Quotes about tragedy

A collection of quotes on the topic of tragedy, life, people, use.

Albert Schweitzer quote: “The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.”

Quotes about tragedy

“The tragedy of a thoughtless man is not that he doesn't think, but that he thinks that he's thinking.”

Andrzej Majewski (1966) Polish writer and photographer

Aphorisms. Magnum in Parvo (2000)

Thinking

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

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Variants: One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is just a statistic. A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic. When one dies, it is a tragedy. When a million die, it is a statistic. In Портрет тирана (1981) (Portrait of a Tyrant), Soviet historian Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko attributes the following version to Stalin: "When one man dies it's a tragedy. When thousands die it's statistics." This is the alleged response of Stalin during the 1943 Tehran conference when Churchill objected to an early opening of a second front in France. In her review "Mustering Most Memorable Quips" of Konstantin Dushenko's 1997 Dictionary of Modern Quotations (Словарь современных цитат: 4300 ходячих цитат и выражений ХХ века, их источники, авторы, датировка), Julia Solovyova states: "Russian historians have no record of the lines, 'Death of one man is a tragedy. Death of a million is a statistic,' commonly attributed by English-language dictionaries to Josef Stalin." This quotation may originate from "Französischer Witz" (1925) by Kurt Tucholsky: "Darauf sagt ein Diplomat vom Quai d'Orsay: «Der Krieg? Ich kann das nicht so schrecklich finden! Der Tod eines Menschen: das ist eine Katastrophe. Hunderttausend Tote: das ist eine Statistik!»" ("To which a Quai d'Orsay diplomat replies: «The war? I can't find it so terrible! The death of one man: that is a catastrophe. One hundred thousand deaths: that is a statistic!»") Another possible source or intermediary may be the concluding words of chapter 8 of the 1956 novel The Black Obelisk by Erich Maria Remarque: "Aber das ist wohl so, weil ein einzelner immer der Tod ist — und zwei Millionen immer nur eine Statistik." ("But probably the reason is that one dead man is death—and two million are only a statistic." 1958 Crest Book reprint) Mary Soames (daughter of Churchill) claims to have overheard Stalin deliver a variant of the quote in immediate postwar Berlin (Remembrance Sunday Andrew Marr interview BBC 2011) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hP2tpw9XEw See also Jean Rostand, Thoughts of a Biologist, 1939: "Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god." In an interview given for the 1983 three-part documentary Der Prozeß by Norddeutscher Rundfunk on the Third Majdanek trial, Simon Wiesenthal attributes the quote to the unpublished auto-biography of Adolf Eichmann. According to Wiesenthal, Eichmann had been asked by another member of the Reich Main Security Office during WWII what they should answer would they be questioned after the war about the millions of dead Jews they were responsible for, to which Eichmann according to his own testimony had replied with the quote. Misattributed Variant: The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.

Death

“Today is filled with anger, fueled with hidden hate.
Scared of being outkast, afraid of common fate.
Today is build on tragedies which no one want's to face.
Nightmares to humanity and morally disgraced.
Tonight is filled with Rage, violence in the air.
Children bred with ruthlessness cause no one at home cares.
Tonight I lay my head down but the pressure never stops,
knowing that my sanity content when I'm droped.
But tomorrow I see change, a chance to build a new,
build on spirit intent of heart and ideas based on truth.
Tomorrow I wake with second wind and strong because of pride.
I know I fought with all my heart to keep the dream alive.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Hate, Fate, Children, Truth

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

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Variant: The tragedy in a man’s life is what dies inside of him while he lives.

Sad, Life

“What can be considered human emotions? Surely not only lyricism, sadness, tragedy? Doesn't laughter also have a claim to that lofty title? I want to fight for the legitimate right of laughter in "serious" music.”

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) Russian composer and pianist

From an article in Sovetskoye Iskusstvo, November 5, 1934; translation from Laurel Fay Shostakovich: A Life (2000) p. 77.

Sadness, Music, Laughter, Fight

“Human potential at its best is to transform a tragedy into a personal triumph, to turn one's predicament into a human achievement.”

Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997) Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor

Personality

“Thank you for the tragedy. I need it for my art.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

Art

“The tragedy is that women so committed to survival cannot recognize that they are committing suicide.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

Women, Suicide

“The greatest tragedy of the family is the unlived lives of the parents.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Family, Parent

“The death of one is a tragedy, but death of a million is just a statistic.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

Being from Manson's Fight Song of Holy Wood, this is actually a quote from German writer Erich Maria Remarque, also often misattributed to Josef Stalin.
Misattributed

Death

“Nothing captures human interest more than human tragedy.”

