Quotes and Sayings about Tragedy
"Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor."
- Sholom Aleichem
(Related: Life, Dream, Comedy, Fool, Poor, Tragedy)
"The difference between tragedy and comedy: Tragedy is something awful happening to somebody else, while comedy is something awful happening to somebody else."
- Aaron Allston
(Related: Comedy, Difference, Tragedy)
"The essence of a tragedy, or even of a serious play, is the spiritual awakening, or regeneration, of the hero."
- Maxwell Anderson
(Related: Play, Spiritual, Tragedy)
"Tragedy is restful: and the reason is that hope, that foul, deceitful thing, has no part in it."
- Jean Anouilh
(Related: Hope, Reason, Tragedy)
"A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end."
- Aristotle
(Related: Action, Beginning, End, Tragedy)
"It works both ways: there are victims of tragedy who come to me who have experienced grief of such magnitude that they cannot reconcile. Likewise, I cannot change the mentality of those who committed the crimes or the fools who followed them."
- Paddy Ashdown
(Related: Change, Fools, Grief, Tragedy, Victims)
"The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly."
- Richard Bach
(Related: Belief, End, Ignorance, Injustice, Tragedy, World)
"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."
- George P. Baker
(Related: Death, Ending, Play, Tragedy, Years)
"There is no essential difference between the material of comedy and tragedy. All depends on the point of view of the dramatist, which, by clever emphasis, he tries to make the point of view of his audience."
- George P. Baker
(Related: Comedy, Difference, Tragedy)
"Europe has what we do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense, in a word, of tragedy. And we have what they sorely need: a sense of life's possibilities."
- James Baldwin
(Related: Life, Europe, Limits, Possibilities, Sense, Tragedy, Word)
"The tragedy of life and of the world is not that men do not know God; the tragedy is that, knowing Him, they still insist on going their own way."
- William Barclay
(Related: Life, Men, God, Tragedy, World)
"It's a tragedy, but with your support and your help we will wage this fight and we're going to win it."
- Michael D. Barnes
(Related: Fight, Help, Support, Tragedy, Wage, Will)
"Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy."
- Jacques Barzun
(Related: Mind, Tragedy)
"Everybody knows about Pearl Harbor. The thing that really fascinated me is that through this tragedy there was this amazing American heroism."
- Michael Bay
(Related: American, Heroism, Tragedy)
"When people divorce, it's always such a tragedy. At the same time, if people stay together it can be even worse."
- Monica Bellucci
(Related: Time, People, Divorce, Tragedy)
"I've never thought of my characters as being sad. On the contrary, they are full of life. They didn't choose tragedy. Tragedy chose them."
- Juliette Binoche
(Related: Life, Thought, Being, Tragedy)
"We, therefore, here in Britain stand shoulder to shoulder with our American friends in this hour of tragedy, and we, like them, will not rest until this evil is driven from our world."
- Tony Blair
(Related: American, Evil, Friends, Rest, Tragedy, Will, World)
"There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt."
- Erma Bombeck
(Related: Humor, Comedy, Hurt, Laughter, Pain, Tragedy)
"Auschwitz is a place in which tragedy cannot occur."
- Edward Bond
(Related: Tragedy)
"To endure the cross is not tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ."
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
(Related: Christ, Suffering, Tragedy)
"I thought there had to be something I could do because it seemed crazy that, in addition to the psychological tragedy each woman has to face, came also all the rest."
- Emma Bonino
(Related: Thought, Rest, Tragedy, Woman)
"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."
- Norman Borlaug
(Related: Famine, Future, Man, Past, Regret, Tragedy, Trying)
"A Shakespearean tragedy as so far considered may be called a story of exceptional calamity leading to the death of a man in high estate. But it is clearly much more than this, and we have now to regard it from another side."
- Andrew Coyle Bradley
(Related: Death, Calamity, Leading, Man, May, Now, Tragedy)
"In Shakespearean tragedy the main source of the convulsion which produces suffering and death is never good: good contributes to this convulsion only from its tragic implication with its opposite in one and the same character."
- Andrew Coyle Bradley
(Related: Death, Character, Suffering, Tragedy)
"In approaching our subject it will be best, without attempting to shorten the path by referring to famous theories of the drama, to start directly from the facts, and to collect from them gradually an idea of Shakespearean Tragedy."
