There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.

Irving elevates tears from a socially stigmatized sign of frailty into a morally and emotionally authoritative language. By calling them “sacred,” he frames weeping as a reverent response to experiences that exceed ordinary speech—grief, repentance, and love. The contrast with “ten thousand tongues” suggests that verbal eloquence can be inadequate or even evasive, while tears communicate sincerity without rhetoric. The passage also implies an ethic of empathy: to witness tears is to receive a message from the deepest regions of another person’s life. In this view, emotional vulnerability becomes a form of strength because it testifies to genuine feeling and moral depth.