105 Tragic Quotes On Life

Life is an intricate tapestry woven with moments of joy and sorrow, triumph and tragedy. Throughout history, poets, philosophers, and thinkers have tried to capture the profound essence of these contrasting emotions through words. In the shadow of life's most joyful experiences often lurk moments of loss and heartache, which can be both overwhelming and transformative. This curated collection of 105 tragic quotes on life delves into the depths of human experience, offering reflection, solace, and perhaps a renewed perspective. Whether you're seeking comfort in shared feelings or yearning for insights into the human condition, these quotes illuminate the poignant beauty found in life's darker moments. Join us as we explore the powerful expressions of tragedy that resonate with our deepest emotions and connect us all.

1. “We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.” - Stephen Jay Gould

2. “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” - Joseph Stalin

3. “The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.” - Horace Walpole

4. “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” - Mel Brooks

5. “A tragedy is a tragedy, and at the bottom, all tragedies are stupid. Give me a choice and I'll take A Midsummer Night's Dream over Hamlet every time. Any fool with steady hands and a working set of lungs can build up a house of cards and then blow it down, but it takes a genius to make people laugh.” - Stephen King

6. “Every reiteration of the idea that _nothing matters_ debases the human spirit.Every reiteration of the idea that there is no drama in modern life, there is only dramatization, that there is no tragedy, there is only unexplained misfortune, debases us. It denies what we know to be true. In denying what we know, we are as a nation which cannot remember its dreams--like an unhappy person who cannot remember his dreams and so denies that he does dream, and denies that there are such things as dreams.” - David Mamet

7. “Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it.” - Lenny Bruce

8. “There is no simple explanation for anything important any of us do, and the human tragedy, or the human irony, consists in the necessity of living with the consequences of actions performed under the pressure of compulsions so obscure we do not and cannot understand them.” - Hugh MacLennan

9. “There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.” - George Bernard Shaw

10. “All those who try to unveil the mysteries always have tragic lives. At the end they are always punished.” - Anais Nin

11. “Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless. . .” - Oscar Wilde

12. “Young men's love then lies not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.” - William Shakespeare

13. “The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or joy.” - Alan Lightman

14. “The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present.” - Alan Lightman

15. “A darkness different from Ember's, but just as frightening...” - Jeanne DuPrau

16. “Great tragedies have great consequences. They ripple through the fabric of this world and the next. When the loss is too great for either world to bear, Everlost absorbs the shock, like a cushion between the two.” - Neal Shusterman

17. “Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” - William Butler Yeats

18. “Even amidst tragedy there is laughter, sometimes farce. The degree of farce depends on who is running the tragedy.” - Daniel Prokop

19. “Weeping is not the same thing as crying. It takes your whole body to weep, and when it's over, you feel like you don't have any bones left to hold you up.” - Sarah Ockler

20. “I had hoped that the rest of the world would stand still while I got myself together again, but Chaos and Tragedy had marched into other lives close to mine as well.” - Julie Metz

21. “That was the day my whole world went black. Air looked black. Sun looked black. I laid up in bed and stared at the black walls of my house….Took three months before I even looked out the window, see the world still there. I was surprised to see the world didn’t stop.” - Kathryn Stockett

22. “What give all that is tragic, whatever its form, the characteristic of the sublime, is the first inkling of the knowledge that the world and life can give no satisfaction, and are not worth our investment in them. The tragic spirit consists in this. Accordingly it leads to resignation.” - Arthur Schopenhauer

23. “Finish, good lady; the bright day is done, And we are for the Dark.” - William Shakespeare

24. “The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy. ” - Steven Weinberg

25. “Va, je ne te hais point.” - Pierre Corneille

26. “Zu früh, befürcht ich; denn mein Herz erbangtUnd ahnet ein Verhängnis, welches, nochVerborgen in den Sternen, heute NachtBei dieser Lustbarkeit den furchtbarn ZeitlaufBeginnen und das Ziel des läst'gen Lebens,Das meine Brust verschließt, mir kürzen wirdDurch irgendeinen Frevel frühen Todes.Doch er, der mir zur Fahrt das Steuer lenkt,Richt' auch mein Segel!I fear, too early. For my mind misgivesSome consequence, yet hanging in the stars,Shall bitterly begin his fearful dateWith this night's revels, and expire the termOf a despisèd life, closed in my breast,By some vile forfeit of untimely death.But He that hath the steerage of my courseDirect my sail!Romeo: Act I, Scene 4” - William Shakespeare

