c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
The ring which you are holding, my friend, is identical to that one. I had it cut according to the model of the king's ring, and damascened in Spain. The original is still in the Escorial; it would have been pleasant to steal it, for I easily acquire the instincts of a thief when I am in a museum, and I always find objects which have a history - especially a tragic history - uniquely attractive. I am not an Englishman for nothing - but that which is easily enough accomplished in France is not at all practical in Spain: the museums there are very secure.
— Jean Lorrain, Monsieur De Phocas
JOCASTA:So clear in this case were the oracles,so clear and false. Give them no heed, I say;what God discovers need of, easilyhe shows to us himself.
— Sophocles, The Complete Greek Tragedies
OEDIPUS:O, O, O, they will all come,all come out clearly! Light of the sun, let melook upon you no more after today!I who first saw the light bred of a matchaccursed, and accursed in my livingwith them I lived with, cursed in my killing.
— Sophocles, The Complete Greek Tragedies
The love that follows us sometime is our trouble, which still we thank as love.
— William Shakespeare, Macbeth
Nothing in his life became him like leaving it.
— William Shakespeare, Macbeth
As you set out on your journey to Ithaca,pray that your journey be a long one,filled with adventure, filled with discovery.Laestrygonians and Cyclopes,the angry Poseidon--do not fear them:you'll never find such things on your wayunless your sight is set high, unless a rareexcitement stirs your spirit and your body.The Laestrygonians and Cyclopes,the savage Poseidon--you won't meet themso long as you do not admit them to your soul,as long as your soul does not set them before you.Pray that your road is a long one.May there be many summer morningswhen with what pleasure, with what joy,you enter harbors never seen before.May you stop at Phoenician stations of trade to buy fine things,mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,and voluptuous perfumes of every kind--buy as many voluptuous perfumes as you can.And may you go to many Egyptian citiesto learn and learn from those who know.Always keep Ithaca in your mind.You are destined to arrive there.But don't hurry your journey at all.Far better if it takes many years,and if you are old when you anchor at the island,rich with all you have gained on the way,not expecting that Ithaca will give you wealth.Ithaca has given you a beautiful journey.Without her you would never have set out.She has no more left to give you.And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not mocked you.As wise as you have become, so filled with experience,you will have understood what these Ithacas signify.
— Barry B. Powell, Classical Myth
It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge.
— William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Tragedy allowed the audience to experience intense, sometimes disturbing emotions that could not be experienced in real life without terrible cost.
— Barry B. Powell, Classical Myth
The dog next-door had settled down, and the neighbourhood seemed stunned by this event occurring in our backyard. It was like it could sense it. It could sense some form of tragedy and helplessness being played out, and to tell you the truth, it all surprised me. I was so used to things just going on, oblivious and ignorant to all feeling.
— Markus Zusak, Underdogs
We may not ever understand why we suffer or be able to control the forces that cause our suffering, but we can have a lot to say about what suffering does to us, and what sort of people we become because of it. Pain makes some people bitter and envious. It makes others sensitive and compassionate. It is the result, not the cause, of pain that makes some experiences of pain meaningful and others empty and destructive.
— Harold S. Kushner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People
Tragedy has been described as 'the conflict between desire and possibility.' Following this definition, is The Forgotten Garden a tragedy? If so, in what way/s?
— Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden
There has to be some way this won’t end in tragedy. Why can’t Romeo and Juliet live happily ever after? It’s as if the universe won’t abide such a strong connection in such a disconnected world, as if our connection defies the natural order.
— Kitty Thomas, The Last Girl
Everyone has a thousand wishes before a tragedy, but just one afterward.
— Fredrik Backman, Beartown
We cannot say who will survive the holocaust of memory.
— Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles
Such was the cyclical nature of Galway life: finding tragedy in the simple things and simplicity in the tragic things.
— Rhian J. Martin, A Different Familiar
Falling so madly in love with you is a tragedy. Nothing in my world will ever seem so beautiful again.
— Michael Faudet, Bitter Sweet Love
Are you strange like me, are you insane? Are you the wildfire, that loves pouring rain...
— J. Limbu
If comedy is tragedy plus time, I need more fucking time. But I would really settle for less fucking tragedy.” ~ Jon Stewart
— Chris Smith, The Daily Show: An Oral History as Told by Jon Stewart, the Correspondents, Staff and Guests
At what point do you give up— decide enough is enough? There is only one answer really. Never.
— Tabitha Suzuma, Forbidden
She was so full of holes now, she was like a Swiss cheese.
— Danielle Steel, Friends Forever
Save me from the things that I love.
— J. Limbu
She has become someone that I am bound to forget her.
— J. Limbu
In the nights though, I couldn't help but weave the golden cloth of my dreams. Each stitch from heart to thought, and thought to heart, was painful to bear, even if it was joyous at times. Because each thread was fraught with the fears of being broken midway, lost and never found again.
