Selected tragedy quotes

1. Lest Arab governments be tempted out of sheer routine to rush into impulsive rejection, let me suggest that tragedy is not what men suffer but what they miss.

2. We turn our backs on nature; we are ashamed of beauty. Our wretched tragedies have a smell of the office clinging to them, and the blood that trickles from them is the color of printer's ink.

3. What must be remembered in any case is that secret complicity that joins the logical and the everyday to the tragic.

4. The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.

5. Holy shadows of the dead, I'm not to blame for your cruel and bitter fate, but the accursed rivalry which brought sister nations and brother people, to fight one another. I do not feel happy for this victory of mine. On the contrary, I would be glad, brothers, if I had all of you standing here next to me, since we are united by the same language, the same blood and the same visions.

6. The closer a man approaches tragedy the more intense is his concentration of emotion upon the fixed point of his commitment, which is to say the closer he approaches what in life we call fanaticism.

7. To us Germans everything is religion. What we do we do not merely with our hands and brains, but with our hearts and souls. This has often become a tragic fate for us.

8. Well, they didn't lack for topics after Hiroshima. Why should 9/11 slow them down? I know it got a lot of press, but it's just a few large buildings and aircraft, it's not like D-Day and the Seige of Berlin.

9. Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot.

10. Comedy is tragedy plus time.

11. Humanity I love you because when you're hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink.

12. An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.

13. In tragic life, God wot, No villain need be! Passions spin the plot: We are betrayed by what is false within.

14. A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.

15. War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory.

16. [Malipiero's advice to Casanova.] If you wish your audience to cry, you must shed tears yourself, but if you wish to make them laugh you must contrive to look as serious as a judge.

17. Romeo and Juliet *died*. I always liked that in a teen romance story.

18. Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy In sceptred pall come sweeping by, Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line, Or the tale of Troy divine.

19. In church your grandsire cut his throat; to do the job too long he tarried: he should have had my hearty vote to cut his throat before he married.

20. What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it.

21. Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.

22. After all, no one is ever taken in by the happy ending, but we are often divinely fuddled by the tragic curtain.

23. Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.

24. Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain.

25. Tragedy, for me, is not a conflict between right and wrong, but between two different kinds of right.

26. The tragedy of human life consists in our vain attempts to stretch the limits of things which can never become unlimited, to reach the infinite by absurdly adding to the rungs of the ladder of the finite.

27. Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live.

28. In an age of enormities, the emotions are naturally weakened. We are continually called upon to have feelings - about genocide, for instance, or about famine or the blowing up of passenger planes - and we are all aware that we are incapable of reacting appropriately. A guilty consciousness of emotional inadequacy or impotence makes people doubt their own human weight.

29. Life is like a concentration camp... you can't leave without dying.

30. This is the saddest story I have ever heard.

31. Now, I think that I should have known that he was magic all along. I did know it - but I should have guessed that it would be too much to ask to grow old with and see our children grow up together. So now, he is a legend when he would have preferred to be a man.

32. One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.

33. The bitterest tragic element in life to be derived from an intellectual source is the belief in a brute Fate or Destiny.

34. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them - this morning, as they prepared for their journey, and waved good-bye, and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God.'

35. I think everybody is covering their posteriors with the Enron scandal and it was very convenient that Sept. 11 came along to deflect the fact that they should never have been in the White House in the first place. What happened in the election was completely corrupt.

36. That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy.

37. Why should I blame her that she filled my days With misery, or that she would of late Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways, Or hurled the little streets upon the great, Had they but courage equal to desire? What could have made her peaceful with a mind That nobleness made simple as a fire, With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind That is not natural in an age like this, Being high and solitary and most stern? Why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there another Troy for her to burn?

38. Heaven blazing into the head: Tragedy wrought to its uttermost. Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages, And all the drop-scenes drop at once Upon a hundred thousand stages, It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.

39. Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.

40. 'I wonder why he shot me,'

41. 'Justice' was done, and the President of the Immortals (in Aeschylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess. And the d'Urberville knights and dames slept on in their tombs unknowing. The two speechless gazers bent themselves down to the earth, as if in prayer, and remained thus a long time, absolutely motionless: the flag continued to wave silently. As soon as they had strength, they arose, joined hands again, and went on.

42. Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connection with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befall himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own.