27. “Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.” - Jean Racine

28. “And wonder, dread and warhave lingered in that landwhere loss and love in turnhave held the upper hand.” - Simon Armitage

29. “A lot of you cared, just not enough.” - Jay Asher

30. “The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.” - Terri Garey

31. “The poets say some moths will do anything out of love for a flame[...]The moth takes off again, and we both step back, because he's circling at eye level now and seems to have lost rudder control, smacking into the wall on each round. He circles lower and lower, spinning around the candle in tighter revolutions, like a soap sud over an open drain. A few times he seems to touch the flame, but dances off unhurt.Then he ignites like a ball of hair, curling into an oily puff of fumes with a hiss. The candle flame flickers and dims for a moment, then burns as bright as before.Moth Smoke Lingers.” - Mohsin Hamid

32. “It is the custom on the stage: in all good, murderous melodramas: to present the tragic and the comic scenes, in as regular alternation, as the layers of red and white in a side of streaky, well-cured bacon. The hero sinks upon his straw bed, weighed down by fetters and misfortunes; and, in the next scene, his faithful but unconscious squire regales the audience with a comic song. We behold, with throbbing bosoms, the heroine in the grasp of a proud and ruthless baron: her virtue and her life alike in danger; drawing forth a dagger to preserve the one at the cost of the other; and, just as our expectations are wrought up to the highest pitch, a whistle is heard: and we are straightway transported to the great hall of the castle: where a grey-headed seneschal sings a funny chorus with a funnier body of vassals, who are free of all sorts of places from church vaults to palaces, and roam about in company, carolling perpetually.Such changes appear absurd; but they are not so unnatural as they would seem at first sight. The transitions in real life from well-spread boards to death-beds, and from mourning weeds to holiday garments, are not a whit less startling; only, there, we are busy actors, instead of passive lookers-on; which makes a vast difference. The actors in the mimic life of the theatre, are blind to violent transitions and abrupt impulses of passion or feeling, which, presented before the eyes of mere spectators, are at once condemned as outrageous and preposterous.” - Charles Dickens

33. “No man, proclaimed Donne, is an Island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature, and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived, and then, by some means or another, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakes—forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'd mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection), but still unique.” - Neil Gaiman

34. “Whatever the response to loss and tragedy, the experience seems to boil down to one journey--searching for Jesus.” - W. Scott Lineberry

35. “As a lord was heldfor the strength of his body and stoutness of heart.Much lore he learned, and loved wisdombut fortune followed him in few desires;oft wrong and awry what he wrought turned;what he loved he lost, what he longed for he won not;and full friendship he found not easily,nor was lightly loved for his looks were sad.He was gloom-hearted, and glad seldomfor the sundering sorrow that filled his youth...(On Turin Turambar - The Children of Hurin)” - J.R.R. Tolkien

36. “„Bin weder Fräulein, weder schön,kann ungeleitet nach Hause gehn.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

37. “He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

38. “Our meeting was inevitable. Our love was terminal. But God and Goddess damn it, our daughter was no mistake at all.” - Edward Morris

39. “Were prayers of murderers, when fighting on the “right side” of the war, ever heard—let alone answered?” - Kristina McMorris

40. “As you set out on your journey to Ithaca,pray that your journey be a long one,filled with adventure, filled with discovery.Laestrygonians and Cyclopes,the angry Poseidon--do not fear them:you'll never find such things on your wayunless your sight is set high, unless a rareexcitement stirs your spirit and your body.The Laestrygonians and Cyclopes,the savage Poseidon--you won't meet themso long as you do not admit them to your soul,as long as your soul does not set them before you.Pray that your road is a long one.May there be many summer morningswhen with what pleasure, with what joy,you enter harbors never seen before.May you stop at Phoenician stations of trade to buy fine things,mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,and voluptuous perfumes of every kind--buy as many voluptuous perfumes as you can.And may you go to many Egyptian citiesto learn and learn from those who know.Always keep Ithaca in your mind.You are destined to arrive there.But don't hurry your journey at all.Far better if it takes many years,and if you are old when you anchor at the island,rich with all you have gained on the way,not expecting that Ithaca will give you wealth.Ithaca has given you a beautiful journey.Without her you would never have set out.She has no more left to give you.And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not mocked you.As wise as you have become, so filled with experience,you will have understood what these Ithacas signify.” - Barry B. Powell

