Tragic Quotes - Page 32

• We are provincials no longer. The tragic events of the 30 months of vital turmoil through which we have just passed have made us citizens of the world. There can be no turning back.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Months, Events, Citizens

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• Delightful, tragic, gloriously elegiac and riddled with puns-Close to Hugh is just like life, only so much more beautiful for being art.

  Lynn Coady

  Beautiful, Art, Pun

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• Nothing seems so tragic to one who is old as the death of one who is young, and this alone proves that life is a good thing.

  Zoe Akins

  Life Is, Good Things, Young

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• Where hunger is imposed by external circumstances, the act of starvation remains literal, a tragic biological event that does not serve metaphoric or symbolic purposes. It is only in a country where one is able to choose hunger that elective starvation may come to express cultural conflict or even social protest.

  Kim Chernin

  Country, May, Able

  Kim Chernin (1982). “The obsession: reflections on the tyranny of slenderness”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• The unequal distribution of food is one of the world's most tragic facts. Millions of people die because they have too little to eat, and many die because they have too much.

  Laura Huxley

  People, World, Littles

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• To say you loved a person. / To say that person no longer exists. / A tragic flawed fate going on and on and on.

  Mary Jo Bang

  Grief, Fate, Flawed

  Mary Jo Bang (2007). “Elegy: poems”, Graywolf Pr

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• What does it mean to be a used white wife, a mother, a tragic girl writing poems? Sandra Simonds gets into these messy words and then tears them apart. Sometimes with the words of others. And sometimes with poems made from scratch. They aren't all bad, these words. But they aren't all good either. And that is where Mother was a Tragic Girl gets its power. You will at moments be laughing but then you will also at moments just as much be crying. If Antigone was alive and decided to write some poems about the nuclear family, she would write them like Sandra Simonds. These are tough.

  Juliana Spahr

  Girl, Mother, Writing

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• We're living through a time where we are fighting wars fostered by politics, admittedly not on the same scale as the First World War, but with equally tragic realities for our soldiers and their families.

  Benedict Cumberbatch

  War, Fighting, Reality

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• As the tragic writer rids us of what is petty and ignoble in our nature, so also the humorist rids us of what is cautious, calculating, and priggish--about half of our social conscience, indeed. Both of them permit us, in blessed moments of revelation, to soar above the common level of our lives.

  Robertson Davies

  Blessed, Tragedy, Half

  Robertson Davies (1961). “The Personal Art: Reading to Good Purpose”, London : Secker & Warburg

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• Fortunately for the human race, pain, however piercing, is not a lasting emotion. The recollection of happiness lingers, but the consciousness never retains for long the first thrust of tragic loss. The details of daily life crowd in upon the mind.

  Wallis Simpson

  Pain, Loss, Race

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• I have learned by experience that a tragic end awaits anyone who dares cross swords with me; Nasser is no more, John and Robert Kennedy died at the hands of assassins, their brother Edward has been disgraced, Krushchev was toppled, the list is endless.

  Mohammed Reza Pahlavi

  Brother, Hands, Assassins

  "The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran's Royal Court, 1968-77". Book by Asadollah Alam, p. 202, 1991.

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• The quest of the truth had been born in me - the most tragic and incomplete, as well as the most essential, of man's quests.

  Ida Tarbell

  Truth, Men, Essentials

  Ida M. Tarbell (2015). “All in the Day's Work: An Autobiography”, p.24, Ravenio Books

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• Those tragic comedians, the Chamber of Commerce red hunters, the Women's Christian Temperance Union smellers, the censors of books, the Klan regulators, the Methodist prowlers, the Baptist guardians of sacred vessels-we have the national mentality of a police lieutenant.

  H. L. Mencken

  Christian, Book, America

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• On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number merely strange, but none commonplace; for, working as he did rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigation which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Art, Book, Eight

  Arthur Conan DOYLE (2010). “Les Aventures de Sherlock Holmes”, p.690, Omnibus

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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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• Had I not gone through the ordeal, in more than one country, of landing a job, I would he tempted to lose patience over the number of letters pouring in from fellows who want me or someone else to hand them a job on a silver platter with a guarantee that they will receive the wonderful promotion their talents warrant.... But a tragic number of young men and even older men have a notion that it is not up to them to prosecute the bettering process. They look to someone else to perform the trick for them.

  B. C. Forbes

  Country, Jobs, Men

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• Alas! the road to Anywhere is pitfalled with disaster;
  There's hunger, want, and weariness, yet O we loved it so!
  As on we tramped exultantly, and no man was our master,
  And no man guessed what dreams were ours, as, swinging heel and toe,
  We tramped the road to Anywhere, the magic road to Anywhere,
  The tragic road to Anywhere, such dear, dim years ago.

  Robert W. Service

  Dream, Men, Years

  Robert W. Service (2012). “Robert W. Service: Selected Poetry and Prose”, p.50, Dundurn

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• I once heard a woman laugh at that most tragic moment in all drama, the off-stage shot in "The Wild Duck," and I afterward had her killed, so there will be no more of that out of her.

  Robert Benchley

  Drama, Ducks, Laughing

  Robert Benchley (1932). “No Poems”

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• Some of the funniest moments I've ever experienced have been in the midst of tragic situations in my life.

  Sarah Polley

  Moments, Midst, Situation

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Acting is the great love of my life. It gives you permission to use all parts of yourself. Permission to be the hero, the love interest, the comedian, the villain. Transformation excites me. So does truth. Nothing is more thrilling, hilarious, and tragic than the truth. Those things motivated me to become an actor. Also, they always have the best food on set.

  Blake Griffin

  Hero, Giving, Great Love

  Source: www.nerdprobs.com

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• How can it fail to smash and shatter the petty provincialism and narrow nantionalism ... making of this world a tragic mosaic of hostility and hate? How can this fabulous new force in the sky fail to serve the hope of teh world and the peace of the world?

  Juan Trippe

  Hate, Sky, World

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• A lot of people saw Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland as persecuted and tragic and vulnerable, and I think a lot of gay men feel that way because of their particular predicament in society and not being accepted completely.

  Madonna Ciccone

  Gay, Men, Thinking

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• A big part of the humor is in identifying with the tragic elements of the film. The New Zealand sense of humor is very dark. Our films are usually very dark and it's always someone being killed. Usually a child.

  Taika Waititi

  Children, Dark, Elements

  Source: editorial.rottentomatoes.com

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• Life is full of moments that are good - winning a lottery, seeing a beautiful woman, a great dinner - but the whole thing is tragic. It's an oasis that is very pleasant.

  Woody Allen

  Beautiful, Winning, Oasis

  "Woody Allen: 'The Whole Thing Is Tragic'". the-talks.com. July 20, 2012.

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• I have spoken, and I was understood. It's not like I'm a tragic person who wasn't understood. All those books are in print, all those movies are still out there, the audience gets younger. So I don't have that "I've got to do one thing before I die." I did it.

  John Waters

  Book, Print, Audience

  Source: www.timeout.com

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