100+ Famous Quotes about Tragedy – Inspire Quotes and Sayings

Famous Quotes about Tragedy

  • “The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.” —Benjamin E. Mays
  • “It’s not the tragedies that kill us; it’s the messes.” —Dorothy Parker
  • “When you close your eyes to tragedy, you close your eyes to greatness.” —Stephen Vizinczey
  • “The great tragedy of science –the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.” —Thomas Huxley
  • “The greatest tragedy in mankind’s entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.” —Arthur C. Clarke
  • “Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live.” —Robert Kennedy
  • “Maybe the tragedy of the human race was that we had forgotten that we are each divine.” —Shirley MacLaine
  • “Tragedy is like strong acid –it dissolves away all but the very gold of truth.” —D. H. Lawrence
  • “Tragedy, for me, is not a conflict between right and wrong, but between two different kinds of right.” —Peter Shaffer
  • “The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or joy.” —Alan Lightman
  • “A tragedy need not have blood and death; it’s enough that it all be filled with that majestic sadness that is the pleasure of tragedy.” —Jean Racine
  • “In this world there are two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst.” —Oscar Wilde
  • “A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end.” —Aristotle
  • “It is the tragedy of the world that no one knows what he doesn’t know –and the less a man knows, the more sure he is that he knows everything.” —Joyce Cary
  • “There is a saying in Tibetan, ‘Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.’ No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that’s our real disaster.” —Dalai Lama
  • “A tragedy is a tragedy, and at the bottom, all tragedies are stupid. Give me a choice and I’ll take A Midsummer Night’s Dream over Hamlet every time. Any fool with steady hands and a working set of lungs can build up a house of cards and then blow it down, but it takes a genius to make people laugh.” —Stephen King

Life Tragedy Quotes

  • “The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.” —Albert Schweitzer
  • “Life’s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.” —Benjamin Franklin
  • “The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.” —Albert Einstein
  • “Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.” —Jean Racine
  • “The tragedy of life is not that man loses, but that he almost wins.” —Heywood Broun
  • “There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.” —George Bernard Shaw
  • “The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present.” —Alan Lightman
  • “There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.” —Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • “Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.” — Sholom Aleichem
  • “Tragedy in life normally comes with betrayal and compromise, and trading on your integrity and not having dignity in life. That’s really where failure comes.” —Tom Cochrane
  • “One of the greatest tragedies in life is to lose your own sense of self and accept the version of you that is expected by everyone else.” —K.L. Toth
  • “The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.” —Vaclav Havel
  • “The tragedy of life and of the world is not that men do not know God; the tragedy is that, knowing Him, they still insist on going their own way.” —William Barclay
  • “Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.” —Stephen Jay Gould
  • “The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives –the death of genuine feeling, the death of inspired response, the awareness that makes it possible to feel the pain or the glory of other men in yourself.” —Norman Cousins
  • “Here is the tragedy: when you are the victim of depression, not only do you feel utterly helpless and abandoned by the world, you also know that very few people can understand, or even begin to believe, that life can be this painful.” —Giles Andreae
  • “The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or of joy. The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present. Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.” —Alan Lightman

Love Tragedy Quotes

  • “The greater the love, the greater the tragedy when it’s over.” —Nicholas Sparks
  • “The tragedy is not that love doesn’t last. The tragedy is the love that lasts.” —Shirley Hazzard
  • “The whole world can become the enemy when you lose what you love.” —Kristina McMorris
  • “The tragedy is not that love doesn’t last. The tragedy is the love that lasts.” —Shirley Hazzard
  • “If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.” —Irvin D. Yalom
  • “There is a saying in Tibetan, ‘Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.’ No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that’s our real disaster.” —Dalai Lama
  • “We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.” —Stephen Jay Gould