Dan Brown book Angels & Demons

Source: Angels & Demons

“It is a tragedy beyond the power of language to convey when what has been imposed on women by force becomes a standard of freedom for women: and all the women say it is so.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Source: Intercourse

Women, Freedom

“Tragedy, he precieved, belonged to the ancient time, to a time when there were still privacy, love, and friendship, and when the members of a family stood by one another without needing to know the reason.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Love, Friendship, Family, Time

“He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Mountain

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

Alan Lightman book Einstein's Dreams

Source: Einstein's Dreams

Pain, World, Time, Joy

“The tragedy of life is not death but what we let die inside of us while we live.”

Norman Cousins (1915–1990) American journalist

Life, Death

“I excused myself as soon as I finished eating, and boy did I stuff myself on that meal. I then walked outside onto the beach. The wine had long since gone to my head, making me feel a sense of dizzy invigoration. I started walking along the shore, taking in the magnificence of the gentle, moonlit ocean. It was so… romantic. I kept walking and walking with no destination in mind. The romance of it all filled me with despair and longing. I wanted a girlfriend to experience that moment with me, but no girl wanted to be my girlfriend. The only thing I could do was imagine how heavenly it would be to have a beautiful girl by my side. It is such a shameful tragedy.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

I ended up walking for two hours, and at the end of it I was crying to myself because I felt so sad.
My Twisted World (2014), Thoughts at 19, Longing

Beauty, Feeling, Imagination, Girl

“Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late. ”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Motivational, Wise, Deep, Happy

“This grandiose tragedy that we call modern art.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Art

“Every woman becomes their mother. That's their tragedy. And no man becomes his. That's his tragedy.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Algernon, Act I.
Variant: All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Funny

“In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”

Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan

Mr. Dumby, Act III
Variant: There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

World

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

Jean Racine (1639–1699) French dramatist

Life, Feeling, Thinking

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

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Sense, Joy

“Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Love, Faith

“There are two aspects of individual harmony: the harmony between body and soul, and the harmony between individuals. All the tragedy in the world, in the individual and in the multitude, comes from lack of harmony. And harmony is the best given by producing harmony in one's own life.”

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927) Indian Sufi

Life, World, Soul

“There are women named Faith, Hope, Joy, and Prudence. Why not Despair, Guilt, Rage, and Grief? It seems only right. 'Tom, I'd like you to meet the girl of my dreams, Tragedy.' These days, Trajedi.”

George Carlin book Brain Droppings

Source: Brain Droppings

Women, Faith, Dreams, Hope

“There is only one tragedy in the end, not to have been a saint.”

Léon Bloy (1846–1917) French writer, poet and essayist

In Catholic Christianity: A Complete Catechism of Catholic Beliefs Based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church by Peter Kreeft Catholic Christianity: A Complete Catechism of Catholic Beliefs Based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Ignatius Press, 2001 https://books.google.com/books?id=VZ-xgfJkNNgC&pg=PA89&dq=%22There+is+only+one+tragedy+in+the+end,+not+to+have+been+a+saint%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAGoVChMIrLb4nOL6yAIVhjk-Ch1XSQVB#v=onepage&q=%22There%20is%20only%20one%20tragedy%20in%20the%20end%2C%20not%20to%20have%20been%20a%20saint%22&f=false

“In reality, the Khojali tragedy is one of the greatest human atrocities of the 20th century. Every effort must be made to seek the world community's unbiased and resolute position regarding this genocide.”

Heydar Aliyev (1923–2003) Soviet and Azerbaijani politician

Azerbaijan International (7.1) Spring 1999 http://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/topics/Quotes/quote_aliyev.heydar.html

World, Communication, Reality, Effort

“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. Now such a clash between right claims can be resolved in one of two manners. There's the Shakespeare tradition of resolving a tragedy with the stage hewed with dead bodies and justice of sorts prevails. But there is also the Chekhov tradition. In the conclusion of the tragedy by Chekhov, everyone is disappointed, disillusioned, embittered, heartbroken, but alive. And my colleagues and I have been working, trying…not to find the sentimental happy ending, a brotherly love, a sudden honeymoon to the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy, but a Chekhovian ending, which means clenched teeth compromise.”

