Quotes & Sayings About Tragic Death

The (capital punishment) controversy passes the anarch by. For him, the linking of death and punishment is absurd. In this respect, he is closer to the wrongdoer than to the judge, for the high-ranking culprit who is condemned to death is not prepared to acknowledge his sentence as atonement; rather, he sees his guilt in his own inadequacy. Thus, he recognizes himself not as a moral but as a tragic person. — Ernst Junger

Death left its old tragic heaven and became the lyrical core of man: his invisible truth, his visible secret. — Michel Foucault

What then is tragedy? In the Elizabethan period it was assumed that a play ending in death was a tragedy, but in recent years we have come to understand that to live on is sometimes far more tragic than death. — George Pierce Baker

I rummaged through the drawers in search of a strong poison. I thought of nothing as I looked; I had to get it over with as quickly as possible. It was as if it were an everyday task I needed to do.
All I could find were things of no use to me: buttons, string, thread of various colors, notebooks - all strongly redolent of naphthalene and none capable of causing a man's death. Buttons, thread, and string - that is what the world contained at this most tragic of moments. — Max Blecher

There has never been any evidence that the death penalty reduces capital crimes or that crimes increased when executions stopped. Tragic mistakes are prevalent ... It is clear that there are overwhelming ethical, financial, and religious reasons to abolish the death penalty. — Jimmy Carter

The reality of death has come upon us and a consciousness of the power of God has broken our complacency like a bullet in the side. A sense of the dramatic, of the tragic, of the infinite, has descended upon us, filling us with grief, but even above grief, wonder. Our plans were so beautifully laid out, ready to be carried to action, but with magnificent certainty God laid them aside and said, "You have forgotten - Mine?"
A meditation on her fathers death. — Flannery O'Connor

I don't know anyone who has been handed only roses. We all encounter hardships. Some we see coming; others take us by surprise. It can be as tragic as the sudden death of a child, as heartbreaking as a relationship that unravels, or as disappointing as a dream that goes unfulfilled. The question is: When these things happen, what do we do next? I — Sheryl Sandberg

Memory is all I have now — James Patterson

Gordon Edgley's sudden death came as a shock to everyone - not least himself. One moment he was in his study, seven words into the twenty-fifth sentence of the final chapter of his new book, And the Darkness Rained upon Them, and the next he was dead. A tragic loss, his mind echoed numbly as he slipped away. — Derek Landy

Evil and suffering are real ... They aren't an illusion, nor are they simply an absence of good. We are fallen creatures living in a fallen world that has been twisted and corrupted by sin, and we all share in its brokenness. Most of all, we share in its tragic legacy of disease and death. — Billy Graham

It seemed bleakly ironic to me that someone who craved, deserved and had worked so hard to earn a tragic, early death appeared to be doomed to live forever. — Mishka Shubaly

Death. I've taunted it for years with confidence and courage. It has taken years for me to realize that it wasn't courage at all, it was the complete opposite; weakness. Bad habits and vulgar sensibilities are my disease. The only cure is dignity and shame, how tragic that I seem lack both. — J.C. Wickhart

Every morning i pray that the school bus will crash and we'll all die in a fiery wreck. then my mom will be able to sue the school bus company for never making school buses with seat belts, and she'll be able to get more money for my tragic death than i would've ever made in my tragic life. unless the lawyers from the school bus company can prove to the jury that i was guaranteed to be a fuckup. then they'd get away with buying my mom a used ford fiesta and call it even. — David Levithan

It was the cruelest of destiny's tricks, the death of a young person. — Danielle Steel

Terri's death brings to a close a very tragic, human and personal event that has left everyone with a feeling of emptiness, regardless of what side of the issue you may have been on. — Bob Beauprez

We really didn't devote a lot of time to investigating the scariest aspects of our flight. It was more challenging and productive to concentrate on the remedies, and leave things that couldn't be solved to happen without thinking about them. There is a morbid human curiosity associated with tragic death-producing events. Though naturally, this needs to be kept in perspective. — Buzz Aldrin

