Quotes About Tragedy

[Comedies], in the ancient world, were regarded as of a higher rank than tragedy, of a deeper truth, of a more difficult realization, of a sounder structure, and of a revelation more complete. The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man. ...Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachment to the forms...

The tragedy is not that love doesn't last. The tragedy is the love that lasts.

I just think what we ought to do is we ought to stop seizing one moments of tragedy. We ought to assure the public that we'll have a full and complete and transparent investigation whenever there's a loss of life because of police action. But, you know, enough of this seeking every opportunity to demean law enforcement broadly by making the accusation of implicit bias every time tragedy occurs.

The real tragedy of England, as I see it, is the tragedy of ugliness. The country is so lovely: the man-made England is so vile.

Tragedy is one of the larger prices we pay for being alive. No one ever sidesteps tragedy. It is always there, shadowing us.

Humor is not funny. Humor is something else. Funny is a joke, sometimes silly. Comedy is deep and connected to tragedy; comedy could be deeper than tragedy, in my view.

In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.

Tragedy enlightens - and it must, in that it points the heroic finger at the enemy of man's freedom. The thrust for freedom is the quality in tragedy which exalts. The revolutionary questioning of the stable environment is what terrifies.

Divorce isn't such a tragedy. A tragedy's staying in an unhappy marriage, teaching your children the wrong things about love. Nobody ever died of divorce.

Either over neither, both over either/or, live-and-let-live over stand-or die, high spirits over low, energy over apathy, wit over dullness, jokes over homilies, good humor over jokes, good nature over bad, feeling over sentiment, truth over poetry, consciousness over explanations, tragedy over pathos, comedy over tragedy, entertainment over art, private over public, generosity over meanness, charity over murder, love over charity, irreplaceable over interchangeable, divergence over concurrence, principle over interest, people over principle.

And those who only know the non-platonic love have no need to talk of tragedy. In such love there can be no sort of tragedy.

Such exceptional suffering and calamity, then, affecting the hero, and-we must now add-generally extending far and wide beyond him, so as to make the whole scene a scene of woe, are an essential ingredient in tragedy and a chief source of the tragic emotions, and especially of pity. But the proportions of this ingredient, and the direction taken by tragic pity, will naturally vary greatly.

If we had a terrorist attack, the way the people respond is going to determine whether that attack is just a tragedy or whether that attack becomes an all-out disaster.

Man can and must prevent the tragedy of famine in the future instead of merely trying with pious regret to salvage the human wreckage of the famine, as he has so often done in the past.

The government needs to help those in need, but members of Congress shouldn't take advantage of the situation and use a national tragedy as an opportunity to spend taxpayer dollars on their pet projects.

Sometimes, recently Israeli-Palestinian conflict is indeed a clash between wrong and wrong. It is not as simple as fascism was. Every decent man had to be against fascism, period. It is not as simple as apartheid or colonialism or racism or misogyny. It is not simple because the Palestinians have no other land. They are absolutely right about this. The Israeli Jews also have no other land and they are absolutely right about this. It is a tragedy of two peoples claiming the same very small country, about the size of New Jersey.

We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one's predicament into a human achievement. When we are no longer able to change a situation-just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer-we are challenged to change ourselves.

Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy - that's the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.

Tragedy is in the eye of the observer, and not in the heart of the sufferer.

If there is any possible consolation in the tragedy of losing someone we love very much, it's the necessary hope that perhaps it was for the best.

I can't imagine anything that would signal more clearly that life goes on and joy can follow tragedy than your having a much wanted child.

The nature of tragedy and accident is that we cannot predict.

Vegas means comedy, tragedy, happiness and sadness all at the same time.

We're blues people. And blues never lets tragedy have the last word.

The trouble with the lower classes is that they lack the sense of tragedy given to them by the upper classes.

One can play comedy, two are required for melodrama, but a tragedy demands three.

In Serbia's case, the unresolved accountability for the Bytyqi brothers massacre needs to be resolved. And we would urge you to give this matter prompt and immediate attention to bring those responsible to justice for this tragedy.

I think that ultimately when life is not tragedy it should be a party and if you've faced the real stuff, if you've faced the ones closest to you being at death's door, passing on, you know, not to let the small stuff really harsh your mellow, as you put it.

For your benefit, learn from our tragedy. It is not a written law that the next victims must be Jews. It can also be other people.

Whatever you do to recover from a loss, people will be critical because they believe that the only way to recover is their way. And you will even run into some people who should be run into by rhinos because they actually don't want to see you get over your tragedy at all; grief is a spectator sport for them.

Every man of genius sees the world at a different angle from his fellows, and there is his tragedy.

I hate England and its hopelessness. I hate [Arnold] Bennett's resignation. Tragedy ought really to be a great big kick at misery.

Patricia Smith is one of the best poets around and has been for a long time. Her Blood Dazzler is full of capacious soul and formal inventiveness: the compassion and artfulness necessary to capture the tragedies and Tragedy of Katrina. Smith is herself a storm of beautiful, frightening talent. Her words will wash you or wash you away. I consider this new book a major literary event.

This must be a world of democracy and respect for human rights, a world freed from the horrors of poverty, hunger, deprivation and ignorance, relieved of the threat and the scourge of civil wars and external aggression and unburdened of the great tragedy of millions forced to become refugees.

The greatest tragedy that can befall a man is never to know who he really is.

It is the tragedy of the world that no one knows what he doesn't know - and the less a man knows, the more sure he is that he knows everything.

There is something disorderly about the death of a young person. In a universe disturbed by so much over which we have no control, an untimely tragedy rattles the teeth of our already shaken confidence. We want to domesticate death, fight it on our own turf, in familiar rooms with shades drawn evenly, top sheets turned back, and a circle of hushed voices closing in.

I think a resumption of the Cold War would be a historic tragedy. If a conflict is avoidable, on a basis reflecting morality and security, one should try to avoid it.

The first divorce in the world may have been a tragedy, but the hundred-millionth is not necessarily one.

Woodrow Wilson administration ended in tragedy, with his insistence on governing following his disabling stroke. I suspect President Wilson is often graded on a special curve, because many academic historians identify with him as one of their own.

What people fear most about tragedy is its randomness - a taxi cab jumps the curb and hits a pedestrian, a gun misfires and kills a bystander. Better to have some rational cause and effect between incident and injury. And if cause and effect aren't possible, better that there at least be some reward for all the suffering.

Life is not a tragedy, it is a comedy. To be alive means to have a sense of humor.

The eyes sparked a lot of things for me, it could be somebody remembering something they had witnessed or heard about, or it could be the person in the photograph that was experiencing a tragedy or it could also be the spectator looking on from a safe distance.

I'm a champion, so I turn tragedy to triumph.

There is no political will for peace in the Israeli government. They're not serious about political peace because they're still building settlements and demolishing Palestinian homes. That is a great tragedy.

Laughter keeps you healthy. You can survive by seeing the humor in everything. Thumb your nose at sadness; turn the tables on tragedy. You can’t laugh and be angry, you can’t laugh and feel sad, you can’t laugh and feel envious.

Sometimes it bothers me that people now only recognize me because of tragedy. But I've come to understand that people really care and worry for me. I feel I should say to every person I meet, 'I'm fine. Daria's fine. Life goes on.'

The real tragedy of minimum wage laws is that they are supported by well-meaning groups who want to reduce poverty. But the people who are hurt most by higher minimums are the most poverty stricken.