— Faiqa Mansab, THIS House of Clay and Water
The problem with the snow is that it sticks to everything it touches. You can’t get rid of it. Even when it melts away, the chill still clings to your bones.
— Alex Z. Moores, Living in Water
Just the thought of you and all the universe conspires against me.
— J. Limbu
Mistrust of good success hath done this deed.O hateful error, Melancholy's child,Why dost thou show to the apt thoughts of menThe things that are not? O Error, soon concieved,Thou never com'st unto a happy birth,But kill'st the mother that engendered thee.
— William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
Time for me is now double-edged: every day brings me further from the low of my last relapse but closer to the next recurrence - and, eventually, death. Perhaps later than I think, but certainly sooner than I desire.
— Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air
– The life of the worlds is a roaring river, but Earth’s is a pond and a backwater.– The sign of doom is written on your brows – how long will ye kick against the pin-pricks?– But there is one conquest and one crown, one redemption and one solution.– Know yourselves – be infertile and let the earth be silent after ye.
— Peter Wessel Zapffe, The Last Messiah
You expect certain things to always be there, like the bakery on the corner, or the boy you grew up with. But when the very ground can eat you alive without warning, what's to say the ocean won't dry up? Or the stars won't suddenly shut off? Nothing is forever.
— Stacey Lee, Outrun the Moon
We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.
— George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
Later—how much later? Hard to tell. In times of tragedy clocks will trick you—Philip stood in the kitchen doorway.
— Dexter Palmer, Version Control
They were people, Tom and Daisy-they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they made....
— f. scott fizgerald
I’ve read so many stories online about how tragedy brings people together, how hard times encourage bravery and sacrifice, how a crisis can turn ordinary folks into heroes. But what about the opposite, when something horrible happens and it strips us bare, exposing weaknesses we didn’t even know we had. What about when tragedy makes people worse?
— Paula Stokes, This is How it Happened
Wracking sobs rip from the innermost chamber of my heart, and I give into them, allowing them to fully take over. Pain lances me on all sides, and I bury my head in my knees, giving in to the heartache.I cry for my parents.For my lost life.For the threat that Addison poses, scaring me in ways it shouldn’t.For a boy I can’t have and shouldn’t want.For the never-ending gut-wrenching hollow ache in my chest and the soul-crushing loneliness I feel.
— Siobhan Davis, Finding Kyler
in your dream, you are jealous of tragedies.and the truth is, we all want our own tragedy, because life is pale without it.we want the teeth, the screaming.the survivalthat comes with it.
— Salma Deera, Letters From Medea
I craft most of my own tragedies without ever having even the remotest understanding that it is I myself who have done the crafting.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Now that you have been touched by death, you’re going to feel its presence all around you. You’re going to realize your own mortality, and that death can happen at any time to anyone. It’s going to scare you to your core. It did me.
— Alex Z. Moores, Living in Water
Dostoyevsky's indignation at Afanasy Fet's innocent lyrics, "Whispers, timid breath, the nightingales trilled," is well known. This is simply disgraceful, wrote Dostoyevsky indignantly, and he speculated what an insulting impression such empty verses would have made if they'd been given to someone to read during the Lisbon earthquake! Some people protested: Yes, of course, Dostoyevsky is right, but we aren't having an earthquake, and we aren't in Lisbon, and after all, are we not allowed to love, to listen to nightingales, to admire the beauty of a beloved woman? But Dostoyevsky's argument held sway for a long time. It did so because of the way Russians perceive Russian life: as a constant, unending Lisbon earthquake.
— Tatyana Tolstaya, Pushkin's Children: Writing on Russia and Russians
In fact, the mark of tragedy became, with time, a mark of glamour.
— E. Lockhart, We Were Liars
It's a lonely place. Sometimes it's the loneliest place in the world.
— Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess
They are tragic,' said Vetinari, 'and we laugh at their tragedy as we laugh at our own. The painted grin leers out at us from the darkness, mocking our insane belief in order, logic, status, the reality of reality. The mask knows that we are born on the banana skin that leads only to the open manhole cover of doom, and all we can hope for are the cheers of the crowd.
— Terry Pratchett, Making Money
There is nothing in human affairs that is a true subject for ridicule. Beneath comedy lies the ferment of tragedy
—  the farcical is but a cloak for coming catastrophe.
Carpenter: "Call Shen Te, someone! She's good!"Shui Ta: "Certainly. She's ruined.
— Bertolt Brecht, The Good Woman of Setzuan
But God has also given us the power to forget, so that when the tragedy is over we carry on as normal.
— Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban
There are some souls, bright and precious, which, like gold and silver, may be subdued by the fiery trial, and yield to new moulds; but there are others, pure and solid as the diamond, which may be shivered to pieces, yet in every fragment retain their indelible characteristics.
— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Valperga: Or, the Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca
Now that I think about it, this might all have been inevitable. The reason we all ended up here, the reason I couldn't leave her alone...it all had to be a ridiculous fairy tale.
— Jun Mochizuki, Pandora Hearts 1巻
ALL LOSSES IN THIS WORLD ARE DUE TO A LACK OF ABILITY. IF YOU WANT TO CURSE SOMETHING, CURSE YOUR OWN WEAKNESS
— Sui Ishida
He unclenched his fists and dropped her worries, unable to catch them for her. But she picked them back up and dusted them off. She wants to be able to hold them herself now.
— Colleen Hoover, Too Late
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world.
— William Shakespeare
But at the time, a mark of how far down the rabbit hole I had fallen, I saw it as just another tragedy I needed to stuff in the growing box in the back of my head. Shut the top and move on.
— Kim Barker, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Most people wait until tragedy strikes before thinking about how to incorporate tragedy into their life.
— Dennis Prager, Happiness Is a Serious Problem: A Human Nature Repair Manual
What troubled people especially was not just the tragedy--or even the needlessness--but the element of fate in it all. If the Titanic had heeded any of the six ice messages on Sunday . . . if ice conditions had been normal . . . if the night had been rough or moonlit . . . if she had seen the berg 15 second sooner--or 15 seconds later . . . if she had hit the ice any other way . . . if her watertight bulkheads had been one deck higher . . . if she had carried enough boats . . . if the Californian had only come. Had any one of these "ifs" turned out right, every life might have been save. But they all went against her--a classic Greek tragedy.
— Walter Lord
And she felt like they, the two of them, right here, right now, could make something that defied tragedy.
— Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky
Our word Tragedy comes from the Greek, tragos-ode: “The song of the goat.” Anybody who has ever heard a goat attempt to sing will know why.
— Neil Gaiman, Adventures in the Dream Trade
Here's how you think about it: Together you constructed many things throughout your life. Then her body disappeared, but the constructions still remain. Human beings die: That's natural. But to accept her death is to lose all hope.
— Michael Paterniti
I wrote in a bedroom crowded with ghosts," Brooke Hayward says. "My mother would disapprove, and my father would be horrified. The moral of my book is that you pay for everything. They were rich, accomplished, famous and beautiful. We were drowned in privilege, yet it ended in all this hideous tragedy." (interview from People magazine (May 23, 1977)
— Brooke Hayward
It's certainly true that Chernobyl, while an accident in the sense that no one intentionally set it off, was also the deliberate product of a culture of cronyism, laziness, and a deep-seated indifference toward the general population. The literature on the subject is pretty unanimous in its opinion that the Soviet system had taken a poorly designed reactor adn then staffed it with a group of incompetents. It then proceeded, as the interviews in this book attest, to lie about the disaster in the most criminal way. In the crucial first ten days, when the reactor core was burning and releasing a steady stream of highly radioactive material into the surrounding areas, the authorities repeatedly claimed that the situation was under control. . . In the week after the accident, while refusing to admit to the world that anything really serious had gone wrong, the Soviets poured thousands of men into the breach. . . The machines they brought broke down because of the radiation. The humans wouldn't break down until weeks or months later, at which point they'd die horribly.
— Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
Author is the prisoner of his thoughts .
— Rajiv Bakshi, Journey from Guwahati to Machhiwara
We all look for meaning behind the tragedies that befall us. And sometimes the meaning is there. But sometimes, Master Bruce, terrible things just happen. No sinister plots. No secret societies. They just happen.
— Batman vs. Robin, Alfred
I wrapped up the remaining half burrito and tossed it into the trash can. Molly watched this act of wastefulness with an expression like she had just seen her entire family die in a fire.
— David Wong, This Book Is Full of Spiders
An event is never just what it is in itself and nothing more. It’s what goes on around it, at the same time, that makes it — potentially — a tragic situation.You have to have been exposed to this, at least once, to understand it.
— Jacques Yonnet, Paris Noir: The Secret History of a City
I prayed. He was going home, and I wanted to pray. Look out for me, I said; look out each day and listen for me. And we were going together on horses to the hills. We were going to ride out in the first light to the hills. We were going to see how it was, and always was, how the sun came up with a little wind and the light ran out upon the land. We were going to get drunk, I said. We were going to be all alone, and we were going to get drunk and sing. We were going to sing about the way it always was. And it was going to be right and beautiful. It was going to be the last time. And he was going home.
— N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn
I loved her- I always loved her- no matter what she was-I wanted her safe- not shut up- a prisoner for life, eating her heart out. And we did keep her safe- for many years" Phillip Stark
— Agatha Christie, By the Pricking of My Thumbs
Thank you for this amazing adventure. I never knew that someone could love without limit. Even when you can't hear me say that I love you or when I can't hear you say that you love me, I found a wonderful lover that I hope to be with even in all of my other lives." he lifted his hands off Kai's neck. 'I love you.'Kai held the sides of Sehun's face and connected their lips for a passionate kiss as they dropped to their knees. Kai forced a smile as he wiped the tears on Sehun's cheeks. 'And you will never know how much I love you.
