Best 1203 quotes in «tragedy quotes» category

The popular definition of tragedy is heavy drama in which everyone is killed in the last act, comedy being light drama in which everyone is married in the last act.

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.

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.

The real tragedy of our postcolonial world is not that the majority of people had no say in whether or not they wanted this new world; rather, it is that the majority have not been given the tools to negotiate this new world.

There are a lot of questions I keep asking myself about why I do comedy. I guess I laugh to keep from crying. And I guess if you ever get me crying, I might not stop. This is the way I look at tragedy or else I'll cry.

There are only three possible endings -aren't there? - to any story: revenge, tragedy or forgiveness. That's it. All stories end like that.

There are some great roles mostly in Shakespeare's tragedies which no one can play at full strength from beginning to end. One simply hopes that one can hit the peaks as often as one has the strength.

There are terrible disasters and tragedies and miseries all over the place, in places like Africa with the atrocities in Darfur, India until recently, and China. So many of them have been brought to our notice by television that we've almost become inured to cruelty and disasters and hopelessness in the world. We don't seem to have made an awfully good job of running things as a sort of planetary cabinet.

There are three sayings I live by, and one of them is 'The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.' That's what losing a job is like. That's why we have to bring them back.

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.

There comes a precious moment in all of our lives when we are tapped on the shoulder and offered the opportunity to do something very special that is unique to us and our abilities, what a tragedy it would be if we are not ready or willing.

The rock star is dying. And it's a small tragedy. Rock stars have blogs now. I have no use for that kind of rock star.

There is a design and a purpose for each of our lives. Living unaware of that is sad, but dying unaware of it is a tragedy.

There's every reason to believe there will be further attacks attempted against the United States. For us to spend so much time patting ourselves on the back because we got bin Laden that we miss the next attack would be a terrible tragedy.

There were so many layers of reality to the world. Nothing stopped for death; nothing stopped for grief or horror or tragedy.

The romantics would call this a love story, the cynics would call it a tragedy.

The rules of engagement are so lax that soldiers are shooting and killing Iraqis under mere suspicion, and tragedies are everyday. There are road killings, killings on the road when someone is trying to pass a convoy and they get shot. Or if a roadside bomb goes off, the soldiers just start shooting in all directions.

These are a few of my favorite things.

There is a point in portraying surface vulgarity where tragedy and comedy are very close.

There is no tragedy, only the unavoidable. Everything has its reason for being: you only need to distinguish what is temporary from what is lasting.

There's a thin, blurry line between humor and tragedy.

There's nothing grimmer than the tragedy that wears a comic mask.

There’s obviously a lot of tragedy in comedy; I really enjoy the paradox of what a really good comedy is.

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.

The romantics would call this a love story, the cynics would call it a tragedy. In my mind it’s a little bit of both, and no matter how you choose to view it in the end, it does not change the fact that it involves a great deal of my life and the path I’ve chosen to follow.

The sense of tragedy - according to Aristotle - comes, ironically enough, not from the protagonist's weak points but from his good qualities. Do you know what I'm getting at? People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues. ... [But] we accept irony through a device called metaphor. And through that we grow and become deeper human beings.

The sense of tragedy is that the world is not a pleasant little nest made for our protection, but a vast and largely hostile environment, in which we can achieve great things only by defying the gods; and that this defiance inevitably brings its own punishment.

The sweetness that all longed for night and day. Some tragedy might be idly guessed at-loss or illness. She had the luminosity of those about to die.

The tomb of the Saviour was a narrow and empty vault, precious only for its memories of the supreme tragedy of the centuries, but the new continent was to be the home and temple of the living God.

The thing is to be happy, 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, you're just there, going along easy in the world.

The tragedy in our colleges and seminaries right now is that we turn men out who know the word of God. That is never going to turn the world. The question is not whether they know the Word of God.... The question is......Do they know the God of the Word?

The tragedy of 9/11 galvanised the American superpower into action, leaving us in Europe divided in its wake.

The tragedy of growing old is not that one is old but that one is young.

The tragedy of human history is decreasing happiness in the midst of increasing comforts.

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.

The tragedy of journalism lies in its impermanence; the very topicality which gives it brilliance condemns it to an early death. Too often it is a process of flinging bright balloons in the path of the hurricane, a casting of priceless petals upon the rushing surface of a stream.

The tragedy of our lives is that, while we suffer from the wounds afflicted on us by those who love us, we cannot avoid wounding those we want to love.

The tragedy of religion is partly due to its isolation from life, as if God could be segregated.

The tragedy is that, as modern viewers, we've completely lost touch with what it physically takes to wage a war.

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

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.

The tragedy of our time is that we've got it backwards, we've learned to love techniques and use people.

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.

The tragedy of the world is that those who are imaginative have but slight experience, and those who are experienced have feeble imaginations.

The tragedy is what - given the 'right circumstances,' - normal decent folks, like you and me, will do. This is what makes me worry whenever looking on the road that Israel entered and shows no intention of leaving.

The tragedy of Africa is that Africans are in the business of canonizing thieves and demonizing its saints.

...the tragedy of consumerism: one acquires more and more things without taking the time to ever see and know them, and thus one never truly enjoys them. One has without truly having. The consumer is right-there is pleasure to be had in good things, a sacred and almost unspeakable pleasure, but the consumer wrongly thinks that one finds this pleasure by having more and more possessions instead of possessing them more truly through grateful contemplation. And here we are, living in an economy that perpetuates this tragedy.

The tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the beautiful die young, but that they grow old and mean. It will not happen to me.

The tragedy of my job [journalist] is that I rarely get to go where I want to go. I have to go where the job takes me.

The tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul.