Tragedy Quotes

N. Scott Momaday

We are what we imagine. Our very existence consists in our imagination of ourselves. Our best destiny is to imagine, at least, completely, who and what, and that we are. The greatest tragedy that can befall us is to go unimagined.

Sarah Ockler

Weeping is not the same thing as crying. It takes your whole body to weep, and when it's over, you feel like you don't have any bones left to hold you up.

W. Somerset Maugham

I know that you're selfish, selfish beyond words, and I know that you haven't the nerve of a rabbit, I know you're a liar and a humbug, I know that you're utterly contemptible. And the tragic part is'-her face was on a sudden distraught with pain-'the tragic part is that notwithstanding I love you with all my heart.

Erma Bombeck

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

Chögyam Trungpa

If you are involved with the intensity of crescendo situations, with the intensity of tragedy, you might begin to see the humor of these situations as well. As in music, when we hear the crescendo building, suddenly if the music stops, we begin to hear the silence as part of the music.

Diane Samuels

Are you keeping up your good studies at school and working as hard as you always did?

Anne Carson

I will not stop singing
the Muses who set me dancing.

Christy A. Campbell

He wishes he could remember everything. Anything. He doesn’t sense a bone in his body that can feel compassion or worthiness. Self-pity hides away as well, the lowest form of emotion not even capable of resting in his wrecked mind.

E.A. Bucchianeri

While art thrives on the blazing colours of scandal, literature blossoms on the dark soil of tragedy.

Chris Dietzel

Why couldn't he see the tragedy of what was unfolding? Was it because it was too painful, or was it because holding onto hope and dying was better than living if it meant you were forced to see the world for what it was?

Oscar Wilde

Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless. . .

Alice Hoffman

Shut up and do not think. All the theorists agree: shut up and keep the words from being said. And all of the scars will remain invisible; and all of the scars will remain under the skin. Where they belong.

Bryant McGill

The world is not what it is supposed to be. We are tragically off course.

Shannon A. Thompson

He's been through so much and to watch that boy suffer makes me wish this world wasn't so cruel.

Suzanne Elizabeth Anderson

Isn’t that the greatest tragedy? When someone rejects us, no matter how they abuse our love, we hope against reason that somehow they will come back to us.

Mel Brooks

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

Samuel Beckett

I can't go on, I'll go on.

Dalai Lama XIV

There is a saying in Tibetan, 'Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.'
No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that's our real disaster.

George Bernard Shaw

There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is
There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.

Horace Walpole

The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.

Joseph Stalin

A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.

Stephen Jay Gould

We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.

Robyn Schneider

Life is the tragedy,' she said bitterly. 'You know how they categorize Shakespeare's plays, right? If it ends with a wedding, it's a comedy. And if it ends with a funeral, it's a tragedy. So we're all living tragedies, because we all end the same way, and it isn't with a goddamn wedding.

Jean Racine

Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.

Jeannette Walls

Life is a drama full of tragedy and comedy. You should learn to enjoy the comic episodes a little more.

Anaïs Nin

All those who try to unveil the mysteries always have tragic lives. At the end they are always punished.

E. Lockhart

They know that tragedy is not glamorous. They know it doesn't play out in life as it does on a stage or between the pages of a book. It is neither a punishment meted out nor a lesson conferred. Its horrors are not attributable to one single person. Tragedy is ugly and tangled, stupid and confusing.

Arthur Schopenhauer

The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant features are emphasized, is really a tragedy; but gone through in detail it has the character of a comedy.

K.L. Toth

One of the greatest tragedies in life is to lose your own sense of self and accept the version of you that is expected by everyone else.

Honoré De Balzac

Who is to decide which is the grimmer sight: withered hearts, or empty skulls?

Kristina McMorris

Were prayers of murderers, when fighting on the “right side” of the war, ever heard - let alone answered?

Alan Lightman

The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or joy.

Lawrence Durrell

You see, nothing matters except pleasure - which is the opposite of happiness, its tragic part, I expect.

Stacey T. Hunt

You and I were meant to be together, even if we weren't meant to be happy.

William Shakespeare

For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

Richard Paul Evans

There's a problem with marrying up. You always worry that someday they'll see through you and leave. Or, worse yet, someone better will come along and take her. In my case, it wasn't someone. And it wasn't something better.

Carmen DeSousa

Misunderstanding and distrust - the predominant elements of a novel. Without them, everyone lives happily from beginning.

Amy Denise

To have the opportunity to know your parents is to have the opportunity to truly know yourself.

