Beautiful Tragedy Quotes & Sayings

The idea that people would be happier if they maintained a constant state of realism is a beautiful sentiment, but Taylor and Brown found just the opposite. They presented a new theory that suggested that well-being came from unrealistic views of reality. They said you reduce the stress of terminal illness or a high-pressure job or unexpected tragedy by resorting to optimism and delusion. Your wildly inaccurate self-evaluations get you through rough times and help motivate you when times are good. Indeed, later research backed up their claims, showing that people who are brutally honest with themselves are not as happy day to day as people with unrealistic assumptions about their abilities. People who take credit for the times when things go their way but who put the blame on others when they stumble or fall are generally happier people. — David McRaney

I guess if it wasn't beautiful, the tragedy ultimately wouldn't be sad. — Mia Sheridan

In the time of war, everyone was basically trying to live and manage the best they could. But you also had another period which was not a hard time at all - it was just a beautiful time. I lived in both eras. I got to fully experience and appreciate both the tragedy of Somalia and the beauty of it. — K'naan

When, late in the war, with the Wehrmacht breaking up on all fronts, our planes were sent to destroy this last major city, I doubt if the question was asked, "How will this tragedy benefit us, and how will that benefit compare with the ill-effects in the long run?" Dresden, a beautiful city, built in the art spirit, symbol of an admirable heritage, so anti-Nazi that Hitler visited it but twice during his whole reign, food and hospital center so bitterly needed now - plowed under and salt strewn in the furrows. — Kurt Vonnegut

Humphrey will go into a black neighborhood in Milwaukee and drench the streets with tears while deploring "the enduring tragedy" that life in Nixon's America has visited on "these beautiful little children" - and then act hurt and dismayed when a reporter who covered his Florida campaign reminds him that "In Miami you were talking just a shade to the Left of George Wallace and somewhere to the Right of Mussolini." Hubert — Hunter S. Thompson

I may not always like at times, but life is a beautiful blend of joy, tragedy and dreams. If not for one, I could not have the other. — Paula Heller Garland

I think there's a poet who wrote once a tragedy by Shakespeare, a symphony by Beethoven and a thunderstorm are based on the same elements. I think that's a beautiful line. — Maximilian Schell

The ways in which people are damaged are the ways in which they're strong. It's what makes people interesting - what they've overcome and how, and what they haven't and how that's become a good thing. Almost everyone's life is both a gorgeous story and a tragedy. I think being alive is really, really hard, and I'm constantly stunned and amazed by people who make it interesting and beautiful. — Sarah Polley

Darker and darker, he said; farther and farther yet. Death takes the good, the beautiful, and the young - and spares me. The Pestilence that wastes, the Arrow that strikes, the Sea that drowns, the Grave the closes over Love and Hope, are steps of my journey, and take me nearer and nearer to the End. — Wilkie Collins

We may be the protagonists of tragedy, but we are also the heroes of our most beautiful and thrilling experiences. — Shin Kyung-sook

In all its beautiful, tragic fragility, there was still life. — Sara Gruen

I saw Kuwait many times before the war. I remember it as a beautiful place, full of very nice people, and it's a tragedy to see that somebody could set out to deliberately destroy a country the way the Iraqis have. — Norman Schwarzkopf

If God on the Cross is God shamming a human tragedy, it turns the Passion of Christ into the Farce of Christ. The death of the Son must be real. Father Martin assured me it was. But once a dead God, always a dead God, even resurrected. The Son must have the taste for death forever in His mouth. The Trinity must be tainted by it; there must be a certain stench at the right hand of God the Father. The horror must be real. Why would God wish that upon Himself? Why not leave death to the mortals? Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? Love. That was Father Martin's answer. — Yann Martel

MY LIFE IS a beautiful tragedy. A sad love story on an endless loop. The players may evolve and the setting may change, but it's always the same. Love. Pain. Death. Repeat. — S.L. Jennings

so we went up the hill. then we got into my room and I looked at them both. my pure and beautiful slim and magic little girl glorious fuck with the hair dangling down to the asshole, and next to her the tragedy of the ages: slime and horror, the machine gone wrong, frogs tortured by little boys and head-on car collisions and the spider taking in the ball-less buzzing fly and the landscape brain of Primo Carnera going down under the dull playboy guns of cocksure Maxie Baer - new heavyweight champ of America - I, I rushed at the Tragedy of the Ages - that fat slob of accumulated shit. — Charles Bukowski

