The Death Of Tragedy Quotes

Virtue is knowledge; man sins only from ignorance; he who is virtuous is happy. In these three basic forms of optimism lies the death of tragedy. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

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

Tell the image makers and magazine sellers and the plastic surgeons that you are not afraid. That what you fear the most is the death of imagination and originality and metaphor and passion. Then be bold and LOVE YOUR BODY. STOP FIXING IT. It was never broken. ~ Marion Woodman

Of all living things, only humans consciously anticipate death; the consequent need to choose how to behave in its face - to worry about how to die - distinguishes us from other animals. The need to manage death is the particular lot of humanity. ~ Drew Gilpin Faust

Heracles is worshipped as a god by the Greeks because he fought with humans equal to himself and killed wild beasts by guile. But what was that compared to what was done by the Word, who banished sicknesses and demons and death itself from human beings? ~ Athanasius Of Alexandria

There are many things in this world that are an outrage, to be sure, but death at our current life expectancy doesn't strike me as one of them. Maybe I sound like some Victorian who felt that forty years ought to be enough for any man, but one of the marks of a life well lived has to be reaching a state of finally getting it, of not needing more, and of being able to sign off with something approaching peace of mind. ~ David Rakoff

I don't know why I pause to watch Raffaele. Perhaps I have always done so, so captivated am I by his beauty. Even now, in the midst of death and destruction, he moves with the grace of someone not of this world. His attention is focused entirely on Enzo. The sight breaks my heart, and a small, lost part of me sparks with light. ~ Marie Lu

Janie starched and ironed her face and came set in the funeral behind her veil. It was like a wall of stone and steel. The funeral was going on outside. All things concerning death and burial were said and done. Finish. End. Never-more. Darkness. Deep hole. Dissolution. Eternity. Weeping and wailing outside. Inside the expensive black folds were resurrection and life. ~ Zora Neale Hurston

Despite all expectations, the time of my last campaign and of my passing is near. I wish to die at home. Let not my end disarm you, and on no account weep for me, lest the enemy be warned of my death. ~ Genghis Khan

Shakespeare's felicity is so often taught
it is easy to overlook how taut
the sinews in his neck must
have been when he grasped his pen, or the musk
that exuded from the fat of his chin
below a somewhat chthonic grin
life wrestled death on his desk when he composed. ~ B.J. Ward

Things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect. ~ J.K. Rowling

Time says "Let there be"
every moment and instantly
there is space and the radiance
of each bright galaxy.

And eyes beholding radiance.
And the gnats' flickering dance.
And the seas' expanse.
And death, and chance. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Followers of Jesus stake their claim on the firm belief that God will one day heal the planet of pain and death. Until that day arrives, the case against God must rely on incomplete evidence. We cannot really reconcile our pain-wracked world with a loving God because what we experience now is not the same as what God intends. Jesus himself prayed that God's will "be done, on earth as it is in heaven," a prayer that will not be fully answered until evil and suffering are finally defeated. ~ Philip Yancey

It may be said, in broad-brush terms, that the primary purpose of life is the continuation of life. A deep program for survival and reproduction underwrites the complex cycles of life, in which death is the grand equalizer. There is, however, a peculiar novelty: human awareness of the cycle of life and a capacity to anticipate our own, individual death. ~ Richard J. Borden

A merchant in Baghdad sends his servant to the marketplace for provisions. Shortly, the servant comes home white and trembling and tells him that in the marketplace he was jostled by a woman, whom he recognized as Death, and she made a threatening gesture. Borrowing the merchant's horse, he flees at top speed to Samarra, a distance of about 75 miles (125 km), where he believes Death will not find him. The merchant then goes to the marketplace and finds Death, and asks why she made the threatening gesture. She replies, "That was not a threatening gesture, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra. ~ John O'Hara

to the Piazzale Loreto and machine-gunned them to death. I saw . . ." He broke down. "Tullio was one of them." Uncle Albert and his father looked gut-shot. Aunt Greta said, "That's not true! You must have seen someone else." Pino, crying, said, "It was him. Tullio was so brave. Yelling at the men who were about to shoot him, calling them cowards . . . and . . . oh God, it was . . . horrible." He went to his father and hugged him while Uncle Albert held Aunt Greta, who had turned hysterical. "I hate them," she said. "My own people and I hate them." When she'd calmed down, Uncle Albert said, "I have to go tell his mother." "She ~ Mark T. Sullivan

Who we are is determined by the actions we take, the words we choose to say, the people we love. And for some that love brings hope. For others, courage. And for some, the luckiest of individuals, that love brings with it a knowledge of contentment, an understanding of strength, and the reward of uncovering exactly who you are. ~ Rebecca Harris

...{I]f everything that has some share of life were to die, and if after death the dead remained in that form and did not come to life again, would it not be quite inevitable that in the end everything should be dead and nothing alive?... [W]hat possible means could prevent their number from being exhausted by death? ~ Socrates

Human nature is not taken into account, it is excluded, it's not supposed to exist! They don't recognise that humanity, developing by a historical living process, will become at last a normal society, but they believe that a social system that has come out of some mathematical brain is going to organise all humanity at once and make it just and sinless in an instant, quicker than any living process! That's why they instinctively dislike history, 'nothing but ugliness and stupidity in it,' and they explain it all as stupidity! That's why they so dislike the living process of life; they don't want a living soul! The living soul demands life, the soul won't obey the rules of mechanics, the soul is an object of suspicion, the soul is retrograde! But what they want though it smells of death and can be made of india-rubber, at least is not alive, has no will, is servile and won't revolt! And it comes in the end to their reducing everything to the building of walls and the planning of rooms and passages in a phalanstery! The phalanstery is ready, indeed, but your human nature is not ready for the phalanstery--it wants life, it hasn't completed its vital process, it's too soon for the graveyard! You can't skip over nature by logic. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Rage - Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses, hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls, great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion, feasts for the dogs and birds, and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end. Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed, Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles. ~ Homer

