Quotes & Sayings About Tears In Heaven

Tears are the softening showers which cause the seed of heaven to spring up in the human heart. — Walter Scott

God weighs souls on a pair of scales. In one of the dishes is the soul, and in the other, the tears of those who weep for it. If nobody cries, the soul goes straight down to hell. If there are enough tears and they are sufficiently heartfelt, it rises up to heaven. — Jose Eduardo Agualusa

I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be when everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: 'Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.' When the mother embraces the fiend who threw her child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears, 'Thou art just, O Lord!' then, of course, the crown of knowledge will be reached and all will be made clear. But what pulls me up here is that I can't accept that harmony. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

There are going to be tears in Heaven, because God is going to have to wipe them away. No doubt many of us will cry when we first arrive there and realize just how much our many mistakes have cost and lost. But God will wipe away all these tears, and comfort and encourage us and inspire us for the future, so we can forget the past. There will be tears, but thank God He will wipe them away with His joy. Then there will be no more tears and no more years, only a happy eternity! — David Berg

If there are any tears shed in heaven, they will be over the fact that we prayed so little. — Billy Graham

There were several recently dug graves in the churchyard, but I found only one that was freshly dug and covered with fresh flowers. I had known Anna only from a few laughing words, from the light in her eyes, a touch of hands and a fleeting kiss, but I felt an ache inside me such as I had not felt since I was a child, since my father's death. I looked up at the church steeple, a dark arrow pointing at the moon and beyond, and tried with all my heart and mind to believe she was up there somewhere in that vast expanse of infinity, up there in Sunday-school Heaven, in Big Joe's happy Heaven. I couldn't bring myself to think it. I knew she was lying in the cold earth at my feet. I knelt down and kissed the earth, then left her there. The moon sailed above me, following behind me, through the trees, lighting my way back to camp. By the time I got there I had no more tears left to cry. The — Michael Morpurgo

We're living in world, stars and dust Between heaven 'n all that surrounds us We're travellers here, spirits passing through And the love we give, is all that will endure Just like a rose after the rain Something beautiful remains Tears will leave no stains Time will ease the pain For every life that fades Something beautiful remains — Tina Turner

To suggest that the grief of Christ issues from his perfect wisdom and
charity would confirm that true sorrow is human and therefore cannot
correspond to despair, since the hopelessness of despair would yield nothing
about which to sorrow. If life is meaningless, there is no reason to
mourn. Truth is what makes grief authentic and real, and so it follows
that Truth Incarnate, come down from heaven to our vale of tears, would
grieve at the highest pitch. The "tragic experience of the most complete
desolation"49 depends on "the knowledge and experience of the Father."50
Or as Adrienne von Speyr puts it: "The Father is never more present than
in this absence on the Cross. — Aaron Riches

Adieu! but let me cherish, still, The hope with which I cannot part. Contempt may wound, and coldness chill, But still it lingers in my heart. And who can tell but Heaven, at last, May answer all my thousand prayers, And bid the future pay the past With joy for anguish, smiles for tears? — Anne Bronte

The rain could turn to gold and still your thirst would not be slaked. Desire is unquenchable or it ends in tears, even in heaven. — Anonymous

I've waited a long time for you and now that I finally have you I will move Heaven and Earth to keep you right where I've always wanted you, at my side. I will walk in the rain so you stay dry, I will forgo food so you can eat, I will take the pain so you won't feel any and I will absolutely step in front of danger to keep you safe." Tears — L.A. Fiore

Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agised as in that hour left my lips: for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love. — Charlotte Bronte

If
If freckles were lovely, and day was night,
And measles were nice and a lie warn't a lie,
Life would be delight,
But things couldn't go right
For in such a sad plight
I wouldn't be I.
If earth was heaven and now was hence,
And past was present, and false was true,
There might be some sense
But I'd be in suspense
For on such a pretense
You wouldn't be you.
If fear was plucky, and globes were square,
And dirt was cleanly and tears were glee
Things would seem fair,
Yet they'd all despair,
For if here was there
We wouldn't be we. — E. E. Cummings

