Tragic Hero Quotes

• Tragic heroes are failed pragmatists. Their ends are unrealistic and their means are impractical.

  Adam Phillips

  Hero, Mean, Ends

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• The truly tragic kind of suffering is the kind produced and defiantly insisted upon by the hero himself so that, instead of making him better, it makes him worse and when he dies he is not reconciled to the law but defiant, that is, damned. Lear is not a tragic hero, Othello is.

  W. H. Auden

  Hero, Law, Suffering

  "Forewords and Afterwords" by W. H. Auden, ("The Greeks and Us"), (p. 21), 1973.

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• The catastrophe of the tragic hero thus becomes the catastrophe of the fifth-century man; all his furious energy and intellectual daring drive him on to this terrible discovery of his fundamental ignorance - he is not the measure of all things but the thing measured and found wanting.

  Robert Fagles

  Hero, Ignorance, Men

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• The tragic hero prefers death to prudence. The comedian prefers playing tricks to winning. Only the villain really plays to win.

  Mason Cooley

  Hero, Winning, Play

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• Tragic heroes always moan when the gods take an interest in them, but it's the people the gods ignore who get the really tough deals

  Terry Pratchett

  Hero, People, Tough

  Terry Pratchett (2009). “Mort: (Discworld Novel 4)”, p.16, Random House

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• O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-ey'd monster, which doth mock The meat it feeds on.

  William Shakespeare

  Jealousy, Envy, Tragedy

  'Othello' (1602-4) act 3, sc. 3, l. 165

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• If I was white I would have been like John Wayne... I feel like a tragic hero in a Shakespeare play

  Tupac Shakur

  Hero, Play, White

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• To joke in the face of danger is the supreme politeness, a delicate refusal to cast oneself as a tragic hero.

  Edmond Rostand

  Hero, Faces, Danger

  Edmond Rostand, Howard Thayer Kingsbury (2004). “Cyrano de Bergerac”, p.205, Simon and Schuster

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• Adolescents are attracted to tragic heroes. That's why rock stars dress like homeless people. Adolescence is a fall. It's when every child becomes an orphan.

  Heather O'Neill

  Stars, Children, Fall

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• My words fly up, my thoughts remain below

  Claudius

  Language And Power, Hamlet And Ophelia, Hamlet Revenge

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