Motivational Quotes

Tragedies

Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy.

- Barzun, Jacques

Best Quotes about Tragedies

There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.

King Jr. Martin Luther

When you close your eyes to tragedy, you close your eyes to greatness.

Vizinczey, Stephen

There are no tragedies, just facts not recognized in time.

Montapert, William D.

The true end of tragedy is to purify the passions.

Aristotle

It was no great tragedy being Judy Garland's daughter. I had tremendously interesting childhood years--except they had little to do with being a child.

Minnelli, Liza

Commonplace people dislike tragedy because they dare not suffer and cannot exult.

Masefield, John

Laughter is ever young, whereas tragedy, except the very highest of all, quickly becomes haggard.

Sackville, Margaret

Tragedy is like strong acid -- it dissolves away all but the very gold of truth.

Lawrence, D. H.

We participate in tragedy. At comedy we only look.

Huxley, Aldous

10.

What would be left of our tragedies if an insect were to present us his?

Cioran, E. M.

11.

In this world there are two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst.

Wilde, Oscar

12.

What the American public wants in the theater is a tragedy with a happy ending.

Howells, William Dean

13.

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.

Lawrence, D. H.

14.

This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.

Walpole, Horace

15.

It's not the tragedies that kill us, it's the messes.

Parker, Dorothy

16.

Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy.

Barzun, Jacques

17.

When any calamity has been suffered, the first thing to be remembered is how much has been escaped.

Johnson, Samuel

18.

The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means.

Stoppard, Tom

19.

I've come to realize that life is not a musical comedy, it's a Greek tragedy.

Joel, Billy

20.

You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

21.

I've never thought of my characters as being sad. On the contrary, they are full of life. They didn't choose tragedy. Tragedy chose them.

Binoche, Juliette

22.

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon--instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.

Carnegie, Dale

23.

A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.

Orwell, George

24.

None but a poet can write a tragedy. For tragedy is nothing less than pain transmuted into exaltation by the alchemy of poetry.

Hamilton, Edith

25.

It is restful, tragedy, because one knows that there is no more lousy hope left. You know you're caught, caught at last like a rat with all the world on its back. And the only thing left to do is shout -- not moan, or complain, but yell out at the top of your voice whatever it was you had to say. What you've never said before. What perhaps you don't even know till now.

Anouilh, Jean

26.

The little word is has its tragedies: it marries and identifies different things with the greatest innocence; and yet no two are ever identical, and if therein lies the charm of wedding them and calling them one, therein too lies the danger.

Santayana, George

27.

The closer a man approaches tragedy the more intense is his concentration of emotion upon the fixed point of his commitment, which is to say the closer he approaches what in life we call fanaticism.

Miller, Arthur

28.

Tragedy on the stage is no longer enough for me, I shall bring it into my own life.

Artaud, Antonin

29.

The greatest tragedy in America is not the destruction of our natural resources, though that tragedy is great. The truly great tragedy is the destruction of our human resources by our failure to fully utilize our abilities, which means that most men and women go to their graves with their music still in them.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

30.

The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives -- the death of genuine feeling, the death of inspired response, the awareness that makes it possible to feel the pain or the glory of other men in yourself.

Cousins, Norman