Life Tragedies Quotes & Sayings

You can look at my life and say there've been some real tragedies, and there have been. But there've also been some exquisitely beautiful times. To me, those far outweigh the others. — Ellen Bass

Perhaps this was one of the tragedies life plots for us: it is our destiny to become in old age what in youth we would have most despised. — Julian Barnes

Life is nothing but surprises. Even our tragedies turn out different than we expect. — Marty Rubin

One of the greatest tragedies of growing up is the discovery that your parents- and your teachers, and your sports heroes, and your favorite actors, singers, YouTube sensations- are fallible. Adults don't know all, and what they do know, they often won't tell you- because they've got their own agendas, or because they want to shield you from the hard truths "for your own good." Adults lie, they betray, they screw up in every way possible ... — Robin Wasserman

Success is living life with all of its songs and melodies, triumphs and tragedies. — Debasish Mridha

The story of what it means to be human is never complete. Every generation will produce its own share of comedies and tragedies, fools and geniuses. What the Greeks started the rest of the world will continue to build upon. The old stories will continue to explicate where we came from, while the new stories will illuminate in what direction humankind trends. The collection of future stories of humanity will add to the cumulative library of stories that past writers told, an anthology of collaborative stories will shed light upon the singleness of the human spirit in its aspirations, powers, vicissitudes, and wisdom. — Kilroy J. Oldster

It has long been a tradition among novel writers that a book must end by everybody getting just what they wanted, or if the conventional happy ending was impossible, then it must be a tragedy in which one or both should die. In real life very few of us get what we want, our tragedies don't kill us, but we go on living them year after year, carrying them with us like a scar on an old wound. — Willa Cather

One Story At A Time

Stories come to life in your imagination. You can meet new friends, just by reading words. Go places you've never gone before . Adventures and dreams come alive. Tragedies that seemed to work out for good. Stories seemed to capture things that wasn't there before. Friendship that can last a lifetime, just from reading words. It all happens in book, with a little imagination... — Jerrel C. Thomas

Poetry, like jazz, is one of those dazzling diamonds of creative industry that help human beings make sense out of the comedies and tragedies that contextualize our lives. — Aberjhani

Can it be, thought I, that my sole mission on earth is to destroy the hopes of others? Ever since I began to live and act, fate has somehow associated me with the last act of other people's tragedies, as if without me no one could either die or give way to despair! I have been the inevitable character who comes in at the final act, involuntarily playing the detestable role of the hangman or the traitor. What has been fate's object in all this? Has it destined me to be the author of middle-class tragedies and family romances
or a purveyor of tales for, say, the Reader's Library? Who knows? Are there not many who begin life by aspiring to end it like Alexander the Great, or Lord Byron, and yet remain petty civil servants all their lives? — Mikhail Lermontov

One of the greatest tragedies I can think of is for a person to die having never fully questioned the life he was born into. — Dan Pearce

The world needs people who have survived mistakes, tragedies, and trials to help the rest of us through. Where would we be if Victor Frankl had never experienced what he did during the war? He wouldn't have used his experiences to benefit millions of people around the world.
The world needs you to let go of self-pity and shame regarding your life experiences, too. The world needs you to use the things you have learned for good. Stop letting your past mistakes define you and affect your value. Let go of separation and victimhood and find meaning in what you have been through. — Kimberly Giles

The greatest lesson I've learned in life is "Who knows what's good or bad?" Things come along that you really want, and they turn out to be the worst thing in the world. And some of the worst tragedies that you can conceive turn out to be the best things, the exact medicine you need in that moment. — Denzel Washington

Roy Orbison was one of the genuinely nicest persons I've ever known. With one of the most beautiful voices in the history of recorded music he could easily have had an opera star's ego, but he was one of the humblest, kindest, sweetest human beings to grace this planet. This in spite of the enormous tragedies in his life. A brave, beautiful blessing of a man. — Kris Kristofferson

