Tragic Quotes
More Tragic Quotes
It is tragic that we have lost one of our nation's finest actors in the prime of his life. Heath Ledger's diverse and challenging roles will be remembered as some of the great performances by an Australian actor.
heath ledger— Kevin Rudd, prime minister of Australia. In Quotes: Heath Ledger Tributes". BBC News, Entertainment. bbc.co.uk (BBC) (January 23, 2008). Retrieved on 2008-08-23.
The Enlightenment worldview held by Du Bois is ultimately inadequate, and, in many ways, antiquated, for our time. The tragic plight and absurd predicament of Africans here and abroad requires a more profound interpretation of the human condition — one that goes beyond the false dichotomies of expert knowledge vs. mass ignorance, individual autonomy vs. dogmatic authority, and self-mastery vs. intolerant tradition.
cornel west— The Future of the Race by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Cornel West (1997, pg. 64)
What after all, has maintained the human race on this old globe despite all the calamities of nature and all the tragic failings of mankind, if not faith in new possibilities, and courage to advocate them. Doubtless many times these new possibilities were declared by a man who, quite unconscious of courage, bore the "sense of being an exile, a condemned criminal, a fugitive from mankind." Did every one so feel who, in order to travel on his own proper path had been obliged to leave the traditional highway?
jane addams— Peace and Bread in Time of War, Chapter 7: Personal Reactions During War (1922)
Life would be tragic if it weren't funny.
stephen hawking— As quoted in "The Science of Second-Guessing", The New York Times (12 December 2004)
Our tragic age demands poetry of courage and not whimpers about the inevitable end of all maya. People still extract pain of each other even after Buddha , Nanak and Gandhi have been preaching peace .
— Mulk Raj Anand, in Mulk Raj Anand: A Reader : Selections from His Fictional and Non-fictional ...(1 January 2005), p.xxi
Ours is essentiallya tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.
— 1928 Lady Chatterley's Lover, ch.1.
It is almost impossible to remember how tragic a place this world is when one is playing golf.
Robert Lynd— Attributed. British journalist and writer. His critique of feminism, No More SexWar:The Failures of Feminism, was published in1992.
I am here tonight under the most tragic circumstances, with the possibilities of grave and difficult operations in Belfast and in Ulster within almost a few days...I am here to tell you solemnly and honestly that we intend to see this matter through. The cost may be great, the sufferings may be terrible.
— Speech in the Albert Hall, 12 January 1912.
It is tragic that the Fuehrer should have the whole nation behind him with the single exception of the Army generals. In my opinion it is only by action that they can now atone for their faults of lack of character and discipline.
alfred jodl— August 10, 1938. Quoted in "The Trial of the Germans" - Page 347 - by Eugene Davidson - History - 1997
On this tragic day, the death of Adolf Hitler was reported - Admiral Dönitz takes over as his nominated successor. Reach Flensburg about 8. Have to drink wine for breakfast — as nothing else is available.
william joyce— Peter Martland, "Lord Haw Haw: The English voice of Nazi Germany" (The National Archives, 2003), p. 301. UK National Archives KV 2/250/2, p. 55.
— Diary entry, 1 May 1945.
It is tragic to have to realize that the best I had to give as a soldier, obedience, and loyalty, was exploited for purposes which could not be recognized at the time, and that I did not see that there is a limit set even for a soldier's performance to his duty. That is my fate.
wilhelm keitel— Statement issued at Nuremberg, 1946. Quoted in "The Trial of the Germans" - Page 341 - by Eugene Davidson - History - 1997
[T]he handsomest, the wittiest, the most brilliant and the most charming of poets. On the last occasion when I happened to catch sight of him, looking into a case of stuffed birds at South Kensington Museum, he had eaten five large chocolate creams in the space of two minutes. He had a career tragic in the extreme and, as I believe, is now dead.
theo marzials— Ford Madox Ford (1911).[2] In fact, Marzails was then still living, and did not die until 1920.
It was a great game, and exciting and dramatic and even at times tragic - but funny it emphatically was not.
— Fate Cannot Harm Me (1935), ASIN: B00088F3VU
Life isn’t divided into genres. It’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky.
alan moore— "The Mustard magazine interview" (January 2005)
All these things have happened in our history, and we need to talk about them. What kind of country are we that our history is so tragic?
yuan tengfei— Reported in Didi Kirsten Tatlow, "A System Afraid of Its Own History", The New York Times (September 16, 2010).
