Tragic Quotes - Page 20

• Through the healing process of time-and through medical intervention or hospitalization in many cases-most people survive depression which may be its only blessing; but to the tragic legion who are compelled to destroy themselves there should be no more reproof attached than to the victims of terminal cancer.

  William Styron

  Depression, Cancer, Healing

  William Styron (1990). “Darkness visible: a memoir of madness”, Random House Incorporated

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• It's not tragic to die doing something you love.

  Mark Foo

  Surfing, Surfer, Something You Love

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• The fact is, the most painful and tragic lesson of the 20th century was that regimes based on racial superiority and religious hatred can't be trusted to keep their word to the international community.

  Michael Bloomberg

  Religious, Racism, Community

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• To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart; To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold, Live o'er each Seene, and be what they behold: For this the Tragic Muse first trod the stage.

  Alexander Pope

  Art, Soul, Genius

  'The Rape of the Lock' (1714) canto 1, l. 1

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• Down through the years my face has been called a sour puss, a dead pan, a frozen face, The Great Stone Face, and, believe it or not, "a tragic mask." On the other hand that kindly critic, the late James Agee, described my face as ranking "almost with Lincoln's as an early American archetype, it was haunting, handsome, almost beautiful." I can't imagine what the great rail splitter's reaction would have been to this, though I sure was pleased.

  Buster Keaton

  Beautiful, Believe, Hands

  "My Wonderful World Of Slapstick".

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• The causes of illusions are not pretty to discover. They're either vicious or tragic.

  Ayn Rand

  Causes, Illusion, Vicious

  Ayn Rand (2005). “The Fountainhead”, p.297, Penguin

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• George turned to her. His blue eyes widened. His lovely face took on a forlorn, deeply troubled expression. He leaned forwar, and, in a theatrical whisper, said, 'My past is tragic. I wouldn't want to burden you with it. It's a pain I must suffer alone. In the rain. In silence.

  Ilona Andrews

  Pain, Rain, Eye

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• Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain. This is the source also of the melancholy which is inseparable from the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Pain, Expression, Sorrow

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (2006). “A Defence of Poetry: an Essay: Easyread Large Edition”, p.57, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• The tragic sense of life: our heroic acceptance of the suffering of others.

  Edward Abbey

  Acceptance, Suffering Of Others, Heroic

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.24, RosettaBooks

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• What a tragic realm this is, he reflected. Those down here are prisoners, and the ultimate tragedy is that they don't know it; they think they are free because they have never been free, and do not understand what it means.

  Philip K. Dick

  Mean, Thinking, Tragedy

  Philip K. Dick (2011). “The Divine Invasion”, p.128, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The Grutter and Gratz decisions, taken together, represent a sad and tragic chapter in American history.

  Ward Connerly

  Taken, Decision, Together

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• Fire supposed he needed to be there in order to give rousing speeches and lead the charge into the fray, or whatever is was commanders did in wartime. She resented his competence at something so tragic and senseless. She wished he, or somebody, would throw down his sword and say, 'Enough! This is a silly way to decide who's in charge!' And it seemed to her, as the beds in the healing room filled and emptied and filled, that these battles didn't leave much to be in charge of. The kingdom was already broken, and this war was tearing the broken pieces smaller.

  Kristin Cashore

  War, Silly, Healing

  Kristin Cashore (2009). “Fire”, p.250, Penguin

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• There are stories that are true, in which each individual's tale is unique and tragic, and the worst of the tragedy is that we have heard it before, and we cannot allow ourselves to feel it to deeply. We build a shell around it like an oyster dealing with a painful particle of grit, coating it with smooth pearl layers in order to cope. This is how we walk and talk and function, day in, day out, immune to others' pain and loss. If it were to touch us it would cripple us or make saints of us; but, for the most part, it does not touch us. We cannot allow it to.

  Neil Gaiman

  Pain, Loss, Unique

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• It is a tragic and agonizing irony that instructions once delivered for the purpose of avoiding needless offense are now invoked in ways that needlessly offend, that words once meant to help draw people to the gospel now repel them.

  Rachel Held Evans

  People, Purpose, Agonizing

  Rachel Held Evans (2012). “A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband "master"”, p.263, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• A car's not the right place for showing off to a girl—the bed's the place for that. The consequences of a mistake there are more upsetting, but less tragic.

  Sergei Lukyanenko

  Girl, Mistake, Car

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• Sometimes I do readings and people can’t stop laughing, but I’m reading about pretty tragic things. I think Soviet humor is a desperate humor, rather typical of very different nations, of Jewish people, Ukrainians, and of course, Russians. It’s despair - just keep laughing, until you are dead.

  Alina Bronsky

  Reading, Thinking, People

  "Hammer and Tickle". Interview with Stephen Heyman, tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com. April 16, 2011.

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• I don't need drugs. Life is already tragic enough.

  Eddie Vedder

  Drug, Needs, Life Is

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• George Lazenby is no one's favorite James Bond, but for me the anonymity at the center of this lavish production only serves to reveal the Bond machine firing on all cylinders: superb editing and photography, incredible score, great setpieces. The most romantic in the series, and it actually has, of all things, a tragic ending.

  Christopher Nolan

  Photography, Editing, Machines

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• All this long human story, most passionate and tragic in the living, was but an unimportant, a seemingly barren and negligible effort, lasting only for a few moments in the life of the galaxy. When it was over, the host of the planetary systems still lived on, with here and there a casualty, and here and there among the stars a new planetary birth, and here and there a fresh disaster.

  Olaf Stapledon

  Stars, Long, Effort

  Olaf Stapledon (1931). “Last and First Men, & Star Maker: Two Science-fiction Novels”, p.379, Courier Corporation

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• I have long held firm to my suspicion that some people are just evil. In some cases I'll concede it seems as though it is thrust upon someone who had little real hope of avoiding it. However tragic that reality, the simple fact remains that it is more important to protect the rest of society for as long as it remains a danger to them.

  Jeremy Kyle

  Real, Simple, Long

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• Tiffany knew what the problem was immediately. She'd seen it before, at birthday parties. Her brother was suffering from tragic sweet deprivation. Yes, he was surrounded by sweets. But the moment he took any sweet at all, said his sugar-addled brain, that meant he was not taking all the rest. And there were so many sweets he'd never be able to eat them all. It was too much to cope with. The only solution was to burst into tears.

  Terry Pratchett

  Sweet, Brother, Party

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• But the saddest difference between them was that Zazetsky, as Luria said, 'fought to regain his lost faculties with the indomitable tenacity of the damned,' whereas Dr P. was not fighting, did not know what was lost. But who was more tragic, or who was more damned -- the man who knew it, or the man who did not?

  Oliver Sacks

  Fighting, Men, Differences

  Oliver Sacks (2014). “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: Picador Classic”, p.28, Pan Macmillan

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• When we talk about our lives, long or short, brief and tragic or enduring beyond comprehension, we impose a continuity on them, and that continuity is a lie.

  Anne Rice

  Lying, Long, Endure

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• You see, nothing matters except pleasure - which is the opposite of happiness, its tragic part, I expect.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Opposites, Matter, Pleasure

  Lawrence Durrell (2012). “The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea”, p.222, Faber & Faber

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• A lot of people get the wrong impression, think there's something romantic or tragic about hitting bottom.

  Donald Ray Pollock

  Thinking, People, Hitting Bottom

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