- Andrew Coyle Bradley
(Related: Idea, Drama, Facts, Famous, Theories, Tragedy, Will)
"But, in addition, there is, all through the tragedy, a constant alternation of rises and falls in this tension or in the emotional pitch of the work, a regular sequence of more exciting and less exciting sections."
- Andrew Coyle Bradley
(Related: Work, Tension, Tragedy)
"I love John Irving's stuff. It's that marriage of comedy and tragedy. It's really terrific."
- Jeff Bridges
(Related: Love, Marriage, Comedy, Tragedy)
"David Brinkley was an icon of modern broadcast journalism, a brilliant writer who could say in a few words what the country needed to hear during times of crisis, tragedy and triumph."
- Tom Brokaw
(Related: Country, Crisis, Journalism, Tragedy, Words, Writer)
"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die."
- Mel Brooks
(Related: Comedy, Open, Tragedy)
"The tragedy of life is not that man loses but that he almost wins."
- Heywood Broun
(Related: Life, Man, Tragedy)
"Divorce is the one human tragedy that reduces everything to cash."
- Rita Mae Brown
(Related: Divorce, Tragedy)
"Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it."
- Lenny Bruce
(Related: Time, Public, Satire, Tragedy, Will)
"Comedy is tragedy plus time."
- Carol Burnett
(Related: Time, Comedy, Tragedy)
"When the systems we expect to help us actually hurt us, we have tragedy."
- Carter Burwell
(Related: Help, Hurt, Tragedy)
"The action we take and the decisions we make in this decade will have consequences far into this century. If America shows weakness and uncertainty, the world will drift toward tragedy. That will not happen on my watch."
- George W. Bush
(Related: Action, America, Consequences, Decisions, Tragedy, Uncertainty, Weakness, Will, World)
"Great tragedy has come to us, and we are meeting it with the best that is in our country, with courage and concern for others because this is America. This is who we are."
- George W. Bush
(Related: Courage, America, Concern, Country, Meeting, Tragedy)
"I believe the most solemn duty of the American president is to protect the American people. If America shows uncertainty and weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy. This will not happen on my watch."
- George W. Bush
(Related: People, America, American, Duty, President, Tragedy, Uncertainty, Weakness, Will, World)
"People marry for a variety of reasons and with varying results. But to marry for love is to invite inevitable tragedy."
- James Branch Cabell
(Related: Love, People, Results, Tragedy, Variety)
"Comedy is tragedy that happens to other people."
- Angela Carter
(Related: People, Comedy, Tragedy)
"It's every woman's tragedy, that, after a certain age, she looks like a female impersonator. Mind you, we've known some lovely female impersonators, in our time."
- Angela Carter
(Related: Time, Age, Mind, Tragedy, Woman)
"It is a tragedy of the world that no one knows what he doesn't know - the less a man knows, the more sure it is that he knows everything."
- Joyce Cary
(Related: Man, Tragedy, World)
"The Iraqi people are living a long-running tragedy because of the legacy of the old regime, the Americans and their actions that are unsuitable for Iraqi society, and the weakness of national resolve."
- Ahmed Chalabi
(Related: Society, People, Actions, Americans, Living, Old, Tragedy, Weakness)
"Tragedy occurs when a human soul awakes and seeks, in suffering and pain, to free itself from crime, violence, infamy, even at the cost of life. The struggle is the tragedy - not defeat or death."
- Whittaker Chambers
(Related: Death, Life, Soul, Crime, Defeat, Pain, Struggle, Suffering, Tragedy, Violence)
"Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot."
- Charlie Chaplin
(Related: Life, Comedy, Tragedy)
"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."
- Chris Chocola
(Related: Government, Pet, Opportunity, Congress, Help, Needs, Projects, Tragedy)
"We just sent our condolences to the President of the United States and the American people on what is a terrible, terrible tragedy."
- Helen Clark
(Related: People, American, President, states, Tragedy, United)
"The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion."
- Arthur C. Clarke
(Related: History, Religion, Morality, Mankind, May, Tragedy)
"This familiarity with a respected physician and my appreciation of his work, or the tragedy I experienced with the long, tormented agony and death of my mother might have influenced me in wanting to study medicine. It was not the case."
- Albert Claude
(Related: Death, Work, Mother, Appreciation, Familiarity, Medicine, Study, Tragedy)
"Humor is merely tragedy standing on its head with its pants torn."
