One may guess the why and wherefore of a tear and yet find it too subtle to give any account of. A tear may be the poetical resume of so many simultaneous impressions, the quintessence of so many opposing thoughts! It is like a drop of one of those precious elixirs of the East which contain the life of twenty plants fused into a single aroma.

Amiel's Journal: The Journal Intime of Henri-Frédéric Amiel; Tr., with an Introduction and Notes (ed. 1893)