Tragedy Quotes - Page 23

• When the bad bleeds, then is the tragedy good.

  Cyril Tourneur

  Cyril Tourneur, Thomas Middleton, C. R. A. Foakes (1996). “The Revenger's Tragedy”, p.9, Manchester University Press

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The government needs to help those in need, but members of Congress shouldn't take advantage of the situation and use a national tragedy as an opportunity to spend taxpayer dollars on their pet projects.

  Chris Chocola

  Opportunity, Government, Pet

  4 Copy quote

• I mean, whose songs don't focus on tragedy and loss?

  Lucinda Williams

  Song, Mean, Loss

  "Lucinda Williams enjoying success from a lotus position" by Eric Schumacher Rasmussen, www.mtv.com. June 13, 2001.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sometimes, people end up thankful for what they mourned. You cannot achieve this state by seeking tragedy, but you can keep yourself open more to sorrow's richness than to unmediated despair. Tragedies with happy endings may be sentimental tripe, or they may be the true meaning of love.

  Andrew Solomon

  Grief, People, Suffering

  Andrew Solomon (2013). “Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity”, p.701, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the tragedies of the Bush administration is that we went back to business as usual, make a deal with the Democrats, lets all be friends in Washington philosophy.

  Pete du Pont

  Philosophy, Usual, Administration

  8 Copy quote

• If, for instance, you put in a Malay officer who's very religious and who has family ties in Malaysia in charge of a machine gun unit, that's a very tricky business. We've got to know his background... I'm saying these things because they are real, and if I don't think that, and I think even if today the Prime Minister doesn't think carefully about this, we could have a tragedy.

  Lee Kuan Yew

  Religious, Real, Thinking

  Straits Times, September 19, 1999.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• That humankind has fallen into the insanity of concensus trance, and lost touch with our true possibilities and functions is a tragedy.

  Charles Tart

  Insanity, Possibility, Lost

  19 Copy quote

• Syria has become the great tragedy of this century - a disgraceful humanitarian calamity with suffering and displacement unparalleled in recent history.

  Antonio Guterres

  Suffering, Humanitarian, Century

  "Deborah Amos on Syria’s Refugee Crisis". "Moyers & Company" with Phil Donahue, billmoyers.com. September 6, 2013.

  35 Copy quote

  Show source

• Laughter is the evidence that we're still here, the proof that our tragedies will not define us forever. Laughter is the language of the survivor.

  Josh James

  Laughter, Forever, Survivor

  4 Copy quote

• I thought there had to be something I could do because it seemed crazy that, in addition to the psychological tragedy each woman has to face, came also all the rest.

  Emma Bonino

  Crazy, Faces, Psychological

  7 Copy quote

• God’s power rests not on totalizing omnipotence, but on His ability to alchemize suffering, tragedy, and loss into wisdom, understanding, and joy.

  Terryl L. Givens

  Loss, Omnipotence, Joy

  7 Copy quote

• To choose a writer for a friend is like palling around with your cardiologist, who might be musing as you talk to him that you are a sinking man. A writer's love for another writer is never quite free of malice. He may enjoy discussing your failures even more than you do. He probably sees you as tragic, like his characters - or unworthy of tragedy, which is worse.

  Anatole Broyard

  Character, Men, May

  9 Copy quote

• The basis of tragedy is man's helplessness against disease, war and death; the basis of comedy is man's helplessness against vanity (the vanity of love, greed, lust, power).

  Dawn Powell

  War, Men, Vanity

  Dawn Powell (1998). “The Diaries of Dawn Powell: 1931-1965”, Zoland Books

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Born to an age where horror has become commonplace, where tragedy has, by its monotonous repetition, become a parody of sorrow, we need to fence off a few parks where humans try to be fair, where skill has some hope of reward, where absurdity has a harder time than usual getting a ticket.

  Thomas Boswell

  Skills, Sorrow, Trying

  Thomas Boswell (1984). “Why Time Begins on Opening Day”, Doubleday Books

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• I kept imagining these people, just living their daily lives, and then having them suddenly ended in unjust tragedy. When we watch the news, we grieve all of this, but when we go to the movies, we want more of it. Somehow we realize that great stories are told in conflict, but we are unwilling to embrace the potential greatness of the story we are actually in. We think God is unjust, rather than a master storyteller.

  Donald Miller

  Greatness, Thinking, Grieving

  Donald Miller (2009). “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life”, p.31, Thomas Nelson Inc

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The difference between tragedy and comedy: Tragedy is something awful happening to somebody else, while comedy is something awful happening to somebody else.

  Aaron Allston

  Differences, Awful, Comedy

  78 Copy quote

• Auschwitz is a place in which tragedy cannot occur.

  Edward Bond

  Auschwitz

  15 Copy quote

• A lot of people consider 9/11 to be a tragedy, and in some ways it is, but I think there's also opportunity for a lot of humor there.

  Zach Braff

  Opportunity, Thinking, People

  4 Copy quote

• If you're dumb enough to volunteer for the army, I don't see why we're supposed to feel so bad when you get shot. I'm not saying we should throw a party or anything, but is it such a tragedy? If I'd gotten shot before I made 'Garden State', yeah, that's a tragedy, but some red-state hick getting his legs blown off? Come on.

  Zach Braff

  Party, Army, Garden

  4 Copy quote

• In the twentieth century, men -- all of us -- find themselves compelled to commit or condone evil for the sake of preventing an evil believed to be greater. And the tragedy is that we do not know whether the evil we condone will not in the end be greater than the evil we seek to avert-- or be identified with.

  Emil Fackenheim

  Men, Evil, Sake

  19 Copy quote

• 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

  Brother, Responsibility, Thinking

  Albert Schweitzer, Charles Rhind Joy (1947). “Albert Schweitzer: An Anthology”, Boston : Beacon Press

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• If the people wanted my head I would bow without demur. If I had lost the confidence or respect of the people I would not want to live. The tragedy of the drama is that the very opposite is true.

  Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

  Drama, Opposites, People

  Letter to his attorney, Yahya Bakhtiar. "My Dearest Daughter: A letter from the Death Cell". Book by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, 2007.

  38 Copy quote

  Show source

• This year marks 20 years since the Rwandan genocide -- the world's greatest humanitarian tragedy of the late 20th century. The international community had pledged 'never again' in the aftermath of the genocide in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the 1990s. Yet, we are witnessing today a different type of humanitarian disaster unfolding in Syria and Iraq.

  Park Geun-hye

  Years, Yugoslavia, Iraq

  10 Copy quote

• One of the outstanding tragedies of this age of struggle and money-madness is the fact that so few people are engaged in the effort which they like best. Everyone should find his or her particular niche in the world's work, where both material prosperity and happiness in abundance may be found.

  Napoleon Hill

  Struggle, People, Effort

  Napoleon Hill (2013). “The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons”, p.103, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The greatest tragedy to befall a person is to have sight but lack vision.

  Helen Keller

  Sight, Vision, Missionary

  16 Copy quote