Tragic Quotes - Page 3

• One's thoughts are one's most crucial adventures. Seriously and strongly and intently to contemplate doing murder is everyway more exciting, more romantic, more profoundly tragic than the murder done.

  Mary MacLane

  Adventure, Done, Murder

  Mary MacLane (2014). “Human Days: A Mary MacLane Reader”, p.389, Petrarca Press

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• It's tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they die. 'Nothing is more rare in any man', says Emerson, 'than an act of his own.' It is quite true. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their life is a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

  Oscar Wilde

  Passion, Men, People

  Oscar Wilde (1977). “The illustrated Oscar Wilde”

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• A habit of finding pleasure in thought rather than action is a safeguard against unwisdom and excessive love of power, a means of preserving serenity in misfortune and peace of mind among worries. A life confined to what is personal is likely, sooner or later, to become unbearably painful; it is only by windows into a larger and less fretful cosmos that the more tragic parts of life become endurable.

  Bertrand Russell

  Mean, Worry, Serenity

  Bertrand Russell, John Greer Slater, Peter Köllner (1996). “A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42”, p.310, Psychology Press

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• With a truly tragic delusion,” Carl Jung noted, “these theologians fail to see that it is not a matter of proving the existence of the light, but of blind people who do not know that their eyes could see. It is high time we realized that it is pointless to praise the light and preach it if nobody can see it. It is much more needful to teach people the art of seeing.

  Carl Jung

  Art, Eye, Light

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• You are Joseph the dreamer of dreams, dear Jude. And a tragic Don Quixote. And sometimes you are St. Stephen, who, while they were stoning him, could see Heaven opened. Oh, my poor friend and comrade, you'll suffer yet!

  Thomas Hardy

  Dream, Heaven, Suffering

  Thomas Hardy (2016). “Jude the Obscure: Works of Hardy”, p.179, 谷月社

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• I would certainly rather the industry not go broke, but if that's what it takes for everyone to acquire some values and lose that sense of entitlement, maybe a little belt-tightening wouldn't be so tragic.

  Tim Gunn

  Littles, Entitlement, Broke

  Tim Gunn (2010). “Gunn's Golden Rules: Life's Little Lessons for Making It Work”, p.52, Simon and Schuster

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• He was wearing a look that she found odd and compelling - that amusement that didn’t seem to pass beyond the surface of his features, as he found everything in the world both infinitely funny and infinitely tragic all at the same time.

  Cassandra Clare

  Looks, World, Amusement

  Cassandra Clare (2013). “The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Angel; Clockwork Prince; Clockwork Princess”, p.91, Simon and Schuster

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• It was wonderful, a stunning happy ending to what began as another tragic rock & roll story, as if Bob Dylan had been arrested in Miami for jacking off in a seedy little XXX theater while stroking the spine of a fat young boy.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Boys, Rocks, Miami

  Hunter S. Thompson (2011). “Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century”, p.150, Penguin UK

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• Oh, Black known and unknown poets, how often have your auctioned pains sustained us? Who will compute the lonely nights made less lonely by your songs, or by the empty pots made less tragic by your tales? If we were a people much given to revealing secrets, we might raise monuments and sacrifice to the memories of our poets, but slavery cured us of that weakness.

  Maya Angelou

  Inspirational, Song, Lonely

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• I am writing this book because we're all going to die - In the loneliness of my own life, my father dead, my brother dead, my mother faraway, my sister and my wife far away, nothing here but my own tragic hands that once were guarded by a world, a sweet attention, that now are left to guide and disappear their own way into the common dark of all our deaths, sleeping in me raw bed, alone and stupid: with just this one pride and consolation: my broke heart in the general despair and opened up inwards to the Lord, I made a supplication in this dream

  Jack Kerouac

  Mother, Dream, Sweet

  Jack Kerouac (1972). “Visions of Cody”, London : André Deutsch

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• It is a tragic paradox that the very qualities that have led to man's extraordinary capacity for success are also those most likely to destroy him.