41. “It’s not over if you’re still here,” Chronicler said. “It’s not a tragedy if you’re still alive.” - Patrick Rothfuss

42. “Disaster is a natural part of my evolution toward tragedy and dissolution.” - Chuck Palahniuk

43. “We naturally try to forget our personal tragedies, serious or trifling, as soon as possible (even something as petty as being scorned or disdained by a stranger on a street corner). We try not to carry these things over to tomorrow. It is not strange, therefore, that the whole human race is trying to put Hiroshima, the extreme point of human tragedy, completely out of mind.” - Kenzaburō Ōe

44. “As individuals die every moment, how insensitive and fabricated a love it is to set aside a day from selfish routine in prideful, patriotic commemoration of tragedy. Just as God is provoked by those who tithe simply because they feel that they must tithe, I am provoked by those who commemorate simply because they feel that they must commemorate.” - Criss Jami

45. “Sözlerinizde ki öfkeyi anlıyorum.Ama sözlerinizi değil...” - William Shakespeare

46. “If you are involved with the intensity of crescendo situations, with the intensity of tragedy, you might begin to see the humor of these situations as well. As in music, when we hear the crescendo building, suddenly if the music stops, we begin to hear the silence as part of the music.” - CHOGYAM TRUNGPA

47. “Receive what cheer you may. The night is long that never finds the day.” - William Shakespeare

48. “Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.” - William Shakespeare

49. “For maybe the first time he could remember, he was very seriously thinking about how to best kill someone he’d never even seen.” - Yukako Kabei

50. “I wish i could tell you that through the tragedy i mined some undiscovered, life-altering absolute that i could pass on to you.I didn't.The cliches apply-people are what count,life is precious,materialism is over rated, and the little things matter,live in the moment-and i can repeat them to you ad nauseam.you might listen, but you won't internalize.Tragedy hammers it hm.Tragedy etches into your soul.You might not be happier.But you will be better.” - Harlan Coben

51. “Our tragedy is their beauty. Our pain is their art. The beatific bereavement that is our life captured on a canvas for all the world to see.” - Solange nicole

52. “She nailed it to the wall with her well-aimed dart, like a butterfly with no will whose sentence has always been written.” - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

53. “The ferocity of Santiago Nasar's fate, which had collected twenty years of happiness from him not only with his death but also with the dismemberment of his body and its dispersion and extermination.” - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

54. “It really seems to me that in the midst of great tragedy, there is always the horrible possibility that something terribly funny will happen.” - Philip K. Dick

55. “And when something awful happens, the goodness stands out even more ...” - Banana Yoshimoto

56. “Poetry is only the highest eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of expression that can be given to our conception of anything, whether pleasurable or painful, mean or dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the perfect coincidence of the image and the words with the feeling we have, and of which we cannot get rid in any other way, that gives an instant "satisfaction to the thought." This is equally the origin of wit and fancy, of comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and pathetic.” - William Hazlitt

57. “A flower bloomed already wilting. Beginning its life with an early ending.” - RJ Gonzales

58. “You've faced horrors in these past weeks... I don't know which is worse. The terror you feel the first time you witness such things, or the numbness that comes after it starts to become ordinary.” - Tasha Alexander

59. “In a world plagued with commonplace tragedies, only one thing exists that truly has the power to save lives, and that is love.” - Richelle Goodrich

60. “If she was broken, she would slash him with her jagged edges, reckless as a drunkard with a shattered bottle.” - Diana Gabaldon

61. “People know your tragedies and they treat you like you’re not human. Like you’re a three-headed goat. A monster from some other planet. They keep reminding you of your pain. You see how they look at me? They’re stuck on that person I used to be. They can’t see that old life as just a moment in time that I’ve moved on from. It was a horrible life.” - Eric Jerome Dickey

62. “The whole world can become the enemy when you lose what you love.” - Kristina McMorris

63. “The world exists on thousands of different levels and just because some are more tragic than others, it doesn't make them any more valid. You fall into that way of thinking and you become so overwhelmed by the world's suffering, you go mad.” - Bella Pollen

64. “A place where something so terrible had happened shouldn't continue to exist in the world” - Ron Rash

65. “A car's not the right place for showing off to a girl—the bed's the place for that. The consequences of a mistake there are more upsetting, but less tragic.” - Sergei Lukyanenko