An artistic image is one that ensures its own development, its historical viability. An image is a grain, a self-evolving retroactive organism. It is a symbol of actual life, as opposed to life itself. Life contains death. An image of life, by contrast, excludes it, or else sees in it a unique potential for the affirmation of life.
Whatever it expresses - even destruction and ruin - the artistic image is by definition an embodiment of hope, it is inspired by faith.
Artistic creation is by definition a denial of death. Therefore it is
optimistic, even if in an ultimate sense the artist is tragic.
And so there can never be optimistic artists and pessimistic artists. There can only be talent and mediocrity. — Andrei Tarkovsky

My point is that death is more tragic than life, than any life, because every life has hope of some kind. — Shalom Auslander

I swear that woman had a previous career as a death-hunter selling tragic ballads down around the Seven Dials," said Will. "And I do wish she wouldn't sing about poisoning just after we've eaten. — Cassandra Clare

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

Because death is not tragic to them, not in the way it is to us,' I said. 'They mourn.' 'They feel sorrow, great sorrow. But it isn't tragic.' 'No, it isn't. They know their ancestors have a plan for them. There's no sense that it was wrong. Tragedy is based on this sense that there's been a terrible mistake, isn't it? — Lily King

The Comtesse's fellow prisoners in this antechamber to death were characteristic of the ill-assorted gatherings thrown together in Revolutionary prisons: duchesses and prostitutes, actresses and politicians: the Duchesse de Crequy-Montmorency and Madame Roland; Madame du Barry and Madame Brissot; the random debris of a sunken ship thrown together for a moment by the tide of fortune and a moment later violently dispersed. All of them were already ghosts, standing on the shoreline of the last limits of life, waiting their turn for Charon and his grim tumbrel to ferry them across the Styx. — Stanley Loomis

I'd be interested in finding out if there is a light you walk into, and if you do meet people from your life and walk hand in hand with Jesus. I would hate for my death to be tragic: I'd like to be old when it happens. But hopefully a young death is unlikely. — Brian Molko

Life is a big fat gigantic stinking mess, that's the beauty of it, too. — Gayle Forman

We think of death and loss as tragic twins, but in fact it is loss that hurts us. — Perry Brass

Tragic deaths aren't avoidable. That's what Ezra said outside Sam's wake, and even though--to use Foster's phrasing--I didn't know anything about anything, I felt in this moment that Ezra was wrong. What often makes something tragic is that it can be avoided. — Emma Mills

Justice must be done in investigating the tragic death of Mr. Freddie Gray. His family deserves our deepest sympathy and respect for their loss, and our admiration for their courage in calling us, as a city, to act as our better selves. — Martin O'Malley

Reading private correspondence is in poor taste, Lord Ackerly."
"Unless it is terribly interesting," Eleanor says, "which Jessamin's letters are not. Mine, however, are lurid tales of my near-death experience and subsequent sequestering against my will in the home of the mysterious and brooding Lord Ackerly. I fear I may have given you a tragic past and a deadly secret or two."
"Are we staying in a decaying Gothic abbey?" I ask.
"Naturally. When I'm finished, there won't be a person in all the city who isn't writhing with jealousy over the heart-pounding drama of my life." She pauses, tapping her pen thoughtfully against her chin. "I don't suppose you have a cousin? I could very much use a romantic foil."
Finn shakes his head. "Sorry to disappoint."
"Alas. As long as I'm not the friend who meets a tragic end that brings you two together forever through shared grief." Her line meets dead silence, and a sly grin splits her face. "Oh wait, I nearly was. — Kiersten White

Responding to bereavement by trying to make a difference is certainly both understandable and admirable, but it doesn't give you good reason to raise money for one specific cause of death rather than any other. If that person had died in different circumstances it would have been no less tragic. What we care about when we lose someone close to us is that they suffered or died, not that they died from a specific cause. By all means, the sadness we feel at the loss of a loved one should be harnessed in order to make the world a better place. But we should focus that motivation on preventing death and improving lives per se, rather than preventing death and improving lives in one very specific way. Any other decision would be unfair on those we could have helped more. — William MacAskill

I'm freezing," moaned Isabella. "I shall freeze to death."
"Cheer up, my southern flower." Jake hauled on the oars. "This was your brilliant idea. Anyway, you can die spectacularly of pneumonia, and someone will write a great tragic opera about you."
Isabella gave him a teeth-chattering grimace, but her expression turned dreamy and distant as if she was already imagining her last heart-rending aria.

