Personal Tragedy Quotes

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

  Albert Schweitzer

  Inspirational, Life, Sympathy

  Albert Schweitzer (1958). “A Selection of Writings of and about Albert Schweitzer”, Boston : [s.n.], 1958 (Boston : H.N. Sawyer Company)

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

  Mel Brooks

  Funny, Death, Suicide

  "The 2,000 Year Old Man". Animation, Comedy, 1975.

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• Most important, however, is the third avenue to meaning in life: even the helpless victim of a
  hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond
  himself, and by so doing change himself. He may turn a personal tragedy into a triumph.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Inspirational, Fate, Challenges

  Viktor E. Frankl (2006). “Man's Search for Meaning”, p.142, Beacon Press

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• Humanity can be divided into madmen and cowards. My personal tragedy is in being born into a world where sanity is held to be a character flaw.

  Mark Lawrence

  Character, Humanity, Tragedy

  Mark Lawrence (2014). “Prince of Fools”, p.200, Penguin

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• I wondered what things what things became when you no longer needed them, and I wondered what the future would hold once we'd gotten past our personal tragedies and proven them ultimately survivable.

  Robyn

  Past, Tragedy, Needed

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• Ordinary people shy away form negative situations, just as they do with failure. They do their best to avoid trouble. What great people do is the opposite. They are their best in these situations. They turn personal tragedy or misfortune - really anything, everything - to their advantage.

  Ryan Holiday

  Opposites, People, Tragedy

  Ryan Holiday (2014). “The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph”, p.74, Penguin

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• But it's a stigmatized problem, and it's a silent problem. This has to end. Suicide is not just a personal tragedy, it's a key issue of public policy and facing up to it requires political will.

  Bob Rae

  Suicide, Keys, Political Will

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• The law demands good works and uses its terror--rejection, shame, fear of punishment, unanswered prayer, personal tragedy, etc.--as motivation. Here performance is a necessity to secure the blessings and avoid the curses. Grace, on the other hand, allows us to serve on a different basis--not from fear but on the basis of love and gratitude, from appreciation and gladness for blessings freely given and freely received.

  Richard Jordan

  Love, Gratitude, Appreciation

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• Running has made my life worthwhile. I used to be more dead than alive after the personal tragedy in my life.

  Fauja Singh

  Running, Tragedy, Alive

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• We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. 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. When we are no longer able to change a situation-just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer-we are challenged to change ourselves.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Cancer, Fate, Thinking

  Viktor E. Frankl (2017). “Man's Search for Meaning: A Young Adult Edition”, p.111, Beacon Press

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• It is not death or dying that is tragic, but rather to have existed without fully participating in life- that is the deepest personal tragedy.

  Edward Abbey

  Tragedy, Dying, Tragic

  "Remembering Alex Cockburn" by James Ridgeway, www.motherjones.com. July 23, 2012.

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• The longer I lived, the more beautiful life became - despite my personal tragedies, the fire, despite my third wife and her dreadful taste. My dear Olgivanna, she insisted on replacing the lovely canvas and wooden trusses at Taliesin West with steel supports and pink frosted glass. Well, I was too old to care by then. What I decided early on was this: If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.

  Frank Lloyd Wright

  Beautiful, Fire, Glasses

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• It is an unfortunate personal tragedy. However, when compared to the vast ocean of the collective tragedy faced by my people, my illness is merely a pebble. I am deeply sad that I am crippled by this illness, unable to contribute anything substantial towards the alleviation of the immense suffering and oppression of my people.

  Anton Balasingham

  Ocean, Sadness, People

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• He didn't want her; he wanted me. Well, you know how it is." Dalgliesh did know. This, after all, was the commonest, the most banal of personal tragedies. You loved someone. They didn't love you. Worse still, in defiance of their own best interests and to the destruction of your peace, they loved another. What would half the world's poets and novelists do without this universal tragicomedy?

  P. D. James

  Love You, Tragedy, Half

  P.D. James (2015). “P. D. James’s Adam Dalgliesh Mysteries: Cover Her Face, A Mind to Murder, Unnatural Causes, Shroud for a Nightingale, The Black Tower, and Death of an Expert Witness”, p.807, Simon and Schuster

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• It is precisely through the onset of old age, through loss or personal tragedy, that the spiritual dimension would traditionally come into people's lives. This is to say, their inner purpose would emerge only as their outer purpose collapsed and the shell of the ego would begin to crack open. The emphasis shifts from doing to Being, and our civilization, which is lost in doing, knows nothing of Being. It asks: being? What do you do with it?

  Eckhart Tolle

  Spiritual, Loss, Civilization

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• I once asked a young dissertation writer whether her suddenly grayed hair was due to ill health or personal tragedy; she answered: “It was the footnotes”.

  Joanna Russ

  Hair, Ill Health, Tragedy

  Joanna Russ (1983). “How to Suppress Women's Writing”, p.137, University of Texas Press

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• 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

  Achievement, Tragedy, Triumph

  Viktor E. Frankl (2015). “Man's Search For Meaning, Gift Edition”, p.87, Beacon Press

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• It was in Spain that [my generation] learned that one can be right and yet be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, that there are times when courage is not its own recompense. It is this, doubtless, which explains why so many, the world over, feel the Spanish drama as a personal tragedy.

  Albert Camus

  Drama, Tragedy, Spain

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• There's some things I can't write about, just terrible personal tragedies.

  Harry Connick, Jr.

  Writing, Tragedy, Terrible

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• I believe that the Lord has a plan for each of us that's better than anything we can imagine, even if that plan isn't obvious to us at every stage. He prepared me for this over a long period of time - in lower-profile locker rooms and the grocery store and in Europe, through all the personal tragedies and in spite of the people who doubted me along the way.

  Kurt Warner

  Believe, Europe, Long

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