- Irvin S. Cobb
(Related: Humor, Tragedy)
"Tragedy in life normally comes with betrayal and compromise, and trading on your integrity and not having dignity in life. That's really where failure comes."
- Tom Cochrane
(Related: Life, Failure, Betrayal, Compromise, Dignity, Integrity, Tragedy)
"The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood."
- Jean Cocteau
(Related: Being, Tragedy)
"It is true that I have had heartache and tragedy in my life. These are things none of us avoids. Suffering is the price of being alive."
- Judy Collins
(Related: Life, Being, Suffering, Tragedy)
"My book 'Trust Your Heart', which is the story of my life, will be followed by 'Singing Lessons', a memoir of love, loss, hope, and healing, which talks about the death of my son and the hope that has been the aftermath of the healing from that tragedy."
- Judy Collins
(Related: Death, Life, Love, Son, Heart, Hope, Healing, Loss, Tragedy, Will)
"I think art can reflect tragedy."
- John Corigliano
(Related: Art, Tragedy)
"The subject of a good tragedy must not be realistic."
- Pierre Corneille
(Related: Tragedy)
"The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives - the death of genuine feeling, the death of inspired response, the awareness that makes it possible to feel the pain or the glory of other men in yourself."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Death, Life, Men, Awareness, Feeling, Glory, Man, Pain, Tragedy)
"We hope to do the Spanish Tragedy based on the play by Thomas Kyd."
- Alex Cox
(Related: Hope, Play, Tragedy)
"Apart altogether from our own vital interests, we cannot and must not desert those other nations who have already gone through so much tragedy and suffering to defeat the evil designs of the Axis powers."
- Stafford Cripps
(Related: Defeat, Evil, Nations, Suffering, Tragedy)
"Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt."
- Clarence Darrow
(Related: Children, Doubt, Teaching, Tragedy)
"The histories which we have of the great tragedy give no idea of the general wretchedness, the squalid misery, which entered into every individual life in the region given up to the war. Where the armies camped the destruction was absolute."
- Rebecca H. Davis
(Related: Life, War, Idea, Destruction, Misery, Tragedy)
"To believe in love, to be ready to give up anything for it, to be willing to risk your life for it, is the ultimate tragedy."
- Leonardo DiCaprio
(Related: Life, Love, Risk, Tragedy)
"It's a terrible thing wishing that it can be someone else's tragedy."
- John Dyer
(Related: Tragedy, Wishing)
"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."
- Abba Eban
(Related: Men, Rejection, Routine, Tragedy)
"It is frequently the tragedy of the great artist, as it is of the great scientist, that he frightens the ordinary man."
- Loren Eiseley
(Related: Artist, Man, Tragedy)
"There's no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
(Related: Death, Life, Tragedy)
"Every man of genius sees the world at a different angle from his fellows, and there is his tragedy."
- Havelock Ellis
(Related: Genius, Man, Tragedy, World)
"I used to think that the Civil War was our country's greatest tragedy, but I do remember that there were some redeeming features in the Civil War in that there was some spirit of sacrifice and heroism displayed on both sides. I see no redeeming features in Watergate."
- Sam Ervin
(Related: War, Sacrifice, Country, Heroism, Spirit, Tragedy)
"Our tragedy is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it... the basest of all things is to be afraid."
- William Faulkner
(Related: Fear, Now, Tragedy)
"Well I would say that we're regular people first of all and we're normal and it's obvious by some of the things that have happened just because our name is famous we're not immune to tragedy."
- Brett Favre
(Related: People, Famous, First, Name, Obvious, Tragedy)
"The tragedy is that so many have ambition and so few have ability."
- William Feather
(Related: Ability, Ambition, Tragedy)
"Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
(Related: Tragedy)
"People try to make a Greek tragedy of my life, and they can't do it. I'm too happy."
- Curt Flood
(Related: Life, People, Tragedy)
"An American tragedy in which we all have played a part."
- Gerald R. Ford
(Related: American, Tragedy)
"The tragedy of war is that it uses man's best to do man's worst."
- Harry Emerson Fosdick
(Related: War, Man, Tragedy)
"Life's Tragedy is that we get old to soon and wise too late."
- Benjamin Franklin
(Related: Life, Old, Tragedy)
"In tragedy every moment is eternity; in comedy, eternity is a moment."
