Quotes About Tragedy

All the corpses must be brought back from the work site for the evening roll call, since the count of living and dead has to match the number of men who left in the morning, to establish that nobody has escaped Auschwitz except by dying.

See, the Germans aren't kidding about the Jews. They're cooking us down to soap over there. They think we're vermin and should be 'sterminated and our corpses turned into something useful.

enormous tragic joke in steel and concrete: half a wall.

For it was not a god invading Greece, but a man; and no man now existed or ever would exist who was not liable to misfortune from the day of his birth— and the greater the man, the greater the misfortune. Their invader therefore, being only human, was bound to fall from his glory.

No one should be so foolish to prefer war to peace, in which, instead of sons burying their fathers, fathers bury their sons.

When they married and gave in marriage They danced at the County Ball And some of them kept a carriage And the flood destroyed them all.

That's the detail of the dead woman I always remember: her bare left foot, along with packets of Top Ramen and a torn box of cat food strewn about as plastic bags danced in the wind of passing cars. I always think how, when she left the house that day, the last thing on that woman's mind must have been the possibility of dying on the pavement with dried noodles crowning her head. Maybe if she had paid more attention to detail, like the oncoming car, she would have made it home to feed her cat.

And overpowered by memory Both men gave way to grief. Priam wept freely For man - killing Hector, throbbing, crouching Before Achilles' feet as Achilles wept himself, Now for his father, now for Patroclus once again And their sobbing rose and fell throughout the house.

It is entirely seemly for a young man killed in battle to lie mangled by the bronze spear. In his death all things appear fair.

Strife and Confusion joined the fight, along with cruel Death, who seized one wounded man while still alive and then another man without a wound, while pulling the feet of one more corpse out from the fight. The clothes Death wore around her shoulders were dyed red with human blood.

All things are in the hand of heaven, and Folly, eldest of Jove's daughters, shuts men's eyes to their destruction. She walks delicately, not on the solid earth, but hovers over the heads of men to make them stumble or to ensnare them.

And so the Trojans buried Hector, breaker of horses.

As the youth came on in front of the others, he got the bronze in his chest beside the right nipple. On through his shoulder it went and he fell to earth in the dust like a sooth black poplar whose branchy top falls in the low grassland of a mighty marsh to the gleaming ax of some chariot-maker, who leaves t to dry by the banks of a river that he may bend him a rim for a beautiful chariot. Even such was the fall of Anthemion's son Simoeisius

Upon the earth appear'd, weeping, they bore Brave Hector out; and on the fun'ral pile Laying the glorious dead, applied the torch.

Did fate, or we, when great Atrides died, Urge the bold traitor to the regicide?

When Achilles heard this he sank into the black depths of despair. He picked up the dark dust in both his hands and poured it on his head...he cast himself down on the earth and lay there like a fallen giant, fouling his hair and tearing it out with his own hands...[the maidservants] beat their breasts with their hands and sank to the ground beside their royal master.

I have endured what no one on earth has ever done before—I put to my lips the hands of the man who killed my son.

Poor wretches, what evil has come on you? Your heads and faces and the knees underneath you are shrouded in night and darkness; a sound of wailing has broken out, your cheeks are covered with tears, and the walls bleed, and the fine supporting pillars. All the forecourt is huddled with ghosts, the yard is full of them as they flock down to the underworld and the darkness. The sun has perished out of the sky, and a foul mist has come over.

They burst into cries, wailing, streaming live tears that gained us nothing —what good can come of grief?

His mother then, Wailing, sobbing, laid open her bosom And holding out a breast spoke through her tears: Hector, my child, if ever I've soothed you With this breast, remember it now, son, and Have pity on me. Don't pit yourself Against that madman. Come inside the wall. If Achilles kills you I will never Get to mourn you laid out on a bier, O My sweet blossom, nor will Andromache, Your beautiful wife, but far from us both Dogs will eat your body by the Greek ships.

For many a Trojan, many a Greek, that day Prone in the dust, and side by side, were laid.

Patroclus equal of Ares came out; and that was the beginning of his end.

Then at last his sorrowing wife detailed the horrors that befall those whose city is taken; she reminded him how the men are slain, and the city is given over to the flames, while the women and children are carried into captivity; when he heard all this, his heart was touched, and he donned his armour to go forth.

Por espacio de nueve días acarrearon abundante leña; y, cuando por décima vez apuntó la aurora, que trae la luz a los mortales, sacaron llorando el cadáver del audaz Héctor, lo pusieron en lo alto de la pira y le prendieron fuego.