Tragic Quotes - Page 24

• What seems tragic now won't even be an issue in a few years time.

  Cecelia Ahern

  Issues, Years, Seems

  Cecelia Ahern (2005). “Rosie Dunne”, Wheeler Pub Incorporated

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• I photographed the entire thing in color because to photograph it in black and white would be to keep it as a tragedy. Because there is a tragic element to photographing, in this case not war, but the collapse. It was just destruction.

  Joel Meyerowitz

  Photography, War, Black And White

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• United have spent all season commemorating the 50th anniversary of Busby's decision to defy the Football League and take the club on a tragic and triumphant journey into Europe, but no orchestrated event could conjure the celebrations ignited by last night's outstanding obliteration of Roma or deliver a more fitting tribute.

  Andy Hunter

  Soccer, Football, Night

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• Before I was born my mother was in great agony of spirit and in a tragic situation. She could take no food except iced oysters and champagne. If people ask me when I began to dance, I reply 'In my mother's womb, probably as a result of the oysters and Champagne.'

  Isadora Duncan

  Mother, Wine, Oysters

  Isadora Duncan (2013). “My Life (Revised and Updated)”, p.1, W. W. Norton & Company

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• There has never been any evidence that the death penalty reduces capital crimes or that crimes increased when executions stopped. Tragic mistakes are prevalent...It is clear that there are overwhelming ethical, financial, and religious reasons to abolish the death penalty.

  Jimmy Carter

  Religious, Mistake, Execution

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• It's just really tragic after all the horrors of the last 1,000 years we can't leave behind something as primitive as government-sponsored execution.

  Russ Feingold

  Government, Years, Lasts

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• We oppose the death penalty not just for what it does to those guilty of heinous crimes, but for what it does to all of us: It offers the tragic illusiion that we can defend life by taking life.

  Joseph Fiorenza

  Doe, Death Penalty, Guilty

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• In a high tech world the cure for the tragic shortcomings and perilous fallacies of human intuition is education, but education in economics, evolutionary biology, probability and statistics - unfortunately most High School and College curricula have barely changed since Medieval times!

  Steven Pinker

  School, College, Intuition

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• To be mature you have to realize what you value most... Not to arrive at a clear understanding of one's own values is a tragic waste. You have missed the whole point of what life is for.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Understanding, Waste, Realizing

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• The time has come for America to hear the truth about this tragic war. In international conflicts, the truth is hard to come by because most nations are deceived about themselves. Rationalizations and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our sins. But the day has passed for superficial patriotism. He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Spiritual, War, America

  "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam". Speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, www.informationclearinghouse.info. April 30, 1967.

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• Things were not tragic for us then, because although we cared passionately we didn't care deeply.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Compassion, Generosity, Care

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• I believe that all the survivors are mad. One time or another their madness will explode. You cannot absorb that much madness and not be influenced by it. That is why the children of survivors are so tragic. I see them in school. They don't know how

  Elie Wiesel

  Children, Believe, School

  Elie Wiesel, Robert Franciosi (2002). “Elie Wiesel: Conversations”, p.84, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Reforms in Russia are very tragic, but they always end in a farce.

  Oscar Wilde

  Russia, Reform, Farce

  Oscar Wilde (2014). “Wilde Complete Plays: Lady Windermere's Fan; An Ideal Husband; The Importance of Being Earnest; A Woman of No Importance; Salome; The Duchess of Padua; Vera, or the Nihilists; A Florentine Tragedy; La Sainte Courtisane”, p.570, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• What is more tragic than to see a person who has risen to the disciplined heights of tough-mindedness but has at the same time sunk to the passionless depths of hard-heartedness?

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Inspirational, Depth, Height

  Martin Luther King (Jr.) (2012). “A Gift of Love: Sermons from Strength to Love and Other Preachings”, p.6, Beacon Press

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• There is terrible suffering in our world today. Tragic things happen to good people. God does not cause them, nor does He always prevent them. He does, however, strengthen us and bless us with His peace, through earnest prayer.

  Rex D. Pinegar

  Prayer, Our World, People

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• The woman poet must be either a sexless, reclusive eccentric, with nothing to say specifically to women, or a brilliant, tragic, tortured suicide.

  Marilyn Hacker

  Suicide, Eccentric, Brilliant

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• Herschel Grynszpan's life was enigmatic, elusive and tragic. The traces he left on the historical record are just sufficient to tantalize and baffle historians. Harlan Greene has woven from these threads a riveting novel, erotic, haunting, and profoundly moving.

  Janette Turner Hospital

  Moving, Erotic, Historical

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• Joaquin Jackson's frank and colorful account of his long career as a modern-day Texas Ranger thrills like an action novel, yet the stories are true, sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, but always gripping. I could hardly put the book down. . . .The writing is superb.

  Elmer Kelton

  Book, Writing, Texas

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• So much of America's tragic and costly failure to care for all its children stems from our tendency to distinguish between our own children and other people's children--as if justice were divisible.

  Marian Wright Edelman

  Children, America, People

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• There were many moments in the Vine like that one--where you might think today was yesterday, and yesterday was tomorrow, and so on. Because we all believed we were tragic, and we drank. We had that helpless, destined feeling. We would die with handcuffs on. We would be put a stop to, and it wouldn't be our fault. So we imagined. And yet we were always being found innocent for ridiculous reasons.

  Denis Johnson

  Thinking, Yesterday, Feelings

  Denis Johnson (2009). “Jesus' Son: Stories”, p.32, Macmillan

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• Am I a pessimist? Not at all. I am convinced that the history of the human race, no matter how tragic, will ultimately lead to the Kingdom of God. I am convinced that all the works of humankind will be reintegrated in the work of God, and that each of us, no matter how sinful, will ultimately be saved.

  Jacques Ellul

  Race, Kingdoms, Matter

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• Shakespeare's plays often turn on the idea of fate, as much drama does. What makes them so tragic is the gap between what his characters might like to accomplish and what fate provides them.

  Nate Silver

  Drama, Character, Fate

  Nate Silver (2012). “The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't”, p.14, Penguin

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• The diabolical work that has taken place since the legalization of abortion is that it has destroyed, in those tragic women who have allowed their child to be murdered, their sense for the sacredness of maternity. Abortion not only murders the innocent; it spiritually murders women... the wound created in their souls is so great that only God's grace can heal it. The very soul of a woman is meant to be maternal.

  Alice von Hildebrand

  Children, Taken, Abortion

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• Between "just desserts" and "tragic irony" we are given quite a lot of scope for our particular talent. Generally speaking, things have gone about as far as they can possibly go when things have got about as bad as they reasonably get.

  Tom Stoppard

  Gone, Irony, Talent

  "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead". Book by Tom Stoppard, www.goodreads.com. 1966.

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• Liberty and equality, spontaneity and security, happiness and knowledge, mercy and justice - all these are ultimate human values, sought for themselves alone; yet when they are incompatible, they cannot all be attained, choices must be made, sometimes tragic losses accepted in the pursuit of some preferred ultimate end.

  Isaiah Berlin

  Loss, Justice, Choices

  Isaiah Berlin (2013). “The Power of Ideas”, p.27, Princeton University Press

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