- Christopher Fry
(Related: Comedy, Eternity, Tragedy)
"The tragedy of the civil rights movement is that just as it achieved the beginning of the end of racial segregation, white educated elites became swept up in the glamour of the sexual revolution."
- Maggie Gallagher
(Related: Beginning, Civil rights, End, Revolution, Glamour, Tragedy)
"If Romeo and Juliet make a tragedy of it nowadays, they have only to blame their own mismanagement, for the world is with them as it has never been before, and all sensible fathers and mothers know it."
- Richard Le Gallienne
(Related: Blame, Fathers, Mothers, Tragedy, World)
"It is in times of great tragedy when the true spirit of our wonderful country unites as one."
- Jim Gerlach
(Related: Country, Spirit, Tragedy)
"The tragedy of machismo is that a man is never quite man enough."
- Germaine Greer
(Related: Man, Tragedy)
"Avoiding humiliation is the core of tragedy and comedy."
- John Guare
(Related: Comedy, Tragedy)
"There is no tragedy in missing a putt, no matter how short. All have erred in this respect."
- Walter Hagen
(Related: Respect, Tragedy)
"Hard work without talent is a shame, but talent without hard work is a tragedy."
- Robert Half
(Related: Work, Talent, Hard work, Shame, Tragedy)
"None but a poet can write a tragedy. For tragedy is nothing less than pain transmuted into exaltation by the alchemy of poetry."
- Edith Hamilton
(Related: Poetry, Alchemy, Nothing, Pain, Tragedy)
"What makes America great is that we can come together during times of national tragedy."
- Dennis Hastert
(Related: America, Tragedy)
"The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less."
- Vaclav Havel
(Related: Life, Man, Meaning, Tragedy)
"Every human being on this earth is born with a tragedy, and it isn't original sin. He's born with the tragedy that he has to grow up... a lot of people don't have the courage to do it."
- Helen Hayes
(Related: People, Courage, Being, Earth, Sin, Tragedy)
"The tragedy is not that love doesn't last. The tragedy is the love that lasts."
- Shirley Hazzard
(Related: Love, Tragedy)
"If you believe, as the Greeks did, that man is at the mercy of the gods, then you write tragedy. The end is inevitable from the beginning. But if you believe that man can solve his own problems and is at nobody's mercy, then you will probably write melodrama."
- Lillian Hellman
(Related: Gods, Beginning, End, Man, Mercy, Problems, Tragedy, Will)
"Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it-don't cheat with it."
- Ernest Hemingway
(Related: Forget, Hell, Hurt, Tragedy)
"I think we're in good shape, but the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina is in some small way mitigated by the fact that we now have more people talking about it, thinking about it and working on it, so that we will be more vigilant and ready."
- John Hickenlooper
(Related: People, Fact, Now, Talking, Thinking, Tragedy, Will)
"The Constitution is never tested during times of tranquility; it is during times of tension, turmoil, tragedy, trauma, and terrorism that it is sorely tested."
- Mike Honda
(Related: Constitution, Tension, Terrorism, Tragedy, Tranquility)
"You use everything. You use tragedy you use everything."
- Shannon Hoon
(Related: Tragedy)
"No, no, I didn't know him. He lost his mind around 1917 because of the tragedy of the Armenians."
- Alan Hovhaness
(Related: Mind, Tragedy)
"What the American public wants in the theater is a tragedy with a happy ending."
- William Dean Howells
(Related: American, Ending, Public, Theater, Tragedy)
"Right after the tragedy, President Bush asked Americans to get on with their lives and we did."
- Jane D. Hull
(Related: Americans, President, Right, Tragedy)
"I like to take these unusual characters and then make them as normal as possible, because we all know that the tragedy and the abnormal always hides itself behind the normal."
- Isabelle Huppert
(Related: Tragedy)
"The tragedy of 9/11 galvanised the American superpower into action, leaving us in Europe divided in its wake."
- Douglas Hurd
(Related: Action, American, Europe, Tragedy)
"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."
- King Hussein I
(Related: Peace, Palestine, Solution, Tragedy, World)
"We participate in a tragedy; at a comedy we only look."
- Aldous Huxley
(Related: Comedy, Tragedy)
"The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact."
- Thomas Huxley
(Related: Science, Fact, Tragedy, Ugly)
"Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fantasies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them."
