Tragedy Quotes - Page 33

• Lest Arab governments be tempted out of sheer routine to rush into impulsive rejection, let me suggest that tragedy is not what men suffer but what they miss.

  Abba Eban

  Men, Rejection, Missing

  Abba Solomon Eban (1968). “Forward to peace: text of the address in the twenty-third plenary session of the Gerneral Assembly of the United Nations, Monday, 8 October, 1968”

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• Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.

  Pico Iyer

  Comedy, Catchy

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• For me the Holocaust was not only a Jewish tragedy, but also a human tragedy. After the war, when I saw that the Jews were talking only about the tragedy of six million Jews, I sent letters to Jewish organizations asking them to talk also about the millions of others who were persecuted with us together - many of them only because they helped Jews.

  Simon Wiesenthal

  War, Talking, Organization

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• I am now quite sure that Tragedy and Hope was suppressed although I do not know why or by whom

  Carroll Quigley

  Knows

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• The world is full of tragedy; and sympathy, a little common sympathy, can do so much to soften the worst of grief. It is for the lack of that, that people despair and go down.

  Mona Caird

  Grief, People, Despair

  Mona Caird, Margaret Morganroth Gullette (1894). “The Daughters of Danaus”, p.490, Feminist Press at CUNY

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• A culture cannot evolve without honest, powerful storytelling. When a society repeatedly experiences glossy, hollowed-out, pseudo-stories, it degenerates. We need true satires and tragedies, dramas and comedies that shine a clean light into the dingy corners of the human psyche and society.

  Robert McKee

  Powerful, Drama, Light

  Robert McKee (2010). “Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting”, p.13, Harper Collins

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• In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Elements, Comedy

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• According to how gifted we are, we are all given a large or small key to this treasury of wonders. I have been blessed with a small key to the world of the young. It's a place where good and evil are clearly stamped. It's a place where the better part of human nature triumphs over tragedies, and where innocence rides high. It is a great pleasure to write there, because the young have what the rest of us only envy, and that is a belief in goodness and perpetual hope.

  Rosemary Wells

  Blessed, Writing, Keys

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• I don't care if they're licensed legal firearms, people who are not highly trained putting guns in their hands is a recipe for disaster. So I'll train our officers that there is a concealed carry law, but when somebody turns with a firearm in their hand the officer does not have an obligation to wait to get shot to return fire and we're going to have tragedies as a result of that. I'm telling you right up front.

  Garry McCarthy

  Gun, Fire, Hands

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• Browning's tragedies are tragedies without villains.

  Edward Dowden

  Villain

  Edward Dowden (1905). “Robert Browning”

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• I refuse to finance the mass murder of innocent
  civilians...What is one more life thrown away in this
  sad and useless national tragedy? If one death can
  atone for anything, in any small way, to say to the
  world: I apologize for what we have done to you, I am
  ashamed for the mayhem and turmoil caused by my
  country.

  Malachi Ritscher

  Country, World, Way

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• When the bad bleeds, then is the tragedy good.

  Cyril Tourneur

  Cyril Tourneur, Thomas Middleton, C. R. A. Foakes (1996). “The Revenger's Tragedy”, p.9, Manchester University Press

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• The government needs to help those in need, but members of Congress shouldn't take advantage of the situation and use a national tragedy as an opportunity to spend taxpayer dollars on their pet projects.

  Chris Chocola

  Opportunity, Government, Pet

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• I mean, whose songs don't focus on tragedy and loss?

  Lucinda Williams

  Song, Mean, Loss

  "Lucinda Williams enjoying success from a lotus position" by Eric Schumacher Rasmussen, www.mtv.com. June 13, 2001.

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• Sometimes, people end up thankful for what they mourned. You cannot achieve this state by seeking tragedy, but you can keep yourself open more to sorrow's richness than to unmediated despair. Tragedies with happy endings may be sentimental tripe, or they may be the true meaning of love.

  Andrew Solomon

  Grief, People, Suffering

  Andrew Solomon (2013). “Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity”, p.701, Simon and Schuster

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• One of the tragedies of the Bush administration is that we went back to business as usual, make a deal with the Democrats, lets all be friends in Washington philosophy.

  Pete du Pont

  Philosophy, Usual, Administration

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• If, for instance, you put in a Malay officer who's very religious and who has family ties in Malaysia in charge of a machine gun unit, that's a very tricky business. We've got to know his background... I'm saying these things because they are real, and if I don't think that, and I think even if today the Prime Minister doesn't think carefully about this, we could have a tragedy.

  Lee Kuan Yew

  Religious, Real, Thinking

  Straits Times, September 19, 1999.

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• That humankind has fallen into the insanity of concensus trance, and lost touch with our true possibilities and functions is a tragedy.

  Charles Tart

  Insanity, Possibility, Lost

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• Syria has become the great tragedy of this century - a disgraceful humanitarian calamity with suffering and displacement unparalleled in recent history.

  Antonio Guterres

  Suffering, Humanitarian, Century

  "Deborah Amos on Syria’s Refugee Crisis". "Moyers & Company" with Phil Donahue, billmoyers.com. September 6, 2013.

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• Laughter is the evidence that we're still here, the proof that our tragedies will not define us forever. Laughter is the language of the survivor.

  Josh James

  Laughter, Forever, Survivor

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• I thought there had to be something I could do because it seemed crazy that, in addition to the psychological tragedy each woman has to face, came also all the rest.

  Emma Bonino

  Crazy, Faces, Psychological

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• God’s power rests not on totalizing omnipotence, but on His ability to alchemize suffering, tragedy, and loss into wisdom, understanding, and joy.

  Terryl L. Givens

  Loss, Omnipotence, Joy

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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, May

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• The basis of tragedy is man's helplessness against disease, war and death; the basis of comedy is man's helplessness against vanity (the vanity of love, greed, lust, power).

  Dawn Powell

  War, Men, Vanity

  Dawn Powell (1998). “The Diaries of Dawn Powell: 1931-1965”, Zoland Books

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• Born to an age where horror has become commonplace, where tragedy has, by its monotonous repetition, become a parody of sorrow, we need to fence off a few parks where humans try to be fair, where skill has some hope of reward, where absurdity has a harder time than usual getting a ticket.

  Thomas Boswell

  Skills, Sorrow, Trying

  Thomas Boswell (1984). “Why Time Begins on Opening Day”, Doubleday Books

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