43. Only the passive, only those who accept their lot without active retaliation, are 'flawless.' Most of us are in that category. But there are among us today, as there always have been, those who act against the scheme of things that degrades them, and in the process of action everything we have accepted out of fear of insensitivity or ignorance is shaken before us and examined, and from this total onslaught by an individual against the seemingly stable cosmos surrounding us - from this total examination of the 'unchangeable' environment - comes the terror and the fear that is classically associated with tragedy. More important, from this total questioning of what has previously been unquestioned, we learn.

44. Hegel remarks somewhere that history tends to repeat itself. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

45. For they could not love you, but still your love was true And when no hope was left in sight, on that starry starry night You took your life as lovers often do, But I could have told you, Vincent, This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.

46. This was her finest role and the hardest one to play. Choosing between heaven and a ridiculous fidelity, preferring oneself to eternity or losing oneself in God is the age-old tragedy in which each must play his part.

47. In the twentieth century power wears the mask of tragedy.

48. People talk about Eric Clapton. What has he ever done except throw his baby off a fuckin' ledge and write a song about it?

49. In this age few tragedies are written. It has often been held that the lack is due to a paucity of heroes among us, or else that modern man has had the blood drawn out of his organs of belief by the skepticism of science, and the heroic attack on life cannot feed on an attitude of reserve and circumspection. For one reason or another, we are often held to be below tragedy - or tragedy above us.

50. Googling is international. It's not just restricted to cranky Republicans who couldn't erase e-mail in their PROFS (Professional Office System). That's going to have more of an effect. It's difficult to escape a tragedy in your life that's not your own fault.

51. Comedy: Why do we laugh at such terrible things? Because comedy is often the sarcastic realization of inescapable tragedy.

52. But death, fires, and burglary, make all men equals...

53. It was reported that the fireworks were beginning and Diana, ever enthusiastic, led the procession to the roof. I was bringing up the rear, had reached the top floor and was about to climb the ladder that led up from it, when I heard the sound of shattered glass followed, after what seemed to me a long interval, by the sound of a falling body. I opened a door from behind which the noise seemed to come and looked into a narrow box-room, on the floor of which Diana was lying. She had fallen through a skylight about twenty-five feet from the floor. The opening was so narrow that the large hat she was wearing remained on the roof. She had broken her thigh... This was not an auspicious beginning to our married life. ~ Duff Cooper in Old Men Forget (1955)

54. Blind as I was, I tried to get out As the carriage fell in the ditch, And was caught in the wheels and killed.

55. In many ways I still resent the wretched yellow journalism that was clearly evident in (the media's) treatment of the game - 60 Minutes in particular. I've never watched that show after Ed Bradley's interview with me because they rearranged my answers. When I sent some copies of letters from mothers of those two children who had committed suicide who said the game had nothing to do with it, they refused to do a retraction or even mention it on air. What bothered me is that I was getting death threats, telephone calls, and letters. I was a little nervous. I had a bodyguard for a while.

56. Why are young widows in mourning so beautiful? (Look into it.)

57. If I should be out driving around looking for a little fun and I see an accident, one that I am not involved in, I stop immediately! Well, I want to get a good look at what's going on. I'm never too busy that I can't stop to enjoy someone else's suffering.

58. September the 4th, 2001, I stood in the ruins of the Twin Towers. It's a day I will never forget.

59. Our nation is shocked and saddened by the news of the shootings at Virginia Tech today...Schools should be places of safety, and sanctuary, and learning. When that sanctuary is violated, the impact is felt in every American classroom and every American community. Today our nation grieves with those who have lost loved ones at Virginia Tech. We hold the victims in our hearts; we lift them up in our prayers; and we ask a loving God to comfort those who are suffering today.

60. So they spoke, and both springing down from behind their horses gripped each other's hands and exchanged the promise of friendship; but Zeus the son of Kronos stole away the wits of Glaukos who exchanged with Diomedes the son of Tydeus armour of gold for bronze, for nine oxen's worth the worth of a hundred.

61. The China Incident [of 1937 onwards] has resulted in massive loss of life through the mutual killing of neighboring friends. This is the greatest tragedy of the last one thousand years. Nevertheless this is a holy war to save the peoples of East Asia.... Invoking the power of Avalokitesvara, I pray for the bright future of East Asia.