Life flows swiftly by and sometimes through tragedies, but it keeps flowing on. — Dee Henderson

Only ambition is fired by the coincidences of success and easy accomplishment but nothing is quite as splendidly uplifting to the heart as the defeat of a human being who battles against the invincible superiority of fate. This is always the most grandiose of all tragedies, one sometimes created by a dramatist but created thousands of times by life. — Stefan Zweig

There is no special protection when you cross that invisible line from your ordinary life to that parallel world where tragedies happen. It happens just like this. You don't become someone else. You're still exactly the same. Everything around you still smells and looks and feels exactly the same. — Liane Moriarty

One of life's sorest tragedies is that the people who brim with confidence are always the wrong people. — Charlie Brooker

How seriously would we take person who said, "I have faith in Adolf Hitler, or in John Dilinger. I can't explain why they did the things they did, but I can't believe they would have done them without a good reason." Yet people try to justify the deaths and tragedies God inflicts on innocent victims with almost these same words.
Furthermore, my religious commitment to the supreme value of an individual life makes it hard for me to accept an answer that is not scandalized by an innocent person's pain, that condones human pain because it supposedly contributes to an overall work of esthetic value. If a human artist or employer made children suffer so that something immensely impressive or valuable could come to pass, we would put him in prison. Why then should we excuse God for causing such undeserved pain, no matter how wonderful the ultimate result may be? — Harold S. Kushner

If we were entirely sane, if madness did not have a serious grip on one side of us, other people's tragedies would hold a great deal less interest for us. — Alain De Botton

I don't see big subjects as separate from little ones. Yes, you could trudge through life with great human tragedies played out before your eyes without ever taking notice. Or you could see a universe in the smallest thing. The way a person takes their coffee, for example, might say something profound and important about that person, about all humanity, about existence itself. — Johnny Rich

But in our age of emptiness, tragedies are relatively rare. Or if they are written, the tragic aspect is the very fact that human life is so empty, as in Eugene O'Neill's drama, The Iceman Cometh. This play is set in a saloon, and its dramatis personae - alcoholics, prostitutes, and, as the chief character, a man who in the course of the play goes psychotic - can dimly recall the periods in their lives when they did believe in something. It is this echo of human dignity in a great void of emptiness that gives this drama the power to elicit the emotions of pity and terror of classical tragedy. — Rollo May

Despite the personalization of life's events, all people largely experience the same general transformative stages of life and eventually we all encounter a row of similar tragedies. We do not experience identical lives or exemplify replicable personalities. Every person is a receptacle whom is capable of experiencing the full gamut of the entire human condition. Our lives act as a period of apprenticeship, which we devote laboring to discover the truths that we can live by. — Kilroy J. Oldster

If we know what can happen in a minute will could have avoid all tragedies. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The enormous sense of the potentiality for success and failure, and the prospect of triumphs and tragedies, hoover over collegiate students jubilant and anguish filled, animated actuality. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Simply, this is what she believed: she believed that the universe showed each of us certain things, that it made certain things open.
Many people lived a peace life with nothing ever happening to them. But into some families other things fell. Some families were afflicted with random tragedies - car accidents, plane accidents, hang gliding accidents, bus crashes, knifing, drownings, scarves getting caught under the wheels of their Rolls Royces, breaking their necks. — Paullina Simons

God created woman as a Warrior. I think about the tragedies the women in my life have faced. How every time a child gets sick or a man leaves or a parent dies or a community crumbles, the women are the ones who carry on, who do what must be done for their people in the midst of their own pain. While those around them fall away, the women hold the sick and nurse the weak, put food on the table, carry their families' sadness and anger and love and hope. They keep showing up for their lives and their people with the odds stacked against them and the weight of the world on their shoulders. They never stop singing songs of truth, love, and redemption in the face of hopelessness. They are inexhaustible, ferocious, relentless cocreators with God, and they make beautiful worlds out of nothing. Have women been the Warriors all along? — Glennon Doyle Melton

