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 lurking tragedy: The chances are that an accident will some day happen to you at a friend's dinner table ... As long as water and coffee and jelly exist, a certain percentage of each will necessarily be overturned upon a like number of snowy white tablecloths. Usually the tragedy is really no one's fault.

I think it's a tragedy that our schools don't teach kids about money. I think it's a tragedy that it has to come to an emergency before we evolve.

It is an unfortunate personal tragedy. However, when compared to the vast ocean of the collective tragedy faced by my people, my illness is merely a pebble. I am deeply sad that I am crippled by this illness, unable to contribute anything substantial towards the alleviation of the immense suffering and oppression of my people.

It must be borne in mind that the tragedy of life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goals to reach.

Drugs are a tragedy for addicts. But criminalizing their use converts that tragedy into a disaster for society, for users and non-users alike. Our experience with the prohibition of drugs is a replay of our experience with the prohibition of alcoholic beverages.

What then is tragedy? In the Elizabethan period it was assumed that a play ending in death was a tragedy, but in recent years we have come to understand that to live on is sometimes far more tragic than death.

To lose one parent is a tragedy, to lose both is utter carelessness.

Suicide is not a blot on anyone’s name; it is a tragedy

Tragedy is what happens to me; comedy is what happens to you.

That does not mean we won't experience the tragedy of the loss of some American lives. We will have an opportunity to instill a democracy in Iraq which will be an example and perhaps force other nations in that region to move in the same direction.

Commonplace people dislike tragedy because they dare not suffer and cannot exult.

The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.

Aid workers, when handing out food to starving people, quickly learn that the people fighting for it at the front are the people who need it least. It's the people sitting quietly at the back, too weak to fight, who need it the most. And so too with tragedy.

Neither our own passing nor the passing of an era is a tragedy, no matter how much we would like to think it is.

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.

All romances end in tragedy. One of the key people in a romance becomes a monster sooner or later.

We have been counseled to "seek . . . out of the best books words of wisdom." It is pointed out in Proverbs, "Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom." (Proverbs 4:7.) But in getting wisdom and getting knowledge, above all we should "get understanding." It is important to learn a profession, learn a trade. That applies not only to the young men, but it applies to you young women as well. You girls should place yourselves in a position to be self-supporting and independent in the event that tragedy or an emergency comes, for emergencies have come and will continue to come.

Violence against women is not random or anonymous. In West Virginia, 88 percent of sexual-assault victims already know their attacker. In my hometown, Alicia McCormick, an advocate for our domestic-violence shelter at the YWCA, was killed in her home by a man doing handiwork in her apartment complex. That one of my greatest advocates could fall victim to something she fought against her whole life was a tragedy that moved me to action.

I think American drama is at its best when it takes the domestic and makes it epic, like a Greek tragedy in the front room.

Most of my life has been one tragedy after another, most of which hasn't happened.

A trauma is something one repeats and repeats, after all, and this is the tragedy of the Iqbals--that they can't help but reenact the dash they once made from one land to another, from one faith to another, from one brown mother country into the pale, freckled arms of an imperial sovereign.

Laughter is very young, whereas tragedy, except the very highest of all, quickly becomes haggard.

Should any terrorist strike or act of war occur in which American lives are lost, we must be on guard for any attempt by the government to turn that tragedy into justification for sweeping action.

The vault above us is not deaf because the universe is an idiot; the silence is not the heartless silence of an endless and aimless world. Rather the silence around us is a small and pitiful stillness like the prompt stillness of a sick room. We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy, because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear.

Let us see as steadily and completely as possible the realities of our age: the wasted lives, the scattered and misused resources (human and material), the steel magic of the misdirected machinery, the mad clockwork tragedy of it all.

A decade ago, my poems were precious little boxes, small and claustrophobic, completely inward gazing. I didn't possess the command to speak beyond the self. Over the years, my poems have stretched out, grown broader and grander. The intervening years of living and aging - with their portions of tragedy, triumph, and shipwreck - have earned me both the authority and the necessity to write on a cosmic scale.

When the news you don't want to hear is looming before you like Everest, two things can happen. Tragedy can run you through like a sword, or it can become your backbone. Either you fall apart and sob, or you say, 'Right. What's next?

It would behoove the world to become used to this fact: that without a just solution to the Palestine tragedy, there can be no stable peace in the Middle East.

I spent five years of my life being treated for cancer, but since then I've spent fifteen years being treated for nothing other than looking different from everyone else. It was the pain from that, from feeling ugly, that I always viewed as the great tragedy of my life. The fact that I had cancer seemed minor in comparison.

The dignified catastrophes of tragedy bear little resemblance to the slow ruin inflicted by life.

You will not leave the theater with nothing to talk about. For me, comedy and tragedy when you get them both in one evening, that's the most satisfying.

Moral evil is the immorality and pain and suffering and tragedy that come because we choose to be selfish, arrogant, uncaring, hateful and abusive.

Auschwitz is a place in which tragedy cannot occur.

One day the enemy will cross the Great Green. They will bring war and tragedy to these eastern lands. Such is the nature of vile men. Yet we cannot live in dread of them. We cannot hide behind these high walls, our hearts trembling. For that is not life. We must accept the needs and the duties of each day, and face them one at a time.

The great tragedy of atheists is that they walk through this world and have no one to thank.

Comedy is tragedy plus time.

I'm drawn to a lot of tragedies, and I love a Greek tragedy.But I would think - I start thinking realistically about it, and performing eight days a week, that would take a toll. I take things to heart. I don't know if I could survive, like, "Medea."

I had come to see that the great tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor...I truly believe that when the rich meet the poor, riches will have no meaning. And when the rich meet the poor, we will see poverty come to an end.

That is the mysterious thing about tragedy- it often strikes at the happiest moment.

If you respect the events and respect the real life tragedy, you can drive your film to address it in some mature way.

And Wigan Athletic are certain to be promoted barring a mathmatical tragedy

Laughter rises out of tragedy when you need it the most, and rewards you for your courage.

The cheapness of man is every day's tragedy. It is as real a loss that others should be low, as that we should be low; for we musthave a society.

It is sad but true that sometimes we need the tragedy to help us to see how human we are and how we are more alike than we are different.

I'm bored to tears by how many clowns have been leaders. That's why it's important to be the best we can be within our own little lives. This divine comic tragedy just keeps getting darker and darker. It's a pattern. What goes up comes down and what comes down goes up. When the wall is finished being built, someday it will get torn down. And then someday it will be built back up again.

My mother's songs are really turning out to be masterpieces. I have inherited this incredible legacy and am so fortunate to bathe in her sensibilities. It is tinged with tragedy. I'd much rather she was here in person, but there is still a positive force to come out of her death and that is having the gift of music that she gave.

I have been through a lot and have suffered a great deal. But I have had lots of happy moments, as well. Every moment one lives is different from the other. The good, the bad, hardship, the joy, the tragedy, love, and happiness are all interwoven into one single, indescribable whole that is called life. You cannot separate the good from the bad. And perhaps there is no need to do so, either.