We're going to have plenty of work to do, but it's going to be a lot easier than here. There'll be no sorrow, no sickness, no pain, no weariness, no death, no more tears, no more crying. That's certainly going to make things easier. We're going to have rest in Heaven compared to what we've had in this life, but we're also going to have something to do. We'd eventually be unhappy if we didn't! — David Berg

He looked up at the round, stained glass window in front of him, a blurred kaleidoscope backlit in the morning sun. It glowed. The color of heaven. Of her hair.
He sat back and cracked open the dry, leather cover of a pew Bible, and a mixture of sweat and tears christened its pristine pages. — Red Tash

But listen, there will be more joy in heaven over the tears of a repentant sinner than over the white robes of a hundred just men. — Victor Hugo

Drop, drop, slow tears, and bathe those beauteous feet Which brought from heaven the news and prince of peace. Cease not, wet eyes, his mercies to entreat; To cry for vengeance sin doth never cease; In your deep floods drown all my faults and fears, Nor let his eye see sin but through my tears. — Phineas Fletcher

I had great Reason to consider it as a Determination of Heaven, that in this desolate Place, and in this desolate Manner I should end my life; the Tears would run plentifully down my Face when I made these Reflections, and sometimes I would expostulate with myself, Why Providence should thus compleately ruine its Creatures, and render them so absolutely miserable, so without Help abandon'd, so entirely depress'd, that it could be hardly rational to be thankful for such a Life. — Daniel Defoe

You are the closest I will ever come to heaven, either here on Earth or in the afterlife, and I will not regret it, not even at the cost of your tears.
So I go to my grave an unrepentant sinner, I'm afraid. There is no use in mourning one such as I, dearest ...
-Simon to Lucy in a letter before the last duel. — Elizabeth Hoyt

Above all else, he was afire with heavenly love, unassumingly patient, devoted to unceasing prayer, and kindly to all who came to him for comfort. He regarded as equivalent to prayer the labour of helping the weaker brethren with advice, remembering that he who said, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God', also said, 'Love thy neighbour'. His self-discipline and fasting were exceptional, and through the grace of contrition he was always intent on the things of heaven. Lastly, whenever he offered the sacrifice of the Saving Victim of God, he offered his prayers to God not in a loud voice but with tears welling up from the depths of his heart. — Bede

The morning of that day, as Gabriel rose and started out to work, the sky was low and nearly black and the air too thick to breath. Late in the afternoon the wind rose, the skies opened, and the rain came. The rain came down as though once more in Heaven the Lord had been persuaded of the good uses of a flood. It drove before it the bowed wanderer, clapped children into houses, licked with fearful anger against the high, strong wall, and the wall of the lean-to, and the wall of the cabin, beat against the bark and the leaves of trees, trampled the broad grass, and broke the neck of the flower. The world turned dark, forever, everywhere, and windows ran as though their glass panes bore all the tears of eternity, threatening at every instant to shatter inward against this force, uncontrollable, so abruptly visited on the earth. — James Baldwin

This is what it said: In heaven, we can see you. . . We can feel you. . . We know your pain, your tears, but we feel no pain or tears ourselves. . . There are no bodies here . . . there is no age. . . The old who come . . . are no different than the children. . . No one feels alone. . . No one is greater or smaller. . . We are all in the light . . . the light is grace . . . and we are part of . . . the one great thing. — Mitch Albom

It [spiritual authority and leadership] is not won by promotion, but my many prayers and tears. It is attained by confession of sin, and much heart-searching and humbling before God; by self-surrender, a courageous sacrifice of every idol, a bold uncomplaining embrace of the cross, and by eternally looking unto Jesus crucified. It is not gained by seeking great things for ourselves, but like Paul, by counting those things that are gain to us as loss for Christ. This is a great price, but it must be paid by the leader whose power is recognized and felt in heaven, on earth, and in hell. — Samuel Brengle

Who looks at me, beholdeth sorrows all, All pain, all torture, woe and all distress; I have no need on other harms to call, As anguish, languor, cruel bitterness, Discomfort, dread, and madness more and less; Methinks from heaven above the tears must rain In pity for my harsh and cruel pain. — Geoffrey Chaucer