Amos Oz (1939–2018) Israeli writer, novelist, journalist and intellectual

From a PBS interview with Amos Oz. The entire interview http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/jan-june02/oz_1-23.html

Love, Pain, Justice, Disappointment

“The thing is to be happy,' he said. 'No matter what. Just try that. You can. It gets to be easier and easier. It's nothing to do with circumstances. You wouldn't believe how good it is. Accept everything and then tragedy disappears. Or tragedy lightens, anyway, and you're just there, going along easy in the world.”

Alice Munro (1931) Canadian novelist

Dear Life (2012)

World, Happiness

“His [ Van Gogh's] pathos is alien to me, especially in my current phase, but he is certainly a genius. Pathetic to the point of being pathological, this endangered man can endanger one who does not see through him. Here a brain is consumed by the fire of a star. It frees itself in its work just before the catastrophe. Deepest tragedy takes place here, real tragedy, natural tragedy, exemplary tragedy. Permit me to be terrified.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (1908), # 816, in The Diaries of Paul Klee; University of California Press, 1964; as quoted by Francesco Mazzaferro, in 'The Diaries of Paul Klee - Part Three' : Klee as a Secessionist and a Neo-Impressionist Artist http://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.nl/2015/05/paul-klee-ev.html 1903 - 1910

Star, Nature

“Envy is a horrible thing. It is unlike all other kinds of suffering in that there is no disguising it, no elevating it into tragedy. It is more than merely painful, it is disgusting.”

George Orwell book Burmese Days

Source: Burmese Days (1934), Ch. XX

Pain, Suffering, Envy

“Sexual intercourse is not intrinsically banal, though pop culture magazines like Esquire and Cosmopolitan would suggest that it is. It is intense, often desperate. Te internal landscape is violent upheaval, a wild and ultimately cruel disregard of human individuality, a brazen, high-strung wanting that is absolute and imperishable, not attached to personality, no respecter of boundaries; ending not in sexual climax but in a human tragedy of failed relationships, vengeful bitterness in an aftermath of sexual heat, personality corroded by too much endurance of undesired, habitual intercourse, conflict, a wearing away of vitality in the numbness finally of habit or compulsion or the loneliness of separation.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter 2

Personality, Loneliness

“It is one of the tragedies of the half-educated that they develop late, when they are already committed to some wrong way of life.”

George Orwell book Burmese Days

Source: Burmese Days (1934), Ch. V

Life, Education, Way

“Not to recognize the effect of the aura is the greatest tragedy. Your radiant power has more power to repel negativity than anything your brain can think of.”

Harbhajan Singh Yogi (1929–2004) Indian-American Sikh Yogi

The Eight Human Talents (2001)

Thinking

“As for ‘Alī ibn Husayn (a), he cried over Husayn (a) for twenty years (after the tragedy of Karbalā); never would any food be placed before him except that he would begin to weep.”

Ja'far al-Sadiq (702–765) Muslim religious person

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.46, p. 108
Religous Wisdom

Food

“The tragedy of civil wars in countries like Angola and Mozambique is that they left many civilians maimed. Poverty is the reason HIV/AIDS spread so rapidly in the African townships and slums. Poverty is the real killer.”

Miriam Makeba (1932–2008) South African singer and civil rights activist

As quoted in Nkrumah, Gamal (1–7 November 2001)
Al-Ahram Weekly interview (2001)

War, Country

“How important can it be that I suffer and think? My presence in this world will disturb a few tranquil lives and will unsettle the unconscious and pleasant naiveté of others. Although I feel that my tragedy is the greatest in history — greater than the fall of empires — I am nevertheless aware of my total insignificance. I am absolutely persuaded that I am nothing in this universe; yet I feel that mine is the only real existence.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

World, Feeling, History, Thinking

“The tragedy of love is indifference.”

