Menu

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Tragedy Quotes

The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poet unlimited.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2. Polonius, who likes to hear himself talk, announces the arrival of the troupe of traveling actors in this comical way.

Tragedy is a hell of a teacher. It’s much too strict, but it’s a hell of a teacher.

– Harlan Coben

What then is tragedy? In the Elizabethan period it was assumed that a play ending in death was a tragedy, but in recent years we have come to understand that to live on is sometimes far more tragic than death.

– George Pierce Baker

I think it’s the tragedy of our time that we’re not aware of the affect of the manner in which we’ve adopted tools. Those tools have become who we are.

– Godfrey Reggio

This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.

– Horace Walpole

We just sent our condolences to the President of the United States and the American people on what is a terrible, terrible tragedy.

– Helen Clark

Unfortunately, since the Sept. 11 tragedy, our business is not doing too well.

– Hunter Tylo

My biggest, you know, regret is what happened in Benghazi. It was a terrible tragedy losing four Americans – two diplomats and, now it’s public so I can say, two CIA operatives.

– Hillary Clinton

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

– Henry David Thoreau

My first job was a Greek tragedy, and ever since, one job just seemed to roll onto the next. I’ve been terribly lucky.

– Hayley Atwell

Every man of genius sees the world at a different angle from his fellows, and there is his tragedy.

– Havelock Ellis

The tragedy of it is that nobody sees the look of desperation on my face. Thousands and thousands of us, and we’re passing one another without a look of recognition.

– Henry Miller

There is no essential difference between the material of comedy and tragedy. All depends on the point of view of the dramatist, which, by clever emphasis, he tries to make the point of view of his audience.

– George Pierce Baker

I consider tragedy the highest form of art.

– Joyce Carol Oates

The worst tragedy that could have befallen me was my success. I knew right away that I was through – cast out.

– Jonas Salk

The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.

– Joseph Stalin

Reduced… to a crude formula, the Russian tragedy is precisely the tragedy of a society in which literature turned out to be the prerogative of the minority.

– Joseph Brodsky

American folk songs were about tragedy, right? They were about suffering and tragedy, and a lot of my songs are about that, even though they were misunderstood.

– John Mellencamp

Tragedy is restful: and the reason is that hope, that foul, deceitful thing, has no part in it.

– Jean Anouilh

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.

– H. L. Mencken

The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.

– Jean Cocteau

Comedy and tragedy are two sides of the same coin. A talent in one area might also lead to a predisposition in the other.

– Jack Dee

I like to take these unusual characters and then make them as normal as possible, because we all know that the tragedy and the abnormal always hides itself behind the normal.

– Isabelle Huppert

We want our marriage to be a triumph, not a tragedy.

– Joyce Meyer

When I was a playwright earlier in my career – my senior project in high school was my first produced play – I used to put on the title page: ‘A tragedy with laughs.’

– Jeff Lindsay

Right after the tragedy, President Bush asked Americans to get on with their lives and we did.

– Jane D. Hull

I don’t understand why Europeans and South Americans can take more sophistication. Why is it that Americans need to hear their happiness major and their tragedy minor, and as jazzy as they can handle is a seventh chord? Are they not experiencing complex emotions?

– Joni Mitchell

A comic book and a straight drama all have the same elements. If you’re playing tragedy, you have to be aware of the comedy; if you’re playing comedy, you have to be aware of the tragedy. If you’re playing comic book, you have to be aware of the reality.

– Jeremy Irons

One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.

– Joseph Stalin

The tragedy of life is not that man loses but that he almost wins.

– Heywood Broun

- 1
- 2
- 3
- …
- 7
- 8