It's about how to bring together the seemingly contradictory aspects of the memorial, which is about a tragedy and how it changed the world, but also about creating a vital and beautiful city of the 21st century. — Daniel Libeskind

There's no doubt that he's heading straight for tragedy. It will be beautiful, of course, but should he throw his whole life away as a sacrificial offering to such a fleeting beauty--like a bird in flight glimpsed from a window? — Yukio Mishima

There's something beautiful about facing tragedy, you crack open a new, you find yourself in the parts of you; that can finally be explored freely with out judgement or guilt. Where to from here doesn't exist & your not sure when it will return, but there's something beautiful in facing tragedy, a new type of being within you is born and one whom is more fearless than ever before. — Nikki Rowe

Of those who have commanded battalions and squadrons, only the names remain. The human race has nothing to show for a hundred battles that have been waged. But the great men I speak to you about have prepared pure and lasting pleasures for men yet to be born. A canal lock uniting two seas, a painting by Poussin, a beautiful tragedy, a newly discovered truth-these are things a thousand times more precious than all the annals of the court or all the accounts of military campaigns. You know that, with me, great men come first and heroes last.

I call great men all those who have excelled in creating what is useful or agreeable. The plunderers of the provinces are merely heroes. — Voltaire

After slipping on a negligee and making herself comfortable on the lounge, she became conscious that she was miserable and that the tears were rolling down her cheeks. She wondered if they were the tears of self-pity, and tried resolutely not to cry, but this existence without hope, without happiness, oppressed her, and she kept shaking her head from side to side, her mouth drawn down tremulously in the corners, as though she were denying the assertion made by some one, somewhere. She did not know that this gesture of hers was years older than history, that, for a hundred generations of men, intolerable and persistent grief has offered that gesture, of denial, of protest, of bewilderment, to something more profound, more powerful than the God made in the image of man, and before which that God, did he exist, would be equally impotent. It is a truth set at the heart of tragedy that this force never explains, never answers - this force intangible as air, more definite than death. — F Scott Fitzgerald

If there is one thing I can say without a doubt, it is that tragedy can make great music. Every single song I have ever written has been born of tragedy and heartache, and being able to make something beautiful out of pain is powerful. When you open your mouth to sing, you are triumphing over pain through music - the music itself can help you conquer your sadness. — Muse En Lystrala

In love madly,
traveling though the
life-raft's unraveling
in a beautiful tragedy,
but gladly i'm still
paddling through
the ocean
of your
anatomy. — Curtis Tyrone Jones

Chamberlain closed his eyes and saw it again. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. No book or music would have that beauty. He did not understand it: a mile of men flowing slowly, steadily, inevitably up the long green ground, dying all the while, coming to kill you, and the shell bursts appearing above them like instant white flowers, and the flags all tipping and fluttering, and dimly you could hear the music and the drums, and then you could hear the officers screaming, and yet even above your own fear came the sensation of unspeakable beauty. He shook his head, opened his eyes. Professor's mind. But he thought of Aristotle: pity and terror. So this is tragedy. Yes. He nodded. In the presence of real tragedy you feel neither pain nor joy nor hatred, only a sense of enormous space and time suspended, the great doors open to black eternity, the rising across the terrible field of that last enormous, unanswerable question. — Michael Shaara

She liked what she saw, although she knew being a not-beautiful woman was supposed to be a tragedy. — Laura Lippman

My soule, poore soule thou talkes of things/ Thou knowest not what, my soule hath sliver wings,/ That mounts me up unto the highest heavens. — Thomas Kyd

Celebration when your plan is working? Anyone can do that. But when you realize that the story of your life could be told a thousand different ways, that you could tell it over and over as a tragedy, but you choose to call it an epic, that's when you start to learn what celebration is. When what you see in front of you is so far outside of what you dreamed, but you have the belief, the boldness, the courage to call it beautiful instead of calling it wrong, that's celebration. — Shauna Niequist

Don't wait until there is tragedy in your life. Don't wait until you lose somebody. Don't wait until it's too late. Appreciate the beautiful people that you have in your life now. — Katie Piper

