Tragedy Quotes - Page 40

• Fate never knows when comedy ends and tragedy begins.

  Frank Frankfort Moore

  Fate, Comedy, Ends

  Frank Frankfort Moore (1904). “The Original Woman”

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• Sören Kierkegaard has another answer: human existence is possible as existence not in despair, as existence not in tragedy; it is possible as existence in faith... Faith is the belief that in God the impossible is possible, that in Him time and eternity are one, that both life and death are meaningful.

  Peter Drucker

  Meaningful, Life And Death, Despair

  "The Ecological Vision: Reflections on the American Condition". Book by Peter F. Drucker, 1993.

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• I support the death penalty. I think that it has to be administered not only fairly, with attention to things like DNA evidence, which I think should be used in all capital cases, but also with very careful attention. If the wrong guy is put to death, then that's a double tragedy. Not only has an innocent person been executed but the real perpetrator of the crime has not been held accountable for it, and in some cases may be still at large. But I support the death penalty in the most heinous cases.

  Al Gore

  Real, Thinking, Dna

  "Text Of Third Bush-Gore Debate (cont.)". www.cbsnews.com. October 18, 2000.

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• It is observable that the ladies frequent tragedies more than comedies; the reason may be, that in tragedy their sex is deified and adored, in comedy exposed and ridiculed.

  Alexander Pope

  Sex, Women, May

  Alexander Pope, Alexander Chalmers (1807). “A Supplementary Volume to the Works of Alexander Pope, Esq: Containing Pieces of Poetry, Not Inserted in Warburton's and Warton's Editions : and a Collection of Letters, Now First Published”, p.130

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• A tragedy can never suffer by delay: a comedy may, because the allusions or the manners represented in it maybe temporary.

  Horace Walpole

  Suffering, Delay, May

  Horace Walpole (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Horace Walpole (Illustrated)”, p.4955, Delphi Classics

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• Comedy, I imagine, is harder to do consistently than tragedy, but I like it spiced in the wine of sadness.

  Bernard Malamud

  Wine, Sadness, Comedy

  1975 Interview in Paris Review, Spring.

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• The sense of tragedy is that the world is not a pleasant little nest made for our protection, but a vast and largely hostile environment, in which we can achieve great things only by defying the gods; and that this defiance inevitably brings its own punishment.

  Norbert Wiener

  Punishment, World, Nests

  Norbert Wiener (1988). “The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society”, p.184, Da Capo Press

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• A great tragedy passes from crest to hollow of passion, rises and sinks again, as rhythmically as sea-waves.

  Austin O'Malley

  Passion, Sea, Wave

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• The marvellous instinct with which women are usually credited seems too often to desert them on the only occasions when it would be of any real use. One would say it was there for trivialities only, since in a crisis they are usually dense, fatally doing the wrong thing. It is hardly too much to say that most domestic tragedies are caused by the feminine intuition of men and the want of it in women.

  Ada Leverson

  Real, Men, Intuition

  Ada Leverson (1962). “The little Ottleys: Love's shadow. Tenterhooks. Love at second sight”

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• Gershwin's tragedy was not that he failed to cross the tracks, but rather that he did, and once there in his new habitat, was deprived of the chance to plunge his roots firmly into the new soil.

  George Gershwin

  Roots, Track, Habitat

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• I'm sure there are people in Hollywood, whose main drive in film is to make money, who will feel that any use of the word hijacking or any reference to anything violent or remotely associated with the terrible tragedy that occurred will lose customers for them. And that will be the only criterion that will matter and so they'll force the minions that work for them to remove these things from their movies, or not make movies about that subject.

  Woody Allen

  People, Hollywood, Use

  Interview with Geoff Andrew, www.theguardian.com. September 27, 2001.

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• There are some great roles mostly in Shakespeare's tragedies which no one can play at full strength from beginning to end. One simply hopes that one can hit the peaks as often as one has the strength.

