Top 260 Tragic Quotes

I stood respectfully as Ronald Reagan was sworn in to his second term though I disagreed with him on many issues. I stood as well for the inauguration of George W. Bush’s second term though I thought his war in Iraq was a tragic mistake.

The Greeks said grandly in their tragic phrase, ‘Let no one be called happy till his death;’ to which I would add, ‘Let no one, till his death, be called unhappy.’

No, as it turns out, I really like being congratulated on my weight loss. I like it so much, it’s tragic.

My tutors at drama school commended and criticised my use of comedy in my acting for a long time at drama school. They said I had a tendency to somehow perform the most tragic of scenes in a slightly flippant way.

I got No Doubt on cassette, ‘Tragic Kingdom.’ And I just remember being so psyched about all those songs and, like, the songwriting and just her voice, and her vibe was amazing.

As we reflect back upon the tragic loss of Challenger and her brave crew of heroes who were aboard that fateful day, I am reminded that they truly represented the best of us, as they climbed aloft on a plume of propellant gasses, reaching for the stars, to inspire us who were Earthbound.

The artist sees the tragic to such a degree that he is compelled to express the non-tragic.

All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill at dancing.

When you’re in a young band for the first time, geographically you’re in the same place and you tend to go out and socialize. You play more shows, you spend more time together. You’re a unit. As you grow older, inevitably you develop a life outside the band. I think it would be tragic if you didn’t.

I don’t mind a dirty girl. But what I find tragic is when we, as women, become not the subject of our own story but someone else’s object.

For a truly religious man nothing is tragic.

The history of Rome presents various men of greater genius than Scipio Aemilianus, but none equalling him in moral purity, in the utter absence of political selfishness, in generous love of his country, and none, perhaps, to whom destiny has assigned a more tragic part.

I always loved that tragic look, the bigger-than-life women. They always have those big glasses and scarfs on, and doctors and nurses always around them. You felt sorry for them, but they had their lips together, no matter what was happening to them. They always looked like movie stars.

It’s self-evident that we are going to have permanent problems with oil and gasoline and the prime resources that are needed to run the American suburbs. And we’re just not going to be able to run them. You know, it’s just unfortunate, it’s tragic, but it’s the truth.

There is tragic evidence to show that the paintings at the French prehistoric art sites are deteriorating.

I think there’s something quite interesting about the almost tragic quality of a lot of overwrought prose, because it has a much more self-conscious awareness of its own failure to touch the real.

I think it’s a question which particularly arises over women writers: whether it’s better to have a happy life or a good supply of tragic plots.

We live lives that aren’t broken into neat three-act structures. On any given day anything can happen, from the hilarious to tragic. So why can’t my movies be like that?

A comedy that is ironic, sometimes bitter, in some cases even dramatic, tragic: This is what Italian comedy is.

It is almost impossible to remember how tragic a place the world is when one is playing golf.

My time as editor has been overlapped by a crisis – a prolonged, labyrinthine, tragic, seemingly non-ending crisis – that involves the prehistory of 9/11, 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, fraught histories between the United States and almost everyone.

I’ve been a supporter of green initiatives for years. I’ve been paying more and more attention to it, you know, with three kids. I thought it was tragic when the Kyoto Protocol was killed by the U.S. It was sort of a call to action.

In those early days, the important thing was the happy ending. I did not tolerate unhappy endings – for my heroines, anyway. And later on, I began to read things like ‘Wuthering Heights,’ and very, very unhappy endings would take place, so I changed my ideas completely and went in for the tragic, which I enjoyed.

And at that point, I think we all realized it was something tremendously tragic, probably a terrorist attack, and the next step was to go down to our command center and get things going.

There has been a time on earth when poets had been young and dead and famous – and were men. But now the poet as the tragic child of grandeur and destiny had changed. The child of genius was a woman, now, and the man was gone.

Yes, I have four children. Four children with whom I spend a good part of every day: bathing them, combing their hair, sitting with them while they do their homework, holding them while they weep their tragic tears. But I’m not in love with any of them. I am in love with my husband.

If you ruin the main course of a dinner party, it ain’t all that tragic. Just laugh!

I think 4 percent growth is a good goal. And I think the fact that we have become used to an economy that sort of putt putts along between 1 and 2 percent is sort of tragic.

I want to do things or write things that make people feel a bit more beautiful or tragic or something because there are so many other things than just funny.

I make, like, three or four times more when I don’t fight than when I do fight. And, I’m one of the higher-paid guys in the UFC, which is remarkably tragic and pathetic.

I am always a beginner. I only try to include different parts of life; the pastoral, the tragic, et cetera.

A very beautiful honey blonde, Sharon Tate, looked into the eyes of the man who the evidence shows just four and a half months later would order her tragic and violent death.

You can’t be funny unless you’re tragic, and you can’t be tragic unless you’re funny.

There were some tragic cases of women whose love was abused, who for a certain time procured important documents or information, not knowing who for, what service they worked for, and for a variety reasons got jailed, were tried and sentenced.

If we are to learn anything from the tragic death of Michael Brown, we must first acknowledge that we have a race issue we are not addressing.

There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.

The poor prey on one another because their lives offer no hope and communicate the tragic message to these human beings that they have no possibility to attain a decent standard of living.

I tried once in my life to write a novel. I had written something like 80 pages of it when my laptop got stolen. When I told people this, they acted as if something tragic had happened, but I kind of felt relieved, grateful to the thief who saved me from another year of something that felt more like homework than fun.

I’ve seen enough successful writers who no longer seem to care when they are recognized with an award, and I think that’s just tragic.

And I thought my loss my loss was not, certainly, the end of the world, but to lessen the enthusiasm of those young people who were signed up, I thought that was tragic.

What makes something tragic is that it could’ve been averted at multiple points.

When we study Shakespeare on the page, for academic purposes, we may require all kinds of help. Generally, we read him in modern spelling and with modern punctuation, and with notes. But any poetry that is performed – from song lyric to tragic speech – must make its point, as it were, without reference back.

It’s tragic when people think feminism is a dirty word.

I find that very appealing: the blurring of the lines between what’s funny and what’s tragic. And what’s ordinary and what’s not – the big things in the small things.

Our epoch is a time of tragic collision between matter and spirit and of the downfall of the purely material world view.

The world is… often terrifying, disgusting and tragic, but it is also beautiful. I should like to know how exactly each person would make it a tiny bit less disgusting and a tiny bit more beautiful.

The tragic thing about the Internet is that you can find out way too much, way too quickly.

We’re living through a time where we are fighting wars fostered by politics, admittedly not on the same scale as the First World War, but with equally tragic realities for our soldiers and their families.

Life is tragic comedy, in a way. There is humor.

In Shakespearean tragedy the main source of the convulsion which produces suffering and death is never good: good contributes to this convulsion only from its tragic implication with its opposite in one and the same character.

For whatever reason, I’ve always gravitated towards music that feels nostalgic or longing or beautifully tragic.

People have become less discriminating listeners, which is tragic, really. There’s a lot of emperor’s new clothes out there, whether they’re female or male solo acts. That bothers me. It’s hard to break through, and it’s like climbing Mount Everest if you actually do.