66. “To have the opportunity to know your parents is to have the opportunity to truly know yourself.” - Amy Denise

67. “Fifty million people die every year, six thousand die every hour, and over one hundred people die every minute. But when thousands of people die in the same place and at the same time, we are more likely to wonder why God would allow such a thing to happen.” - Steve Farrar

68. “If the bombs go off the sun will still be shining, because I've heard it said thatevery mushroom cloud has a silver lining.” - Adam Young Owl City Cave In

69. “While art thrives on the blazing colours of scandal, literature blossoms on the dark soil of tragedy.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

70. “Eğer gönüller gerçekten aydınlıksa, güneş ışığına gerek kalmaz.Başkalarının esirgediği şeyi biz kendi kalbimizde buluyoruz..” - Goethe

71. “In the center lay the exploded carcass of a lonely sperm whale that hadn't lived long enough to be disappointed with its lot.” - Douglas Adams

72. “Dear God,I hurt. Please hold me.Amen” - Richelle E. Goodrich

73. “Is there an answer to the question of why bad things happen to good people?...The response would be…to forgive the world for not being perfect, to forgive God for not making a better world, to reach out to the people around us, and to go on living despite it all…no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it has happened.” - Harold Kushner

74. “I’d accepted my judgment without question. Agreed to live a mortal life. I didn’t know my memories would come with me; didn’t know I’d relive them every day.Death would have been more merciful.” - Christine Fonseca

75. “And those who only know the non-platonic love have no need to talk of tragedy. In such love there can be no sort of tragedy.” - Leo Tolstoy

76. “We make choices every day, some of them good, some of them bad. And if we are strong enough, we live with the consequences.” - David Gemmell Lord of the Silver Bow

77. “As one who appreciated the tragic side of eating, it seemed to him that anything other than fruit for dessert implied a reprehensible frivolity, and cakes in particular ended up annihilating the flavour of quiet sadness that must be allowed to linger at the end of a great culinary performance.” - Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

78. “OEDIPUS: Upon the murderer I invoke this curse-whether he is one man and all unknown, or one of many- may he wear out his life in misery to miserable doom! If with my knowledge he lives at my hearthI pray that I myself may feel my curse. On you I lay my charge to fulfill all this for me, for the God, and for this land of ours destroyed and blighted, by the God forsaken.” - Sophocles

79. “TEIRESIAS:You have your eyes but see not where you arein sin, nor where you live, nor whom you live with.Do you know who your parents are? Unknowingyou are enemy to kith and kinin death, beneath the earth, and in this life.” - Sophocles

80. “Isn’t that the greatest tragedy? When someone rejects us, no matter how they abuse our love, we hope against reason that somehow they will come back to us.” - Suzanne E. Anderson

81. “I was thinking about all these things and more, but I wasn't really thinking about them at all. They were just there, floating around in the back of my mind, thinking about themselves. What I was really thinking about, of course, was Lucas.” - Kevin Brooks

82. “О Зевс! Зачем ты создавал жену?И это зло с его фальшивым блескомЛучам небес позволил обливать?Иль для того, чтоб род людской продолжить,Ты обойтись без женщины не мог?Иль из своих за медь и злато храмовИль серебро не мог бы сыновейТы продавать, чего который стоит,Освободив жилища нам от жен?Что жены зло, мне доказать не трудно.Родной отец за дочерью, ееВзлелеявши, чужому человекуПриданое дает - освободиЕго от дочки только. Муж, конечно,Отравленной украсив розой сад,Ей восхищен бывает. Точно куклуИль алмаз фальшивый, он женуСтарается оправить подороже.Но и мужей жена нищит, и только.И хорошо, кому попалось в домНичтожное творенье, чтоб ни злого,Ни доброго придумать не могла.Но умницы!.. Избави боже, еслиВ ней на вершок побольше, чем в других,Ума, излишек этот АфродитеНа пользу лишь - коварством станет он.Напротив, та, которая природойОбижена жена, по крайней мере,На хитрости Киприды не пойдет.” - Euripides