  Anthony Storr

  Men, Quality, Paradox

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• 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, Tragedy

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• Miss Grantham's sense of humour got the better of her at this point, and, tottering towards a chair, she sank into it, exclaiming in tragic accents:'Oh Heavens! I am betrayed!' His lordship blenched; both he and miss Laxton regarded her with guilty dismay. Miss Grantham buried her face in her handkerchief, and uttered one shattering word: 'Wretch!

  Georgette Heyer

  Missing, Heaven, Betrayed

  Georgette Heyer (2011). “Faro's Daughter”, p.202, Random House

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• It was like those songs I'd heard as a child, each so familiar, and all mine. When i got older and realized the words were sad, the stories tragic, it didn't make me love them any less. By then they were already part of me, woven into my conciousness & memory

  Sarah Dessen

  Song, Children, Memories

  Sarah Dessen (2008). “Lock and Key”, p.156, Penguin

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• All human behavior, all human motivations, all man’s hopes and fears, were heavily colored and largely controlled by mankind’s tragic and oddly beautiful pattern of reproduction.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Beautiful, Motivation, Men

  Robert A. Heinlein (2014). “Stranger in a Strange Land”, p.99, Hachette UK

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• The vast silence of Buddha overtakes
  and overrules the oncoming roar
  of tragic life that fills alleys and avenues;
  it blocks the way of pedicabs, police, convoys.

  Denise Levertov

  Block, Silence, Police

  Denise Levertov, Peggy Rosenthal (2006). “Making Peace”, p.25, New Directions Publishing

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• Sleepy-head is no longer aroused by tragic imaginings.

  Mason Cooley

  Tragedy, Sleepy

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• For me, it is good to be vulnerable. It makes me nice... weak sometimes, but in a good way, not a tragic way.

  Sophia Loren

  Nice, Way, Sometimes

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• America is a great country. It has many shortcomings, many social inequalities, and it's tragic that the problem of the blacks wasn't solved fifty or even a hundred years ago, but it's still a great country, a country full of opportunities, of freedom! Does it seem nothing to you to be able to say what you like, even against the government, the Establishment?

  Golda Meir

  Country, Opportunity, Government

  Interview with Oriana Fallaci, Ms. Magazine, April 1973.

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• Sylvia Plath. Interesting poetess whose tragic suicide was misinterpreted as romantic by the college-girl mentality.

  Woody Allen

  Girl, Suicide, College

  Woody Allen, Marshall Brickman (2000). “Annie Hall: scénario bilingue”

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• Robin [Williams] was a world treasure. As we mourn his tragic death, we must remember him for the great waves of laughter that he was able to illicit from us, how his humor and insights - though they came from a place of pain and uncertainty - connected us and reminded us of how flawed and fragile...how human we are. How we are capable of moments of inspired transcendence and others of unspeakable despair.

  Glenn Close

  Leadership, Wisdom, Pain

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• Or if I truly gave up I could be like Wet Lindsay. When Robbie dumped her she got all pale and even wetter than normal. She was like an anoraksick. (A person who is both very thin and wears tragic anoraks.) I just made that up as a joke. Even though I am very upset I can still think of a joke.

  Louise Rennison

  Thinking, Upset, Dumped Her

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• Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence.

  George Santayana

  Summer, Nature, Fate

  George Santayana (1967). “Animal Faith and Spiritual Life”, Irvington Pub

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• Let's take my truck," Jim said as he hit the gravel. "Less noise." And it has a radio, right?" With tragic concentration Adrian started warming up his voice, sounding like a moose being backstroked by a chesse grater. Jim shook his head at Eddie as the doors opened "How can you stand that racket?" Selective deafness" Teach me,master.

  J.R. Ward

  Voice, Doors, Noise

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• It is not possible, for a poet, writing in any language, to protect himself from the tragic elements in human life.... [ellipsis in source] Illness, old age, and death--subjects as ancient as humanity--these are the subjects that the poet must speak of very nearly from the first moment that he begins to speak.

  Louise Bogan

  Life, Writing, Poetry

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