Cassie cleared her throat in exasperation. "Can we not talk about spectacular deaths? — Gabriella Poole

If you believe that all men are created equal, then a child's death in some other country is no less tragic than in the United States. — Bill Gates

To politicize a man's tragic death is about as low as you can go, isn't it? — Tucker Carlson

The great wheel of fire of ancient wisdom, silence and word engendering the myth of the origin, human action engendering the epic voyage toward the other; historical violence revealing the tragic flaw of the hero who must then return to the land of origin; myth of death and renewal and silence from which new words and images will arise, keeps on turning in spite of the blindness of purely lineal thought. — Carlos Fuentes

Such a funny thing death is for mortals. You cry. You morn. You grieve. You get angry. But death is not always tragic, dear one. Sometimes death is the ultimate expression of love. — R.K. Ryals

So long as men die, life will reassert its tragic interest from time to time with fresh energy, and to this interest Christianity alone can respond. If the scientific people could rid us of death, they might indeed hope to win over the heart and conscience of the world, permanently, to some form of non-theistic speculation. As it is, the tide ebbs, as I believe, only that it may flow again. — Henry Parry Liddon

We oppose the death penalty not just for what it does to those guilty of heinous crimes, but for what it does to all of us: It offers the tragic illusiion that we can defend life by taking life. — Joseph Fiorenza

History conditioned you for epic-scale calamity. Once, when she was studying the death tolls of battles in World War I, she'd caught herself thinking, Only eight thousand men died here. Well, that's not many. Because next to, say, the million who died at the Somme, it wasn't. The stupendous numbers deadened you to the merely tragic, and history didn't average in the tame days for balance. On this day, no one in the world was murdered. A lion gave birth. Ladybugs launched on aphids. A girl in love daydreamed all morning, neglecting her chores, and wasn't even scolded. — Laini Taylor

Racism and injustice and violence sweep our world, bringing a tragic harvest of heartache and death. — Billy Graham

Amy might not have had the most exciting life over the past few years, up here in her room, but she must have been fighting death to the very end. Sara could understand why she had been in denial or so long. It must have been a frightening realization: so many books she would never get to pick up, so many stories that would happen without her, so many authors she would never get to discover.

That night, Sara sat in Amy's library for hours, thinking about how tragic it was that the written word was immortal while people were not, and grieving for her, the woman she had never met. — Katarina Bivald

Now the standard cure for one who is sunk is to consider those in actual destitution or physical suffering - this is an all-weather beatitude for gloom in general and fairly salutary day-time advice for everyone. But at three o'clock in the morning, a forgotten package has the same tragic importance as a death sentence, and the cure doesn't work - and in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Holding the knife with the blade against my palm, it became so clear how my life would only contain shadows now. Shadows of things gone; not just the people themselves but everything connected to them. Was this my future? Every moment, every tiny thing I saw and did and touched, weighted by loss. Every space in this house and
my town and the world in general, empty in a way that could never be filled. — Jennifer Castle

The death of one man is tragic, but the death of thousands is statistic — Joseph Stalin

The greatest tragedy in your life will not be the death of a loved one or a natural disaster; those things hurt like hell and devastate to the core. But loss like that is part of life. What's not necessary and is therefore most tragic is the demise of your truest identity, your dying before you're dead, the moments when you let the words and judgments of others define who you are instead of rising above that pain to be the person you were meant to be. No matter what has happened in your past, you are still capable of becoming a better version of who you are at this moment. Think right. Believe the voice inside of you that speaks the truth. You are a divine marvel. Act like it. Live like it. — Toni Sorenson

