Tragic Quotes - Page 35

• Razo was sorely tempted to assert that all was true and he'd lost his horns and tail in a tragic childhood accident

  Shannon Hale

  Childhood, Tails, Lost

  Shannon Hale (2010). “River Secrets”, p.28, A&C Black

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• We even talked like Hemingway characters, though in travesty, as if to deny our discipleship: That is your bed, and it is a good bed, and you must make it and you must make it well. Or: Today is the day of the meatloaf. The meatloaf is swell. It is swell but when it is gone the not-having meatloaf will be tragic and the meatloaf man will not come anymore.

  Tobias Wolff

  Character, Men, Today Is The Day

  Tobias Wolff (2004). “Old School”, p.14, Vintage

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• You go to someone and you think, 'I'll tell him this.' But why? The impulse is that the telling is going to relieve you. And that's why you feel awful later--you've relieved yourself, and if it truly is tragic and awful, it's not better, it's worse---the exhibitionism inherent to a confession has only made the misery worse.

  Philip Roth

  Thinking, Exhibitionism, Awful

  Philip Roth (1997). “American Pastoral”, p.90, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• But mostly, I remembered what I’ve always believed. What my mom taught me. That while some things are just plain awful, most things in life can be seen either tragic or comic. And it’s your choice. Is life a big, long, tiresome slog from sadness to regret to guilt to resentment to self-pity? Or is life weird, outrageous, bizarre, ironic, and just stupid? Gotta go with stupid. It’s not the easy way out. Self pity is the easiest thing in the world. Finding the humor, the irony, the slight justification for a skewed, skeptical optimism. That’s tough. - Marco, Animorphs #35: The Proposal

  Katherine Applegate

  Mom, Regret, Stupid

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• To say nothing of what you lose, lose, lose, are losing, man. You fool, you stupid fool ... You've even been insulated from the responsibility of genuine suffering ... Even the suffering you do endure is largely unnecessary. Actually spurious. It lacks the very basis you require of it for its tragic nature. You deceive yourself.

  Malcolm Lowry

  Stupid, Responsibility, Men

  Malcolm Lowry (2012). “Under the Volcano: A Novel”, p.317, Open Road Media

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• A tragic irony of life is that we so often achieve success or financial independence after the chief reason for which we sought it has passed away.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Success, Independence, Credit

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• Everyone agrees that the failure of our high schools is tragic. It's bad business, and it's bad policy. But we act as if it can't be helped. It can be helped. We designed these high schools; we can redesign them.

  Melinda Gates

  Change, Education, School

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• There is nothing as tragic as being alive and not enjoying life... Life should be celebrated!

  Joyce Meyer

  Witty, Enjoy Life, Alive

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• There are no greater treasures than the highest human qualities such as compassion, courage and hope. Not even tragic accident or disaster can destroy such treasures of the heart.

  Daisaku Ikeda

  Courage, Heart, Compassion

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• Nature has a way sometimes of reminding Man of just how small he is. She occasionally throws up terrible offspring's of our pride and carelessness to remind us of how puny we really are in the face of a tornado, an earthquake, or a Godzilla. The reckless ambitions of Man are often dwarfed by their dangerous consequences. For now, Godzilla - that strangely innocent and tragic monster - has gone to earth. Whether he returns or not, or is never again seen by human eyes, the things he has taught us remain...

  Raymond Burr

  Ambition, Eye, Pride

  "Fictional character: Steve Martin". "Godzilla 1985", www.imdb.com. 1984.

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• Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. ... We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or to feel remorse for this shameful episode.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Race, Population, Doctrine

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• But it does make me sad that we've forgotten our names. Out of everything, this seems to me the most tragic. I miss my own and I mourn for everyone else's, because I'd like to love them, but I don't know who they are.

  Isaac Marion

  Names, Missing, Doe

  Isaac Marion (2012). “Warm Bodies: A Novel”, p.4, Simon and Schuster

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• It is tragic and sad and chaotic and lovely. All life is the same, as citizens of the human State: the animating limits are within, to be killed and mourned, over and over again.

  David Foster Wallace

  Lovely, Citizens, Limits

  David Foster Wallace (2011). “Infinite Jest”, p.68, Hachette UK

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• The world is an infinitely fascinating, tragic and humorous place.

  Mike Figgis

  Humorous, World, Fascinating

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• The growing possibility of our destroying ourselves and the world with our own neglect and excess is tragic and very real.

  Billy Graham

  Real, Excess, World

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• Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other ­people. Nothing that happens to a writer – however happy, however tragic – is ever wasted.

  P. D. James

  New Experiences, People, Mind

  "Ten rules for writing fiction" by P. D. James, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

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• A gourmet meal without a glass of wine just seems tragic to me somehow.

  Kathy Mattea

  Wine, Glasses, Gourmet

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• The relativism which is not willing to speak about truth but only about ‘what is true for me’ is an evasion of the serious business of living. It is the mark of a tragic loss of nerve in our contemporary culture. It is a preliminary symptom of death.

  Lesslie Newbigin

  Loss, Serious Business, Culture

  Lesslie Newbigin (2013). “The Gospel in a Pluralist Society: SPCK Classic”, p.36, SPCK

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• To be an artist it is not necessary to make a living from our creations. Nor is it necessary to have work hanging in fine museums or the praise of critics . . . To be an artist it is necessary to live with our eyes wide open, to breathe in the colors of mountain and sky, to know the sound of leaves rustling, the smell of snow, the texture of bark . . . To be an artist is to notice every beautiful and tragic thing, to cry freely, to collect experience and shape it into forms that others can share.

  Jan Phillips

  Beautiful, Eye, Artist

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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, Participating

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

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• The most tragic paradox of our time is to be found in the failure of nation-states to recognize the imperatives of internationalism.

  Earl Warren

  Patriotism, Paradox, States

  "Saturday Review" Magazine, (p. 16), October 23, 1971.

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• Quite often in life, when a tragic event arrives it becomes a springboard for mirroring all other things in one's life that one hasn't come to terms with.

  Charlotte Rampling

  Events, Term, Mirroring

  Interview with Christopher Cook, www.theguardian.com. March 16, 2001.

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• The animals that depend on instinct have an inherent knowledge of the laws of economics and of how to apply them; Man, with his powers of reason, has reduced economics to the level of a farce which is at once funnier and more tragic than Tobacco Road.

  James Thurber

  Animal, Men, Law

  James Thurber (1990). “Collecting Himself: James Thurber on Writing and Writers, Humor and Himself”

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• When we consider that each of us has only one life to live, isn’t it rather tragic to find men and women, with brains capable of comprehending the stars and the planets, talking about the weather; men and women, with hands capable of creating works of art, using those hands only for routine tasks; men and women, capable of independent thought, using their minds as a bowling-alley for popular ideas; men and women, capable of greatness, wallowing in mediocrity; men and women, capable of self-expression, slowly dying a mental death while they babble the confused monotone of the mob?

  Neil Gaiman

  Art, Stars, Confused

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• I don't need drugs to make my life tragic.

  Eddie Vedder

  Reality, Drug, Needs

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