Quotes & Sayings About Greek Tragedy

The essence of tragedy is time, or rather the lack of it. There is no problem in any Greek tragedy that could not have been solved if there had been enough time, but there is never enough. Decisions, choices have to be made in a moment, there is no time to think and weigh the consequences; and, since even tragic heroes are fallible - especially fallible, perhaps - the decisions are wrong. It is easy for us to see what should have been done, but would we have been able to see in time? That is the question that you should always ask in reading any Greek tragedy. — Mortimer J. Adler

I've come to realize that life is not a musical comedy, it's a Greek tragedy. — Billy Joel

'Greek Street' is a very strange beast. I think of it as 'The Long Good Friday' meets 'Agamemnon.' A way of using those fantastically rich stories from Greek tragedy to take a look at our world and to explore some of the things I think about this world. — Peter Milligan

I have a pullout couch, and I could sleep in the living room. You can have the bedroom."
"I'm sorry. No." Mel put her hand on his chest, her eyes sparkling. "I have to draw the line there. I should at least get sex out of this deal or this really would be a tragedy. — Lisa Kessler

I gave them hope, and so turned away their eyes from death — Aeschylus

I see the gods - the names, images, stories - as the poetic encapsulation of our human experience, our relationship with the ineffable forces that shape human life. While this makes the gods no thing, it does not make them nothing. I see the gods as representing very real, powerful, even dangerous forces. I believe the gods are real. It doesn't matter what we call them or don't call them. They are real and dangerous, and we will contend with them. This for me is the message of the Bacchae. - M. J. Lee, "Being Human When Surrounded by Greek Gods — John Halstead

It has all the terrible beauty of a Greek tragedy, a tragedy in which I took a great part, but by which I have not been wounded. — Oscar Wilde

Greek tragedy was pre-Freudian, so every emotion has to be so raw; there are no psychological undertones. — Lydia Leonard

His copy was full of lofty echoes: Greek Tragedy; Damocle's sword; manna from heaven; the myth of Sisyphus; the last of the Mohicans; hydra-headed and Circe-voiced; experiments with truth; discovery of India; biblical resonance; the lessons of Vedanta; the centre does not hold; the road not taken; the mimic men; for whom the bell tolls; a hundred visions and revisions; the power and the glory; the heart of the matter; the heart of darkness; the agony and the ecstasy; sands of time; riddle of the Sphinx; test of tantalus; murmurs of mortality; Falstaffian figure; Dickensian darkness; ... — Tarun J. Tejpal

Like Nemesis of Greek tragedy, the central problem of America after the Civil War, as before, was the black man: those four million souls whom the nation had used and degraded, and on whom the South had built an oligarchy similar to the colonial imperialism of today, erected on cheap colored labor and raising raw material for manufacture. — W.E.B. Du Bois

One would have a strong case for arguing that it was the men in her life - the lovers, the father, the directors, producers, critics - who destroyed it. And yet when you looked at the broad sweep they appeared more as agents, collectively, of a darker, wider force of ruin that pursued her. It was as if her epic beauty somehow angered the gods and drew down a suitably Promethean punishment; and the girl behind the beauty - the nice girl from Connecticut who at the end would wonder whether, if her life had been a movie, she would have been cast to play her part - found she had wandered off the lot into a Greek tragedy. [On Gene Tierney] — Paul Murray

Sometimes bad luck hits you like in an ancient Greek tragedy, and it's not your own making. When you have a plane crash, it's not your fault. — Werner Herzog

The tragedy of Eliot Spitzer is almost Greek: Ascendant son of wealth and privilege dedicates his life to social justice, warns of the corruption lurking among us, and falls victim to his inner demons at the very moment of vindication. — Wil S. Hylton

I always think a good sports movie is emblematic in the same way that a great Greek tragedy really has a certain kind of structure, or a Shakespearean play if you're looking at a comedy or a tragedy, is that these are the heights and depths of human emotion. — Carla Gugino

Our word Tragedy comes from the greek, tragos-ode: "The song of the goat." Anybody who has ever heard a goat attempt to sing will know why. — Neil Gaiman

In some ways grief anonymizes as powerfully as a Greek tragedy mask. — Tana French

What troubled people especially was not just the tragedy--or even the needlessness--but the element of fate in it all. If the Titanic had heeded any of the six ice messages on Sunday . . . if ice conditions had been normal . . . if the night had been rough or moonlit . . . if she had seen the berg 15 second sooner--or 15 seconds later . . . if she had hit the ice any other way . . . if her watertight bulkheads had been one deck higher . . . if she had carried enough boats . . . if the Californian had only come. Had any one of these "ifs" turned out right, every life might have been save. But they all went against her--a classic Greek tragedy. — Walter Lord