It was a tragic end to a heroic life. — Chris Kyle

She was murdered by rebels.' He took in her unconcealed look of shock. 'So there you go. Something for you to celebrate.'
Magnus turned away from her, ready to find solace in his chambers, but the princess grabbed his arm to stop him. He sent a dark look at her over his shoulder.
'I would never celebrate death, no matter whose it is,' she said, her gaze filled with anger and something else. Something that looked vaguely like sympathy.
'Come now, I'm sure you wouldn't mourn any Damora.'
'I know very well what it's like to lose a parent in a tragic way.'
'Oh, yes, we have so much in common. Maybe we should get married. — Morgan Rhodes

What white Americans do not face when they regard a Negro reality- the fact that life is tragic. Life is tragic simply because he earth turn and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps, the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves all he beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, race, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which us rye inly fact we have. — James Baldwin

You know Americans are obsessed with life and death and rebirth, that's the American Cycle. You know, awakening, tragic, horrible death and then Phoenix rising from the ashes. That's the American story, again and again. — Billy Corgan

The kind of death you should mourn over is the one that happen when you abort your potentials prematurely! Life without purpose is a tragedy! — Israelmore Ayivor

Living is really hard, but death is forever. We're all going to die eventually, so what's your rush' Even if you think committing suicide will make you seem tragic and romantic and cool, you'll never know what happened anyway. Don't you want to know how your life was supposed to turn out. Wouldn't you like to see what you're made of? — Susan M. Brackney

With mind distracted, never thinking, "Death is coming,"
To slave away on the pointless business of mundane life,
And then to come out empty
it is a tragic error. (116)
trans by Robert Thurman — Huston Smith

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

At the end to death I must go,
Finishing a real tragic and funny show. — Mohit K. Misra

It's a tragic fact to die in an accident — Gabrielle Zevin

Just because [butterflies'] lives were short didn't mean they were tragic ... See, they have a beautiful life. — Lisa Genova

Only comedians can talk about death, life, God and Virgin Mary. If I was a tragic actor, I couldn't allow myself. But with this accent I can do it. I can talk with death in person because I am a clown. Yes. And I am proud to be a clown - very much. — Roberto Benigni

It is not death or dying that is tragic, but rather to have existed without fully participating in life- that is the deepest personal tragedy. — Edward Abbey

His mother's death, nearly thirty years ago, had been tragic and sorrowful in a way that was no longer possible. Tragedy, he perceived, belonged to the ancient time, to a time when there was still privacy, love, and friendship, and when the members of a family stood by one another without needing to know the reason. His mother's memory tore at his heart because she had died loving him, when he was too young and selfish to love her in return, and because somehow, he did not remember how, she had sacrificed herself to a conception of loyalty that was private and unalterable. Such things, he saw, could not happen today. Today there were fear, hatred, and pain, but no dignity of emotion, no deep or complex sorrows. All this he seemed to see in the large eyes of his mother and his sister, looking up at him through the green water, hundreds of fathoms down and still sinking. — George Orwell

Such needless death, so unnecessary, so tragic — Amy Harmon

In Shakespearean tragedy the main source of the convulsion which produces suffering and death is never good: good contributes to this convulsion only from its tragic implication with its opposite in one and the same character. — Andrew Coyle Bradley

The three touchstones that woke Buddha up - sickness, old age, and death - are a pretty good place to start when crafting a tragic tale. And if we need to get more specific: heartbreak, destruction, miscomprehension, natural disasters, betrayal, and the waste of human potential. — Paul Di Filippo

It is not possible, for a poet, writing in any language, to protect himself from the tragic elements in human life ... [ellipsis in source] Illness, old age, and death
subjects as ancient as humanity
these are the subjects that the poet must speak of very nearly from the first moment that he begins to speak. — Louise Bogan

Early on in my life I comprehended that death is the most tragic event in our life. Events of early Monday July 14, 1958 [Coup in Iraq] had convinced me that hate is the most destructive force in our life. — Ala Bashir

The death of my daughter is a subject I talk about briefly because there is nothing more tragic. — Ben Vereen

In a distant age and climate, the tragic scene of the death of Hosein will awaken the sympathy of the coldest reader. — Edward Gibbon