Lindsay Detwiler

If she’s gonna love again, it won’t be an eternity but a hard, fast conflagration that leaves everyone else in the embers.

Dave Matthes

I never had a childhood. Not like the rest of them anyway. I had a starting
I never had a childhood. Not like the rest of them anyway. I had a starting point from which I have never stopped running.

Erich Segal

And then I did what I had never done in his presence, much less in his arms. I cried.

Kristina McMorris

It’s odd, isn’t it? People die every day and the world goes on like nothing happened. But when it’s a person you love, you think everyone should stop and take notice. That they ought to cry and light candles and tell you that you’re not alone.

Jean Racine

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.

Maya Van Wagenen

No popularity exists when tragedy strikes. All that's left are human hearts and love and ache. We all love each other, deep down, and when we see another soul in pain we can't help but hurt too.

R.J. Gonzales

A flower bloomed already wilting. Beginning its life with an early ending.

Dee Remy

Dark circles under my eyes sink deeper and deeper into my skull, in contrast to my pale skin there is an undeniable resemblance to a fresh corpse.

Gabriel García Márquez

She nailed it to the wall with her well-aimed dart, like a butterfly with no will whose sentence has always been written.

Gabriel García Márquez

The ferocity of Santiago Nasar's fate, which had collected twenty years of happiness from him not only with his death but also with the dismemberment of his body and its dispersion and extermination.

William Trevor

Only the debris of wreckage, and not much of that, was left behind by the sharks who fed on tragedy: the fishermen, too, mourned the death of a living child.

Kristina McMorris

Not every loss was confirmed by an officer at the door. Nor a telegram with the power to sink a fleet. Loss, often the worst kind, also arrived through the deafening quiet of an absence.

Douglas Adams

In the center lay the exploded carcass of a lonely sperm whale that hadn't lived long enough to be disappointed with its lot.

Ron Rash

A place where something so terrible had happened shouldn't continue to exist in the world

Jennifer Gardner Trulson

We may be helpless to stop bad things from happening, but perhaps God leaves us signs and road maps to help us recover and reconnect, provided we know where to look.

Jim George

What you think to be a tragedy id God’s opportunity to show Himself faithful.

Patrick Rothfuss

It’s not over if you’re still here,” Chronicler said. “It’s not a tragedy if you’re still alive.

Aberjhani

This world’s anguish is no different
from the love we insist on holding back.

Richelle E. Goodrich

In a world plagued with commonplace tragedies, only one thing exists that truly has the power to save lives, and that is love.

Paula Heller Garland

I may not always like at times, but life is a beautiful blend of joy, tragedy and dreams. If not for one, I could not have the other.

Dave Matthes

Being crazy, for the rest of us, is a form of sanity.

Dave Matthes

...you're either gonna spend your life fucking pussy, or taking it to church.. Dave Matthes
...you're either gonna spend your life fucking pussy, or taking it to church.

Dave Matthes

Life will hack off your head and shit down your neck every chance it gets. I've found that consuming drugs and booze, listening to music and always having an excuse in the best way to tip the scales.

Dave Matthes

Let me ask you this: How many days do you have left, if any, in the life you promised for yourself yesterday?

Dave Matthes

So you mean to tell me you won't fuck anyone you don't share some kind of deep emotional connection with? What a sad, depressing, truly horrible life you must lead...

Philip K. Dick

It really seems to me that in the midst of great tragedy, there is always the horrible possibility that something terribly funny will happen.

Simon Armitage

And wonder, dread and war
have lingered in that land
where loss and love in turn
have held the upper hand.

Alan Lightman

If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly. If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.

Diane Samuels

I don't want to sew.
How else will the buttons get onto the coat?

David Gemmell

We make choices every day, some of them good, some of them bad. And if we are strong enough, we live with the consequences.

Lailah Gifty Akita

May you always have extraordinary grace and faith to cope with the uncertainties of life.

Lailah Gifty Akita

May you be set free from all your fears.
May you be saved from all your troubles.
May you be rescued from every calamity.

Solange Nicole

Our tragedy is their beauty. Our pain is their art. The beatific bereavement that is our life captured on a canvas for all the world to see.

Nenia Campbell

'Better to have loved and lost,' my ass.

Anyone parroting that little platitude had obviously never lost anyone of consequence.

Bryant McGill

This is why some relationships look so beautiful and some look so tragic - beauty belongs to the thoughtful; tragedy to the neglectful.

Steven Weinberg

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.