— FishMeAnEXo
Kai kissed Sehun's lips one last time before letting Sehun rest his head on his arm. When Sehun caressed Kai's cheek, he realized that the boy's hand was colder than it had been just several minutes ago. Even then, he managed to smile. "Merry Christmas, Kai."'Merry Christmas, Sehun.' he tugged Sehun close until their foreheads brushed as he watched Sehun close his sleepy eyes just before Kai closed his.
— FishMeAnEXo
Sehun love Kai." he brushed his fingers on the gravestone. "Kai love Sehun.""Sooooo much, Sehun...
— FishMeAnEXo
The true aristocracy and the true proletariat of the world are both in understanding with tragedy. To them it is the fundamental principle of God, and the key,—the minor key,—to existence. They differ in this way from the bourgeoisie of all classes, who deny tragedy, who will not tolerate it, and to whom the word of tragedy means in itself unpleasantness.
— Isak Dinesen
Jun Do had dealt with this his whole life, the ways it was impossible for people from normal families to conceive of a man in so much hurt that he couldn’t acknowledge his own son, that there was nothing worse than a mother leaving her children, though it happened all the time, that “take” was a word people used for those who had so little to give as to be immeasurable.
— Adam Johnson, The Orphan Master's Son
Comedy Born :) When Tragedy Happens :(
— Navin M. Karmarkar
He's sleeping, Mr. Kim." Sehun muttered. "Don't disturb him.
— FishMeAnEXo
In all its beautiful, tragic fragility, there was still life.
— Sara Gruen, At the Water's Edge
You'll find that great artists don't love, live, fuck or even die like ordinary people. Because they always have their art. It nourishes them more than any connection to people. Whatever human tragedy befalls them, they're never too gutted, because they need only to pour the tragedy into their vat, stir in the other lurid ingredients, blast it over a fire. What emerges will be even more magnificent than if the tragedy had never occurred.
— Marisha Pessl, Night Film
See? Memories aren't happy, they're sad. Don't you know anything?
— Morris Gleitzman
What a tragedy, to stand in the middle of your world, watch everything around you fall apart, and realize, your actions precipitated this free fall! Take more time to consider the consequences of your thoughts and actions. One day, you WILL call out for help. Don't let bad judgment disconnect your lifelines.
— Carlos Wallace, Life Is Not Complicated-You Are: Turning Your Biggest Disappointments Into Your Greatest Blessings
We participate in tragedy. At comedy we only look.
— Aldous Huxley
Every affair is a fairy tale or a tragedy.
— Cherie Priest, Maplecroft
His thoughts are unfathomable & her emotions are all over the place. Oh! The tragedy of Love.
— Ankita Singhal
A writer's tragedy: to know all the words and nothing else.
— Marty Rubin
There were six hundred thousand Indian troops in Kashmir but the pogrom of the pandits was not prevented, why was that. Three and a half lakhsof human beings arrived in Jammu as displaced persons and for many months the government did not provide shelters or relief or even registertheir names, why was that. When the government finally built camps it only allowed for six thousand families to remain in the state, dispersing theothers around the country where they would be invisible and impotent, why was that. The camps at Purkhoo, Muthi, Mishriwallah, Nagrota were builton the banks and beds of nullahas, dry seasonal waterways, and when the water came the camps were flooded, why was that. The ministers of thegovernment made speeches about ethnic cleansing but the civil servants wrote one another memos saying that the pandits were simply internalmigrants whose displacement had been self-imposed, why was that. The tents provided for the refugees to live in were often uninspected andleaking and the monsoon rains came through, why was that. When the one-room tenements called ORTs were built to replace the tents they tooleaked profusely, why was that. There was one bathroom per three hundred persons in many camps why was that and the medical dispensarieslacked basic first-aid materials why was that and thousands of the displaced died because of inadequate food and shelter why was that maybe fivethousand deaths because of intense heat and humidity because of snake bites and gastroenteritis and dengue fever and stress diabetes andkidney ailments and tuberculosis and psychoneurosis and there was not a single health survey conducted by the government why was that and thepandits of Kashmir were left to rot in their slum camps, to rot while the army and the insurgency fought over the bloodied and broken valley, todream of return, to die while dreaming of return, to die after the dream of return died so that they could not even die dreaming of it, why was that whywas that why was that why was that why was that.
— Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown
Someone must have talked plenty, because on an afternoon in June 2008, Sarvannantha Pereira was detained by men who didn't say who whey were. They would call it an arrest. It felt more like an abduction.
— Rohini Mohan, The Seasons of Trouble: Life Amid the Ruins of Sri Lanka's Civil War
...disaster, when it is quite sure of its own strength, will announce itself by hardly moving its lips...
