Quotessence
Home / Topics / Tragedy Quotes

Tragedy Quotes

Browse 2649 quotes about Tragedy.

Related topics

PeopleComedyIfsMenWorldThinkingHumansKnowsLife IsWayRealHas BeensSufferingEndsGreat TragedyDiesWantBelieveMayFeelsLifeNeedsHappensStoriesWarGivingLossMeanTwoTragicTryingDramaLooksSeemsShouldArtMindMomentsWellsWritingHeartLittlesSometimesCharacterDifferentKindDoeMatterAgeChildrenCountryFacesLongMadePlayTriumphTragedy And ComedyYearsFactsFirstsPainSaidActionGriefPersonsTerribleImportantModernBookGreekHelpingJoySituationLaughterSelfShowsSoulYoungConflictLaughingReasonTogetherTurnsWould BeDisasterEnoughMankindMovingProblemEmotionEvilLiteratureMightOpportunityStillsWholeEventsHuman BeingsLastsPoliticalmore

Tragedy Quotes

“What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?”

NeedsLife IsGoneOur LivesTragedyDisasterMortalsArtificialPrimitiveQuarrelsCalamityUnbeliefHarshness
Book:Wise, Witty, and Tender Sayings in Prose and Verse: Selected from the Works of George Eliot
Create image

“It is sometimes said that the tragedy of an artist's life is that he cannot realise his ideal. But the true tragedy that dogs the steps of most artists is that they realise their ideal too absolutely. For, when the ideal is realised, it is robbed of its wonder and its mystery, and becomes simply a new starting-point for an ideal that is other than itself.”

SaidSometimesLife IsArtistWonderStepsMysteryDogIdealsTragedyStartingRealisingRealisedStarting PointNew Start
Book:The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
Create image

“I never can hear a crowd of people singing and gesticulating, all together, at an Italian opera, without fancying myself at Athens, listening to that particular tragedy, by Sophocles, in which he introduces a full chorus of turkeys, who set about bewailing the death of Meleager.”

PeopleArtTogetherParticularListeningSingingTragedyCrowdsItalianOperaIntroducingTurkeysChorusAthens
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe (Illustrated)
Create image

“Tragedy and comedy are simply questions of value; a little misfit in life makes us laugh; a great one is tragedy and cause for expression of grief.”

LittlesValuesCausesGriefLaughingComedyExpressionTragedyGreat OnesMisfitsTragedy And Comedy
Book:Love, Life & Work: Being a Book of Opinions Reasonably Good-Natured Concerning How to Attain the Highest Happiness for One's Self with the Least Possible Harm to Others
Create image

“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.”

GivingIdeasWarIndividualGivenDestructionTragedyArmyAbsolutesMiseryNo IdeaRegionsGiven UpWretchednessIndividual LifeGreat Tragedy
Book:Rebecca Harding Davis: Writing Cultural Autobiography
Create image

“The pursuit of Fashion is the attempt of the middle class to co-opt tragedy. In adopting the clothing, speech, and personal habits of those in straitened, dangerous, or pitiful circumstances, the middle class seeks to have what it feels to be the exigent and nonequivocal experiences had by those it emulates.”

FeelsClassMiddleFashionDangerousHabitCircumstancesSpeechTragedyPursuitMiddle ClassClothingsEmulateAdoptingPitiful
Book:Writing in restaurants
Create image

“The popularity of disaster movies expresses a collective perception of a world threatened by irresistible and unforeseen forces which nevertheless are thwarted at the last moment. Their thinly veiled symbolic meaning might be translated thus: We are innocent of wrongdoing. We are attacked by unforeseeable forces come to harm us. We are, thus, innocent even of negligence. Though those forces are insuperable, chance will come to our aid and we shall emerge victorious.”

WorldMomentsMightLastsForceChancePerceptionTragedyHarmAidsDisasterInnocentCollectivesPopularityNeverthelessThreatenedSymbolicIrresistibleWrongdoingNegligenceUnforeseenSymbolic MeaningDisaster Movie
Author:David Mamet
Create image

“The conviction of tragedy that rises out of his [John Dos Passos's] work is the steady protest of a sensitive democratic conscience against the tyranny and the ugliness of society, against the failure of a complete human development under industrial capitalism.”

HumansSocietyDevelopmentConscienceCapitalismTragedyDemocraticConvictionTyrannySensitiveProtestSteadyUglinessHuman Development
Book:ON NATIVE GROUNDS An Interpretation of Modern American Prose Literature
Create image

“Perhaps no American family-with the possible exception of the Adams family-has had a more vivid and powerful impact on the life of their times. But the Kennedy tale-the spiral compound of glory, achievement, degradation and almost mythical tragedy-exerts a fascination upon us that goes beyond their public achievements.”

PowerfulFamilyAchievementGloryTragedyImpactTalesExceptionVividFascinationCompoundsDegradationSpiralsAmerican Family
Author:Doris Kearns Goodwin
Create image

“It was his [Gen. Douglas MacArthur's] relationship with the administration In Washington which became poisoned by his egomania. Link upon link the bond between events on the battlefield and his own ruin was forged, and, as is essential in genuine tragedy, the gods used the victim himself to forge the links.”

UsedEventsEssentialsTragedyVictimGenuineRuinsAdministrationLinksBattlefieldsForgedSelf-importanceMacarthurEgomania
Book:American Caesar
Create image

“Studies of people who report high well-being in their fifties and sixties indicate that they have lived lives that involved personal risks. They are not people whose lives have been calm and predictable. A life under tight control sometimes produces quiet desperation. High well-being is a life that has depth and quality. Risks, losses, problems, and tragedy add pain to a life. That pain becomes a teacher. We learn; the pain gives us no choice.”

PeopleGivingWellsHas BeensSometimesProblemPainChoicesLossQualityStudyTeacherRiskProduceInvolvedQuietTragedyAddDepthCalmWell BeingReportsSixtyDesperationPredictableQuiet Desperation
Book:Success Is the Quality of Your Journey
Create image

“In olden times when there was a war, it was a human-to-human confrontation. The victor in battle would directly see the blood and suffering of the defeated enemy. Nowadays, it is much more terrifying because a person in an office can push a button and kill millions of people and never see the human tragedy that he or she has created. The mechanization of war, the mechanization of human conflict, poses an increasing threat to peace.”

PeopleHumansPersonsWarSufferingEnemyMillionsBloodBattleConflictOfficeTragedyThreatButtonsDefeatedConfrontationMechanizationOlden Times
Author:Dalai Lama
Create image

“If humans one day become extinct from a catastrophic collision, there would be no greater tragedy in the history of life in the universe. Not because we lacked the brain power to protect ourselves but because we lacked the foresight. The dominant species that replaces us in post-apocalyptic Earth just might wonder, as they gaze upon our mounted skeletons in their natural history museums, why large headed Homo sapiens fared no better than the proverbially peabrained dinosaurs.”

IfsHumansMightWould BeEarthUniverseNaturalBrainWonderGreaterWalkingOne DayMoonProtectTragedySpeciesPostsMuseumsDominantDinosaursHomo SapiensForesightSkeletonsStar GazingApocalypticCollisionNatural HistoryPost ApocalypticBrain PowerHistory Of Life
Author:Neil deGrasse Tyson
Create image