It started when we were little kids.
Free spirits, but already
tormented by our own hands
given to us by our parents.
We got together and wrote on desks
and slept in laundry rooms near snowy mountains
and slipped through whatever
cracks we could find,
minds altered, we didn't falter
in portraving hysterical and
tragic characters in a smog
filled universe.
we loved the dirty city
and the journeys away from it.
We had not yet been or seen our friends, selves,
chase tails round and round in downward spirals,
leaving trail of irretrievable,
vital life juice behind.
Still, the
brothersbloodcomradespartnerfamilycuzz
was impenetrable
and we lived inside it
laughing with no clothes, and
everything experimental 'till
death was upon us.
In our face, mortality. — Anthony Kiedis

The dimension of space and time, represented by what is transpiring in the here and now, is all that we will ever know. Unlike the continuum of perpetual time and infinite space, everything that we know will experience disruption, dissolution, disintegration, dismemberment, and death. The inevitability of our ending represents the tragic comedy of life. Much of our needless suffering emanates from resisting our impermanence rather than embracing our fate. Only through acceptance of the events and situations that occur in a person's life including suffering, and by releasing our attachments, will a person ever experience enlightenment. — Kilroy J. Oldster

4. The whole Icarus-flying-too-near-the-sun-and-plummeting-out-of-the-sky thing? That's real. Same with the Sirens who lure you to death with their irresistible song, and the odalisque so beautiful anyone who looks at her dies. And remember: as badass as Grendel was, Beowulf hadn't seen anything until he went up against Grendel's mother. I know, I know - I thought they were just myths too. But the fact is, sometimes, if you don't want to meet a tragic end, your only option is to avert your gaze, tie yourself to the mast with cotton in your ears, or ascend a little less close to the Vault of Heaven. — Todd Hanson

The Nazis are not justified by saying,
Don't you know that there is more than just the issue of the Jews? The issues are more complex than that! What of the poor in this country, who cannot afford housing? What about the sick and malnourished? Don't you care about these people? Don't you claim to be a follower of Jesus?!
Supporting a murderous political agenda with such an argument is tragic!
And what do we know about Obama? He is the single most anti-life proponent that has ever run for the office of president. — Joseph Bayly

O Luke, I would not lose thee as I lost
Darth Vader. His betrayal made my life
A bleak and tragic thing. Thy loss unto
The dark would make my death a hellish, cold
Eternity. — Ian Doescher

The story of a life can be as long or as short as the teller wishes. Whether the life is tragic or enlightened, the classic gravestone inscription marking simply the dates of birth and death has, in its brevity, much to recommend it. — Michel Houellebecq

What has survived of Garfield, however, is far more powerful than a portrait, a statue, or even the fragment of his spine that tells the tragic story of his assassination. The horror and senselessness of his death, and the wasted promise of his life, brought tremendous change to the country he loved - change that, had it come earlier, almost certainly would have spared his life. — Candice Millard

So much of the literature we had to read for high school English class was filled with victimized, tragic, symbolic women who spurred the plot forward with their inevitable shunning/death/shunning-followed-by-pregnancy-followed-by-death timelines. — Libba Bray

A person desires to leave a mark of goodness on earth before death arrives. All artists are creators in the face of death. All of life a person seeks to salvage something worthwhile and enduring from living a tragic life. We must eventually dance with death. A person begins on a road leading to personal enlightenment by giving up false beliefs, quelling destructive desires, overcoming fearfulness, and by seeking truth. In order to lead an evocative life full of truth, I must stop living a false life, conquer my fearfulness, and begin expressing love, wonder, and gratitude for all the beauty and splendor of the world. — Kilroy J. Oldster

What is death? A "tragic mask." Turn it and examine it. See, it does not bite. The poor body must be separated from the spirit either now or later, as it was separated from it before. Why, then, are you troubled, if it be separated now? for if it is not separated now, it will be separated afterward. Why? That the period of the universe may be completed, for it has need of the present, and of the future, and of the past. What is pain? A mask. Turn it and examine it. The poor flesh is moved roughly, then, on the contrary, smoothly. If this does not satisfy you, the door is open: if it does, bear. For the door ought to be open for all occasions; and so we have no trouble. — Epictetus