God washes the eyes by tears until they can behold the invisible land where tears shall come no more. O love! O affliction! ye are the guides that show us the way through the great airy space where our loved ones walked; and, as hounds easily follow the scent before the dew be risen, so God teaches us, while yet our sorrow is wet, to follow on and find our dear ones in heaven. — Henry Ward Beecher

Like the rainbow, peace rests upon the earth, but its arch is lost in heaven. Heaven bathes it in hues of light
it springs up amid tears and clouds
it is a reflection of the eternal sun
it is an assurance of calm
it is the sign of a great covenant between God and man
it is an emanation from the distant orb of immortal light. — Charles Caleb Colton

Thus it is brought prominently before us, that superstition's chief victims are those persons who greedily covet temporal advantages; they it is, who (especially when they are in danger, and cannot help themselves) are wont with prayers and womanish tears to implore help from God: upbraiding Reason as blind, because she cannot show a sure path to the shadows they pursue, and rejecting human wisdom as vain; but believing the phantoms of imagination, dreams, and other childish absurdities, to be the very oracles of Heaven. As though God had turned away from the wise, and written His decrees, not in the mind of man but in the entrails of beasts, or left them to be proclaimed by the inspiration and instinct of fools, madmen, and birds. Such is the unreason to which terror can drive mankind! Superstition, then, is engendered, preserved, and fostered by fear. — Christopher Hitchens

The Bible teaches that we are to be patient in suffering. Tears become telescopes to heaven, bringing eternity a little closer. — Billy Graham

One of the most beautiful verses in the Bible about Heaven is in the 21st chapter of Revelation, the fourth verse. John says, And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. — David Berg

I return to the sprinklers and sit down. George plunks down next to me. "Did you know that a bird-eating tarantula is as big as your hand?"
"Jase doesn't have one of those, does he?"
George gives me his sunniest smile. "No. He useta have a reg'lar tarantula named Agnes, but she" - his voice drops mournfully - "died."
"I'm sure she's in tarantula heaven now," I assure him hastily, shuddering to think what that might look like.
Mrs. Garret's van pulls in behind the motorcycle, disgorging what I assume are Duff and Andy, both red-faced and windblown. Judging by their life jackets, they've been at sailing camp.
George and Harry, my loyal fans, rave to their mother about my accomplishments, while Patsy immediately bursts into tears, points an accusing finger at her mother, and wails, "Boob."
"It was her first word." Mrs. Garret takes her from me, heedless of Patsy's damp swimsuit. "There's one for the baby book. — Huntley Fitzpatrick

Do not let us suppose that if we weep a great deal we have done everything that matters; let us also work hard and practise the virtues, for these are what we most need. Let the tears come when God is pleased to send them: we ourselves should make no efforts to induce them. They will leave this dry ground of ours well watered and will be of great help in producing fruit; but the less notice we take of them, the more they will do, because they are the water which comes from Heaven. When we ourselves draw water, we tire ourselves by digging for it, and the water we get is not the same; often we dig till we wear ourselves out without having discovered so much as a pool of water, still less a wellspring. — Padma Aon Prakasha

The smile on your lips brings the summer sunshine, the tears in your eyes bring the rain. I feel your touch, you warm embrace, and I'm in heaven again. — Bobby Helms

I have prayed for new men, fiery, reckless men, possesed of uncontrollably youthful passion - these lit by the Spirit of God. I have prayed for new words, explosive, direct, simple words. I have prayed for new miracles. Explaining old miracles will not do. If God is to be known as the God who does wonders in heaven and earth, then God must produce for this generation. Lord, fill preachers and preaching with Thy power. How long dare we go on without tears, without moral passions, hatred and love? Not long, I pray, Lord Jesus, not long ... — Jim Elliot

The whole point of Heaven is to relieve us of the suffering, pain, death and tears brought into the world by the evil of humanity. That is why God says that in Heaven there will be no more sorrow, pain, death or crying. — David Berg

Life's sunniest hours are not without
The shadow of some lingering doubt
Amid its brightest joys will steal
Spectres of evil yet to feel
Its warmest love is blent with fears,
Its confidence a trembling one
Its smile
the harbinger of tears
Its hope
the change of April's sun!
A weary lot
in mercy given,
To fit the chastened soul for heaven. — John Greenleaf Whittier

