“And those who only know the non-platonic love have no need to talk of tragedy. In such love there can be no sort of tragedy.”
Source: Anna Karenina
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Leo Tolstoy 456
Russian writer 1828–1910Related quotes
The Four Loves (1960)
Context: To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.
“The tragedy of love is indifference.”
The Trembling of a Leaf, ch. 4
“Only tragedy allows the release
Of love and grief never normally seen.”
Song lyrics, The Dreaming (1982)
Context: 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.
Herodotus: History (p. 45)
Classics Revisited (1968)
“I knew that the deepest of tragedies was simple: to love, and not to be loved in return.”
Source: Strings Attached
Opening address to the National Day of Prayer in Suva, 15 May 2005 (excerpts) http://www.fiji.gov.fj/publish/page_4607.shtml
“The greater the love, the greater the tragedy when it's over.”
Variant: The greater the love, the greater the tragedy when it’s over. Those two elements always go together.
Source: Nights in Rodanthe