- Hypatia
(Related: Mind, Miracles, Myths, Pain, Tragedy, Years)
"In this sport luck and tragedy are only a few hundredths of seconds apart from each other."
- Jacky Ickx
(Related: Luck, Tragedy)
"September 11 stands on its own as a terrible tragedy."
- Vernon Jordan
(Related: Tragedy)
"The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy."
- John F. Kennedy
(Related: Life, Courage, Tragedy)
"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."
- Patrick J. Kennedy
(Related: People, Disaster, Tragedy)
"Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live."
- Robert Kennedy
(Related: Wisdom, Gain, Living, Tragedy)
"This new one was held for a couple months, so I guess it was better, but when we go into thinking our next record tragedy, it traditionally will probably change the distribution again and it will get held up again."
- Kerry King
(Related: Change, Months, Thinking, Tragedy, Will)
"History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
(Related: History, People, Silence, Tragedy, Will)
"The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
(Related: People, Cruelty, Oppression, Silence, Tragedy)
"One of the greatest things drama can do, at it's best, is to redefine the words we use every day such as love, home, family, loyalty and envy. Tragedy need not be a downer."
- Ben Kingsley
(Related: Family, Home, Love, Day, Drama, Envy, Loyalty, Tragedy, Words)
"It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise."
- Henry A. Kissinger
(Related: Nature, End, Nixon, Tragedy)
"The tragedy of September 11th was so sudden, so enormous, and so horrendous, both in terms of lives lost and global consequences, that this country and the world went into immediate and prolonged shock."
- Allen Klein
(Related: Consequences, Country, Tragedy, World)
"My bones are tired from all the tragedy in me."
- Peter Krause
(Related: Tragedy)
"Following the Second World War, we are a country of one ethnicity. After the moving of the borders, after the tragedy of the Holocaust and the murder of Polish Jews, we don't have large minority groups."
- Aleksander Kwasniewski
(Related: War, Country, Minority, Murder, Tragedy, World, World war)
"Vegas means comedy, tragedy, happiness and sadness all at the same time."
- Artie Lange
(Related: Happiness, Time, Comedy, Sadness, Tragedy)
"Tragedy is like strong acid - it dissolves away all but the very gold of truth."
- David Herbert Lawrence
(Related: Truth, Gold, Tragedy)
"Comedy is much more difficult than tragedy-and a much better training, I think. It's much easier to make people cry than to make them laugh."
- Vivien Leigh
(Related: People, Comedy, Tragedy, Training)
"It's about how to bring together the seemingly contradictory aspects of the memorial, which is about a tragedy and how it changed the world, but also about creating a vital and beautiful city of the 21st century."
- Daniel Libeskind
(Related: Tragedy, World)
"Certainly after the tragedy in Neil's life, we were holding out hope for his recovery. It wasn't too promising at the time and obviously you get to the point of thinking that that is it."
- Alex Lifeson
(Related: Time, Life, Hope, Thinking, Tragedy)
"A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both."
- James Madison
(Related: Government, Information, Popular, Tragedy)
"Life is a tragedy full of joy."
- Bernard Malamud
(Related: Life, Joy, Tragedy)
"History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce."
- Karl Marx
(Related: History, First, Tragedy)
"Greek philosophy seems to have met with something with which a good tragedy is not supposed to meet, namely, a dull ending."
- Karl Marx
(Related: Ending, Philosophy, Tragedy)
"Commonplace people dislike tragedy because they dare not suffer and cannot exult."
- John Masefield
(Related: People, Tragedy)
"The tragedy of life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach."
- Benjamin E. Mays
(Related: Life, Lie, Goal, Lies, Tragedy)
"It must be borne in mind that the tragedy of life does not lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy of life lies in having no goal to reach."
- Benjamin E. Mays
(Related: Life, Lie, Goal, Lies, Mind, Tragedy)
"Why do we laugh at such terrible things? Because comedy is often the sarcastic realization of inescapable tragedy."
- Bryant H. McGill
(Related: Comedy, Sarcastic, Tragedy)
"I was with somebody else at the time, who I left - one, because I didn't really want to be with that person, and two, because I felt I'd had so much tragedy I needed to go off, go crazy, and maybe live on the outside for a while."
- Rose McGowan
(Related: Time, Tragedy, Want)
"Of course the Munich tragedy was the biggest event in my career and the most terrible."