W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer

The Trembling of a Leaf, ch. 4

Love, Indifference

“Everywhere I go people are making a mess of their lives. Everyone has his private tragedy. It's in the blood now - misfortune, ennui, grief, suicide. The atmosphere is saturated with disaster, frustration, futility. Scratch and scratch, until there's no skin left. However, the effect upon me is exhilarating. Instead of being discouraged or depressed, I enjoy it. I am crying for more and more disasters, for bigger calamities, grander failures. I want the whole world to be out of whack, I want every one to scratch himself to death.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer (1934), Chapter One
Context: Well, I'll take these pages and move on. Things are happening elsewhere. Things are always happening. It seems wherever I go there is drama. People are like lice - they get under your skin and bury themselves there. You scratch and scratch until the blood comes, but you can't get permanently deloused. Everywhere I go people are making a mess of their lives. Everyone has his private tragedy. It's in the blood now - misfortune, ennui, grief, suicide. The atmosphere is saturated with disaster, frustration, futility. Scratch and scratch, until there's no skin left. However, the effect upon me is exhilarating. Instead of being discouraged or depressed, I enjoy it. I am crying for more and more disasters, for bigger calamities, grander failures. I want the whole world to be out of whack, I want every one to scratch himself to death.

Death, People, World, Failure

“We admired Dr. King. We felt his loss as our own. The tragedy rekindled memories of the great martyrs of all time who gave their lives so that men might live and grow.”

Indíra Gándhí (1917–1984) Indian politician and Prime Minister

Luther King" http://gos.sbc.edu/g/gandhi2.html"Martin, speech at the presentation of the Jawaharial Nehru Award for International Understanding to Coretta Scott King in New Delhi, India (January 24, 1969). Published in Selected Speeches and Writings of Indira Gandhi, September 1972-March 1977 (New Delhi : Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Govt. of India, 1984. pp. 312-313). Context: We admired Dr. King. We felt his loss as our own. The tragedy rekindled memories of the great martyrs of all time who gave their lives so that men might live and grow. We thought of the great men in your own country who fell to the assassin's bullet and of Mahatma Gandhi's martyrdom here in this city, this very month, twenty-one years ago. Such events remain as wounds in the human consciousness, reminding us of battles, yet to be fought and tasks still to be accomplished. We should not mourn for men of high ideals. Rather we should rejoice that we had the privilege of having had them with us, to inspire us by their radiant personalities.

Men, Memory, Loss, Time

“My greatest hope is that one day our hospital will be devoted to the miracle of childbirth, rather than the tragedy of sexual violence, and that our wards devoted to victims of rape will be empty.”

Denis Mukwege (1955) Congolese gynecologist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Source: Denis Mukwege (2021) cited in " 'We Cannot Rest in Our Fight.' Angelina Jolie Talks to Dr. Denis Mukwege About Supporting Victims of Sexual Violence https://time.com/6124350/angelina-jolie-denis-mukwege/" on TIME, 1 December 2021.

Hope

“And I still won't grow up, I'm a grown-ass kid
Swear I should be locked up for stupid shit that I did
But I'm a champion, so I turned tragedy to triumph
Make music that's fire, spit my soul through the wire.”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

Through the Wire
Lyrics, The College Dropout (2004)

Soul, Stupidity, Music

“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 (1639–1699) French dramatist

Sad, Death, Pleasure, Sadness

“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.”

N. Scott Momaday (1934) American author

Imagination

“Humor is tragedy plus time.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Time

“Nothing is worth more than laughter. It is strength to laugh and to abandon oneself, to be light. Tragedy is the most ridiculous thing.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

Laughter, Light

“Laughter rises out of tragedy when you need it the most, and rewards you for your courage.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…

Courage, Laughter

“Most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally evil, but by people being fundamentally people.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

People, History, Evil

“In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood”

Henry David Thoreau A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

Source: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

Silence

“Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor, — all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked, — who is good? not that men are ignorant, — what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.”

W.E.B. Du Bois book The Souls of Black Folk

Source: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. XII: Of Alexander Crummell

Men, Truth, Age

“It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man bungles his own life and the lives of others yet remains totally incapable of seeing how much the whole tragedy originates in himself, and how he continually feeds it and keeps it going.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Life

“Never regret thy fall,
O Icarus of the fearless flight
For the greatest tragedy of them all
Is never to feel the burning light.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Feeling, Light

“We can only begin to live when we conceive life as
Tragedy.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Life

“Somethings in life are out of your control. you can make it a party or a tragedy. Or, you could refuse to take the next step. You could refuse to take what you wanted most because you're afraid some day you might lose it.”

Nora Roberts Vision in White

Source: Vision in White

Life

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

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: Lady Windermere's Fan / A Woman of No Importance / An Ideal Husband / The Importance of Being Earnest / Salomé

Life

“That was the tragedy. Not that one man had the courage to be evil. But that millions had not the courage to be good.”