Allowed to cast themselves for great tragic roles, they were experiencing the exhilaration felt by great tragic actors. It was not lack of control, lack of taste, lack of knowledge that accounted for permission of what was not permitted in the West. Rather was it the reverse. Our people could not have handled patients full of the dangerous thoughts of death and love; these people had such resources that they did not need to empty their patients of such freight. — Rebecca West

It's easy to forget, given her scandal-tinged life and tragic death, how incredibly talented Whitney Houston was. She holds the world record as the most-awarded female act of all time, with over 415 major recognitions during her career. She is the only artist to chart seven consecutive number one songs. — Charles Duhigg

It has taken me four years to figure this out.
If we live long enough, we all will experience this.
Don't ever predetermine how you think that you should feel on an anniversary of a tragic event in your life, such as a death of a loved one, or on a holiday after such an event.
Each year starts out with 365 days, and I will be damned if I am giving up even one of them to misery. — JohnA Passaro

Nothing seems so tragic to one who is old as the death of one who is young, and this alone proves that life is a good thing. — Zoe Akins

Marena," he said with an effort, "Marena ... " He did not recognize her. His voice failed. — Felix Salten

Only through the group, I realised - through sharing the suffering of the group - could the body reach that height of existence that the individual alone could never attain. And for the body to reach that level at which the divine might be glimpsed, a dissolution of individuality was necessary. The tragic quality of the group was also necessary, the quality that constantly raised the group out of the abandon and torpor into which it was prone to lapse, leading it to an ever-mounting shared suffering and so to death, which was the ultimate suffering. The group must be open to death - which meant, of course, that it must be a community of warriors. — Yukio Mishima

Is tragic to see the wounded being used as political props. This must be done to satisfy the subconscious guilt of those who supported the war and are morally responsible for all the suffering. Without this, the promoters and instigators of aggressive wars would experience the guilt that would come with facing the truth. Few ever admit their errors in judgment nor lament their actions that brought death, destruction, and heartache. — Ron Paul

The relativism which is not willing to speak about truth but only about 'what is true for me' is an evasion of the serious business of living. It is the mark of a tragic loss of nerve in our contemporary culture. It is a preliminary symptom of death. — Lesslie Newbigin

He was outwardly calm but inwardly bleeding to death. — Matthew Pearl

With Pale Women in Maryland
With pale women in Maryland,
Passing the proud and tragic pastures,
And stupefied with love
And the stupendous burdens of the foreign trees,
As all before us lived, dazed
With overabundant love in the reach of the Chesapeake,
Past the tobacco warehouse, through our dark lives
Like those before, we move to the death we love
With pale women in Maryland. — Robert Bly

It is hard to look away from the swirl of media that the untimely and tragic death of Heath Ledger has engendered, and the Internet has jacked the frenzy into overdrive. — Kara Swisher

A pall fell over the room. A black shroud of disease and deathbeds and all the worst things from all the worst places. This mutant world, a tragic portmanteau, the unnatural marriage of two roots as different as could be. 'And do you, Ability take Vitriol to be your lawfully wedded suffix?' I wanted to scream objections to the unholy matrimony, but nothing came out. My mouth was clammy and dry, full of sand. Dr. Wilson smiled on, rambling about the benefits of Abilitol while my father nodded like a toy bobblehead immune to the deepening shadow in the room.

As they spoke, I caught my mother's eye. I could tell by her face that she felt the deepening shadow too.

Neither of us smiled.
Neither of us spoke.
We felt the shadow together. — David Arnold

When death becomes an escape, when it becomes attractive, the purpose of life is fulfilled. To teach one it's futility, it's worthlessness, that is the purpose of life. Incongruously, its value lies in having imparted that lesson.
Bhanggi — Faiqa Mansab

A very beautiful honey blonde, Sharon Tate, looked into the eyes of the man who the evidence shows just four and a half months later would order her tragic and violent death. — Vincent Bugliosi