— Chris Cleave, Little Bee
That's what makes a tragedy a tragedy. There's no rhyme or reason to it, only heartbreak. The only thing you can do when the ground stops shaking and the waters recede is try to save whoever's left.
— Kimberly Belle, The Ones We Trust
Our kiss was electric and soft,and tentative and certain,terrifying and exactly right.I felt the love rush from me to Gat and from Gat to me.We were warm and shivering,and young and ancient,and alive.I was thinking, It's true. We already love each other.We already do.
— E. Lockhart, We Were Liars
Game or no, she would someday die, as all living beings did. But that wasn't the tragedy. Nor was there tragedy in being a pawn. All souls are, if not of eternal beings, then as pawns of their own bodies. The game, whatever shape it takes, lasts only as long as the body holds out. The tragedy, every time, is choosing something other than love.
— Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death
There is tragedy all around us, we pick up pieces, we find our feet and before long another turn of events stare us in the eyes; like we're some kind of magician- the fight seems endless, so I look to the world for inspiration. I observe and I watch how others face adversity, some hide from it, some master each lesson and some create a life with it... Our lessons don't define us, our integrity to keep rising after every fall is.
— Nikki Rowe
The skies give no warning when they fall.
— Marty Rubin
If she’s gonna love again, it won’t be an eternity but a hard, fast conflagration that leaves everyone else in the embers.
— Lindsay Detwiler
How one tragedy affects so many others.
— Kenneth Eade, Unreasonable Force
We wear the mask that grins and lies.It shades our cheeks and hides our eyes.This debt we pay to human guileWith torn and bleeding hearts…We smile and mouth the myriad subtleties.Why should the world think otherwiseIn counting all our tears and sighs.Nay let them only see us whileWe wear the mask.
— Maya Angelou
Like so many of our neighbors who latched onto tragedy to stand out from the crowd -- slavery, incest, a suicide -- I had exaggerated the ethnic chip on my shoulder for effect. I've learned since that tragedy is not to be hoarded. Only the untouched, the well-fed and contented, could possibly covet suffering like a designer jacket. I'd readily donate my story to the Salvation Army so that some other frump in need of color could wear it away.
— Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin
I wish I could read a couple of thousand words a day. Words written by someone else for a change!
— A. Louise Robertson, Welcome to Mineola
I salute you as the Gates of Death
— Aeschyluslus
You're the hunter, the warrior. You're stronger than anyone else here, that's your tragedy.
— Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat
Tragedy has a cruel way of ripping off the masks of self-sufficiency and self-satisfaction. It yells in the streets, "No! Everything is not A-okay!" It cracks apart our airtight theologies about God having everything under control. It forces us to get real and really struggle with the big questions of life. It cautions us that this life journey we are on is not easily comprehended with a few sermon points but demands a lifetime of wisdom to even begin to fathom.
— David Brazzeal, Pray Like a Gourmet: Creative Ways to Feed Your Soul
It's easier, somehow, if there's a reason for tragedy - lust or jealousy or hatred or revenge. We can find in these explanations an emotional tenor commensurate with the gravity of the act. There's something we recognize as human, a motive toward which we can direct our rage but can also understand, at some primal level, as an extension of ourselves.
— Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams: Essays
How beautiful the tragic seems when it is beneath a mask, but when it appears so nakedly before me and... when I am so forcibly implicated... I don't know whether I care for it so much. Somehow or other it is as though I were torturing myself.("Thirty-Three Abominations")
— Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal, The Silver Age of Russian Culture: An Anthology
At the beginning of the war…I had to look in on the War Office, and in a room I found a fellow…What do you think he was doing…what the hell do you think he was doing? He was devising the ceremonial for the disbanding of a Kitchener battalion. You can’t say we were not prepared in one matter at least…. Well, the end of the show was to be: the adjutant would stand the battalion at ease; the band would play Land of Hope and Glory, and then the adjutant would say: There will be no more parades…. Don’t you see how symbolical it was—the band playing Land of Hope and Glory, and then the adjutant saying: There will be no more parades?…For there won’t. There won’t, there damn well won’t. No more Hope, no more Glory, no more parades for you and me any more. Nor for the country…nor for the world, I dare say… None… Gone… Napoo finny! No…more…parades!
— Ford Madox Ford, Parade's End
I am not the best :( but try to understand, this world is samll to swallow my thoughts :') , you let me free and find my world :'D
— Pratyush Singh
Had he not resembled My father as he slept I had done't!" Macbeth
— William Shakespeare
How now! Here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand." Lady Macbeth
— William Shakespeare
they told her to grave him in her heart and punished her by walking to the monster's cave on her feet,unfaire life
— Souhila Hamdi
she is waiting the day she would stop writing about him in her daily book
— Souhila Hamdi
Unsex me here and fill me from crown to toe full of direst cruelty That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose." Macbeth
— William Shakespeare
Natural selection favors the forces of psychological denial. The individual benefits as an individual from his ability to deny the truth even though society as a whole, of which he is a part, suffers. Education can counteract the natural tendency to do the wrong thing, but the inexorable succession of generations requires that the basis for this knowledge be constantly refreshed.
