Modern Tragedy Quotes

• The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.

  Edward Abbey

  Peace, Real, War

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.18, RosettaBooks

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  Henry Miller

  Fear, Reality, Tragedy

  Henry Miller (1961). “The Cosmological Eye”, p.335, New Directions Publishing

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• This grandiose tragedy that we call modern art.

  Salvador Dali

  Art, Tragedy, Modern

  9 Copy quote

• Classical tragedy was the war between good and evil. We wanted evil to be defeated and good to be victorious. But the battle in modern tragedy is between good and good. And no matter which side wins, we'll still be heartbroken.

  Asghar Farhadi

  Heartbroken, War, Winning

  "Farhadi Talks Oscar Front-Runner A Separation; Divorce Drama Questions Iran’s Future". Interview with Anne Thompson, www.indiewire.com. December 30, 2011.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is a modern tragedy that despair has so many spokesmen, and hope so few.

  Oscar Hammerstein II

  Tragedy, Despair, Modern

  41 Copy quote

• It is a modern tragedy that one of the Soviet Union's most intelligent and realistic leaders has served and died during the administration of the most ill-informed and dangerous man ever to occupy the White House.

  George McGovern

  War, Intelligent, Men

  34 Copy quote

• The weakness of modern tragedy[is that] transgression against the social code is made to bring destruction, as though the social code worked our irrevocable fate.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Fate, Tragedy, Weakness

  D. H. Lawrence, Bruce Steele (1985). “Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays”, p.30, Cambridge University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• God the father, and even more often the devil himself, appears at times in the place of fate in the modern tragedy. Why is it thatthis has not induced any scholar to develop a theory of the diabolical genre?

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Father, Fate, Tragedy

  9 Copy quote

• I wouldn't overall say that "The Diagnosis" is a funny book. I would say that it has comic moments. It's a modern tragedy.

  Alan Lightman

  Book, Tragedy, Diagnosis

  Interview with Robert Birnbaum, www.identitytheory.com. November 16, 2000.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source