... and suddenly I love you beyond all measure is not just words but a heart, a soul bursting open, a stripping raw of all pretense. It is Sully, it is Gabriel, it is his tears on my face, his body in mine, our minds seamless. It is hopes and dreams and failures. It is apologies and a prayer for redemption. It is heaven and damnation.
All that I am is yours pales beside it.
It is everything.
It is love. — Linnea Sinclair

How I hate this world. I would like to tear it apart with my own two hands if I could. I would like to dismantle the universe star by star, like a treeful of rotten fruit. Nor do I believe in progress. A vermin-eaten saint scratching his filth for heaven is better off than you damned in clean linen. Progress doubles our tenure in a vale of tears. Man is a mistake, to be corrected only by his abolition, which he gives promise of seeing to himself. Oh, let him pass, and leave the earth to the flowers that carpet the earth wherever he explodes his triumphs. Man is inconsolable, thanks to that eternal "Why?" when there is no Why, that question mark twisted like a fishhook in the human heart. "Let there be light," we cry, and only the dawn breaks. — Peter De Vries

Ramey said in heaven you had no more pains or tears. — Karen Kingsbury

Goodbye to my friends at home, goodbye to people I've trusted. I've got to go out and make my way, I might get rich, you know I might get busted. But my heart keeps calling me backwards, as I get on the 707. Ridin' high, I got tears in my eyes, you know you got to go through hell before you get to heaven. Big ol' jet airliner, don't carry me too far away. Big ol' jet airliner, 'cause it's here that I've got to stay. — Steve Miller

Safety is in Heaven. Put your values there only; put your heart there. No tears are there to flood your heart, no sorrows there to break it, no losses there to grieve and embitter. — Edward McKendree Bounds

Lost, I am Lost! My fates have doomed my death.
The more I strive, I love; the more I love,
The less I hope. I see my ruin, certain.
What judgement or endeavors could apply
To my incurable and restless wounds
I throughly have examined, but in vain.
Oh, that it were not in religion sin
To make our love a god and worship it!
I have even wearied heaven with prayers, dried up
The spring of my continual tears, even starved
My veins with daily fasts; what wit or art
Could counsel, I have practiced. But, alas,
I find all these but dreams and old men's tales
To fright unsteady youth; I'm still the same.
Or I must speak or burst. Tis not, I know,
My lust, but tis my fate that leads me on.
Keep fear and low fainthearted shame with slaves!
I'll tell her that I love her, through my heart
Were rated at the price of that attempt. — John Ford

Maybe one day we all had wings and one day we'll all have wings again."
"D'you think the baby had wings?"
"Oh, I'm sure that one had wings. Just got to take one look at her. Sometimes I think she's never quite left Heaven and never quite made it all the way here to Earth."
She smiled, but there were tears in her eyes.
"Maybe that's why she has such trouble staying here," she said. — David Almond

Eyes open wide, looking at the heavens with a tear in my eye. — Richard Ashcroft

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see? — William Blake

Richard?" Her gentle fingers smoothed over his brow. Tears streamed down her cheeks. "I'm so sorry. Richard, I'm just so sorry." He reached for her. She came to him and fit perfectly into his arms. Richard clutched her to him, buried his face in her hair, and tried to still that horrifying fear that continued to reach out for him. He wouldn't lose her. If he had to move Heaven and Hell to keep her, he would. "Richard, I know you loved him." Richard couldn't bear to tell her that it was the thought of losing her that terrified him so. He continued to hold her, rocking her, trying to soothe himself with the motion and the feel of her in his arms. He wasn't sure how much time had passed before the fear receded. It left him cold and weary. — Lynn Kurland

And pity, like a new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind. — William Shakespeare

For with eyes made clear by many tears, and a heart softened by the tenderest sorrow, she recognized the beauty of her sister's life - uneventful, unambitious, yet full of the genuine virtues which 'smell sweet, and blossom in the dust', the self-forgetfulness that makes the humblest on earth remembered soonest in heaven, the true success which is possible to all. — Louisa May Alcott

O me, what eyes hath Love put in my head,
Which have no correspondence with true sight!
... Or, if they have, where is my judgment fled,
That censures falsely what they see aright?
If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,
What means the world to say it is not so?
If it be not, then love doth well denote
Love's eye is not so true as all men's 'No.'
How can it? O, how can Love's eye be true,
That is so vex'd with watching and with tears?
No marvel then, though I mistake my view;
The sun itself sees not till heaven clears.
O cunning Love! with tears thou keep'st me blind,
Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find.
- Shakespeare's Sonnet 148 — William Shakespeare

For my 23rd birthday, I received a nylon string guitar. I told myself that if I could play Eric Clapton's 'Tears In Heaven,' then I could play the guitar. I practised every chance I got, driving my housemates insane, until several weeks later I had a shaky version of the song down. I wrote my first song on the guitar a few weeks after that. — Neil Jackson

... she does not resent her grief. No; the weakness of that word would make it a lie. To her, what hurts becomes immediately embodied: she looks on it as a thing that can be attacked, worried down, torn in shreds. Scarcely a substance herself, she grapples to conflict with abstractions. Before calamity she is a tigress; she rends her woes, shivers them in convulsed abhorrence. Pain, for her, has no result in good; tears water no harvest of wisdom; on sickness, on death itself, she looks with the eye of a rebel. Wicked, perhaps, she is, but also she is strong: and her strength has conqueredBeauty, has overcome Grace, and bound both at her side, captives peerlessly fair, and docile as fair. Even in the uttermost frenzy of energy is each maenad movement royally, imperially, incedingly upborne. ... Fallen, insurgent, banished, she remembers the heaven whereshe rebelled. — Charlotte Bronte

Away with tears and fears and troubles! United in wedlock with the eternal Godhead Itself, our nature ascends into the Heaven of Heavens. So it would be impious to call ourselves 'miserable.' On the contrary, Man is a creature whom the Angels-were they capable of envy-would envy. Let us lift up our hearts! — C.S. Lewis

It is this admirable, this immortal, instinctive sense of beauty that leads us to look upon the spectacle of this world as a glimpse, a correspondence with heaven. Our unquenchable thirst for all that lies beyond, and that life reveals, is the liveliest proof of our immortality. It is both by poetry and through poetry, by music and through music, that the soul dimly descries the splendours beyond the tomb; and when an exquisite poem brings tears to our eyes, those tears are not a proof of overabundant joy: they bear witness rather to an impatient melancholy, a clamant demand by our nerves, our nature, exiled in imperfection, which would fain enter into immediate possession, while still on this earth, of a revealed paradise. — Charles Baudelaire

I know there will be no more tears in heaven. — Eric Clapton

Yes, great God, these torrents of tears which flow down from my eyes announce thy divine presence in my soul. This heart hitherto so dry, so arid, so hard; this rock which thou hast struck a second time, will not resist thee any longer, for out of it there now gushes healthful waters in abundance. The selfsame voice of God which overturns the mountains, thunders, lightens, and divides the heaven above, now commands the clouds to pour forth showers of blessings, changing the desert of his soul into a field producing a hundredfold; that voice I hear. — Jean Baptiste Massillon

We're going to be surprised when we discover that things in Heaven are normal and natural, much like this life. Of course, it will be better, much more beautiful and supernatural, without all the troubles, trials, tribulations, suffering, tears and pain we have here. However, it will still be enough like this life that we will survive the change and not suffer some sort of traumatic culture shock. It'll be life very much like we're living now, only without the bad and evil. — David Berg

My prayers, my tears, my wishes, fears, and lamentations, were witnessed by myself and heaven alone. When we are harassed by sorrows or anxieties, or long oppressed by any powerful feelings which we must keep to ourselves, for which we can obtain and seek no sympathy from any living creature, and which yet we cannot, or will not wholly crush, we often naturally seek relief in poetry - and often find it, too - whether in the effusions of others, which seem to harmonize with our existing case, or in our own attempts to give utterance to those thoughts and feelings in strains less musical, perchance, but more appropriate, and therefore more penetrating and sympathetic, and, for the time, more soothing, or more powerful to rouse and to unburden the oppressed and swollen heart. — Anne Bronte

