A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.
Commonplace people dislike tragedy because they dare not suffer and cannot exult.
I've come to realize that life is not a musical comedy, it's a Greek tragedy.
I've never thought of my characters as being sad. On the contrary, they are full of life. They didn't choose tragedy. Tragedy chose them.
In this world there are two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst.
It is restful, tragedy, because one knows that there is no more lousy hope left. You know you're caught, caught at last like a rat with all the world on its back. And the only thing left to do is shout — not moan, or complain, but yell out at the top of your voice whatever it was you had to say. What you've never said before. What perhaps you don't even know till now.
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.
It was no great tragedy being Judy Garland's daughter. I had tremendously interesting childhood years — except they had little to do with being a child.
It's not the tragedies that kill us, it's the messes.
Laughter is ever young, whereas tragedy, except the very highest of all, quickly becomes haggard.
None but a poet can write a tragedy. For tragedy is nothing less than pain transmuted into exaltation by the alchemy of poetry.
One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon–instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy.
Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.
The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means.
The closer a man approaches tragedy the more intense is his concentration of emotion upon the fixed point of his commitment, which is to say the closer he approaches what in life we call fanaticism.
The greatest tragedy in America is not the destruction of our natural resources, though that tragedy is great. The truly great tragedy is the destruction of our human resources by our failure to fully utilize our abilities, which means that most men and women go to their graves with their music still in them.
The little word is has its tragedies: it marries and identifies different things with the greatest innocence; and yet no two are ever identical, and if therein lies the charm of wedding them and calling them one, therein too lies the danger.
The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives — the death of genuine feeling, the death of inspired response, the awareness that makes it possible to feel the pain or the glory of other men in yourself.
The true end of tragedy is to purify the passions.