Tragedies can contain some of life's greatest rewards and valuable lessons. Struggle makes you stronger. Pain makes you alert. Clouds bring forth the rain. As a wise man once said, 'You seek problems because you need their gifts.' Why would you rob someone of these benefits? — Brownell Landrum

I think all tragedies are best told with some humor. You have to relieve the darkness to let the reader get through it. Also, that life has happiness and sadness mixed together. If you told a story that was all darkness, it wouldn't be real. — Alan Lightman

I promise to be with you, stay with you, love you, and laugh with you. I promise to listen and always look for new ways to show you how much I care. Most of all, I promise to lean on God through life's trials, tragedies and triumphs. Because if I lean on Him, you can always lean on me. — Karen Kingsbury

My life has been filled with unexpected disappointments and tragedies that led to incredible and rewarding opportunities. — Jenn Sadai

If you do not know the horrors and the tragedies of life, you can be sure that you know nothing! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Hardship bred a bitter, quickfire humour and resilience to all but the most terminal of life's tragedies. — Ian Rankin

The promises of eternal life stored up in our heart through the work of the Holy Spirit empower us to walk through the most difficult of life's trials and tragedies and glorify God in the process. — Anonymous

Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes like this, or he doesn't care to, or he doesn't exist. God is either impotent, evil, or imaginary. Take your pick, and choose wisely.
The only sense to make of tragedies like this is that terrible things can happen to perfectly innocent people. This understanding inspires compassion.
Religious faith, on the other hand, erodes compassion. Thoughts like, 'this might be all part of God's plan,' or 'there are no accidents in life,' or 'everyone on some level gets what he or she deserves' - these ideas are not only stupid, they are extraordinarily callous. They are nothing more than a childish refusal to connect with the suffering of other human beings. It is time to grow up and let our hearts break at moments like this. — Sam Harris

The most spiritual human beings, assuming they are the most courageous, also experience by far the most painful tragedies: but it is precisely for this reason that they honor life, because it brings against them its most formidable weapons. — Friedrich Nietzsche

It is at the family fireside, often under the shelter of the law itself, that the real tragedies of life are acted; in these days traitors wear gloves, scoundrels cloak themselves in public esteem, and their victims die broken-hearted, but smiling to the last. What I have just related to you is almost an every-day occurrence; and yet you profess astonishment. — Emile Gaboriau

None of us makes it through this life without problems and challenges - and sometimes tragedies and misfortunes. After all, in large part we are here to learn and grow from such events in our lives. We know that there are times when we will suffer, when we will grieve, and when we will be saddened. However, we are told, "Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy." How might we have joy in our lives, despite all that we may face? Again from the scriptures: "Wherefore, be of good cheer, and do not fear, for I the Lord am with you, and will stand by you. — Thomas S. Monson

have seen how the fear of becoming subject to God's revenge and punishment has paralyzed the mental and emotional lives of many people, independently of their age, religion, or life-style. This paralyzing fear of God is one of the great human tragedies. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

The boy and the man must be raised to see the possibility of self worth, then meet a few others who provide the vision of a road toward it, then spend a lifetime pursing that worth through action and relationship. One of the great tragedies in human life is to be born a male and not be guided toward the value of a man. — Michael Gurian

Life's the sum total of all our small mistakes, little tragedies, bad choices. Addition on top of addition. They pile up and pile up until the cost of keeping up appearances is too high and the weight is just too much. Then: collapse. — Lauren Oliver

When we condescend, when we act consistently with a sense of the character of people in general which demeans them, we impoverish them AND ourselves, and preclude our having a part in the creation of the highest wealth, the testimony to the mysterious beauty of life we all value in psalms and tragedies and epics and meditations, in short stories and novels. — Marilynne Robinson

Just like me. Just like so many others. Tragedies may change who we are, may alter the paths we take, sometimes drastically. But we can still continue on, continue living for tomorrow. Tomorrow is always worth fighting for." Mach Derune, A Time for Revenge, The End of Old Ways series — A.W.Chrystalis

