Tragedy Quotes - Page 7

• None of us has ever seen a motive. Therefore, we don't know we can't do anything more than suspect what inspires the action of another. For this good and valid reason, we're told not to judge. Tragedy is that our attention centers on what people are not, rather than on what they are and who they might become.

  Brennan Manning

  Judging, People, Inspire

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• We can only begin to live when we conceive life as Tragedy.

  William Butler Yeats

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• The tragedy of being both rational and animal seems to consist in having to choose between duty and desire rather than in making any particular choice

  Mortimer Adler

  Animal, Choices, Desire

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• the tragedy of an attachment is that if its object is not attained it causes unhappiness. But if it is attained, it does not cause happiness – it merely causes a flash of pleasure followed by weariness, and it is always accompanied, of course, by the anxiety that you may lose the object of your attachment.

  Anthony de Mello

  Attachment, Anxiety, Doe

  Anthony De Mello (2011). “The Way to Love: Meditations for Life”, p.21, Image

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• Most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally evil, but by people being fundamentally people.

  Terry Pratchett

  People, Evil, Triumph

  Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett (2011). “Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch”, p.30, Harper Collins

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• If my work has a theme, I suspect it is a simple one: that most human beings are inescapably alone, and therein lies their tragedy.

  Richard Yates

  Lying, Simple, Theme

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• There are two aspects of individual harmony: the harmony between body and soul, and the harmony between individuals. All the tragedy in the world, in the individual and in the multitude, comes from lack of harmony. And harmony is the best given by producing harmony in one's own life.

  Hazrat Inayat Khan

  Two, Soul, World

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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, Young

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

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• A faith without some doubts is like a human body with no antobodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask the hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic. A person's faith can collapse almost overnight if she failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection.

  Timothy Keller

  Smart, Believe, Reflection

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• The tragedy is that society (your school, your boss, your government, your family) keeps drumming the genius part out. The problem is that our culture has engaged in a Faustian bargain, in which we trade our genius and artistry for apparent stability.

  Seth Godin

  School, Government, Boss

  Seth Godin (2010). “Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?”, p.6, Penguin

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• He is a [sane] man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Encouragement, Heart, Comedy

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• Our human tragedy is that we are unable to comprehend our experience, it slips through our fingers, we can't hold on to it, and the more time passes, the harder it gets...My father said that the natural world gave us explanations to compensate for the meanings we could not grasp. The slant of the cold sunlight on a winter pine, the music of water, an oar cutting the lake and the flight of birds, the mountains' nobility , the silence of the silence. We are given life but must accept that it is unattainable and rejoice in what can be held in the eye, the memory, the mind.

  Salman Rushdie

  Memories, Father, Eye

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• After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own. Music always seems to me to produce that effect. It creates for one a past of which one has been ignorant, and fills one with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden from one’s tears.

  Oscar Wilde

  Past, Mourning, Ignorant

  Oscar Wilde (1969). “The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde”, p.343, University of Chicago Press

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• There is a warning. The path of God-exalting joy will cost you your life. Jesus said, “Whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.” In other words, it is better to lose your life than to waste it. If you live gladly to make others glad in God, your life will be hard, your risks will be high, and your joy will be full. This is not a book about how to avoid a wounded life, but how to avoid a wasted life. Some of you will die in the service of Christ. That will not be a tragedy. Treasuring life above Christ is a tragedy.

  John Piper

  Jesus, Book, Joy

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• You can't just skip the boring parts." "Of course I can skip the boring parts." "How do you know they're boring if you don't read them?" "I can tell." "Then you can't say you've read the whole play." "I think I can live a happy life, Meryl Lee, even if I don't read the boring parts of The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark." "Who knows?" she said. "Maybe you can't.

  Gary D. Schmidt

  Happy Life, Thinking, Play

  Gary D. Schmidt (2007). “The Wednesday Wars”, p.215, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Laughter rises out of tragedy when you need it the most, and rewards you for your courage.

  Erma Bombeck

  Inspirational, Laughter, Humor

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• tragedy in the theater opens our eyes so that we can discover and appreciate the heroic in reality.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Eye, Reality, Appreciate

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• She had always assumed that she would have years to sort out the meaning of life... As she bent over the child she realized that the tragedy of death had to do entirely with what was left unfulfilled.

  Abraham Verghese

  Children, Years, Meaning Of Life

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• People know your tragedies and they treat you like you’re not human. Like you’re a three-headed goat. A monster from some other planet. They keep reminding you of your pain. You see how they look at me? They’re stuck on that person I used to be. They can’t see that old life as just a moment in time that I’ve moved on from. It was a horrible life.

  Eric Jerome Dickey

  Pain, People, Monsters

  Eric Jerome Dickey (2006). “Genevieve”, p.191, Penguin

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• Great tragedy gives us opportunities for great kindness.

  Karen White

  Kindness, Opportunity, Giving

  Karen White (2011). “The Beach Trees”, p.95, Penguin

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• Grief lasts longer than sympathy, which is one of the tragedies of the grieving.

  Elizabeth McCracken

  Grief, Grieving, Lasts

  Elizabeth McCracken (2008). “An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination: A Memoir”, p.38, Hachette UK

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• There were so many layers of reality to the world. Nothing stopped for death; nothing stopped for grief or horror or tragedy.

  Rachel Caine

  Grief, Reality, Layers

  Rachel Caine (2011). “Working Stiff: A Revivalist Novel”, p.194, Penguin

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• Phury knelt beside him and stroked his face. "I've only ever had you to live for. If you die I have nothing. I'm utterly lost. And you are needed here." Zsadist tried to reach out, but couldn't lift his arms as Phury stood up. "God, Z, I keep thinking this tragedy of ours is going to be over. But it just keeps going, doesn't it?" Zsadist blacked out to the sound of his twin's boots heading from the room.

  J.R. Ward

  Thinking, Zsadist, Boots

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• The tragedy of growing old is not that one is old but that one is young.

  Oscar Wilde

  Time, Humor, Age And Youth

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• The weird, weird thing about devastating loss is that life actually goes on. When you're faced with a tragedy, a loss so huge that you have no idea how you can live through it, somehow, the world keeps turning, the seconds keep ticking.

  James Patterson

  Grief, Loss, Ideas

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