Quotes About Tragedy

A tragedy tears away a hope; a kindness brings it back.

My brother killed Abraham Lincoln. That is my weight, my shame.

On the moonless night of April 14, 1865, days after a plot to blow up the White House failed, John Wilkes Booth killed President Abraham Lincoln. During the twelve days of his flight through the

On the moonless night of April 14, 1865, days after a plot to blow up the White House failed, John Wilkes Booth killed President Abraham Lincoln. During the twelve days of

Fiction cannot recite the numbing numbers, but it can be that witness, that memory. A storyteller can attempt to tell the human tale, can make a galaxy out of the chaos, can point to the fact that some people survived even as most people died. And can remind us that the swallows still sing around the smokestacks.

Oleander time, she said. Lovers who kill each other now will blame it on the wind.

Some days later Susan and I went to the city for an X-ray, and Susan was found to have tuberculosis, and was put in one of the small rooms down the corridor next to Margaret and to Eva who woke one morning, vomited, and died, and her mother, a small woman with bandy legs and wearing a grey coat, came to collect her things.

Death isn't a tragedy," he continued. "Death is merely a step to something better. The tragedy is a life misspent. Yours wasn't." Misspent? It hardly seemed spent at all. "But I didn't get a chance to do anything important." "You learned to love and to forgive. That is a life well spent." The

What is any war but a massacre?

After briefly acknowledging the tragedy of his predecessor's passing, he called for an increase in the size of the Navy, avoidance of public debt during peacetime, stabilization of the currency, and greater scrutiny over abuse of public offices.

I think I would cope like anyone copes with any tragedy. I'm sure I would be very upset for a while and then there would come a point where I would either have to stay in this place of darkness and anger, or I'd have to accept that it happened.

O mal das desgraças muito grandes, que nos partem ao meio e que parece que não vamos poder suportar, é que quem as padece acredita, ou quase exige que com elas o mundo acabe, e contudo o mundo não faz caso e continua, e ainda por cima é exigente com quem sofreu a desgraça, isto é, não lhe permite sair como quem abandona um teatro, a não ser que o desgraçado se mate.

Je regrettais la mort de cette fille comme on regrette la destruction totale d'une belle Å"uvre.

Like Abraham you will believe, like Sarah you will conceive, and like Moses you will rise from your isolation and exile. You will live again. God is determined to reverse your tragedy into transformation and crown your tomb with the testimony of a glorious resurrection. From

There's no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.

War is mankind's most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men.

There is great human shame when people die before they are ready. It's as if their living didn't matter at all. I

It is precisely through the onset of old age, through loss or personal tragedy, that the spiritual dimension would traditionally come into people's lives. This is to say, their inner purpose would emerge only as their outer purpose collapsed and the shell of the ego would begin to crack open. The emphasis shifts from doing to Being, and our civilization, which is lost in doing, knows nothing of Being. It asks: being? What do you do with it?

Whenever tragic loss occurs, you either resist or you yield. Some people become bitter or deeply resentful; others become compassionate, wise, and loving. Yielding means inner acceptance of what is.You are open to life.

To lose the only creature in all his world who ever had manifested love and affection for him was the greatest tragedy he had ever known.

London waited, waited in patience, orderly, content to stare steadfastly at nothing, deriving no satisfaction for their weakness but the sense of being as near as it was humanly possible to be to the scene of a tragedy.

room after the tragedy, had put out the light. And during the night you heard no sound whatever. Miss Ellerslie? Forgive me for repeating my questions to you, but I am trying to recall any sound which may have reached your ears during your wakeful hours, but which you dismissed from your thoughts as of no significance

They yoked themselves to a car and drew her all the long way through dust and heat. Everyone admired their filial piety when they arrived and the proud and happy mother standing before the statue prayed that Hera would reward them by giving them the best gift in her power. As she finished her prayer the two lads sank to the ground. They were smiling and they looked as if they were peacefully asleep but they were dead. (Biton and Cleobis)

None but a poet can write a tragedy. For tragedy is nothing less than pain transmuted into exaltation by the alchemy of poetry.