There is another life both for you and for me,' said I. 'If it be the will of God that we should sow in tears now, it is only that we may reap in joy hereafter. It is His will that we should not injure others by the gratification of our own earthly passions; and you have a mother, and sisters, and friends who would be seriously injured by your disgrace; and I, too, have friends, whose peace of mind shall never be sacrificed to my enjoyment, or yours either, with my consent; and if I were alone in the world, I have still my God and my religion, and I would sooner die than disgrace my calling and break my faith with heaven to obtain a few brief years of false and fleeting happiness - happiness sure to end in misery even here - for myself or any other! — Anne Bronte

In the genre of "making you feel like you're not having an awesome American high school experience," the worst offender is actually a song: John Cougar Mellencamp's "Jack & Diane." It's one of those songs - like Eric Clapton's "Tears in Heaven" - that everyone knows all the words to without ever having chosen to learn them. — Mindy Kaling

The heart is like an instrument whose strings Steal nobler music from Life's many frets: The golden threads are spun thro' Suffering's fire, Wherewith the marriage-robes for heaven are woven: And all the rarest hues of human life Take radiance, and are rainbow'd out in tears. — Gerald Massey

There are people who are willing to suffer and swallow their tears at leisure, and God will not doubt reward them in heaven for their resignation; but those who have the will to struggle strike back at fate in retaliation for the blows they receive. Do you intend to fight back at fate, Valentine? That's what I came here to ask you.
-Maximilien Morrel — Alexandre Dumas

Have confidence in the compassion of our Creator. Reflect well on what you are now doing, and keep before you the things you have done. Lift up your eyes to the overflowing compassion of heaven, and while He waits for you, draw near in tears to our merciful Judge. Having before your mind that He is a Just Judge, do not take your sins lightly; and having also in mind that He is compassionate, do not despair. The God-Man gives man confidence before God. — Pope Gregory I

Prayers are instantly noticed in heaven. The moment Saul began to pray, the Lord heard him. Here is comfort for the distressed but praying soul. When our hearts are broken and we bow in prayer, we are often only able to employ the language of sighs and tears; still our groaning has made all the harps of heaven thrill with music. That tear has been caught by God and treasured in the receptacle of heaven. "Put my tears in your bottle"1 implies that they are caught as they flow. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The Gods on the death of his wife Yang Kai-hui I lost my proud poplar and you your willow As poplar and willow they soar straight up into the ninth heaven and ask the prisoner of the moon, Wu Kang' what is there. He offers them wine from the cassia tree. The lonely lady on the moon, Chang 0, spreads her vast sleeves and dances for these good souls in the unending sky. Down on earth a sudden report of the tiger's defeat. Tears fly down from a great upturned bowl of rain. — Mao Zedong

For anyone who knows what it is to weep over sin or loss or pain, Heaven offers a beautiful promise: one day God himself will wipe the tears from our eyes. And even better, one day he will transform those tears into laughter. The Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Revelation 7:17 — Randy Alcorn

He gazed up at the blue sky and knew that heaven - at least in this life - was neither a time nor a place
to be grasped and made into a possession. It came in fleeting moments and then went away again to
leave one nostalgic and yearning and on the verge of tears.
Very much on the verge of tears.
And very frightened. — Mary Balogh

Sonnet XII: There is a Meetinghouse across the wold

There is a Meetinghouse across the wold
Near shaded churchyard where pine breezes sigh;
Such sacred mem'ries gently here unfold
Of rustic folk whom 'neath the yew trees lie.
Engraved on stones now crum'ling in the earth,
Of souls asleep for o'er a hundred years,
Foretell unceasing cycles - Death and Birth
That yew tree nods and weeps her unseen tears.
But God shall guide us through the gloom of night
Victorious over grim reaper's blade,
As yet we grasp to see eternal light
Amidst life's fickle joys which here do fade.
Victims of Death by lusty scythe bannish'd
Triumphant wake to find nightmares vanish'd!