62. I am doubtful myself about the undertaking. Part of the attraction of the L.R. is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background: an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in a sunlit mist. To go there is to destroy the magic, unless new unattainable vistas are again revealed. Also many of the older legends are purely 'mythological', and nearly all are grim and tragic: a long account of the disasters that destroyed the beauty of the Ancient World, from the darkening of Valinor to the Downfall of Numenor and the flight of Elendil.

63. The moment when she crawled out onto the back of the open limousine in which her husband had been murdered was the first and last time the American people would see Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis crawl... She was the last great private public figure in this country. In a time of gilt and glitz and perpetual revelation, she was perpetually associated with that thing so difficult to describe yet so simple to recognize, the apotheosis of dignity.

64. First the world will call me Bouvier, then I'll change to Jackie K. After my date with tragedy, I will let Aristotle take care of me, I want to be Jackie Onassis oh yeah....

65. We fatuously hoped that we might pluck from the human tragedy itself a consciousness of a common destiny which should bring its own healing, that we might extract from life's very misfortunes a power of cooperation which should be effective against them.

66. Attic tragedies of stateliest and most regal argument.

67. Only tragedy allows the release Of love and grief never normally seen. I didn't want to let them see me weep, I didn't want to let them see me weak, But I know I have shown That I stand at the gates alone.

68. 'Bring it up, bring it down till you hit the ground, Get a rude attitude, turn the world around, Shall we see, shall we disagree, Sing it all In The Name of Tragedy.' - From 'In The Name of Tragedy'.

69. In American literature she will remain a remarkable biographic phenomenon, while the tragic death of this Lycidas of women, a most painful personal story of shipwreck, was intensified by so many melancholy incidents that whoever, long years hence, may read them, will wonder how the gods could have been so pitiless, and why the life of new happiness and larger intellectual achievement which was before her should so suddenly have ended upon that savage and inhospitable shore.

70. The 'tragic flaw' is not a detail of characterization, a mere 'fly in the ointment', but a structural feature of ordinary consciousness. (p.45)

71. They had left him for dead in the middle of a pool of blood in his own bedroom, his belly slit open like gaping barn doors, the hilt of the knife wedged against his sternum. But the only trouble was that he had stayed alive somehow, his life pumping out, managing to knock the telephone off the little table and dial me. Now he was looking up at me with seconds left and all he could do was force out the words, 'Mike ...there was no reason.'

72. He jumped to the sky with anger about Hebron and the provocation of Levinger that has become such a tragedy.

73. For sorrow is our joy, And joy our greatest sorrow. Elissa dies tonight, And Carthage flames tomorrow.

74. Nigella inhabits a strange world of extremes: she has experienced extreme tragedy, extreme success and has the advantage of extreme beauty.

75. There's nothing between them anymore. I could see it fall, the last tie of love or even of concern. If he died tonight, she would be content. to Luet this seemed the most terrible of tragedies. Once these two had been joined together in love, or something like love... And yet the last tie between them was broken now. All lost, all gone. Nothing lasted, nothing.

76. He [Welles] was an onlooker at the clumsy, poignant suicide of 'The Man on the Ledge,' which took place in New York in 1938, when a boy perched for fourteen hours on a window-sill of the Gotham Hotel before plunging into the street. 'I stood in the crowd outside for a long time,' Welles says pensively, 'and wanted to make a film of it all. But they tell me that in the Hollywood version of the film they gave the boy a reason for what he did. That's crazy. It's the crowd that needs explaining.'

77. Tragically I was an only twin.

78. I mean you look in the paper and you see the bodies of mutilated people, and that's sexy. Controversy isn't saying something like 'Oh I've fucked Noel Gallagher' or something. Which I have.

79. The red-faced president took afternoon tea With her majesty The Queen And they watched old films flicker Across the old palace movie screen Crying, 'What a shame!' As she slipped in the rain Poor dancing girl Well, she won't dance again...

80. Le sujet d'une belle tragedie doit n'etre pas vraisemblable.

81. But After 9/11 it was Tony who said 'This heinous incident has brought our civilization to the edge of oblivion but we shall endure.' And there's poor W going 'Shit, I can't even spell that.'

82. The number of people that put their lives at risk, just totally overwhelmed the evil of the act.

83. 'It is a great tragedy that Rufus Wainwright is gay.' (responding to screaming female fan)

84. The Tragic event that befell Amirulmumenin ( a title of Imam Ali ) and Islam is greater than that which befell the Seyyed-al-Shohada ( a title of Imam Hosein).