- Jim McKay
(Related: Career, Tragedy)
"The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line."
- H. L. Mencken
(Related: War, Existence, Fact, Tragedy)
"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."
- Arthur Miller
(Related: Life, Commitment, Emotion, Fanaticism, Man, Tragedy)
"The tragedy of it is that nobody sees the look of desperation on my face. Thousands and thousands of us, and we're passing one another without a look of recognition."
- Henry Miller
(Related: Desperation, Tragedy)
"Gay icons usually have some tragedy in their lives, but I've only had tragic haircuts and outfits."
- Kylie Minogue
(Related: Gay, Tragedy)
"I don't understand why Europeans and South Americans can take more sophistication. Why is it that Americans need to hear their happiness major and their tragedy minor, and as jazzy as they can handle is a seventh chord? Are they not experiencing complex emotions?"
- Joni Mitchell
(Related: Happiness, Americans, Emotions, Sophistication, Tragedy)
"Life is neither comedy or tragedy, life is what you make of it."
- Radha Mitchell
(Related: Life, Comedy, Tragedy)
"Lack of something to feel important about is almost the greatest tragedy a man may have."
- Arthur E. Morgan
(Related: Man, May, Tragedy)
"Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute."
- John Mortimer
(Related: Tragedy)
"Any art worthy of its name should address 'life', 'man', 'nature', 'death' and 'tragedy'."
- Barnett Newman
(Related: Art, Name)
"City government can and must help San Franciscans prepare for emergencies in order to avoid tragedy where possible and minimize loss of life and property when emergencies occur."
- Gavin Newsom
(Related: Government, Life, Help, Loss, Order, Property, Tragedy)
"The office of drama is to exercise, possibly to exhaust, human emotions. The purpose of comedy is to tickle those emotions into an expression of light relief; of tragedy, to wound them and bring the relief of tears. Disgust and terror are the other points of the compass."
- Laurence Olivier
(Related: Purpose, Comedy, Disgust, Drama, Emotions, Exercise, Expression, Light, Office, Tears, Terror, Tragedy)
"The calls that I have received from President Bush and Vice President Cheney, the fact that there are other people that are suffering every bit as much as I am, and that our whole nation is going through a tragedy together, I think we have to think about those things."
- Ted Olson
(Related: People, Fact, Nation, President, Suffering, Tragedy, Vice)
"And in this respect, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been a tragedy, a clash between one very powerful, very convincing, very painful claim over this land and another no less powerful, no less convincing claim."
- Amos Oz
(Related: Conflict, Land, Respect, Tragedy)
"Well, my definition of a tragedy is a clash between right and right."
- Amos Oz
(Related: Right, Tragedy)
"The tragedy of all of this is that it happened to me and it shouldn't have happened. It ruined my life and my career. That's the tragedy of this."
- Rafael Palmeiro
(Related: Life, Career, Tragedy)
"After the tragedy, New Yorkers are more united than ever in their vision, as well as in appreciation what living in freedom means - and that if we stand together, we can accomplish anything."
- George Pataki
(Related: Vision, Appreciation, Freedom, Living, Tragedy, United)
"Losing a game is heartbreaking. Losing your sense of excellence or worth is a tragedy."
- Joe Paterno
(Related: Excellence, Losing, Sense, Tragedy, Worth)
"And I have lived since - as you have - in a period of cold war, during which we have ensured by our achievements in the science and technology of destruction that a third act in this tragedy of war will result in the peace of extinction."
- Lester B. Pearson
(Related: Peace, Science, Technology, War, Act, Destruction, Result, Tragedy, Will)
"If I told you the tragedy parts, we'd all sit here and cry."
- John Phillips
(Related: Tragedy)
"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light."
- Plato
(Related: Life, Men, Light, Tragedy)
"Somebody said that I am the last American living the tragedy of Europe."
- Ezra Pound
(Related: American, Europe, Living, Tragedy)
"The basis of tragedy is man's helplessness against disease, war and death; the basis of comedy is man's helplessness against vanity (the vanity of love, greed, lust, power)."
- Dawn Powell
(Related: War, Love, Death, Comedy, Disease, Greed, Lust, Man, Tragedy, Vanity)
"What we think of as our sensitivity is only the higher evolution of terror in a poor dumb beast. We suffer for nothing. Our own death wish is our only real tragedy."
