Tragicomic Quotes & Sayings

You can increase or decrease the distance between yourself and an obvious danger, but the tragicomic thing here is that when you increase this distance, you approach to another danger simply because everywhere is full of dangers, clear or hidden! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

We all live in a tragicomic situation, a life that is in part absurd simply because it is not of our own making. We are born into a disordered world, into a family we did not choose, into circumstances we would have had somewhat improved, and we are even called by a name we did not select. (40) — Sheldon B. Kopp

I think the best comedy is tragicomic. Yeah, I suppose if you were to look at everything I've done, there is a bit of a black streak through all of it. It's not deliberate: it's what makes me laugh, and there's a fine tradition of it, especially in Ireland. — Sharon Horgan

gone and couldn't protect her, — Selena Kitt

Bless their dear little hearts!" said Mrs. Mann with emotion, "they're as well as can be, the dears! Of course, except the two that died last week. — Charles Dickens

If you ask someone if they like music, they look at you strangely. It seems to be a universal given. Like asking someone if they like breathing. It is like breathing. Or air, rather. Flowing without and within. A matrix within which our lives are set. The setting for the tableware of our beings. — Jane Siberry

Great works of art in all cultures succeed in capturing within the constraints of their form both the pathos of anguish and a vision of its resolution. Take, for example, the languorous sentences of Proust or the haiku of Basho, the late quartets and sonatas of Beethoven, the tragicomic brushwork of Sengai or the daunting canvases of Rothko, the luminous self-portraits of Rembrandt and Hakuin. Such works achieve their resolution not through consoling or romantic images whereby anguish is transcended. They accept anguish without being overwhelmed by it. They reveal anguish as that which gives beauty its dignity and depth. — Stephen Batchelor

President Kennedy was a voracious reader and was forever coming up with fascinating bits of information. — Pierre Salinger

Had Marx understood the implications of the principles of capitalistic distribution which presented themselves to him as "appearances" only, he might have become a revolutionary capitalist instead of a revolutionary socialist. — Louis O. Kelso

Go to countries where you don't speak the language. Eat food that looks like you may not like it. Read all of the holy books. — Michael Skolnik

Simple class-based bigotry that infected truth in the liberal media. And he knew the difference between those same propaganda dicks who distinguished between blue collar and white collar workers with the old Soviet-catchphrase, "Working Class," as if human beings were broken down into different species according to their education or wealth or jobs. He hated that jarringly divisive phrase as the kind of Cold War propaganda that launched "class struggle" and "people's democracy" as American political concerns, among the evil Communist movement's greatest coups. It was something he only heard from the so-called "elites" but never back home in the old neighborhood. "Old Harbor Village housing projects. — Michael J. Stedman

I study long-married couples and decide that wives are like bras: sometimes the most matronly are the most supportive. — Helen Ellis

The blues is relevant today because when we look down through the corridors of time, the black American interpretation of tragicomic hope in the face of dehumanizing hate and oppression will be seen as the only kind of hope that has any kind of maturity in a world of overwhelming barbarity and bestiality. That barbarity is found not just in the form of terrorism but in the form of the emptiness of our lives - in terms of the wasted human potential that we see around the world. In this sense, the blues is a great democratic contribution of black people to world history. — Cornel West

In this sense every serious choice has a tragicomic dimension. For it is impossible to be a human being without choosing, and it is impossible to choose without value denials, and it is impossible to deny values without guilt. That is a very simple though, but it forms the core definition of guilt: an awareness of significant value loss for which I know myself to be responsible. Guilt is the self-knowing of moral loss. — Thomas C. Oden

Said the Knave, I didn't write it and they can't prove that I did; there's no name signed at the end. — Lewis Carroll

It is not appropriate to act and speak like men asleep. — Heraclitus

All the humiliating, tragicomic, heartbreaking things happened to me in my girlhood, and nothing makes me happier than to realize I cannot possibly relive my youth. — Ilka Chase

Unsophisticated'," he said, cracking himself up again, " 'but nubile'. Jesus, where do they get that
stuff? Nubile."
"Try to contain your hilarity." Sophia sat behind the desk in her office in the villa and continued to
study the models Kris had chosen for the ads. "And I'd appreciate it if you'd warn me the next time
you decide to add a mystery vintage to the selection."
"Last-minute candidate. And it was in the name of science. — Nora Roberts

It is a tragicomic fact that our proper upbringing has become an ally of the secret police. ( ... ) The "Tell the truth!" imperative drummed into us so automatically that we feel ashamed of lying even to a secret policeman. — Milan Kundera