— Garrett Hardin
The tragedy of unfulfilling life is that you're already dead but no one pronounced you dead...
— Assegid Habtewold
her heart was the defendant,in the court waiting for the last decision and the judge was th mind.is it the end of love
— Souhila Hamdi
I don't like feeling sorry for myself. That's not who I am. And most of the time I don't feel that way. Instead, I am grateful for having at least found you. We could have flashed by one another like two pieces of cosmic dust.God or the universe or whatever one chooses to label the great systems of balance and order does not recognize Earth-time. To the universe, four days is no different than four billion light years. I try to keep that in mind.But, I am, after all, a man. And all the philosophic rationalizations I can conjure up do not keep me from wanting you, every day, every moment, the merciless wail of time, of time I can never spend with you, deep within my head.I love you, profoundly and completely. And I always will.The last cowboy,Robert
— Robert James Waller, The Bridges of Madison County
Never underestimate the importance of tragedy in life. Don't fear it, make it the mirror of your life.
— Debasish Mridha
When something is tragic you never really forget it.
— Sophia Olson, A Twist in the Story
Americans refused to see accidents as accidental. They did not comprehend they while tragedy always exacts a formidable price, it rarely incurs a debt.
— Julia Glass, And the Dark Sacred Night
When tragedy comes like this, at first it is complete. You do not need to think it over, or decide what it means. For it is far ahead of you, and the very act of acknowledging it means letting it go. But then it comes round again - and it goes through you and is worse than before.
— Benjamin Lytal
I can’t imagine that I’m supposed to get over it , like hopping a low stone wall; if Thursday was a barrier of some kind, it was made of razor wire, which I did not bound over but thrash through, leaving me in flayed pieces and on the other side of something only in a temporal sense.
— Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin
Death is only tragic if you have tragically wasted your life on meaninglessness.
— Jason A. Heisey
But when you realize that the story of your life could be told a thousand different ways, that you could tell it over and over as a tragedy, but you choose to call it an epic, that's when you start to learn what celebration is. When what you see in front of you is so far outside of what you dreamed, but you have the belief, the boldness, the courage to call it beautiful instead of calling it wrong, that's celebration.
— Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines: Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life
We conform to pain until we don't notice it anymore
—  it's what you call — numb — and it tragically blots out our pleasure too.
If your life is like a tragedy it is because you have been neglecting something — most likely yourself.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Sir, I love you more than words can wield the matter; dearer than eye-sight, space, and liberty, beyond waht can be valued, rich or rare; no less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honor; as much as child e'er loved, or father found; a love that makes breath poor, and speech unable; beyond all manner of so much I love you.
— William Shakespeare
The quotation falsely attributed to Stalin, 'One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic,' gets the numbers wrong but captures a real fact about human psychology. (p. 220)
— Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
The afternoon light brightening the green in her eyes, her tan skin the last memory of fall
— John Green, Looking for Alaska
Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least
—  nor are those empty-hearted whose low sounds reverb no hollowness.
I profess myself an enemy to all other joys, which the most precious square of sense possesses, and find I am alone felicitate in your dear highness love.
— William Shakespeare, King Lear
This is why some relationships look so beautiful and some look so tragic — beauty belongs to the thoughtful
—  tragedy to the neglectful.
The world is not what it is supposed to be. We are tragically off course.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
It is tragic the way fearful people put all of their fears and insecurities into others
—  the way they strangle their dreams — often in the name of love.
The tragedy of Hetty is a ‘collide’26 between the free will and male dominant society or nobility27 or religion. If her conduct is bad and cause of her tragedy then where is the tragedy of A.D. So as a moralist, GE demands a way for ‘Hetty like human beings’ in set society. says Bhutta
— M.K. Bhutta
The tragedy of Hetty is a ‘collide’ between the free will and male dominant society or nobility or religion. If her conduct is bad and cause of her tragedy then where is the tragedy of A.D. So as a moralist, GE demands a way for ‘Hetty like human beings’ in set society.
— M.K. Bhutta
I have not broken your heart - you have broken it - and in breaking it, you have broken mine ... I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer - but yours! How can I?
— Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer - but yours! How can I?
— Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
The tragic hero usurps the function of the gods and attempts to remake the world.
— Helen Gardner
All terrible things are more terrible if they give us no chance of retrieving a blunder—either no chance at all, or only one that depends on our enemies and not ourselves. Those things are also worse which we cannot, or cannot easily, help. Speaking generally, anything causes us to feel fear that when it happens to, or threatens, others causes us to feel pity.