85. In just the last few months Sharon was beginning to come into her own. She never cared about being beautiful. She never even really cared about acting. She just wanted to love and be loved. And have her baby. I know that if she'd lived and had the baby everything would have been different for her. Because that is what Sharon really wanted. She was just a little girl from Texas who was so incredibly beautiful that she got swept up in all of the Hollywood nonsense. But all she ever wanted was what every woman wants - a man to love and a baby of her own. I can't believe that the murderers knew her. To know Sharon, to really know her, was to love her. There is just no way that anyone who knew her could have hurt her so.

86. THH poem in letter to J.D. Hooker 4th Dec 1894 on hearing that JDH's son had fallen into a salt vat. Huxley papers at Imperial College London HP 2.454.

87. Duly twice a morning Would I be sprinkling it with fountain-water. At last it grew, and grew, and bore, and bore, Till at the length It grew a gallows, and did bear our son, It bore thy fruit and mine: O wicked, wicked plant.

88. En effet, l'histoire n'est que le tableau des crimes et des malheurs.

89. It is vain to recount further the catalogue of miseries. In earlier ages such horrors remain unknown because unrecorded. Just enough flickering light plays upon this infernal scene to give us the sense of its utter desolation and hopeless wretchedness and cruelty.

90. I think what makes him so compelling as an artist, is that there is a tragic beauty in him. The sadness comes through in his singing.

91. I mourn for Kurt. A once beautiful, then pathetic, lost and heroically stupid boy.

92. So many other things for us to see/Things to be, our history so full of tragedy and misery

93. Laura and I have come to Blacksburg today with hearts full of sorrow. This is a day of mourning for the Virginia Tech community -- and it is a day of sadness for our entire nation. We've come to express our sympathy. In this time of anguish, I hope you know that people all over this country are thinking about you, and asking God to provide comfort for all who have been affected. Yesterday began like any other day. Students woke up, and they grabbed their backpacks and they headed for class. And soon the day took a dark turn, with students and faculty barricading themselves in classrooms and dormitories -- confused, terrified, and deeply worried. By the end of the morning, it was the worst day of violence on a college campus in American history -- and for many of you here today, it was the worst day of your lives. It's impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering. Those whose lives were taken did nothing to deserve their fate. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now they're gone -- and they leave behind grieving families, and grieving classmates, and a grieving nation.

94. We were about to board the planes for the flight back to the United States. Jim Jones didn't want us to leave, at least not alive. A tractor trailer loaded with men armed with shotguns and rifles pulled up and opened fire on us at that airstrip. Congressman Ryan was gunned down, having been shot 40 times. The first and only congressman in the history of this country to be assassinated during the line of duty. I was shot five times and left to bleed on that airstrip for 22 hours. Back at Jonestown, over 900 people lost their lives in a mass murder and suicide that night. This is what I awoke to on that long day. I was 28 years old, and I was waiting to die. I laid awake all night fearing some of the gunmen would come back and finish us off. Time passed, and local Guyanese people offered me rum to try and get me through the night. I had a lot of time to think. I promised God that if I lived, I would make every day count. I promised that I would make something out of my life if I was allowed to keep my life. Well, here I am. I have chosen a career as a public servant. One, I hope many of you will contemplate as you move forward in your lives.

95. The ring was all blood-stained... so I put the ring on Jack's finger... and then I kissed his hand...

96. So it goes.

97. You were such a promising boy. Of all the tragedies this lifelong war between brothers has caused, you are the saddest one of all

98. It is customary at occasions such as this for some old person to pass on his accumulated pearls of wisdom and life story to the young. But this is not a customary year. It is a year marked by distinctive tragedy and challenge, by events that no one at last year's commencement ceremony could have possibly anticipated. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon took the lives of so many - Seton Hall graduates among them - and have affected us so deeply that it is impossible to speak here today without acknowledging the witness to tragedy which this University and its students have borne. These events delivered a four-fold shock to us and our country. The shock of our country, under attack. The shock that others would hate so much that they would kill themselves to hurt us. The shock of death to the youthful and innocent. The shock that the murderers would claim to have acted in the name of God.

99. While the angels, all pallid and wan, Uprising, unveiling, affirm That the play is the tragedy, 'Man', And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

100. If I got a paper cut, that's a tragedy. If you fell down an open manhole and died, that's comedy.