Tragedy Quotes

“I know that you're selfish, selfish beyond words, and I know that you haven't the nerve of a rabbit, I know you're a liar and a humbug, I know that you're utterly contemptible. And the tragic part is'--her face was on a sudden distraught with pain--'the tragic part is that notwithstanding I love you with all my heart.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“A poet should be so crafty with words that he is envied even for his pains.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“It’s not over if you’re still here,” Chronicler said. “It’s not a tragedy if you’re still alive.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“Come what come may, time and the hour run through the roughest day.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless. . .”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan / A Woman of No Importance / An Ideal Husband / The Importance of Being Earnest / Salomé

“The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant features are emphasized, is really a tragedy; but gone through in detail it has the character of a comedy.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Volume I

“The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present.”
― Alan Lightman, Einstein’s Dreams

“Isn’t that the greatest tragedy? When someone rejects us, no matter how they abuse our love, we hope against reason that somehow they will come back to us.”
― Suzanne E. Anderson, Mrs. Tuesday's Departure

“When you’re in The System, like after being arrested, you’re no longer a participant. You’re being processed. Instead of an easy to ignore, well-greased cog, you become a sharp edge that needs to be ground down.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sixth Borough

“That was the day my whole world went black. Air looked black. Sun looked black. I laid up in bed and stared at the black walls of my house….Took three months before I even looked out the window, see the world still there. I was surprised to see the world didn’t stop.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“It really seems to me that in the midst of great tragedy, there is always the horrible possibility that something terribly funny will happen.”
― Philip K. Dick

“Humanity can be divided into madmen and cowards. My personal tragedy is in being born into a world where sanity is held to be a character flaw.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Fools

“And then I did what I had never done in his presence, much less in his arms. I cried.”
― Erich Segal, Love Story

“The love that follows us sometime is our trouble, which still we thank as love.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“There’s something… I can’t really explain it. Best not to try.’ ‘I’m so sorry. Must be so disturbing for you. But can’t you tell him about it?’  ‘No.’  ‘Is it affecting him?’  ‘I can’t really say. It’s complicated. He’s strong, he can overcome it, it’s going to take time. It’s something he has to face, something very difficult and complex. I can’t go there to be with him and I can’t say anything. I have to do what I have to do.”
― Elizabeth Tebby Germaine, A MAN WHO SEEMED REAL: A story of love, lies, fear and kindness

“One day can change your life. One day can ruin your life. All life is is three or four big days that change everything.”
― Beverly Donofrio

“No man, proclaimed Donne, is an Island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature, and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived, and then, by some means or another, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakes—forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'd mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection), but still unique.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“Who is to decide which is the grimmer sight: withered hearts, or empty skulls?”
― Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot

“The very worst events in life have that effect on a family: we always remember, more sharply than anything else, the last happy moments before everything fell apart.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“War had bled color from everything, leaving nothing but a storm of gray.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“Everyone thinks their own situation most tragic. I am no exception.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“darkness falls upon Humanity
and faces become terrible
things
that wanted more than there
was.

all our days are marked with
unexpected
affronts - some
disastrous, others
less so
but the process is
wearing and
continuous.
attrition rules.
most give
way
leaving
empty spaces
where people should
be.

and now
as we ready to self-destruct
there is very little left to
kill

which makes the tragedy
less and more
much much
more.”
― Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

“A tragedy need not have blood and death; it's enough that it all be filled with that majestic sadness that is the pleasure of tragedy.”
― Jean Racine

“The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy. ”
― Steven Weinberg

“I do have a point to all this,” she continues. “There are like twenty people in that waiting room right now. Some of them are related to you. Some of them are not. But we’re all your family.” She stops now. Leans over me so that the wisps of her hair tickle my face. She kisses me on the forehead. “You still have a family,” she whispers.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“Humor is tragedy plus time.”
― Mark Twain

“It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man bungles his own life and the lives of others yet remains totally incapable of seeing how much the whole tragedy originates in himself, and how he continually feeds it and keeps it going. Not consciously, of course—for consciously he is engaged in bewailing and cursing a faithless world that recedes further and further into the distance. Rather, it is an unconscious factor which spins the illusions that veil his world. And what is being spun is a cocoon, which in the end will completely envelop him.”
― C.G. Jung, Aion

“It is a tragedy beyond the power of language to convey when what has been imposed on women by force becomes a standard of freedom for women: and all the women say it is so.”
― Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse

“Look around! Look what we’ve done to the world. We fucked everything up. In a few years it’s going to be unlivable. We don’t deserve to be stewards of this planet. And that pales to the things we do to each other. We’re monsters, Sander, and someone needs to end it.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sixth Borough

“I should not act better than anybody, but sure as hell, NOBODY’S better than ME!”
― Patricia D'Arcy Laughlin, Sacrifices Beyond Kingdoms: A Provocative Romance Torn Between Continents and Cultures