  Peggy Ashcroft

  Strength, Play, Roles

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• Tragedies make you realize how selfish you are.

  Tony Dorsett

  Selfish, Realizing

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• I do not recall another period when ‘faith’ was as popular as it is today. ‘If only we believe hard enough we'll make it somehow.’ So goes the popular chant. What you believe is not important. Only believe... What is overlooked in all this is that faith is good only when it engages truth; when it is made to rest upon falsehood it can and often does lead to eternal tragedy. For it is not enough that we believe; we must believe the right thing about the right One.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Believe, Important, Doe

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• The tragedy of Karbala decided not only the fate of the Caliphate, but also of Mohammadan kingdoms long after the Caliphate had waned and disappeared.

  William Muir

  Fate, Long, Hussain

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• The unions are the first feeble effort to conquer the industrial jungle for democratic life. They may not succeed, but if they don't their failure will be a tragedy for civilization, a loss of cooperative effort, a baulking of energy, and the fixing in American life of a class-structure.

  Walter Lippmann

  Loss, Civilization, Class

  Walter Lippmann (1914). “Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest”

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• The Jews are among the aristocracy of every land; if a literature is called rich in the possession of a few classic tragedies, what shall we say to a national tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years, in which the poets and the actors were also the heroes.

  George Eliot

  Hero, Years, Land

  Daniel Deronda bk. 6, ch. 42 (1876)

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• The greatest tragedy of old age is the tendency for the old to feel unneeded, unwanted, and of no use to anyone; the secret of happiness in the declining years is to remain interested in life, as active as possible, useful to others, busy, and forward looking.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Years, Secret, Use

  Eleanor Roosevelt (1962). “Book of common sense etiquette”

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• We may be the protagonists of tragedy, but we are also the heroes of our most beautiful and thrilling experiences.

  Shin Kyung-sook

  Beautiful, Hero, May

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• Black Tragedy lets slip her grim disguise and shows you laughing lips and roguish eyes; but when, unmasked, gay Comedy appears, how wan her cheeks are, and what heavy tears!

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  Eye, Gay, Laughing

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1907). “Poems”

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• The tragedy of civil wars in countries like Angola and Mozambique is that they left many civilians maimed. Poverty is the reason HIV/AIDS spread so rapidly in the African townships and slums. Poverty is the real killer.

  Miriam Makeba

  Country, Real, War

  Al-Ahram Weekly interview, 2001.

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• Arrogance is a way for a person to cover up shame. After years of arrogance, the arrogant person is so out of touch, she truly doesn't know who she is. This is one of the greatest tragedies of shame cover-ups: not only does the person hide from others, she also hides from herself.

  John Bradshaw

  Arrogant Person, Years, Arrogance

  John Bradshaw (2010). “Healing the Shame that Binds You”, p.123, Health Communications, Inc.

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• A comedy is just a tragedy interrupted, I once said. Do you finish with the kiss or when she opens her eyes to tell him she loves him and sees blonde hairs on his collar?

  Alan Ayckbourn

  Eye, Kissing, Hair

  "A Crash Course In Playwriting". research.alanayckbourn.net. 1993.

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• The oppressive weight of disaster and tragedy in our lives does not arise from a high percentage of evil among the summed total of all acts, but from the extraordinary power of exceedingly rare incidents of depravity to inflict catastrophic damage, especially in our technological age when airplanes can become powerful bombs. (An even more evil man, armed only with a longbow, could not have wreaked such havoc at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415.)

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Powerful, Airplane, Men

  "I Have Landed". Book by Stephen Jay Gould, p. 390: "The Good People of Halifax", 2002.

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• The real tragedy of human existence is not that we are nasty by nature, but that a cruel structural asymmetry grants to rare events of meanness such power to shape our history.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Real, Rare Events, Asymmetry

  Stephen Jay Gould (1993). “Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history”, Vintage

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