Not too little, not too much: there safety lies. — Euripides

What cannot be borne in reality, becomes a source of pleasure when it is transposed into the visual and somatic fiction of the dramatic spectacle. — Claude Calame

Argos the greatest tragedy in Greek legend was — Will Durant

People try to make a Greek tragedy of my life, and they can't do it. I'm too happy. — Curt Flood

Come back. Even as a shadow, even as a dream. — Euripides

Greek philosophy seems to have met with something with which a good tragedy is not supposed to meet, namely, a dull ending. — Karl Marx

Tragedy is born of myth, not morality. Prometheus and Icarus are tragic heroes. Yet none of the myths in which they appear has anything to do with moral dilemmas. Nor have the greatest Greek tragedies.

If Euripides is the most tragic of the Greek playwrights, it is not because he deals with moral conflicts but because he understood that reason cannot be the guide of life. — John N. Gray

Mortal fate is hard. You'd best get used to it. — Euripides

Blind hope. Blind hope is all we have. There's a Greek tragedy called Prometheus Bound; Prometheus is the [titan] that gave humans fire. He's chained to a rock and bemoaning his fate and saying, "I gave you everything. By giving you fire, I gave you blind hope. By giving you a little light that kept you warm at night, I let you believe that this was all going to be okay." For me, that's what art has been. Music and books, it's an act of hope to make them, and it's an act of hope to listen to them. That hope will be dashed, you will say goodbye. — Torquil Campbell

I told myself that historically when people do too well too quickly, they are a Greek tragedy waiting to happen. — Anne Lamott

Permitting the continuance and expansion of slavery as the price to pay for nationhood. This decision meant that tragedy was also built into the American founding, and the only question we can ask is whether it was a Greek tragedy, meaning inevitable and unavoidable, or a Shakespearean tragedy, meaning that it could have gone the other way, and the failure was a function of the racial prejudices the founders harbored in their heads and hearts.10 — Joseph J. Ellis

Laughter and weeping, the Greek masks of comedy and tragedy, mark the extremes of a continuous spectrum; both provide channels for the overflow of emotion; both are — Arthur Koestler

You are young and young your rule and you think that the tower in which you live is free from sorrow: from it have I not seen two tyrants thrown? The third, who now is king, I shall yet live to see him fall, of all three most suddenly, most dishonored. — Aeschylus

Laughter on American television has taken the place of the chorus in Greek tragedy. It is unrelenting; the news, the stock-exchange reports, and the weather forecast are about the only things spared. — Jean Baudrillard

My sister's looking off to the side so half her face is in shadow and her smile is neatly cut in half. It's like one of those Greek tragedy masks in a textbook that's half one idea and half the opposite. Light and dark. Hope and despair. Laughter and sadness. Trust and loneliness. — Haruki Murakami

Old loves are dropped when new ones come — Euripides

I don't write fantasy, I write reality. Also, my novels have roots to Greek tragedies and as such, there has to be tragedy. — Nicholas Sparks

The Alexandrian Library was a tragedy of some moment, for it was believed to contain the complete published works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Polybius, Livy, Tacitus, and a hundred others, who have come down to us in mangled form; full texts of the pre-Socratic philosophers, who survive only in snatches; and thousands of volumes of Greek, Egyptian, and Roman history, science, literature, and philosophy. — Will Durant

It's human; we all put self interest first. — Euripides

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

Who can stop grief's avalanche once it starts to roll. — Euripides

I often teach a graduate theater seminar on Greek tragedy in performance. I usually begin by saying that no matter what technological advances occur, the wisdom of these plays will never be obsolete. — Neil Patrick Harris

Under (Lyndon) Johnson, the Senate functions like a Greek tragedy. All the action takes place offstage, before the play begins. Nothing is left for the participants but the enactment of their prescribed roles. — Bobby Baker

What we were trying to do was take the notion of Greek tragedy, of fated and doomed people, and instead of these Olympian gods, indifferent, venal, selfish, hurling lightning bolts and hitting people in the ass for no reason - instead of those guys whipping it on Oedipus or Achilles, it's the postmodern institutions ... those are the indifferent gods. — David Simon

We all know what tragedy is. "Yes, I'd rather not have any more tragedy, please. I'll have comedy, please." Comedy, in the Greek sense, only means that it has a happy ending. — Eric Drooker