13 February, 2013 — Timothy Salter

I digress, but here's the rub: The dead are visible only in the terrible lidless eye of memory. The living, thank heaven, retain the ability to surprise and to disappoint. Your Hazel is alive, Waters, and you mustn't impose your will upon another's decision, particularly a decision arrived at thoughtfully. She wishes to spare you pain, and you should let her. You may not find young Hazel's logic persuasive, but I have trod through this vale of tears longer than you, and from where I'm sitting, she's not a lunatic. — John Green

The angels in heaven covered their eyes with their hands and sobbed loudly, because that is what they always do when a man hits his wife. A profound sadness settled over the earth ... God was silent in every language. The angels tried to dry their tears, but their handkerchiefs were so soaked through that is started raining even in the deserts. — Guus Kuijer

Raphael said, "There are no tears in Heaven, no chances of a broken heart. Maybe being witness to great love is why I love coming to Earth. And maybe true love is why some angels choose to stay. — D.F. Jones

The meaning of the story is found in every detail, as well as in the broad narrative. The pain and tears of all the years were met together on Calvary. The sorrow of heaven joined with the anguish of earth; the forgiving love stored up in God's future was poured out into the present; the voices that echo in a million human hearts, crying for justice, longing for spirituality, eager for relationship, yearning for beauty, drew themselves together into a final scream of desolation. — N. T. Wright

But there, in a little boat in Venice, as I watched the sun set - a fiery, hellish, red ball turning the water and sky into shades of heaven - my eyes had filled up with tears at the violent beauty of it all. In that moment, I realized I wanted to live again. For the first time in a long time, I was glad to be alive. — Amy Harmon

Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle,
Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong.
Think rather,
call to thought, if now you grieve a little,
The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long.
Men loved unkindness then, but lightless in the quarry
I slept and saw not; tears fell down, I did not mourn;
Sweat ran and blood sprang out and I was never sorry:
Then it was well with me, in days ere I was born.
Now, and I muse for why and never find the reason,
I pace the earth, and drink the air, and feel the sun.
Be still, be still, my soul; it is but for a season:
Let us endure an hour and see injustice done.
Ay, look: high heaven and earth ail from the prime foundation;
All thoughts to rive the heart are here, and all are vain:
Horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation
Oh why did I awake? when shall I sleep again? — A.E. Housman

And that love letter you wrote," Rowan added helpfully. "Signing it with another chap's name." Emma Smallwood's eyes widened, and she turned to look at him, brows high. Henry felt his neck heat. His cravat seemed suddenly far too tight. "That's right," Phillip nodded as the memory returned to him. "Pugsworth, was it not?" Julian grinned at Miss Smallwood, clearly enjoying himself. "Did you really think this Pugsworth fellow in love with you?" Heaven help him, Henry hoped she wouldn't burst into disillusioned tears. Not all these years later. And not over Milton Pugsworth. But Miss Smallwood remained her imperturbable self. "Goodness no," she said. "For all his faults, Mr. Pugsworth spelled exceptionally well and had the neatest hand I ever saw. Your brother, on the other hand, never did learn to spell. And I recognized his sloppy scratchings the moment I saw them." Phillip gave her a long look of amused approval. "Bravo, Emma. — Julie Klassen

Why did God do it? or is there really a Devil who led to the Fall? Souls in Heaven said "We want to try mortal existence, O God, Lucifer said it's great!" - Bang, down we fall, to this, to concentration camps, gas ovens, barbed wire, atom bombs, television murders, Bolivian starvation, thieves in silk, thieves in neckties, thieves in office, paper shufflers, bureaucrats, insult, rage, dismay, horror, terrified nightmares, secret death of hangovers, cancer, ulcers, strangulation, pus, old age, old age homes, canes, puffed flesh, dropped teeth, stink, tears, and goodbye. Somebody else write it, I dont know how. — Jack Kerouac

If your heart takes more pleasure in reading novels, or watching TV, or going to the movies, or talking to friends, rather than just sitting alone with God and embracing Him, sharing His cares and His burdens, weeping and rejoicing with Him, then how are you going to handle forever and ever in His presence ... ? You'd be bored to tears in heaven, if you're not ecstatic about God now! — Keith Green