Hope After Tragedy Quotes & Sayings

Even if we can't change the big picture, our choices can alter the details. That's how we rebel against destiny, — Rick Riordan

In ancient China, the Taoists taught that a constant inner smile, a smile to oneself, insured health, happiness and longevity. Why? Smiling to yourself is like basking in love: you become your own best friend. Living with an inner smile is to live in harmony with yourself. — Mantak Chia

No man, proclaimed Donne, is an Island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature, and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived, and then, by some means or another, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakes - forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'd mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection), but still unique. — Neil Gaiman

Technology has bridged the gap of distant communication,bringing friends and family closely together but no matter the number of 'likes', tweets, chats, comments, posts and shares, none can compare to a sincere smile, a kind kiss and a warm hug — Bernard Kelvin Clive

Pretty girls don't need a lot of education to marry into a rich and powerful family, but girls with an average or ugly appearance will find it difficult. These kinds of girls hope to further their education in order to increase their competitiveness. The tragedy is, they don't realize that as women age, they are worth less and less, so by the time they get their M.A. or Ph.D., they are already old, like yellowed pearls."

- Xinhua News Agency, 2011. Reposted on All-China Women's Federation website days after International Women's Day. — Leta Hong Fincher

Certainly after the tragedy in Neil's life, we were holding out hope for his recovery. It wasn't too promising at the time and obviously you get to the point of thinking that that is it. — Alex Lifeson

In other words, government had always been big for people like us, and we were fine with that. But beginning in the 1960s, as people of color began to gain access to the benefits for which we had always been eligible, suddenly we discovered our inner libertarian and decided that government intervention was bad, — Tim Wise

We are rational creatures, Professor Jove explained; hope is irrational. We thus set ourselves up for one dispiriting fall after the next. Anger and depression are not diseases or dysfunctions or anomalies; they are perfectly rational responses to the myriad avoidable disappointments that begin in a thoroughly irrational hope. — Shalom Auslander

How tragic lives there are in this world! But there is a greater tragedy: People who have very hard lives often believe that they will have a better life after death! Losing hope in life and running after an absolute illusion is even a bigger tragedy! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

The closer you can live to being a vegetarian the better. — Gary Player

Jean Louise interrupted. Hester, let me ask you something. I've been home since Saturday now, and since Saturday I've heard a great deal of talk about mongrelizin' the race, and it's led me to wonder if that's not rather an unfortunate phrase, and if probably it should be discarded from Southern jargon these days. It takes two races to mongrelize a race - if that's the right word - and when we white people holler about mongrelizin', isn't that something of a reflection on ourselves as a race? The message I get from it is that if it were lawful, there'd be a wholesale rush to marry Negroes. If I were a scholar, which I ain't, I would say that kind of talk has a deep psychological significance that's not particularly flattering to the one who talks it. At its best, it denotes an alarmin' mistrust of one's own race. — Harper Lee

I'm not particularly optimistic, but I hope that the lack of alternatives will lead to it. I would like to remind you of the fact that before May 2015 there was no overall European agenda on immigration. Nothing, zero. It wasn't until after yet another tragedy in the Mediterranean that, in response to an Italian initiative, (Europe) began thinking about setting policies for the registration of refugees, their distribution or their deportation. — Paolo Gentiloni

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