Living your life through negative feelings and memories is doing yourself a dishonour.If you want to change you need to be willing to leave your past wounds behind you. -If you wish to remain stuck in your attachment to past pains then dare to ask yourself exactly why you feel the need to define yourself by your past traumas or tragedies. — Miya Yamanouchi

Life is not easy. We all have problems-even tragedies-to deal with, and luck has nothing to do with it. Bad luck is only the superstitious excuse for those who don't have the wit to deal with the problems of life. — Joan Lowery Nixon

Remember, there are no real failures in life, only results. There are no true tragedies, only lessons. And there are no problems, only opportunities waiting to be recognized as solutions by the person of wisdom. — Robin Sharma

At least one indication of unbelief is the tendency to measure life's challenges against our own adequacy instead of God's promises. To enter our Sabbath rest, we must put an end to self-reliance - trusting in our own abilities to overcome difficulties, rise above challenges, escape tragedies, or achieve personal greatness. — Charles R. Swindoll

You know, one of the tragedies of real life is that there is no background music. — Annie Proulx

Don't let your tragedies fool you, they were never meant to alter your path; just re-pave your direction. Spend time nurturing the things that once tore you apart and you will find within you, your most empowering strength. — Nikki Rowe

TO ACCEPT THE DIFFICULTIES,SETBACKS AND TRAGEDIES OF LIFE AS A CHALLENGE WHICH TO OVERCOME MAKES US STRONGER, RATHER THAN AS SOMETHING THAT SHOULD NOT HAPPEN TO US REQUIRES FAITH AND COURAGE — Erich Fromm

Jesus will turn your sorrow into joy. One can only imagine the shock and bewilderment the Apostles felt when the Lord told them he must go away. Though they could not understand it at the time, his departure was for their benefit. The same is true of the unexpected setbacks and tragedies we experience in this life ... When I consider the times when I have been confounded by events that seemed so contrary to what I thought God wanted for me, I should be mindful that they were permitted by the Lord's inscrutable providence for my own good, as difficult as that might be to fathom. — Patrick Madrid

Peace is not just safety or lack of war, violence, conflict and contention. Peace comes from knowing that the Savior knows who we are, knows that we have faith in Him, love Him, and keep His commandments, even and especially amid life's devastating trials and tragedies. — Quentin L. Cook

Your world is your story with tragedies and triumphs; never forget that you are the editor too. — Debasish Mridha

I've had to deal with my tragedies, and how you cope with them is what life's all about. You can choose to let them consume you or choose not to. — Sarah Parish

It is one of the tragedies of the half-educated that they develop late, when they are already committed to some wrong way of life. — George Orwell

I've always been interested in the Greek tragedies. A few years back, I re-read a translation of the 'The Oresteia,' and that stayed with me, and slowly this idea of using some of those old legends and plays to tell a new story about modern urban life began to form. — Peter Milligan

Life would continue, with joys and sorrows, triumphs and tragedies rising and falling like the waves of the sea. It was up to him to respond wisely, enjoy simple pleasures unshaken by the inevitable endless turmoil of the world. — Devdutt Pattanaik

To answer the question, what makes a tragedy, is to answer the question wherein lies the essential significance of life, what the dignity of humanity depends upon in the last analysis. Here the tragedians speak to us with no uncertain voice. The great tragedies themselves offer the solution to the problem they propound. It is by our power to suffer, above all, that we are of more value than the sparrows. Endow them with a greater or as great a potentiality of pain and our foremost place in the world would no longer be undisputed. Deep down, when we search out the reason for our conviction of the transcendent worth of each human being, we know that it is because of the possibility that each can suffer so terribly. What do outside trappings matter, Zenith or Elsinore? Tragedy's preoccupation is with suffering. But, — Edith Hamilton