Kessler depicts his developing intimacy with a handful of dairy goats and offers an enviable glimpse of the pastoral good life. Yet he also cautions, "Wherever the notion of paradise exists, so does the idea that it was lost. Paradise is always in the past." The title Goat Song is a literal rendering of the Greek word traghoudhia, tragedy. Reading it, I was reminded of Leo Marx's analysis of Thoreau's Walden. In The Machine in the Garden, Marx names Thoreau a tragic, if complex pastoralist. After failing to make an agrarian living raising beans for commercial trade (although his intent was always more allegorical than pecuniary), Thoreau ends Walden by replacing the pastoral idea where it originated: in literature. Paradise, Marx concludes, is not ultimately to be found at Walden Pond; it is to be found in the pages of Walden. — Heather Paxson

...I like to see things through the lens of Greek tragedy, which teaches us, among other things, that real tragedy is never a straightforward confrontation between Good and Evil, but is rather much more exquisitely and much more agonizingly, a conflict between two irreconcilable views of the world. — Daniel Mendelsohn

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

To be kept waiting is unfortunate, but to be kept waiting with nothing interesting to read is a tragedy of Greek proportions" -Agatha Swanburne — Maryrose Wood

In Greek tragedy, they fall from great heights. In noir, they fall from the curb. — Dennis Lehane

Modern romance, like Greek tragedy, celebrates the mystery of dismemberment, which is life in time. The happy ending is justly scorned as a misrepresentation; for the world, as we know it, as we have seen it, yields but one ending: death, disintegration, dismemberment, and the crucifixion of our heart with the passing of the forms that we have loved. — Joseph Campbell

The theater of man is not always 'amusing', but it is always theater, and theater can be marveled at even when its content is somber and harsh. You're acquainted with Greek tragedy? — Tom Robbins

Ten thousand men possess ten thousand hopes. A few bear fruit in happiness; the others go awry. But he who garners day by day the good life, he is happiest. — Gilbert Murray

I'm intrigued by the classic Greek tragedies, as well as by the idea of the Greek chorus. — Joseph Boyden

Frequently my life has been likened to a Greek tragedy, and the actress in me cannot deny that comparison. — Patricia Neal

In childbirth grief begins. — Euripides

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

I'd three times sooner go to war than suffer childbirth once. — Euripides

It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise. — Henry A. Kissinger

Sicily is a blessed land. First, because of its geographic position in the Mediterranean. Second, for its history and all the different peoples who have settled there: Arabs, Greeks, Normans, the Swedes. That has made us different from others. We exaggerate, we overdo. We love Greek tragedy. We cry, we fight, sometimes for nothing. — Marcello Giordani

Receive the god into your kingdom
pour libations, cover your head with ivy, join the dance! — Euripides

Listen, Kafka. What you're experiencing now is the motif of many Greek tragedies. Man doesn't choose fate. Fate chooses man. That's the basic worldview of Greek drama. And the sense of tragedy - according to Aristotle - comes, ironically enough, not from the protagonist's weak points but from his good qualities. Do you know what I'm getting at? People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues. Sophocles' Oedipus Rex being a great example. Oedipus is drawn into tragedy not because of laziness or stupidity, but because of his courage and honesty. So an inevitable irony results. — Haruki Murakami

I'm running out of time, and a Western is America's answer to a Greek tragedy, so that's what we did. [Kiefer] hired Brad [Mirman] to write the script and he had the ideas, and then he and I did stuff on the script to make it a little cleaner to ourselves. And then, we played it. We were just actors working together, and our DNA must have informed it somehow. Certainly, we came out of it purified a little bit. — Donald Sutherland

[A]s Agatha Swanburne once said, 'To be kept waiting is unfortunate, but to be kept waiting with nothing interesting to read is a tragedy of Greek proportions. — Maryrose Wood

No one will ever make necessity not happen. — Anne Carson

I'm drawn to a lot of tragedies, and I love a Greek tragedy.But I would think - I start thinking realistically about it, and performing eight days a week, that would take a toll. I take things to heart. I don't know if I could survive, like, "Medea." — Eva Mendes

Greek tragedy operates through the ear. It is through the ear primarily that it enters the eyes, the senses, the mind, the heart. It must be spoken aloud. It is designed for that. And until that is done these plays have not been read, have not been used, have not been born. — Paul Roche

PROMETHEUS: 'Oh, it is easy for the one who stands outside the prison-wall of pain to exhort and teach the one who suffers — Aeschylus

Of all creatures that can feel and think,
we women are the worst treated things alive — Euripides

I think American drama is at its best when it takes the domestic and makes it epic, like a Greek tragedy in the front room. — Anne-Marie Duff