83. “Tell her I'm sorry I sold the diamond, eh?" Sammy said. "I broke my promise. When she disappeared in Alaska... ah, so long ago, I finally used that diamond, moved to Texas as I always dreamed. I started my machine shop. Started my family! It was a good life, but Haze; was right. The diamond came with a curse. I never saw her again." "Oh, Sammy," Hazel said. "No, a curse didn't keep me away. I wanted to come back. I died!" The old man didn't seem to hear. He smiled down at the baby, and kissed him on the head. "I give you my blessing, Leo. First male great-grandchild! I have a feeling you are special, like Hazel was. You are more than a regular baby, eh? You will carry on for me. You will see her someday. Tell her hello for me.” - Rick Riordan

84. “Either I’ve got a wart on my nose they find curious, or I’ve grown a tail, Albie Merani muttered to himself. Just then he thought. I’d better get a move on, got work to do. He hurried across to some stairs, heading down deeper into station, then followed the signs to the pod station.” - Rw Rivers

85. “What an ironic tragedy that an affluent, “Christian” minority in the world continues to hoard its wealth while hundreds of millions of people hover on the edge of starvation!” - Ronald J. Sider

86. “I am dwelling on things I love, even if a measure of tragedy is stitched into everything, if you follow the thread long enough” - Sebastian Barry

87. “Human beings have capitalized on the silence of animals, just as certain human beings have historically imposed silence on certain other human beings by denying slaves the right to literacy, denying women the right to own property, and denying both the right to vote.” - Gary Steiner

88. “Sin and grace, absence and presence, tragedy and comedy, they divide the world between them and where they meet head on, the Gospel happens.” - Frederick Buechner

89. “For there has never been a story nearly as tragic as the one of Frankenstein, except for that of Johnny Heart and his Francesca Valentine.” - Rae Hachton

90. “We are all Romeos looking for our Juliet, but never finding her.” - Rae Hachton

91. “I do have a point to all this,” she continues. “There are like twenty people in that waiting room right now. Some of them are related to you. Some of them are not. But we’re all your family.” She stops now. Leans over me so that the wisps of her hair tickle my face. She kisses me on the forehead. “You still have a family,” she whispers.” - Gayle Forman

92. “Anything that lights your world leaves it dark once it's gone.” - Ashly Lorenzana

93. “It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man bungles his own life and the lives of others yet remains totally incapable of seeing how much the whole tragedy originates in himself, and how he continually feeds it and keeps it going. Not consciously, of course—for consciously he is engaged in bewailing and cursing a faithless world that recedes further and further into the distance. Rather, it is an unconscious factor which spins the illusions that veil his world. And what is being spun is a cocoon, which in the end will completely envelop him.” - C.G. Jung

94. “A farce or comedy is best played; a tragedy is best read at home.” - Abraham Lincoln

95. “We are rational creatures, Professor Jove explained; hope is irrational. We thus set ourselves up for one dispiriting fall after the next. Anger and depression are not diseases or dysfunctions or anomalies; they are perfectly rational responses to the myriad avoidable disappointments that begin in a thoroughly irrational hope.” - Shalom Auslander

96. “Every great tragedy forms a fertile soil in which a great recovery can take root and blossom...but only if you plant the seeds.” - Steve Maraboli

97. “It is a tragedy beyond the power of language to convey when what has been imposed on women by force becomes a standard of freedom for women: and all the women say it is so.” - Andrea Dworkin

98. “In tragedy and despair, when an endless night seems to have fallen, hope can be found in the realization taht the companion of night is not another night, that the companion of night is day, that darkness always gives way to light, and that death rules only half of creation, life the other half.” - Dean Koontz

99. “Moth: I gave you my life. Flame: I allowed you to kiss me.” - Hazrat Inayat Khan

100. “Tragic tales rarely do make sense.” - Gwenn Wright

101. “She gave me for my pains a world of sighs.” - William Shakespeare

102. “You his brother?''Yes, damn it!' I burst out. "And all I want is to get my hands on whoever did this to him!''Funny,' said a dick dryly, 'but so do we.'I didn't like him much after that. Sarcasm is out of place when a man has just been brought face to face with personal tragedy.("Walls That Hear You")” - Cornell Woolrich

103. “Closing your eyes won't make the awfulness go away. It may be that nothing will. But dwelling on it, dreading the evil, playing out the misery in your head - doesn't this feed the monster? You can't close your eyes to life, but you can choose where your gaze lingers.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

104. “One of the greatest tragedies in life is to lose your own sense of self and accept the version of you that is expected by everyone else.” - K.L. Toth

105. “God didn’t design your life so you would constantly fall down, but he does hope that you will be brought to your knees.” - Shannon L. Alder