For a truly religious man nothing is tragic.
ludwig wittgenstein— Conversation of 1930
The ideal may seem remote of execution, but the democratic ideal of education is a farcical yet tragic delusion except as the ideal more and more dominates our public system of education.
john dewey— Education as National and as Social
As I rejected amnesty, so I reject revenge. I ask all Americans who ever asked for goodness and mercy in their lives, who ever sought forgiveness for their trespasses, to join in rehabilitating all the casualties of the tragic conflict of the past.
jerry ford— Statement about Americans who avoided the draft during the Vietnam War, to Veterans of Foreign Wars, Chicago, Illinois (19 August 1974)
In American literature she will remain a remarkable biographic phenomenon, while the tragic death of this Lycidas of women, a most painful personal story of shipwreck, was intensified by so many melancholy incidents that whoever, long years hence, may read them, will wonder how the gods could have been so pitiless, and why the life of new happiness and larger intellectual achievement which was before her should so suddenly have ended upon that savage and inhospitable shore.
margaret fuller— Charles T. Congdon, in Reminiscences of a Journalist (1880), p. 121.
When you attend a funeral, It is sad to think that sooner o' Later those you love will do the same for you. And you may have thought it tragic, Not to mention other adjec- Tives, to think of all the weeping they will do. (But don't you worry.)
tom lehrer— "We Will All Go Together When We Go"
I personally believed, at least in 1914 when predator control began, that there could not be too much horned game, and that the extirpation of predators was a reasonable price to pay for better big game hunting. Some of us have learned since the tragic error of such a view, and acknowledged our mistake. One must judge from the present volume that the Fish and Wildlife Service does not see any mistake.
aldo leopold— "Review of The Wolves of North America by Stanley P. Young and Edward A. Goldman" [1944]; Published in Aldo Leopold's Southwest, David E. Brown and Neil B. Carmony (eds.) 1990 , p. 226
I'd first read Lovecraft when I was a young adolescent, which is perhaps the best time to read Lovecraft. Now, I admire him for his style, his monomaniacal precision, the 'weirdness' of his imagination, and the underlying, intransigent tragic vision that informs all of his work. He's an American original, whose influences on subsequent writers in the field (Stephen King, for instance) is all-pervasive.
h. p. lovecraft— Joyce Carol Oates, Interview with "DarkEcho Horror Online", 1999.
Many consider that Shostakovich is the greatest 20th-century composer. In his 15 symphonies, 15 quartets, and in other works he demonstrated mastery of the largest and most challenging forms with music of great emotional power and technical invention…All his works are marked by emotional extremes – tragic intensity, grotesque and bizarre wit, humour, parody, and savage sarcasm.
dmitri shostakovich— Michael Kennedy The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music (1980) p. 593.
It's a fairytale so tragic there's no prince to break the spell. I don't believe in magic, but for you I will"
Bruce Springsteen— "Countin' on a Miracle"
After all, no one is ever taken in by the happy ending, but we are often divinely fuddled by the tragic curtain.
Lionel Trilling— Ch. 12: Resolution
It's very hard! Oh, Dick, my boy, It's very hard one can't enjoy A little private spouting; But sure as Lear or Hamlet lives, Up comes our master, Bounce! and gives The tragic Muse a routing.
thomas hood— Thomas Hood, The Stage-Struck Hero.
To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart; To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold, Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold For this the tragic Muse first trod the stage.
Alexander Pope— Alexander Pope, Prologue to Addison's Cato, line 1.
I think that the tendency for most people is to fall back on a comic interpretation of things because things are so sad, so terrible. If you didn't laugh you'd kill yourself. But the truth of the matter is that existence in general is very very tragic, very very sad, very brutal and very unhappy.
— Woody Allen, interview in "Interview with Woody Allen: 'Nothing Pleases Me More than Being Thought of as a European Filmmaker'" by Helene Zuber, in Der Spiegel (20 June 2005)
War is mankind's most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men. Though you follow the trade of the warrior, you do so in the spirit of Washington -- not of Genghis Khan. For Americans, only threat to our way of life justifies resort to conflict.
dwight Eisenhower— Graduation Exercises at the United States Military Academy at West Pont, New York, USA at 3 June 1947