You
see, I came into this world just like I'm assuming
you did - full of excitement and
promise. I wanted to do so much good work,
help so many people, and give as much as I
could to those who needed me. But then I
learned a very harsh lesson - the world
doesn't always give back. I am not a tragic case of the world; I am
the world - cruel, unfair, and not a fairy tale.
People are not born heroes or villains;
they're created by the people around them.
And one day when your bright-eyed and
bushy-tailed view of life gets its first taste of
reality, when bitterness and anger first run
through your veins, you'll discover that you
are just like me - and it'll scare you to death. — Chris Colfer

And the more I thought of what had happened, the wilder and darker it grew. I reviewed the whole extraordinary sequence of events as I rattled on through the silent gas-lit streets. There was the original problem: that at least was pretty clear now. The death of Captain Morstan, the sending of the pearls, the advertisement, the letter, - we had had light upon all those events. They had only led us, however, to a deeper and far more tragic mystery. The Indian treasure, the curious plan found among Morstan's baggage, the strange scene at Major Sholto's death, the rediscovery of the treasure immediately followed by the murder of the discoverer, the very singular accompaniments to the crime, the footsteps, the remarkable weapons, the words upon the card, corresponding with those upon Captain Morstan's chart, - here was indeed a labyrinth in which a man less singularly endowed than my fellow-lodger might well despair of ever finding the clue. — Arthur Conan Doyle

I think a couple things, I mean, you know, the tragic death of Matthew Shepard occurred in Wyoming. Colorado and Wyoming are very similar. We have some of the same, you know, backwards thinking in the kind of rural Western areas you see in, you know, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico. — John Hickenlooper

I think about death all the time, but only in a romantic, self-serving way, beginning, most often, with my tragic illness and ending with my funeral. I see my brother squatting beside my grave, so racked by guilt that he's unable to stand. "If only I'd paid him back that twenty-five thousand dollars I borrowed," he says. I see Hugh, drying his eyes on the sleeve of his suit jacket, then crying even harder when he remembers I bought it for him. — David Sedaris

The suffering and calamity are, moreover, exceptional. They befall a conspicuous person. They are themselves of some striking kind. They are also, as a rule, unexpected, and contrasted with previous happiness or glory. A tale, for example, of a man slowly worn to death by disease, poverty, little cares, sordid vices, petty persecutions, however piteous or dreadful it might be, would not be tragic in the Shakespearean sense. — A. C. Bradley

This death to the logic of emotional commitments of our chance moment in the world of space and time, this recognition of, the shift of our emphasis to, the universal life that throbs and celebrates its victory in the very kiss of our own annihilation, this amor fati, 'love of fate,' love of the fate that is inevitably death, constitutes the experience of the tragic art ... — Joseph Campbell

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

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death
ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. — James Baldwin

Kidnapped by a vampire, death by a squid. How tragic. — Abigail Gibbs

When we look at the situation in Ferguson, Missouri and the tragic death of Michael Brown, we are reminded of the importance of who we elect to our city councils, who sits on our local board of education committees, who we pick to represent us in Congress, in the Senate and more. — Al Sharpton

Every crime scene is a piece of a sprawling man-made puzzle. Each one begins with a tragic death that leads to heartbreak, tumbles into forgiveness, sparks anger, fuels fear and triggers a vast array of other emotions that sometimes lead to additional chaos and heart-rending calamity. So it's not enough to take a picture of a crime scene that showcases a couple of crime lab technicians laying out evidence markers around a body, not when there is so much more that surrounds the darkest moments of life. — Maggie Ybarra

In the letter he left for the coroner he had explained his reasoning (for suicide): that life is a gift bestowed without anyone asking for it; that the thinking person has a philosophical duty to examine both the nature of life and the conditions it comes with; and that if this person decides to renounce the gift no one asks for, it is the moral and human duty to act on the consequences of that decision ... Alex showed me a clipping from the Cambridge Evening News. 'Tragic Death of "Promising" Young Man.' ... The verdict of the coroner's inquest had been that Adrian Flinn (22) had killed himself 'while the balance of his mind was disturbed.' ... The law, and society, and religion all said it was impossible to be sane, healthy, and kill yourself. Perhaps those authorities feared that the suicide's reasoning might impugn the nature and value of life as organised by the state which paid the coroner? — Julian Barnes