Family Tragedy Quotes

  • “Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.” —Dalai Lama
  • “Memories is all that you have, which help you survive the storms and struggles of your daily life after you lose someone.” —Nikita Dudani
  • “It is worth remembering that the time of greatest gain in terms of wisdom and inner strength is often that of greatest difficulty.” —Dalai Lama
  • “The mindset of loss of a loved one is to understand that the loss will never be undone. You must live with it, like it or not. But, to live well, you must turn that loss into something positive. That way, you can become the best version of yourself; scarred, flawed and unstoppable.” —Val Uchendu
  • “God’s dream is that you and I and all of us will realize that we are family that we are made for togetherness, for goodness, and for compassion.” —Desmond Tutu

Quotes About Finding Humor in Tragedy

  • “Comedy is tragedy that happens to other people.” —Angela Carter
  • “Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in the long-shot.” —Charlie Chaplin
  • “Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.” —Jean de la Bruyere
  • “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.” —Mel Brooks
  • “It is the tragedy of the world that no one knows what he doesn’t know and the less a man knows, the more sure he is that he knows everything.” —Joyce Cary

Quotes About Senseless Tragedies

  • “It’s not the tragedies that kill us, it’s the messes.” —Dorothy Parker, Author
  • “You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks.” —Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosopher
  • “Tragedy is like strong acid. It dissolves away all but the very gold of truth.” —D. H. Lawrence, Author
  • “Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live.” —Robert F. Kennedy, Politician
  • “The tragedy about history – personally and globally is that while we may learn it we rarely learn from it.” —Rasheed Ogunlaru

Inspirational Quotes on Overcoming Tragedy

  • “Peace does not mean an absence of conflicts; differences will always be there. Peace means solving these differences through peaceful means; through dialogue, education, knowledge; and through humane ways.” —Dalai Lama, Monk
  • “Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.” —Harriet Tubman, Activist
  • “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” —Nelson Mandela, Activist
  • “I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.” —Nelson Mandela, Activist
  • “It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” —Robert F. Kennedy, Politician

Tragedy Quotes and Sayings

  • “Tragedy makes you grow up.” —Jane Campion
  • “You use everything. You use tragedy you use everything.” —Shannon Hoon
  • “Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy.” —Jacques Barzun
  • “The true end of tragedy is to purify the passions.” —Aristotle
  • “It’s not the tragedies that kill us, it’s the messes.” —Dorothy Parker
  • “You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks.” —Ludwig Wittgenstein
  • “A perfect tragedy is the noblest production of human nature.” —Joseph Addison
  • “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” —Joseph Stalin
  • “When you close your eyes to tragedy, you close your eyes to greatness.” —Stephen Vizinczey
  • “A nation that has no music and no fairytales is a tragedy.” — Ai Weiwei
  • “This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.” —Horace Walpole
  • “Tragedy is like strong acid it dissolves away all but the very gold of truth.” —D. H. Lawrence
  • “The greatest tragedy in mankind’s entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.” —Arthur C. Clarke
  • “Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live.” —Robert F. Kennedy
  • “Tragedy, for me, is not a conflict between right and wrong, but between two different kinds of right.” —Peter Shaffer
  • “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” —Mel Brooks
  • “The tragedy about history – personally and globally is that while we may learn it we rarely learn from it.” —Rasheed Ogunlaru
  • “The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or joy.” —Alan Lightman
  • “A great tragedy is occurring. Millions of people are dying prematurely. These people are killing themselves and they don’t even know it.” —Tim Loy
  • “A tragedy need not have blood and death; it’s enough that it all be filled with that majestic sadness that is the pleasure of tragedy.” —Jean Racine
  • “In this world there are two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst.” —Oscar Wilde
  • “It is the tragedy of the world that no one knows what he doesn’t know and the less a man knows, the more sure he is that he knows everything.” —Joyce Cary
  • “Tragedy is a representation of action that is worthy of serious attention, complete in itself and of some magnitude bringing about by means of pity and fear the purging of such emotions.” —Aristotle
  • “A tragedy is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions.” —Aristotle