Everybody has terrible things that they deal with. Everybody. Just because you're some big shot rock star doesn't mean you're immune to having these awful tragedies in your life. — Alex Lifeson

In the life of everyone there is a limited number of experiences which are not written upon the memory, but stamped there with a die; and in the long years after, they can be called up in detail, and every emotion that was stirred by them can be lived through anew; these are the tragedies of life. — James Weldon Johnson

Will these books be comedies or tragedies?"
"Both. Just like life. — Tiffany Reisz

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

Our goodness is our wealth and when we close our eyes to the tragedies of the hard lives, we start losing our wealth! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

There are two great tragedies in life: one is to fail to achieve one's grandest ambitions, and the other one is to succeed. — Graham T. Allison

With twice his wits, she had to see things through his eyes
one of the tragedies of married life. — Virginia Woolf

The art of mastering life is the prerequisite for all further forms of expression, whether they are paintings, sculptures, tragedies, or musical compositions. — Paul Klee

This habit of free speaking at ladies' lunches has impaired society; it has doubtless led to many of the tragedies of divorce and marital unhappiness. Could society be deaf and dumb and Congress abolished for a season, what a happy and peaceful life one could lead! — M. E. W. Sherwood

My life was typical. I played a little Little League baseball. I never wanted for food. I always had shoes. I had a room. There were no great tragedies. There were the typical ups and downs but I wouldn' t say it was at all sad. We were Jewish and living in the suburbs so there was a slightly neurotic bent to it, but I can't point to anything where a boy overcame a tragedy to become a comedian. As my grandmother used to say, 'I can't complain. — Jon Stewart

I don't believe in the Law of Attraction. There were things I wanted in my life that no amount of positive thinking was going to make it a reality for me. However, I have learned to believe in the Law of Tough Love. Life has thrown a dozen tragedies at me. I did what any Christian would do
prayed for the outcome I wanted, but God was tough and only gave me what I needed. I now realize that life is not about fulfilling a wish list; rather a need list. Good and bad experiences are on the horizon. How else does a person change, grow and evolve? And just like any warrior woman, I won't simply survive
but thrive! — Shannon L. Alder

That's one of the tragedies of this life - that the men who are most in need of a beating up are always enormous. — Preston Sturges

Far back in the impulses to find this story is a storyteller's belief that at times life takes on the shape of art and that the remembered remnants of these moments are largely what we come to mean by life. The short semihumours comedies we live, our long certain tragedies, and our springtime lyrics and limericks make up most of what we are. they become almost all of what we remember of ourselves. — Norman Maclean

I'm pretty squeaky clean. No big tragedies in my childhood or adolescence or adulthood. I've had a very easygoing, simple life. — Vera Farmiga

Truth is we are all tragedies waiting to happen; we just have to remember to have the rescue crew nearby when it strikes. — S. Elle Cameron

If you have a story to tell, put it out there. Get the thing done. No excuses. No procrastinating. No apologies. It will never be as good as you want it to be, so forget about perfection. Just be satisfied that you've done the best work you can do at this stage in your life as an author. Then roll the rocket onto the launch pad and fire it off. After that, write another story. Always keep going. Move fast. Stay one step ahead of the forces of distraction and self-doubt. Love your characters enough to give them a good home. Love your readers enough to give them a place of refuge from life's tragedies, big and small. And love the world you live in enough to make it the world of your dreams. — James Hampton

Every moment of every day, your mind chooses whether you focus on the angelic or the demonic, on your life's blessings or your tragedies, on the flashes of insight or the reminders of trouble. — Catherine Carrigan

Life is the tragedy,' she said bitterly. 'You know how they categorize Shakespeare's plays, right? If it ends with a wedding, it's a comedy. And if it ends with a funeral, it's a tragedy. So we're all living tragedies, because we all end the same way, and it isn't with a goddamn wedding. — Robyn Schneider

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. — Oscar Wilde

The way I figure it, life's the sum total of all our small mistakes, little tragedies, bad choices. — Lauren Oliver

