she sang, like the moan of an autumn wind
Over the stubble left behind. — George MacDonald

I love you," he gasped. "For always." "And I love you," she whispered as tears filled her eyes. He rolled on his side and drew her close, his arms sheltering against the storm that pounded on London. The sky itself wept because they loved each other, and it wasn't enough. As — Mary Jo Putney

It's about Diana,' sobbed Anne luxuriously. 'I love Diana so, Marilla. I cannot ever live without her. But I know very well when we grow up that Diana will get married and go away and leave me. And oh, what shall I do? I hate her husband - I just hate him furiously. I've been imagining it all out - the wedding and everything - Diana dressed in snowy white garments, and a veil, and looking as beautiful and regal as a queen; and me the bridesmaid, with a lovely dress, too, and puffed sleeves, but with a breaking heart hid beneath my smiling face. And then bidding Diana good-bye-e-e - ' Here Anne broke down entirely and wept with increasing bitterness. Marilla turned quickly away to hide her twitching face, but it was no use; she collapsed on the nearest chair and burst into such a hearty and unusual peal of laughter ... — L.M. Montgomery

She asked another question: "What does it matter if the rhinos die out? Is it really important that they are saved?"
This would normally have riled me ... but I had come to think of her as Dr. Spock from Star Trek - an emotionless, purely logical creature, at least with regards to her feelings for animals. Like Spock, though, I knew there were one or two things that stirred her, so I gave an honest reply.
" ... to be honest, it doesn't matter. No economy will suffer, nobody will go hungry, no diseases will be spawned. Yet there will never be a way to place a value on what we have lost. Future children will see rhinos only in books and wonder how we let them go so easily. It would be like lighting a fire in the Louvre and watching the Mona Lisa burn. Most people would think 'What a pity' and leave it at that while only a few wept — Peter Allison

And lying there, her hair in damp strands across her crumpled face, Harriet gave up the long, long struggle to love her father and her aunt.
It was for this loss above all that she wept. She had learned, during the long years of her childhood, to live without receiving love. To live without giving it seemed more than she could bear. — Eva Ibbotson

She wept for the hurt that he owned, a hurt she could never hope to remove. — Jonathan Maberry

It was the first day in the life of the new lean and mean Peabody.
An hour later, she lay on the grubby floor wheezing like the dying. Her quads and hamstrings burned, her glutes wept, and her arms couldn't stop screaming for mama.
"Never doing this again," she announced. "Yes, you are," she corrected. "Can't. Dying. Can. Will. Help me, I think I broke my ass. Wimp, pussy. Shut up. — J.D. Robb

Her efforts received encouragement. In fact, they were welcomed as the Tallises began to understand that the baby of the family possessed a strange mind and a facility with words. The long afternoons she spent browsing through the dictionary and thesaurus made for constructions that were inept, but hauntingly so: the coins a villain concealed in his pocket were 'esoteric,' a hoodlum caught stealing a car wept in 'shameless auto-exculpation,' the heroine on her thoroughbred stallion made a 'cursory' journey through the night, the king's furrowed brow was the 'hieroglyph' of his displeasure. — Ian McEwan

She wondered if old dreams could haunt rooms - if, when one left forever the room where she had joyed and suffered and laughed and wept, something of her, intangible and invisible, yet nonetheless real, did not remain behind like a voiceful memory. — L.M. Montgomery

Marianne would have thought herself very inexcusable had she been able to sleep at all the first night after parting from Willoughby. She would have been ashamed to look her family in the face the next morning, had she not risen from her bed in more need of repose than when she lay down in it. But the feelings which made such composure a disgrace, left her in no danger of incurring it. She was awake the whole night, and she wept the greatest part of it. She got up with an head-ache, was unable to talk, and unwilling to take any nourishment; giving pain every moment to her mother and sisters, and forbidding all attempt at consolation from either. Her sensibility was potent enough! — Jane Austen

Charity knew that she had to be up early in the morning. And she knew that a weepy, silly, ridiculously old-fashioned love story was not the thing to watch with a broken heart. Nevertheless, she watched. And wept. And was still smiling when she fell asleep at three o'clock in the morning, with the remote in her hand and the telly still going. — Elizabeth Jane Howard

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. — Herman Melville

As for Ellai, she told her sister what had passed, and Nitid wept, and her tears fell to earth and became chimaera, children of regret ... — Laini Taylor

She wept for her hardheadedness, and for a world that couldn't just let her be both, a woman in love and a woman with a career, without flares of guilt and self-doubt seeping in and wreaking havoc. — Sandhya Menon