Tragic Hero Quotes & Sayings

Perhaps Aristotle's most widely-read work is his esoteric treatise on aesthetics, the Poetics. According to his analysis of tragic poetry (a section on comedy was either lost or never completed), the theatrical audience experiences katharsis ("purgation") of the heightened emotions of pity and fear as the tragic hero, a basically good but flawed aristocrat, is brought down by his own "error of judgment. — The New York Times

If I was white I would have been like John Wayne ... I feel like a tragic hero in a Shakespeare play — Tupac Shakur

I was acquainted once with a gallant soldier who assured me that his only measure of courage was this: upon the first fire, in an engagement, he immediately looked upon himself as a dead man. He then bravely fought out the remainder of the day, perfectly regardless of all manner of danger, as becomes a dead man to be. So that all the life or limbs he carried back again to his tent he reckoned as clear gains, or, as he himself expressed it, so much out of the fire. — Laurence Sterne

You can never know if a person forgives you when you wrong them. Therefore it is existentially important to you. It is a question you are intensely concerned with. Neither can you know whether a person loves you. It's something you just have to believe or hope. But these things are more important to you than the fact that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees. You don't think about the law of cause and effect or about modes of perception when you are in the middle of your first kiss. — Jostein Gaarder

God has never made a mistake. Ever. — Ray Lewis

Romantic haste in drama brings
tears and sighs when the hero dies
but the curtain fall is final
when in life we take the tragic way
The sunset too is a glorious thing
but with it ends the day. — C. P. Klapper

She can't keep writing about what a tragic little hero I am, it'll get boring. — J.K. Rowling

Such exceptional suffering and calamity, then, affecting the hero, and-we must now add-generally extending far and wide beyond him, so as to make the whole scene a scene of woe, are an essential ingredient in tragedy and a chief source of the tragic emotions, and especially of pity. But the proportions of this ingredient, and the direction taken by tragic pity, will naturally vary greatly. — A. C. Bradley

This sectarianism is an attempt to leap away from the narrow path of the paradox and become a tragic hero at a cheap price. The tragic hero expresses the universal and sacrifices himself for it. The sectarian punchinello, instead of that, has a private theatre, i.e. several good friends and comrades who represent the universal — Soren Kierkegaard

The hero, the villain, or modern tragic character. A modern Achilles who inflicts his own arrow. "The Wings of the Seraph — Jeffrey LeBlanc

I don't think the Hulk is a superhero. He's the first Marvel character who is a tragic monster. Really an anti-hero. — Ang Lee

To joke in the face of danger is the supreme politeness, a delicate refusal to cast oneself as a tragic hero; panache is therefore a timid heroism, like the smile with which one excuses one's superiority. — Edmond Rostand

For a while he'd tried molding himself into the tragic Romantic hero, brooding and staring clench-jawed off into space as he composed dark verse in his head. But it turned out that trying to appear tragic in Incontinence, Indiana, was redundant, and his mother kept shouting at him and making him forget his rhymes. "Tommy, if you keep grinding your teeth like that, they'll wear away and you'll have to have dentures like Aunt Ester." Tommy only wished his beard was as heavy as Aunt Ester's
then he could stare out over the moors while he stroked it pensively. — Christopher Moore

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

Hamartia (n.) The flaw that precipitates the destruction of a tragic hero. Hamartia is a noble word, with a fine history (the OED says also that it refers particularly to Aristotle's Poetics). If you have any decency or soul, please do not use this word to refer to your own weakness for something such as chocolate. also — Ammon Shea

The tragic hero usurps the function of the gods and attempts to remake the world. — Helen Gardner

Butterflies are nature's tragic heroes. They live most of their lives being completely ordinary. And then, one day, the unexpected happens. They burst from their cocoons in a blaze of colors and become utterly extraordinary. It is the shortest phase of their lives, but it holds the greatest importance. It shows us how empowering change can be. — Kelseyleigh Reber

Moorcock's interlinked 'Eternal Champion' series is a constant source of enjoyment. Of its tragic hero incarnations, my favourite is 'Elric of Melnibone,' and the best book has to be 'Stormbringer.' And as for that other sword, Excalibur? Pah! Use it to spread your butter. — Neal Asher

Solitude is the rebel of the freedom. — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Throughout his life Newton must have devoted at least as much attention to chemistry and theology as to mathematics ... — W. W. Rouse Ball