John Fowles (1926–2005) British writer

Courage, Evil

“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

This has been compared to Horace Walpole's statement: "This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel."
Variant translation: Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as a tragedy, the second time as farce.
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)

World, Appearance, Time

“Marla's philosophy of life, she told me, is that she can die at any moment. The tragedy of her life is that she doesn't.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Life

“Jesus insisted that the greatest ritual service is the service of human need. It is an odd thing to think that, with the possible exception of that day in the synagogue at Nazareth, we have no evidence that Jesus ever conducted a ‘church’ service in all his life on earth, but we have abundant evidence that he fed the hungry and comforted the sad and cared for the sick. Christian service is not the service of any liturgy or ritual; it is the service of human need. Christian service is not monastic retreat; it is involvement in all the tragedies and problems and demands of the human situation.”

William Barclay (1907–1978) Church of Scotland minister and academic

Source: The Gospel of Matthew: Vol. 2, Chapters 11-28

Life, Sadness, Problem, Thinking

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

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Sad, Life

“Sometimes, soulmates may meet, stay together until a task or life lesson is completed, and then move on. This is not a tragedy, only a matter of learning.”

Brian L. Weiss

Life, Learning

“The tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self denial.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“Some things in life are out of your control. You can make it a party or a tragedy.”

Nora Roberts Vision in White

Source: Vision in White

Life

“The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things which lifts human life a little above the level of farce and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.”

Steven Weinberg (1933) American theoretical physicist

(1993), Epilogue, p. 155
The First Three Minutes (1977; second edition 1993)

Life, Understanding, Effort, Universe

“My mother wanted us to understand that the tragedies of your life one day have to potential to be the comic stories the next.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Life, Understanding

“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.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

Love

“LORD ILLINGWORTH: The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life.
MRS ALLONBY: And the body is born young and grows old. That is life's tragedy.”

Oscar Wilde A Woman of No Importance

Source: A Woman of No Importance

Life, Soul

“For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement.”

Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997) Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor

Personality

“Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Notebook E (1945) edited by Edmund Wilson
Quoted, Notebooks

“There's something vile (and all the more vile because ridiculous) in the tendency of feeble men to make universal tragedies out of the sad comedies of their private woes.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Men, Sadness, Universe

“There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Life

“Life is a tragedy to those who feel and a comedy to those who think.”

Molière (1622–1673) French playwright and actor

Life, Feeling, Thinking

“The most spiritual human beings, assuming they are the most courageous, also experience by far the most painful tragedies: but it is precisely for this reason that they honor life, because it brings against them its most formidable weapons.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Life, Pain, Courage

“Every child needs a tragedy to become truly interesting.”

Holly Black book The Darkest Part of the Forest

Source: The Darkest Part of the Forest

“It's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Life

“That’s one of the things I love about being single, everybody always goes ‘Oh, you’re single what a tragedy.’ And I go ‘Well, yeah, from about ten to two each evening it is a tragedy but that times a tragedy for most married people as well.’ One of the great advantages of being single is you can still pick up hitch hikers, if you are married you don’t want to get, you know, slit or anything, cause you have a family to support. If you single and you die it doesn’t really matter so you are free to do what you really want to do. I love that!”

Rich Mullins (1955–1997) American christian musician

Lufkin, Texas http://www.kidbrothers.net/words/concert-transcripts/lufkin-texas-jul1997-full.html (July 19, 1997) In Concert

Love, People, Family, Support

“The legacy of modernity is a legacy of fratricidal wars, devastating "development," cruel "civilization," and previously unimagined violence. Erich Auerbach once wrote that tragedy is the only genre that can properly claim realism in Western literature, and perhaps this is true precisely because of the tragedy Western modernity has imposed on the world.”

Antonio Negri book Empire

46
Empire

War, World, Literature

“Death is always and under all circumstances a tragedy, for if it is not, then it means that life itself has become one.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Letter to Cecil Spring-Rice (12 March 1900)
1900s

Life, Death

“Without will, no conflict: no tragedy among the abulic. Yet the failure of will can be experienced more painfully than a tragic destiny.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)

Failure

“A few truths, for those who have ears and eyes and care to know the truth:
1.) The hurricane that hit New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama was an astonishing tragedy. The suffering and loss of life and peace of mind of the residents of those areas is acutely horrifying.
2.) George Bush did not cause the hurricane. Hurricanes have been happening for eons. George Bush did not create them or unleash this one.
3.) George Bush did not make this one worse than others. There have been far worse hurricanes than this before George Bush was born.”