It's just that most really good-looking people are stupid, so I exceed expectations.'
'Right, it's primarily his hotness,' I said.
'It can be sort of blinding,' he said.
'It actually did blind our friend Isaac,' I said.
'Terrible tragedy, that. But can I help my own deadly beauty?'
'You cannot.'
'It is my burden, this beautiful face.'
'Not to mention your body.'
'Seriously, don't even get me started on my hot bod. You don't want to see me naked, Dave. Seeing me naked actually took Hazel Grace's breath away,' he said, nodding toward the oxygen tank. — John Green

Frances was not only grieving her sister's loss, but also striving to reconcile in her mind the tragedy with the idea of a loving God. Restless and aching, Frances climbed mountains in the Swiss Alps, where their hotel had a view of beautiful Mount Rigi. — Nancy Carpentier Brown

My wife's the reason anything gets done, she nudges me towards promise by degrees. She is a perfect symphony of one our son is her most beautiful reprise. We chase the melodies that seem to find us until they're finished songs and start to play. When senseless acts of tragedy remind us that nothing here is promised--not one day. This show is proof that history remembers. We live in times when hate and fear seem stronger. We rise and fall and light from dying embers--remembrances that hope and love last longer. And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside. I sing Vanessa's symphony. Eliza tells her story. Now, fill the world with music, love, and pride. — Lin-Manuel Miranda

Something very beautiful happens to people when their world has fallen apart: a humility, a nobility, a higher intelligence emerges at just the point when our knees hit the floor. Perhaps, in a way, that's where humanity is now: about to discover we're not as smart as we thought we were, will be forced by life to surrender our attacks and defenses which avail us of nothing, and finally break through into the collective beauty of who we really are.
[Facebook post, August 31, 2013] — Marianne Williamson

The day after the darkest hour is always the most beautiful. — Wheston Chancellor Grove

Almost without exception the most beautiful, selfless people I've met are ones who've experienced personal tragedy. — Donald Miller

I can only hope," Julie said, turning back to Gus, "they grow into the kind of thoughtful, intelligent young men you've become."
I resisted the urge to audibly gag. "He's not that smart," I said to Julie.
"She's right. It's just that most really good-looking people are stupid, so I exceed expectations."
"Right, it's primarily his hotness," I said.
"It can be sort of blinding," he said.
"It actually did blind our friend Isaac," I said.
"Terrible tragedy, that. But can I help my own deadly beauty?"
"You cannot."
"It is my burden, this beautiful face."
"Not to mention your body."
"Seriously, don't even get me started on my hot bod. You don't want to see me naked, Dave. Seeing me naked actually took Hazel Grace's breath away," he said, nodding toward the oxygen tank.
"Okay, enough," Gus's dad said. — John Green

The great tragedy of Science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact. — Thomas Henry Huxley

Time makes everything mean and shabby and wrinkled. The tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the beautiful things die young, but that they grow old and mean. — Raymond Chandler

The part of the tradition that I knew best was mostly written (or rewritten for children) in England and northern Europe. The principal characters were men. If the story was heroic, the hero was a white man; most dark-skinned people were inferior or evil. If there was a woman in the story, she was a passive object of desire and rescue (a beautiful blond princess); active women (dark, witches) usually caused destruction or tragedy. Anyway, the stories weren't about the women. They were about men, what men did, and what was important to men. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I swear you can see in Juliet's eyes that she knows she's going to die because of how she feels for this guy.
I think, this scene is where the true tragedy lives. It's not because they both die in the end. The tragedy is all right there ... in the very beginning. When he smiles at her. When she instantly forgets.
Forgets how dangerous he is.
You can't blame her for how it plays out. Romeo's so amazing in this movie - what he says to her - how he looks at her. She's obviously drowning in butterflies.
I know for a fact now, butterflies like that can be horrible, beautiful things. — Anne Eliot

I will miss myself in relation to others. The rareness. The exceptional differences. I will miss the gift that comes with hardship and paying the price. I will miss the tragedy of my own life. As I once spoke...emphatically, but I now repeat here, quietly - the pain, the pain is what made it so God damn beautiful. I endured. You can wait a lifetime for thirty seconds, five minutes, or for an hour to come into your life - a brief interval that makes all the suffering purposeful. In such moments of splendor and rapture - even if the rapture be stilled, the private hours and years of reckoning are unloaded, a burden lifted and the spirit feels as it did on the happiest day of its life when it was young and untormented Or rather, unconscious of the torment waiting to be ignited. — Wheston Chancellor Grove

