TRAGEDY

Related Subjects: Accident, Chance, Death, Drama, Fate, Misfortune

1. Nothing seems so tragic to one who is old as the death of one who is young, and this alone proves that life is a good thing.—ZOE AKINS, The Portrait of Tiero
   

2. The tragedy of a man who has found himself out.—J. M. BARRIE, What Every Woman Knows
   

3. That there should one man die ignorant who had capacity for knowledge, this I call a tragedy.—CARLYLE, Sartor Resartus
   

4. There is nothing more tragic in life than the utter impossibility of changing what you have done.—GALSWORTHY, Justice
   

5. Commonplace people dislike tragedy, because they dare not suffer and cannot exult. The truth and rapture of man are holy things, not lightly to be scorned. A carelessness of life and beauty marks the glutton, the idler, and the fool in their deadly path across history.—JOHN MASEFIELD, The Tragedy of Nan
   

6. Romantic plays with happy endings are almost of necessity inferior in artistic value to true tragedies. Not, one would hope, simply because they end happily; happiness in itself is certainly not less beautiful than grief; but because a tragedy in its great moments can generally afford to be sincere, while romantic plays live in an atmosphere of ingenuity and make-believe.—GILBERT MURRAY, Preface to Iphigenia in Tauris
   

7. To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
   To raise the genius, and to mend the heart;
   To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold,
   Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold:
   For this the Tragic Muse first trod the stage.—POPE, Prologue to Addison's Cato

8. A tragical plot may produce a comical conclusion.—Proverb

9. In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting at what one wants, and the other is getting it.—OSCAR WILDE, Lady Windermere's Fan