The tragic hero prefers death to prudence. The comedian prefers playing tricks to winning. Only the villain really plays to win. — Mason Cooley

I can listen no longer in silence.
I must speak to you by such means
As are within my reach.
You pierce my soul. — Jane Austen

If this were a fairy tale, this would be the part where the fishboy appears and Diana shoots him through the heart. Because he is a tragic hero, he's our fucking Gatsby, and he lived for his fish and he has to die for his fish. He would never let my fake authority, condoning his abandonment, making up rules about what's okay just to save his life, convince him to give up his family. He would never leave.
He would know that without him, none of us will be as good. Me, without a friend; and the fish, without a brother; and the island, without a story; and Diana, without her something real, we will all be a little bit less than we were before we knew him.
So he wouldn't leave. Not until I could come with him. And I have never been less able to leave than I am now.
But this isn't a fairy tale, and he doesn't appear. We stand here for a long time.
He really left.
Because it was all that we could do. — Hannah Moskowitz

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

The catastrophe of the tragic hero thus becomes the catastrophe of the fifth-century man; all his furious energy and intellectual daring drive him on to this terrible discovery of his fundamental ignorance - he is not the measure of all things but the thing measured and found wanting. — Robert Fagles

Major Richard Bong was an example of the tragic and terrible price we must pay to maintain principles of human rights, of greater value than life itself. This gallant Air Force hero will be remembered because he made his final contribution to aviation in the dangerous role of test pilot of an untried experimental plane, a deed that places him among the stout-hearted pioneers who gave their lives in the conquest of sky and space. — Eddie Rickenbacker

Lestat might be the hero of the Vampire Chronicles, but this one, Louis, was the tragic heart. Yet he seemed at long last to have achieved a kind of peace with the ghastly realities of his existence and the existence of all those around him who outranked him in power but not necessarily in insight or wisdom. — Anne Rice

I have a fetish," Kami claimed. "For scars," she added, and Jared's mouth quirked. His smile still looked incredulous, but in a different way. "Obviously my first choice would be Mr. Stearn, who was in World War II and is by all reports absolutely covered in scars. Hot, am I right? But alas, our love can never be."
"That's tragic," said Jared.
"He's like a hundred years old, I'd kill him with my enthusiasm," said Kami. "I couldn't live with myself. He's a hero who fought for our country. You'll have to do."
"I'm a little reassured," Jared told her. He laughed, a slow, wonderful sound, warm as the line of his body against hers. "But I'm mostly appalled. I had no idea of the massive age range my competition apparently fits into. Anyone from the age of thirteen to a hundred? — Sarah Rees Brennan

I have brought you a hero's fate, and a hero's fate is never happy. It is never anything but tragic. — Rick Riordan

Socrates, the dialectical hero of the Platonic drama, reminds us of the kindred nature of the Euripidean hero who must defend his actions with arguments and counterarguments and in the process often risks the loss of our tragic pity; for who could mistake the optimistic element in the nature of the dialectic, which celebrates a triumph with every conclusion and can breathe only in cool clarity and consciousness. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Listen, my friend, there are two races of beings. The masses teeming and happy - common clay, if you like - eating, breeding, working, counting their pennies; people who just live; ordinary people; people you can't imagine dead. And then there are the others - the noble ones, the heroes. The ones you can quite well imagine lying shot, pale and tragic; one minute triumphant with a guard of honor, and the next being marched away between two gendarmes — Jean Anouilh

In books, often the bad guys have a story too, and sometimes it is just as tragic as the hero's. — Jennifer Megan Varnadore

The truly tragic kind of suffering is the kind produced and defiantly insisted upon by the hero himself so that, instead of making him better, it makes him worse and when he dies he is not reconciled to the law but defiant, that is, damned. Lear is not a tragic hero, Othello is. — W. H. Auden

Acting is the great love of my life. It gives you permission to use all parts of yourself. Permission to be the hero, the love interest, the comedian, the villain. Transformation excites me. So does truth. Nothing is more thrilling, hilarious, and tragic than the truth. Those things motivated me to become an actor. Also, they always have the best food on set. — Blake Griffin

Maybe being numb to the mediocrity of one's life is the price people pay for true happiness. Maybe bliss blinds a person to the fact that they could be something more than normal. Maybe if everyone grew up in happy houses with happy lives void of pain, we'd still be living in caves and beating animals to death with a club to eat. — Selina Rosen