People want the tragedy. They need things to go wrong, they need the tension. In my characters there's a core of trust and love that I'm very committed to. These guys would die for each other, and it's very beautiful. But at the same time, you can't keep that safety. Things have to go wrong, bad things have to happen. — Joss Whedon

I shall have to miss forever some beautiful, wonderful things because of that wretched, lonely childhood. There will always be a lacking, a wanting -- some dead branches that never grew leaves. It is not deaths and murders and plots and wars that make life tragedy. It is day after day, and year after year, and Nothing. It is a sunburned little hand reached out and Nothing put into it. — Mary MacLane

The tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the beautiful die young, but that they grow old and mean. It will not happen to me. — Raymond Chandler

Falling so madly in love with you is a tragedy. Nothing in my world will ever seem so beautiful again. — Michael Faudet

For every man is a magnet, highly and singularly sensitized. Some draw to them fields and woods and hills, and are drawn in return; and some draw swift streets and the riches which are known to cities. It is not of importance what we draw, but that we really draw. And the greatest tragedy in life, as I see it, is that thousands of men and women never have the opportunity to draw with freedom; but they exist in weariness and labour, and are drawn upon like inanimate objects by those who live in unhappy idleness. They do not farm: they are farmed. But that is a question foreign to present considerations. We may be assured, if we draw freely, like the magnet of steel which gathers its iron filings about it in beautiful and symmetrical forms, that the things which we attract will also become symmetrical and harmonious with our lives. — Anonymous

In fact, however, Nietzsche's very first book, The Birth, constitutes a declaration of independence from Schopenhauer: while Nietzsche admires him for honestly facing up to the terrors of existence, Nietzsche himself celebrates Greek tragedy as a superior alternative to Schopenhauer's "Buddhistic negation of the will." From tragedy Nietzsche learns that one can affirm life as sublime, beautiful, and joyous in spite of all suffering and cruelty. — Friedrich Nietzsche

We maintain, therefore, that the first essential, the life and soul, so to speak, of Tragedy is the Plot; and that the Characters come second - compare the parallel in painting, where the most beautiful colours laid on without order will not give one the same pleasure as a simple black-and-white sketch of a portrait. — Aristotle.

Tragedy, sadness, loneliness and despair taught me that life is really a beautiful thing; if it wasn't I wouldn't be able to recognize that anything was wrong — Greg Evans

I prayed. He was going home, and I wanted to pray. Look out for me, I said; look out each day and listen for me. And we were going together on horses to the hills. We were going to ride out in the first light to the hills. We were going to see how it was, and always was, how the sun came up with a little wind and the light ran out upon the land. We were going to get drunk, I said. We were going to be all alone, and we were going to get drunk and sing. We were going to sing about the way it always was. And it was going to be right and beautiful. It was going to be the last time. And he was going home. — N. Scott Momaday

All I could think about as I stood there was that sometimes life gave you a tragedy that burned everything you knew to the ground and changed you completely. But somehow, if you really wanted to, you could learn how to hold your breath as you made your way through the smoke left in its wake and you could keep going. And sometimes, sometimes, you could grow something beautiful from the ashes that were left behind. If you were lucky. — Mariana Zapata

One of the greatest tragedies of life is the murder of a beautiful theory by a gang of brutal facts. — Benjamin Franklin

A look which reveals inward stress adds more beauty to the face, no matter how much tragedy and pain it bespeaks; but the face which, in silence, does not announce hidden mysteries is not beautiful, regardless of the symmetry of its features. — Khalil Gibran

Life is filled with tragedy, with long patches of struggle and with, I think, beautiful bursts of joy and accomplishment. Blessed with those moments, you just try to relax as much as possible and focus on the little things, like the joy of changing your baby's diaper. — David Dastmalchian

Patricia Smith is one of the best poets around and has been for a long time. Her Blood Dazzler is full of capacious soul and formal inventiveness: the compassion and artfulness necessary to capture the tragedies and Tragedy of Katrina. Smith is herself a storm of beautiful, frightening talent. Her words will wash you or wash you away. I consider this new book a major literary event. — Terrance Hayes

