Tragedians Quotes & Sayings

I once heard a Native American teaching story in which an elder, a grandmother, was asked what she had done to become so happy, so wise, so loved and respected.

She replied: "It's because I know that there are two wolves in my heart, a wolf of love and a wolf of hate. And I know that everything depends on which one I feed each day. — Rick Hanson

up in a middle-class family, so I never thought I would starve. — Walter Isaacson

At one time, a freethinker was a man who had been brought up in the conceptions of religion, law and morality, who reached freethought only after conflict and difficulty. But now a new type of born freethinkers has appeared, who grow up without so much as hearing that there used to be laws of morality, or religion, that authorities existed ... In the old days, you see, if a man - a Frenchman, for instance- wished to get an education, he would have set to work to study the classics, the theologians, the tragedians, historians and philosophers- and you can realize all the intellectual labour involved. But nowadays he goes straight for the literature of negation, rapidly assimilates the essence of the science of negation, and thinks he's finished. — Leo Tolstoy

Sometimes even music cannot substitute for tears. — Paul Simon

Passion, once unleashed, has a way of unleashing other passions
a principle adhered to as firmly by the police force of any large modern city as by the Greek tragedians. — Caroline Gordon

I grew up in the theater, my mother is an actress, I was always around the world of acting and theater. — Alicia Keys

Woman, no less than man, can qualify herself for the more onerous occupations of life. — Victoria Woodhull

How shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many
proud monarchs groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so many
magistrates liquefying in fiercer flames than they ever kindled against the
Christians; so many sages philosophers blushing in red-hot fires with their
deluded pupils; so many tragedians more tuneful in the expression of their
own sufferings; so many dancers tripping more nimbly from anguish then
ever before from applause. — Tertullian

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

I drive myself to and from work. I love the privacy. — Bob Iger

As a city, Chicago really affords me an environment that I am really happy creating in. It's an easy place to live in a lot of ways; it's a great community to be making music in. — Jason Molina

A field is the most just possession for men. For what nature requires it carefully bears: barley, oil, wine, figs, honey. Silver-plate and purple will do for the tragedians, not for life. — Philemon

History is but the record of the public and official acts of human beings. It is our object, therefore, to humanize our history and deal with people past and present; people who ate and possibly drank; people who were born, flourished and died; not grave tragedians, posing perpetually for their photographs. — Bill Nye

The lovelorn, the cry-for-helpers, all mawkish tragedians who give suicide a bad name are the idiots who rush it, like amateur conductors.A true suicide is a paced, disciplined certainty. People pontificate, 'Suicide is selfishness.' Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call it a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reasons: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one's audience with one's mental fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize. Cowardice is nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what's selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching. The only selfishness lies in ruining strangers' days by forcing 'em to witness a grotesqueness. — David Mitchell

Something quite remote from anything the builders intended has come out of their work, and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played; something none of us thought about at the time: a small red flame
a beaten-copper lamp of deplorable design, relit before the beaten-copper doors of a tabernacle; the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs, which they saw put out; that flame burns again for other soldiers, far from home, farther, in heart, than Acre or Jerusalem. It could not have been lit but for the builders and the tragedians, and there I found it this morning, burning anew among the old stones. — Evelyn Waugh