— Aristotle, The Rhetoric & The Poetics of Aristotle
When I was a teenager in Boston, a man on the subway handed me a card printed with tiny pictures of hands spelling out the alphabet in sign language. I AM DEAF, said the card. You were supposed to give the man some money in exchange. I have thought of that card ever since, during difficult times, mine or someone else's; surely when tragedy has struck you dumb, you should be given a stack of cards that explain it for you. When Pudding died, I wanted my stack. I still want it. My first child was stillborn, it would say on the front. It remains the hardest thing for me to explain, even now, or maybe I mean especially now - now that his death feels like a non sequitur. My first child was stillborn. I want people to know but I don't want to say it aloud. People don't like to hear it but I think they might not mind reading it on a card.
— Elizabeth McCracken, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination
...I like to see things through the lens of Greek tragedy, which teaches us, among other things, that real tragedy is never a straightforward confrontation between Good and Evil, but is rather much more exquisitely and much more agonizingly, a conflict between two irreconcilable views of the world.
— Daniel Mendelsohn, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million
For a moment, blake said nothing. After chewing on her venom for a moment, he shrugged. "I would rather hate you for who I am than love me for who I am not
— Tanya Kaley, Lady Highwayman
The tragedy of life is that sometimes we get what we want.
— W. Somerset Maugham
Her occupation was the worst that anyone could think of. No guest in the park had to think of it because, unlike the wandering dwarf women, her job had no bearing on paper.
— Pam   Jones, The Biggest Little Bird
Every great tragedy forms a fertile soil in which a great recovery can take root and blossom, but only if you plant the seeds.
— Steve Maraboli
A tragedy can catch us any time possible; for this very reason, we must catch the life any time possible!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
Life can be at its cruelest with love and dreams. But of course they keep most of us going.
— Robert  Black, The Control Sickness
He's opening a door, but he already knows I won't walk through. The power of Bodee is in the way he reads me, sees through me, and then understands the truth behind the facade. He's the guy who can walk straight through the House of Mirrors on the first try. It's almost annoying. No one should ride tragedy like a pro surfer while I drown.
— Courtney C. Stevens, Faking Normal
If I could take away his pain… If there was a way to transfer it from his soul onto mine. I would take it. Without hesitation I would take it all. Maybe that’s how you know you love someone. When you actually feel each tear they cry as if they were your own. When you feel each cut, each bruise, each hit as if you’re the one suffering. I bled for him.& in turn, he bled for her.Funny, how life comes full circle
— Rachel Van Dyken, Toxic
Sometimes by holding onto what you love the most — you end up choking the very life from the thing you want to keep on living. It’s possible to try too hard, to love something so deeply that you lose yourself. The danger is never in loving someone — but losing your identity in the process. Because what happens when tragedy strikes? You’re left an empty shell. You’re left with nothing. 
— Rachel Van Dyken, Toxic
But I had deliberately acquired the habit of closing my eyes even to such obvious assumptions, just as though I did not want to miss a single opportunity for tormenting myself. This is a trite device, often adopted by persons who, cut off from all other means of escape, retreat into the safe haven of regarding themselves as objects of tragedy.
— Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask
If e'er again I meet him beard to beard, he's mine or I am his.
— William Shakespeare, Coriolanus
Life is a mystical and tragic thing. It is a journey often full of fear, when it ought to be full of hope. It's fascinating to look back on your life and feel as though most of it was a precursor to the rest of it; to what was always supposed to be.
— L.K. Hill, Citadels of Fire
Therefore love moderately. Long love doth so. Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.
— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
The only thing you've got in this world is what you can sell.
— Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman
Blessed be they whose lives do not taste of evilbut if some god shakes your houseruin arrivesruin does not leaveit comes tolling over the generationsit comes rolling the black night salt up from the ocean floorand all your thrashed coasts groan
— Anne Carson, Antigonick
We can not escape tragic roads. It is like grasping at the sun & trying to catch air. We must take one step at-a-time. Keep going.
— Ace Antonio Hall
She thought men were saviors......And she looked for more in them than what they were...Only to rescue herself from those she wished would rescue her...And isn't that the most tragic lie...The lie where we tell what we wished were true and believe it...?She had an artificial memory, a prosthesis to a past that never was...She was like a party that no one ever went to...Like a cure...without a disease...And isn't that the greatest fear of all...to be ready with the answersto questions that no one asks anymore?
— Merrit Malloy, Things I Meant To Say To You When We Were Old
So our virtuesLie in the interpretation of the time:And power, unto itself most commendable,Hath not a tomb so evident as a chairTo extol what it hath done.One fire drives out one fire; one nail, one nail;Rights by rights falter, strengths by strengths do fail.
— William Shakespeare, Coriolanus
Every normal family is one tragedy away from complete implosion.
— Katja Millay, The Sea of Tranquility
The unavoidable has touched the life of every human being on the face of the earth. Some have rebounded, others have given up--but all of us have felt the wings of tragedy brushing against us.