- Mario Puzo
(Related: Death, Dumb, Evolution, Nothing, Poor, Sensitivity, Terror, Tragedy)
"It's such a tragedy that man endures in killing his brother and his own kind, putting him in jail and insane asylums, letting him lay out in the street."
- Sun Ra
(Related: Brother, Killing, Man, Tragedy)
"A tragedy need not have blood and death; it's enough that it all be filled with that majestic sadness that is the pleasure of tragedy."
- Jean Racine
(Related: Death, Blood, Pleasure, Sadness, Tragedy)
"While we have the gift of life, it seems to me the only tragedy is to allow part of us to die - whether it is our spirit, our creativity or our glorious uniqueness."
- Gilda Radner
(Related: Life, Creativity, Spirit, Tragedy, Uniqueness)
"I think it's the tragedy of our time that we're not aware of the affect of the manner in which we've adopted tools. Those tools have become who we are."
- Godfrey Reggio
(Related: Time, Tools, Tragedy)
"I think I would cope like anyone copes with any tragedy. I'm sure I would be very upset for a while and then there would come a point where I would either have to stay in this place of darkness and anger, or I'd have to accept that it happened."
- Jason Ritter
(Related: Anger, Darkness, Tragedy)
"But I find with Francis Bacon, some of the things were in the place, and someone who was connected with these schools of thought, and someone who had a motivation that equals the scope of the comedy and the tragedy in the plays."
- Mark Rylance
(Related: Motivation, Thought, Comedy, Schools, Tragedy)
"Laughter is ever young, whereas tragedy, except the very highest of all, quickly becomes haggard."
- Margaret Sackville
(Related: Laughter, Tragedy)
"I've had at least my share of tragedy, but I have had far more than my share of happiness."
- Pierre Salinger
(Related: Happiness, Tragedy)
"The worst tragedy that could have befallen me was my success. I knew right away that I was through - cast out."
- Jonas Salk
(Related: Success, Right, Tragedy)
"I think there's a poet who wrote once a tragedy by Shakespeare, a symphony by Beethoven and a thunderstorm are based on the same elements. I think that's a beautiful line."
- Maximilian Schell
(Related: Shakespeare, Tragedy)
"Jews are not part of a European ruling class imposed on helpless natives, but are caught up in a tragedy in which two peoples are struggling for the same piece of land."
- Jack Schwartz
(Related: Class, Land, Tragedy)
"The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives."
- Albert Schweitzer
(Related: Life, Man, Tragedy)
"Tragedy, for me, is not a conflict between right and wrong, but between two different kinds of right."
- Peter Shaffer
(Related: Conflict, Right, Tragedy, Wrong)
"The key element in tragedy is that heroes and heroines are destroyed by that which appears to be their greatest strength."
- Robert Shea
(Related: Strength, Heroes, Key, Tragedy)
"Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Related: Pain, Pleasure, Shadow, Tragedy)
"Women in the service put themselves in harms way to protect us and our Nation from threats at home and abroad. The least we can do is ensure they are protected when facing a horrible tragedy."
- Louise Slaughter
(Related: Home, Women, Nation, Service, Tragedy)
"The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations."
- Adam Smith
(Related: Aspirations, Poor, Poverty, Tragedy)
"In all love stories the theme is love and tragedy, so by writing these types of stories, I have to include tragedy."
- Nicholas Sparks
(Related: Love, Tragedy, Writing)
"The memories of the Munich games for me are of triumph and tragedy."
- Mark Spitz
(Related: Games, Memories, Tragedy)
"One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic."
- Joseph Stalin
(Related: Death, Tragedy)
"The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic."
- Joseph Stalin
(Related: Death, Man, Tragedy)
"I did know Ted Hughes and I partly wrote the book to explain to myself and others the complexities of a marriage that was for six years wonderfully productive of poetry and then ended in tragedy."
- Anne Stevenson
(Related: Marriage, Poetry, Tragedy, Years)
"The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means."
- Tom Stoppard
(Related: End, Tragedy)
"How often we fail to realize our good fortune in living in a country where happiness is more than a lack of tragedy."
- Paul Sweeney
(Related: Happiness, Country, Fortune, Living, Tragedy)
"In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed."
