Quotes About Tragedy

One editor during the Civil War got a grievous message to meet his brothers corpse, only to find out that the telegraph operator had garbled the message to meet his living brother's CORPS.

Saya percaya bahwa orang bukannya takut mati. Mereka takut sesuatu yang lain. Sesuatu yang lebih menggelisahkan dan lebih tragis daripada maut itu sendiri. Kita takut tidak pernah hidup, menjelang akhir hayat kita dengan perasaan bahwa kita tidak pernah benar-benar hidup. Bahwa kita tidak pernah memahami, untuk apa kehidupan kita itu.

We have come to know Man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Israel on his lips.

When you have been hurt by life, it may be hard to keep that in mind. When you are standing very close to a large object, all you can see is the object. Only by stepping back from it can you also see the rest of its setting around it. When we are stunned by some tragedy, we can only see and feel the tragedy. Only with time and distance can we see the tragedy in the context of a whole life and a whole world.

But, of course, we cannot choose. We can only try to cope. That is what one does with sorrow, with tragedy, with any misfortune. We do not try to explain it. We do not try to explain it. We do not justify it by telling ourselves that we somehow deserve it. We do not even accept it. We survive it. We recognize its unfairness and defiantly choose to go on living.

Why did they say that? Why did they assume that they were somehow responsible for this tragedy? Who taught them to believe in a God who would strike down an attractive, gifted young woman without warning as punishment for someone else's ritual infraction?

the Weeping Willow love slayer

One would think there was enough unavoidable tragedy in everyone's existence to keep him from seeking the hideous and unsightly," he mused. "And yet it may be the fact that each has his cross to bear that leads him to come in contact with the world's wretchedness as a sort of palliative to his own."[11]

Outraged at having the site of the tragedy transformed into what one observer called a "mass murder amusement park," an angry mob tore down the barricade, "and everyone was then free to visit the death spot without charge or restraint.

If serial murder is, in essence, a sex crime, mass murder is almost always a suicidal one. In blind, apocalyptic fury, the mass murderer has decided to go out with a bang and take as many people with him as possible. Typically, once the bloodbath is over, the mass murderer will either end his own life or provoke a fatal shoot-out with the police ("suicide by cop," as it is called).

Virtually nothing is known about the early life of Andrew Philip Kehoe, the man his neighbors would later dub "the world's worst demon."1 Philip Kehoe had already sired six daughters before Andrew came into the world on February 1, 1872. As the first son, Andrew occupied a special place in the family: the "long sought" male heir who was both "enthroned" by his parents and burdened with the highest expectations of a proud, stern, and demanding father.2

Love is very beautiful, but very, very sad.

windows, shouting, 'There's a huge dead

Still, national politics meant little to him: about as much as paper airplanes would mean to the survivor of a plane crash.

When they told me yesterday what had happened [the death of F. D. Roosevelt], I felt like the moon, the stars and all the planets had fallen on me.

he spoke a word of pure German: "Vernichtungslager." Extermination camp.

At first, she bucked like a wild stag beneath me, and she tried to scream, but the pillow did a good job of muffling her voice.  Before long, the bucking stopped, and my wife's corpse, blue without oxygen, appeared below me like a hideous phantom.

She put all of her weight against the sill of the balcony, her lovesick heart ready and willing to join the man she loved.  She closed her eyes and pushed herself forward.  From three stories high, she plummeted to the earth.  Before hitting the ground, she swore she saw him, racing down from the heavens and lifting her up towards God's domain where lovers never ceased to rule.

The true use of music is to become musical in one's thoughts, words and actions. One should be able to give the harmony for which the soul yearns and longs every moment. All the tragedy in the world, in the individual and in the multitude, comes from lack of harmony, and harmony is best given by producing it in one's own life.

Für den Menschen ist es das größte Privileg, zu einem geeigneten Instrument für Gott zu werden, und solange er dies nicht begreift, hat er den wahren Sinn seines Lebens nicht verstanden. Die ganze Tragödie im Leben der Menschen ist ihre Unkenntnis dieser Tatsache. Von dem Moment an wo ein Mensch dies versteht, lebt er das wirkliche Leben. (S. 178)

The constant struggle in mature life, I think, is to accept the necessity of tragedy and conflict, and not to try to escape to some falsely simple solution which does not include these more somber complexities...One doesn't get prizes for this increasing awareness, which sometimes comes with an intensity indistinguishable from pain.

When the High King was killed - first poisoned, several times, then shot with pistols, then his head cut off, then burned in the great palace fire ... no one really liked to talk about it ...

Christa, she was fine and sweet and gentle, and yes, I loved her, and dear God, yes, I'm sorry the war killed her, just as I'm sorry the war killed so many! But Christa, I have never wished that you were anyone but you, and I have prayed only that our child might survive. If you haven't read my heart, Christa, then you are a stupid, stupid Reb as well!

The day they brought him forth to die they feared he might incite the crowd (the man was famous for his eloquence). And so his captors placed upon his face an iron mask in which he could not speak. That is how they burned him. That is how he died, without a word, in front of everyone.