Richard Goldschmidt

I have accumulated a wealth of knowledge in innumerable spheres and enjoyed it as an always ready instrument for exercising the mind and penetrating further and further. Best of all, mine has been a life of loving and being loved. What a tragedy that all this will disappear with the used-up body!

Donald Miller

God allows us to face the tension whether we like it or not.

Rachitha Cabral

Life is one big Coaster Ride -Sometimes You are UP, sometimes Down and sometimes You are in the Middle Screaming your head off wondering what it's all about!!!

Hilary Mortz

What's it like to be a living legend? A lot fucking better than being a dead one..."
Geordie Selwyn, Appetite for Corruption

Lenny Bruce

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.

Darnell Houston

You know what I like about Time. Times heals everything. As Time passes you don't feel the hurt as much as you use to. The pain has become so light you forget it was even there.
See Time heals everything. Give yourself Time and you will see Happier Days.

William Shakespeare

Time shall unfold what pleated cunning hides: Who cover faults, at last shame them derides.

Nutan Bajracharya

People use to say that time can change everything but as far as I know the nothing can change the tease inside your heart .

Taylor Swift

You can plan on a change in the weather and time, but I never planned on you changing you mind.

Katelin Wagner

They don’t know I only speak in runaway train stations
and everybody is always a few minutes too late to the platform.
No one has ever gotten the chance to get too close
because it is never romantic to fuck the girl who makes love to her own sadness every single night.

Bryant McGill

It is tragic the way fearful people put all of their fears and insecurities into others; the way they strangle their dreams - often in the name of love.

L.K. Hill

Life is a mystical and tragic thing. It is a journey often full of fear, when it ought to be full of hope. It's fascinating to look back on your life and feel as though most of it was a precursor to the rest of it; to what was always supposed to be.

William Shakespeare

So our virtues
Lie in the interpretation of the time:
And power, unto itself most commendable,
Hath not a tomb so evident as a chair
To extol what it hath done.
One fire drives out one fire; one nail, one nail;
Rights by rights falter, strengths by strengths do fail.

Wilkie Collins

Darker and darker, he said; farther and farther yet. Death takes the good, the beautiful, and the young - and spares me. The Pestilence that wastes, the Arrow that strikes, the Sea that drowns, the Grave the closes over Love and Hope, are steps of my journey, and take me nearer and nearer to the End.

D.R. Silva

The worst tragedy of sin isn't that it produced bad behavior, but that it produced the idea that bad behavior is strong enough to deflect love.

D.R. Silva

If sickness brought glory God, Jesus would have spread disease, not healed it.

Sergei Lukyanenko

A car's not the right place for showing off to a girl - the bed's the place for that. The consequences of a mistake there are more upsetting, but less tragic.

Nenia Campbell

Maybe that was why the French called orgasms “las petites morts”: because the things that bring us passion tend to slip past our defenses, to creep insidiously into every facet of our consciousnesses and kill us as ruthlessly, and efficiently, as any drug.

Dave Matthes

Some people's glasses are half full. I'm the one drinking them.
Some people have forgotten that Pluto is still a planet. I still remember my childhood.
Some people are vegans. I have common sense.
Some people call me Maurice. Some people call me the Gangsta of Love.
Some people just want to live...but me, I'm the one still alive.

Oliver Gaspirtz

Happy Endings are an illusion. Real life is filled with brief moments of fleeting happiness, but ultimately every life is a tragedy that ends in death and grief.

Mo Yan

The cliche that sea dry up and rocks rot away, but the heart never changes is nothing but a beautiful fantasy.

Richelle E. Goodrich

Gratitude is medicine for a heart devastated by tragedy.  If you can only be thankful for the blue sky, then do so.

Michael Bassey Johnson

Life is like a story, when all the resolution is resolved, you heave a sigh of relief.

John Fowles

The human race is unimportant. It is the self that must not be betrayed."

"I suppose one could say that Hitler didn't betray his self."

"You are right. He did not. But millions of Germans did betray their selves. That was the tragedy. Not that one man had the courage to be evil. But that millions had not the courage to be good.

Kristina McMorris

The whole world can become the enemy when you lose what you love.

Chris Kyle

It was a tragic end to a heroic life.

Kristina McMorris

Good had defeated evil, people proclaimed, a justification for atrocities best left forgotten. They would cling to this oversimplified truth while trading pats on the back and placing flowers on graves.

Salvador Dalí

This grandiose tragedy that we call modern art.

Share Page