We have to understand - not justify - what gives rise to this tragedy. It's not because they're looking for beautiful virgins in heaven, as Orientalists portray it. Palestinian people are in love with life. If we give them hope - a political solution - they'll stop killing themselves. — Mahmoud Darwish

When it's good, it's the best and most beautiful thing I've ever experienced. So good, that it makes me feel bad for people who haven't had the honor. But when it's bad, it's bad, Nikki. A goddamn Greek tragedy. It's horrific. And really fucking scary. He scares me.
But those good times ... I'll take the bad just so I can have the good. Because the good is outstanding. So, if you must know, I'm going with the flow and taking it as it comes. — Belle Aurora

This is why some relationships look so beautiful and some look so tragic - beauty belongs to the thoughtful; tragedy to the neglectful. — Bryant McGill

Is it possible that a tragedy can look so beautiful? The death of the leaves is the answer for this question! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

I sensed her before I saw her but I didn't scream. I remember thinking at the time that the split seconds before death were a quiet and still place. Her eyes were unapologetic, piercing and untamed. This is how it will end, I thought to myself with no sense of tragedy. It seemed complete and, in a way, romantic. But another second passed and then another. She released me from her hypnotic gaze and bent her beautiful head. And then with gentle flicks of her tongue began to drink from the river. Her eyes never wavered from mine as she lapped at the cool waters that flowed between us. And then, in a blink and a whisper, she was gone. — Giselle Fox

I wrote in a bedroom crowded with ghosts," Brooke Hayward says. "My mother would disapprove, and my father would be horrified. The moral of my book is that you pay for everything. They were rich, accomplished, famous and beautiful. We were drowned in privilege, yet it ended in all this hideous tragedy." (interview from People magazine (May 23, 1977) — Brooke Hayward

we are all born/ so beautiful/ the greatest tragedy is/ being convinced we are not — Rupi Kaur

The world is a crazy, beautiful, ugly complicated place, and it keeps moving on from crisis to strangeness to beauty to weirdness to tragedy. The caravan keeps moving on, and the job of the longform writer or filmmaker or radio broadcaster is to stop - is to pause - and when the caravan goes away, that's when this stuff comes. — David Remnick

How beautiful the tragic seems when it is beneath a mask, but when it appears so nakedly before me and... when I am so forcibly implicated... I don't know whether I care for it so much. Somehow or other it is as though I were torturing myself.

("Thirty-Three Abominations") — Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal

Humans are constantly, and in every way, comparing themselves to one another, which, given the brief nature of their existence, seems an oddity and, for that matter, a waste. Nevertheless, this is the driving influence behind every human's social development, their emotional health and sense of joy, and, sadly, their greatest tragedies. It is as though something that helped them function and live well has gone missing, and they are pining for that missing thing in all sorts of odd methods, none of which are working. The greater tragedy is that very few people understand they have the disease. This seems strange as well because it is obvious. To be sure, it is killing them, and yet sustaining their social and economic systems. They are an entirely beautiful people with a terrible problem. — Donald Miller

Art is a place where tragedy meets beauty. An artist is someone who creates the most beautiful things of his life when his soul starts bleeding. — Akshay Vasu

LARRY
(with increasing bitter intensity, more as if he were fighting with himself than with Hickey) I'm afraid to live, am I?
and even more afraid to die! So I sit here, with my pride drowned on the bottom of a bottle, keeping drunk so I won't see myself shaking in my britches with fright, or hear myself whining and praying: Beloved Christ, let me live a little longer at any price! If it's only for a few days more, or a few hours even, have mercy, Almighty God, and let me still clutch greedily to my yellow heart this sweet treasure, this jewel beyond price, the dirty, stinking bit of withered old flesh which is my beautiful little life! (He laughs with a sneering, vindictive self-loathing, staring inward at himself with contempt and hatred. Then abruptly he makes Hickey again the antagonist.) You think you'll make me admit that to myself? — Eugene O'Neill

The cliche that sea dry up and rocks rot away, but the heart never changes is nothing but a beautiful fantasy. — Mo Yan

She was beautiful and radiant. He remembered the concern in her eyes. The same concern drove her now, pushing her toward acts of violence. On the surface, he'd be a fool to turn her down. She was driven by tragedy, just like him, and she would be incorruptible, just like him. He needed a blade to kill, but she could kill dozens at once empty-handed. She was Death, and she had just asked to be his ally. — Ilona Andrews