- Wislawa Szymborska
(Related: Comedy, Tragedy)
"People think it's a terrible tragedy when somebody has Alzheimer's. But in my mother's case, it's different. My mother has been unhappy all her life. For the first time in her life, she's happy."
- Amy Tan
(Related: Time, Life, Mother, People, First, Tragedy)
"My heart goes out to victims and survivors of the Hurricane Katrina tragedy and to their families. This disaster will go down in history books as one of the largest natural disasters in U.S. history."
- Ellen Tauscher
(Related: History, Heart, Books, Disaster, Disasters, Tragedy, Victims, Will)
"In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood."
- Henry David Thoreau
(Related: Silence, Tragedy, Words)
"The main cause of my difficulties stemmed from the tragedy of my daughter's unsound birth and my inability to face my feelings."
- Gene Tierney
(Related: Daughter, Feelings, Cause, Difficulties, Tragedy)
"Unfortunately, since the Sept. 11 tragedy, our business is not doing too well."
- Hunter Tylo
(Related: Business, Tragedy)
"The tragedy of bold, forthright, industrious people is that they act so continuously without much thinking, that it becomes dry and empty."
- Brenda Ueland
(Related: People, Act, Thinking, Tragedy)
"The acts of the human race on the world's stage have doubtless a coherent unity, but the meaning of the vast tragedy enacted will be visible only to the eye of God, until the end, which will reveal it perhaps to the last man."
- Alfred de Vigny
(Related: God, End, Eye, Man, Meaning, Race, Tragedy, Unity, Will, World)
"When you close your eyes to tragedy, you close your eyes to greatness."
- Stephen Vizinczey
(Related: Greatness, Eyes, Tragedy)
"This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel."
- Horace Walpole
(Related: Comedy, Tragedy, World)
"The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those who feel."
- Horace Walpole
(Related: Comedy, Tragedy, World)
"Plot, rules, nor even poetry, are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitation of nature, of character, of the passions and their operations in diversified situations."
- Horace Walpole
(Related: Nature, Poetry, Character, Comedy, Imitation, Rules, Tragedy)
"Life is a comedy for those who think... and a tragedy for those who feel."
- Horace Walpole
(Related: Life, Comedy, Tragedy)
"Life is a tragedy for those who feel, but a comedy to those who think."
- Horace Walpole
(Related: Life, Comedy, Tragedy)
"The abduction of a child is a tragedy. No one can fully understand or appreciate what a parent goes through at such a time, unless they have faced a similar tragedy. Every parent responds differently. Each parent copes with this nightmare in the best way he or she knows how."
- John Walsh
(Related: Time, Tragedy)
"One of the advantages of appearing in such a play is that you begin to understand it properly, I feel Ophelia's tragedy was that she had been so used by everybody and felt that she bore a great burden of guilt."
- Lalla Ward
(Related: Burden, Guilt, Play, Tragedy)
"The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon."
- Jenny Weber
(Related: Life, Tragedy)
"The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy."
- Steven Weinberg
(Related: Life, Effort, Grace, Tragedy, Universe)
"The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy."
- Alfred North Whitehead
(Related: Life, Tragedy, Youth)
"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."
- Simon Wiesenthal
(Related: People, Law, Tragedy, Victims)
"The mark of a good marriage is partnership and continuing to feel inspired by your spouse. I had that with Tao. But the end is not necessarily the tragedy. Staying in a relationship that is no longer working is the tragedy. Living unhappily - that's the tragedy."
- Olivia Wilde
(Related: Marriage, End, Living, Partnership, Tragedy)
"I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy."
- Oscar Wilde
(Related: Society, Tragedy)
"All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his."
- Oscar Wilde
(Related: Women, Man, Mothers, Tragedy)
"I mean, whose songs don't focus on tragedy and loss?"
- Lucinda Williams
(Related: Focus, Loss, Songs, Tragedy)
"You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks."
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
(Related: Tragedy)
"Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy."
- William Butler Yeats
(Related: Being, Irish, Joy, Sense, Tragedy)
"It seems that almost every time a valuable natural resource is discovered in the world-whether it be diamonds, rubber, gold, oil, whatever-often what results is a tragedy for the country in which they are found. Making matters worse, the resulting riches from these resources rarely benefit the people of the country from which they come."
- Edward Zwick
(Related: Time, People, Country, Gold, Oil, Results, Tragedy, World)