Ben Stein (1944) actor, writer, commentator, lawyer, teacher, humorist

Get Off His Back, The American Spectator, 2 September 2005, 2011-09-03 http://spectator.org/archives/2005/09/02/get-off-his-back-updated, referring to Hurricane Katrina

Life, Truth, Peace, Suffering

“We cannot abdicate our conscience to an organization, nor to a government. 'Am I my brother's keeper?' Most certainly I am! I cannot escape my responsibility by saying the State will do all that is necessary. It is a tragedy that nowadays so many think and feel otherwise.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 309

Feeling, Thinking

“The tragedy of marriage is that while all women marry thinking that their man will change, all men marry believing their wife will never change.”

Len Deighton book London Match

London Match (London: Hutchinson, 1985) p. 18

Women, Men, Marriage, Thinking

“War, no matter what our intentions may be, brings suffering and tragedy.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Obama raises human rights in Vietnam, calls for 'peaceful resolution' of South China Sea disputes http://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/24/politics/obama-vietnam-south-china-sea/, CNN (24 May 2016) 2016

War, Suffering

“One of the great American tragedies is to have participated in a just war. It's been possible for politicians and movie-makers to encourage us we're always good guys. The Second World War absolutely had to be fought. I wouldn't have missed it for the world. But we never talk about the people we kill. This is never spoken of.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

Interviewed by Roger Friedman, "God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut" http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,70164,00.html, FoxNews.com (11 November 2002) Various interviews

War, People, World, Guy

“The reaction against your own thought in itself lends life to thought. How this reaction is born is hard to describe, because it identifies with the very rare intellectual tragedies. ––The tension, the degree and level of intensity of a thought proceeds from its internal antinomies, which in turn are derived from the unsolvable contradictions of a soul. Thought cannot solve the contradictions of the soul. As far as linear thinking is concerned, thoughts mirror themselves in other thoughts, instead of mirroring a destiny.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

The Book of Delusions (1936)

Life, Soul, Thinking

“There are moments in history when brooding tragedy and its dark shadows can be lightened by recalling great moments of the past.”

Indíra Gándhí (1917–1984) Indian politician and Prime Minister

Letter to Richard Nixon (December 15, 1971) http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/mag/2005/07/03/stories/2005070300090100.htm.

History, Past

“He who is himself crossed in love is able from time to time to master his passion, for he is not the creature but the creator of his own misery; and if a lover is unable to control his passion, he at least knows that he is himself to blame for his sufferings. But he who is loved without reciprocating that love is lost beyond redemption, for it is not in his power to set a limit to that other's passion, to keep it within bounds, and the strongest will is reduced to impotence in the face of another's desire. Perhaps only a man can realize to the full the tragedy of such an undesired relationships; for him alone the necessity to resist t is at once martyrdom and guilt. For when a woman resists an unwelcome passion, she is obeying to the full the law of her sex; the initial gesture of refusal is, so to speak, a primordial instinct in every female, and even if she rejects the most ardent passion she cannot be called inhuman. But how disastrous it is when fate upsets the balance, when a woman so far overcomes her natural modesty as to disclose her passion to a man, when, without the certainty of its being reciprocated, she offers her love, and he, the wooed, remains cold and on the defensive! An insoluble tangle this, always; for not to return a woman's love is to shatter her pride, to violate her modesty. The man who rejects a woman's advances is bound to wound her in her noblest feelings. In vain, then, all the tenderness with which he extricates himself, useless all his polite, evasive phrases, insulting all his offers of mere friendship, once she has revealed her weakness! His resistance inevitably becomes cruelty, and in rejecting a woman's love he takes a load of guild upon his conscience, guiltless though he may be. Abominable fetters that can never be cast off! Only a moment ago you felt free, you belonged to yourself and were in debt to no one, and now suddenly you find yourself pursued, hemmed in, prey and object of the unwelcome desires of another. Shaken to the depths of your soul, you know that day and night someone is waiting for you, thinking of you, longing and sighing for you - a woman, a stranger. She wants, she demands, she desires you with every fibre of her being, with her body, with her blood. She wants your hands, your hair, your lips, your manhood, your night and your day, your emotions, your senses, and all your thought and dreams. She wants to share everything with you, to take everything from you, and to draw it in with her breath. Henceforth, day and night, whether you are awake or asleep, there is somewhere in the world a being who is feverish and wakeful and who waits for you, and you are the centre of her waking and her dreaming. It is in vain that you try not to think of her, of her who thinks always of you, in vain that you seek to escape, for you no longer dwell in yourself, but in her. Of a sudden a stranger bears your image within her as though she were a moving mirror - no, not a mirror, for that merely drinks in your image when you offer yourself willingly to it, whereas she, the woman, this stranger who loves you, she has absorbed you into her very blood. She carries you always within her, carries you about with her, no mater whither you may flee. Always you are imprisoned, held prisoner, somewhere else, in some other person, no longer yourself, no longer free and lighthearted and guiltless, but always hunted, always under an obligation, always conscious of this "thinking-of-you" as if it were a steady devouring flame. Full of hate, full of fear, you have to endure this yearning on the part of another, who suffers on your account; and I now know that it is the most senseless, the most inescapable, affliction that can befall a man to be loved against his will - torment of torments, and a burden of guilt where there is no guilt.”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