— Paulo Coelho, The Fifth Mountain
It seemed to him that life's true tragedy was to lift up one's voice among the living and be met with indifference.
— Cristina García, Monkey Hunting
The blood of too many, dissolving the very stain.
— Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland
Any deal that recognizes Iran "right" to enrich is a prelude to fiasco and tragedy.
— Ziad K. Abdelnour, Ending Syria's Occupation Of Lebanon: The U.S. Role
Hope? Hope is not the absence of tragedy, my friend. It is the conviction that tragedy can be endured. Hope is the spark in you that is not subdued in the face of the vast and callous indifference of the universe. Hope is that which is not shattered by hardship. Hope is the urge to fight what is wrong even when you know it will destroy you. Hope is the decision to love and need someone knowing that they will one day die. For me to promise that there are no obstacles would be the cruelest lie I could possibly tell. That lie is not hope. Hope is the will which needs no lies.
— Travis Beacham
It’s just that I coulda swore you had sung me a love song back there and that you meant it but I guess sometimes people just chew with their mouth open
— Buddy Wakefield
My mother used to say that sometimes if you turn a tragedy over in your hand, you can see a miracle running through it, like fool's gold in the hardest shard of rock.
— Jodi Picoult, The Storyteller
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ME AND YOUWhen I hold a rose,I see the soft, velvety petalsand smile, becausetucked betweenthose precious petalsis a special gift -the one of a fragrance,pure and sweet.When you hold a rose,you see the thornsalong the stem,and you frownbecause those thornscan bring you painand cause you to bleed.I see the gift.You see the tragedy.More and moreI fear that one of these dayssomeone will hand me a roseand all I will seeare thorns.Talk about tragedy.
— Lisa Schroeder, Falling For You
The sense of tragedy - according to Aristotle - comes, ironically enough, not from the protagonist's weak points but from his good qualities. Do you know what I'm getting at? People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues. Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex being a great example. Oedipus is drawn into tragedy not because of laziness or stupidity, but because of his courage and honesty. So an inevitable irony results....[But] we accept irony through a device called metaphor. And through that we grow and become deeper human beings.
— Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
Francis stared down at the Duchess of York's letter. He swallowed, then read aloud in a husky voice, "It was showed by John Sponer that King Richard, late mercifully reigning upon us, was through great treason piteously slain and murdered, to the great heaviness of this City." As Margaret listened, the embittered grey eyes had softened, misted with sudden tears. "My brother may lie in an untended grave," she said, "but he does not lack for an epitaph.
— Sharon Kay Penman, The Sunne in Splendour
People can act so nice, bringing you food and all, but in the end they are nothing but buzzards. Waiting to pick your bones.
— Lee Smith, On Agate Hill
How could it be? For weeks he'd run himself ragged, his only goal to keep her safe until the moment when he could no longer offer her protection. Now that moment had come and gone- and so did Luce
— Lauren Kate, Torment
Comedies are fit for common wits: But to present a kingly troop withal, Give me a stately-written tra
— Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy
A few weeks ago, Abdul had seen a boy’s hand cut clean off when he was putting plastic into one of the shredders. The boy’s eyes had filled with tears but he hadn’t screamed. Instead he’d stood there with his blood-spurting stump, his ability to earn a living ended, and started apologizing to the owner of the plant. “Sa’ab, I’m sorry,” he’d said to the man in white. “I won’t cause you any problems by reporting this. You will have no trouble from me.
— Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
Not having ice cream,” she proclaimed, “is the culmination of all disasters!
— Brandon Sanderson, The Rithmatist
But in life, a tragedy is not one long scream. It includes everything that led up to it. Hour after trivial hour, day after day, year after year, and then the sudden moment: the knife stab, the shell burst, the plummet of the car from a bridge.
— Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
In the presence of real tragedy you feel neither pain nor joy nor hatred, only a sense of enormous space and time suspended, the great doors open to black eternity, the rising across the terrible field of that last enormous, unanswerable question.
— Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan
I saw the destruction of Dresden. I saw the city before and then came out of an air-raid shelter and saw it afterward, and certainly one response was laughter. God knows, that's the soul seeking some relief.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., A Man Without a Country
The cliche that sea dry up and rocks rot away, but the heart never changes is nothing but a beautiful fantasy.
— Mo Yan, Shifu: You'll Do Anything for a Laugh and Other Stories
Maybe it takes tragedy to create paradise.
— Katie Kacvinsky, Middle Ground
His life was a party which tragically came to an early end.
— David J.   Cooper, The Party's Over
Tragedy is not the second face of the life
—  but it is the very first face of it!
Today, a couple with 'just married' tags collided head-on with a hearse carrying two coffins in the back, both of a married couple that had previouslydied in a car accident.
— Anthony Liccione
That we cannot rise equal to situations when we are in them — that is the tragedy of life.
— Henry Miller, A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin  Henry Miller, 1932-1953