Welcome to the future, she thought, surveying all this wordage and tat. All our tragedies and triumphs, our lives and deaths, our shames and joys are just stuffing for your emptiness. — Iain M. Banks

The only religion that can satisfy today's ideal is a religion that will give consecration to life, and direction to human endeavor, inspire men with faith in themselves, dedicate them to high moral purpose, and give them the strength to live through their failures, and to face with high courage their supreme tragedies. — Sterling M. McMurrin

there are worse things than death or murder." "Like what?" I asked. "Though it's hard to comprehend," he said, "the worst thing is to say to God that you don't need him. Why? Because a dead person can be restored to life by God; a bereaved person can find peace from God; a person who has been violated can find God's sustenance and strength and even see God conquer through the dark mystery of evil. In other words, there is recourse through these atrocities and tragedies. But to a person who says he or she doesn't need God, what is the recourse? There is none. — Lee Strobel

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

I worked it through with pride,I almost spoke without words, and i'm masterly at speaking without words.All my life I have spoken without words, and I have passed through whole tragedies on my own account without words — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I'm a master of speaking silently - all my life I've spoken silently and I've lived through entire tragedies in silence. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such
an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their
absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack
of style. They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give us
an impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that.
Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements of
beauty crosses our lives. If these elements of beauty are real, the
whole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenly
we find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of the
play. Or rather we are both. We watch ourselves, and the mere wonder
of the spectacle enthralls us. — Oscar Wilde

It's one of the great tragedies of our contemporary life in America, that families fall apart. Almost everybody has that in common. — Sam Shepard

To what exactly had I felt entitled with Bill? There is an answer: Joy. Not happiness, which by that time seemed a fantasy one had to agree to give up in order to keep from going mad. By forty, is there anyone who hasn't had to recognize that happiness, as understood by youth, is illusory? That the best one can hope for is an absence of too many tragedies and that the road through the inevitable grief be, if not smooth, then steady? Daily life was a pale gray thing, it seemed, and to expect otherwise was to be a fool - at best. — Robin Black

One of the tragedies of our life is that we keep forgetting who we are — Henri J.M. Nouwen

All suffering goes just as it came. So it is with the glories and tragedies of the world. — Paulo Coelho

The real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style. — Oscar Wilde

There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it. — George Bernard Shaw

But one of the great tragedies of life is that you cannot force people to read what they ought, as good as it might be for them.
- Roland Gardner
"Query — Robert Boyczuk

The saddest of all tragedies - the wasted life — Aristotle.

At a certain age, death becomes familiar to you-or a loss becomes familiar-the tragedies that are more commonplace in life. — Jessica Lange

They were one flame made out of two people, with a love that had endured all the challenges and tragedies of life. But they were still standing, still alive, and still whole. — Danielle Steel

My life has been full of external tragedies and if they have not left any visible effect on me, I owe it to the teaching of the Bhagavadgita. — Mahatma Gandhi

If it can be verified, we don't need faith ... Faith is for that which lies on the other side of reason. Faith is what makes life bearable, with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys. — Madeleine L'Engle

The stage is more beholding to love than the life of man. For as to the stage, love is ever matter of comedies and now and then of tragedies; but in life it doth much mischief, sometimes like a Siren, sometimes like a Fury. — Francis Bacon

It was the ultimate cautionary tale, the moral being Don't fall, as if they were made of glass. In a sense they were
their fragility was irrefutable, medically proven
and yet Emily detested the inevitable rundown of accidents and tragedies, the more fortunate clucking their tongues and counting their blessings, all the while knowing it was just a matter of time. She didn't need to be reminded that she was a single misstep from disaster, especially here, without Henry, surrounded by the survivors of an earlier life. — Stewart O'Nan

That is the great mistake about the affections. It is not the rise and fall of empires, the birth and death of kings, or the marching of armies that move them most. When they answer from their depths, it is to the domestic joys and tragedies of life. — Amelia Barr