Love, Hate, Friendship, Fate

“The past alone is truly real: the present is but a painful, struggling birth into the immutable being of what is no longer. Only the dead exist fully. The lives of the living are fragmentary, doubtful, and subject to change; but the lives of the dead are complete, free from the sway of Time, the all but omnipotent lord of the world. Their failures and successes, their hopes and fears, their joys and pains, have become eternal—our efforts cannot now abate one jot of them. Sorrows long buried in the grave, tragedies of which only a fading memory remains, loves immortalized by Death's hallowing touch these have a power, a magic, an untroubled calm, to which no present can attain. …On the banks of the river of Time, the sad procession of human generations is marching slowly to the grave; in the quiet country of the Past, the march is ended, the tired wanderers rest, and the weeping is hushed.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

On History (1904)
1900s

Love, Death, Pain, World

“I'd like to think, eight years ago, I was pretty humble and modest. But I think, with each year, you get more modest, more humble, more appreciative. The off the field tragedies put things in better perspective, but life happens to everybody, and I think we all just try to do the best we can.”

Brett Favre (1969) former American football quarterback

Green Bay's big cheese aging gracefully, rockymountainnews.com, October 23, 2007, 2007-12-05 http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2007/oct/23/green-bay146s-big-cheese-aging-gracefully/,

Life, Thinking

“People left Ali when he was alive and only remembered him and held him dear after his death, and this is a tragedy”

Ali Al-Wardi (1913–1995) Iraqi sociologist

Death, People

“…to be redeemed to aim at the highest value, to sacrifice what's no longer useful and valid in yourself, and to tell the truth. And the consequence of that is, existence on a deep state of meaning that justifies the tragedy of being and the possibility of transforming your own life, in the most beneficial positive direction, while simultaneously doing that for the people around you. And that's Redemption.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

podcast episode 5 ( https://jordanbpeterson.com/podcasts/podcast-episode/episode-5/) Other

Life, People, Truth

“There is an idea of free will associated with it too. In order for there to be being, there has to be limitation. In order for there to be good, there has to be the possibility of evil. I think the right path is to exist such that the possibility of evil remains open, but that you choose the good. And I don't think that evil perse is built into the structure of the world. But I do think that it's human. I think that evil is human. And I think it's understandable. There is a difference between evil and tragedy. Tragedy does seem to be built into the structure of the world. But human beings seem to be equipped to deal with tragedy, but we are not equipped to deal with malevolence. That destroys people. I think that, metaphysically thinking, the world is structured such that humans have a choice between good and evil. Why do we have a choice? We don't know.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

People, World, Idea, Understanding

“Only ambition is fired by the coincidences of success and easy accomplishment but nothing is quite as splendidly uplifting to the heart as the defeat of a human being who battles against the invincible superiority of fate. This is always the most grandiose of all tragedies, one sometimes created by a dramatist but created thousands of times by life.”

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) Austrian writer

Stellar Moments in Human History [Sternstunden der Menschheit] (1953), p. 280, as translated by Marion Sonnenfeld

Life, Fate, Time, Success

“It is just as ridiculous to get excited & hysterical over a coming cultural change as to get excited & hysterical over one's physical aging... There is legitimate pathos about both processes; but blame & rebellion are essentially cheap, because inappropriate, emotions... It is wholly appropriate to feel a deep sadness at the coming of unknown things & the departure of those around which all our symbolic associations are entwined. All life is fundamentally & inextricably sad, with the perpetual snatching away of all the chance combinations of image & vista & mood that we become attached to, & the perpetual encroachment of the shadow of decay upon illusions of expansion & liberation which buoyed us up & spurred us on in youth. That is why I consider all jauntiness, & many forms of carelessly generalised humour, as essentially cheap & mocking, & occasionally ghastly & corpselike. Jauntiness & non-ironic humour in this world of basic & inescapable sadness are like the hysterical dances that a madman might execute on the grave of all his hopes. But if, at one extreme, intellectual poses of spurious happiness be cheap & disgusting; so at the other extreme are all gestures & fist-clenchings of rebellion equally silly & inappropriate—if not quite so overtly repulsive. All these things are ridiculous & contemptible because they are not legitimately applicable... The sole sensible way to face the cosmos & its essential sadness (an adumbration of true tragedy which no destruction of values can touch) is with manly resignation—eyes open to the real facts of perpetual frustration, & mind & sense alert to catch what little pleasure there is to be caught during one's brief instant of existence. Once we know, as a matter of course, how nature inescapably sets our freedom-adventure-expansion desires, & our symbol-&-experience-affections, definitely beyond all zones of possible fulfilment, we are in a sense fortified in advance, & able to endure the ordeal of consciousness with considerable equanimity... Life, if well filled with distracting images & activities favourable to the ego's sense of expansion, freedom, & adventurous expectancy, can be very far from gloomy—& the best way to achieve this condition is to get rid of the unnatural conceptions which make conscious evils out of impersonal and inevitable limitations... get rid of these, & of those false & unattainable standards which breed misery & mockery through their beckoning emptiness.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Frank Belknap Long (27 February 1931), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 291
Non-Fiction, Letters, to Frank Belknap Long

Life, Pleasure, Youth, Age

“On September 11, 2001, 3000 Americans were killed by terrorists. We spent billions of dollars trying to hunt them down and kill them, right? You know what else happened September 11, 2001? Forty-five hundred Americans were killed by abortionists; 50% more deaths, but nobody said a word. The next day, it happened again. We've had a September 11 tragedy every day ever since.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), Lies in the textbooks

Death

“Greek tragedy met her death in a different way from all the older sister arts: she died tragically by her own hand, after irresolvable conflicts, while the others died happy and peaceful at an advanced age. If a painless death, leaving behind beautiful progeny, is the sign of a happy natural state, then the endings of the other arts show us the example of just such a happy natural state: they sink slowly, and with their dying eyes they behold their fairer offspring, who lift up their heads in bold impatience. The death of Greek tragedy, on the other hand, left a great void whose effects were felt profoundly, far and wide; as once Greek sailors in Tiberius' time heard the distressing cry 'the god Pan is dead' issuing from a lonely island, now, throughout the Hellenic world, this cry resounded like an agonized lament: 'Tragedy is dead! Poetry itself died with it! Away, away with you, puny, stunted imitators! Away with you to Hades, and eat your fill of the old masters' crumbs!”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Birth of Tragedy

Mit dem Tode der griechischen Tragödie dagegen entstand eine ungeheure, überall tief empfundene Leere; wie einmal griechische Schiffer zu Zeiten des Tiberius an einem einsamen Eiland den erschütternden Schrei hörten "der grosse Pan ist todt": so klang es jetzt wie ein schmerzlicher Klageton durch die hellenische Welt: "die Tragödie ist todt! Die Poesie selbst ist mit ihr verloren gegangen! Fort, fort mit euch verkümmerten, abgemagerten Epigonen! Fort in den Hades, damit ihr euch dort an den Brosamen der vormaligen Meister einmal satt essen könnt!"
Source: The Birth of Tragedy (1872), p. 54

Death, God, Age, World

“You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

1929, p. 1
Culture and Value (1980)

Tree

“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 (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

Collected Plays (1958) Introduction, Section 1

Life

“Our biggest tragedy is not knowing what to do with our lives.”

José Saramago (1922–2010) Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature

Nossa maior tragédia é não saber o que fazer com a vida.
During the opening lecture of the course Literature and power. Lights and shadows, in the University Carlos III in Madrid. As quoted by Marco Aurélio Weissheimer in the article Saramago prega retorno à filosofia para salvar democracia, na Agência Carta Maior. (January 19th, 2004)