Death has been tolerable to me only because Death has been the Great Democrat, treating all alike. But now Death plays favorites. Zaccur Barstow, can you understand the bitter, bitter jealousy of the ordinary man of-oh, say‚ fifty- who looks on one of your sort? Fifty years . . . twenty of them he is a child, he is well past thirty before he is skilled in his profession. He is forty before he is established and respected. For not more than the last ten years of his fifty he has really amounted to something." Ford leaned forward in the screen and spoke with sober emphasis: "And now, when he has reached his goal, what is his prize? His eyes are failing him, his bright young strength is gone, his heart and wind are‚ not what they used to be. He is not senile yet . . . but he feels the chill of the first frost. He knows what is in store for him. He knows-he knows! ~ Robert A. Heinlein

She was infamous once upon a time. She's legendary now. The girl is a definite force to be reckoned with, though perhaps she doesn't know it yet. ~ Rebecca Harris

The witch's hair was too short and too dark for blond. She wasn't sure if that relieved her or disturbed her.
Riley had immediately begun his interrogation, and it had gone something like this:
Riley: Where is the meeting between your kind and Aden Stone supposed to take place?
Witch: Go suck yourself.
Riley: Maybe later. Meeting?
Witch: Enjoy death.
Riley: I have once already. Now, decide to talk or lose a body part.
Witch: May I recommend a finger?
Riley: Sure. After I take one of your very necessary hands. ~ Gena Showalter

Those who have never had a father can at any rate never know the sweets of losing one. To most men the death of his father is a new lease of life. ~ Samuel Butler

Death - the aftermath of it - is a strange thing to watch from the pedestal of immortality. I've seen death in every way: as a thief in the night, as the heat of fever, as the lust of a warrior. Yet I've never really understood grief, or what it does to those left behind.

But seeing Richard alone in the dark. It breaks away pieces of me. I'm a glacier, plunging, falling apart against the sea. ~ Ryan Graudin

As I squat to pee I look upward at the billions of stars and planets in the heavens and somehow my own insignificance no longer terrifies me as it once did, but comforts me, makes me feel a part, however tiny, of the whole complete and perfect universe ... and when I die the wind will still blow and the stars still shine, for the place I occupy on earth is no more permanent than the water I now make, absorbed by the the sandy soil, dried instantly by the constant prairie wind ... ~ Jim Fergus

No mercy for these enemies of the people, the enemies of socialism, the enemies of the working people! War to the death against the rich and their hangers-on, the bourgeois intellectuals; war on the rogues, the idlers and the rowdies! ~ Vladimir Lenin

spiritual wants and instincts are as various in the human family as are physical appetites, complexions, and features, and a man is only at his best, morally, when he is equipped with the religious garment whose color and shape and size most nicely accommodate themselves to the spiritual complexion, angularities, and stature of the individual who wears it; and, besides, I was afraid of a united Church; it makes a mighty power, the mightiest conceivable, and then when it by and by gets into selfish hands, as it is always bound to do, it means death to human liberty and paralysis to human thought. ~ Mark Twain

...love, he thinks. What a bother. It's completely gotten in the way of his plan to drink himself to death, to drive his business to ruin. The most annoying thing about it is that once a person gives a shit about one thing, he finds he has to start giving a shit about everything.
No, the most annoying thing about it is that he's even started to like Elmo. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

That won't happen," Dean said. "This is America. You can't just hunt people because they're different." "Can't you?" Rudy said, leveling his gaze at the paramedic. "It wasn't all that long ago that, in parts of this country, the death of a person of a certain color was looked upon as no different than killing an animal. ~ Jamie Davis

Until recently, I'd never thought much about dying. That sounded great,enlightened even, like a lack of concern about my own mortality was a gift of higher spiritual knowledge via my alien half. But to be honest, that had nothing to do with it.
The truth was there were things worse than death. ~ Stacey Kade

In all outward aspects he remained patient and mild now, not caring even to speak against heretics; he knew that he was likely to die soon enough, but the prospect of death was not an unwelcome one ( ... ). More retained his hair shirt as he dwelled in his chamber, and is reported to have whipped himself for penitence; he fasted on the appointed days, sang hymns and prayed both day and night. ~ Peter Ackroyd

But neither the business alleged, nor the magnificent compliment, could win Catherine from thinking that some very different object must occasion so serious a delay of proper repose. To be kept up for hours, after the family were in bed, by stupid pamphlets was not very likely. There must be some deeper cause: something was to be done which could be done only while the household slept; and the probability that Mrs. Tilney yet lived, shut up for causes unknown, and receiving from the pitiless hands of her husband a nightly supply of coarse food, was the conclusion which necessarily followed. Shocking as was the idea, it was at least better than a death unfairly hastened, as, in the natural course of things, she must ere long be released. The suddenness of her reputed illness, the absence of her daughter, and probably of her other children, at the time - all favoured the supposition of her imprisonment. Its origin - jealousy perhaps, or wanton cruelty - was yet to be unravelled. ~ Jane Austen

Our conception of immortality now requires precise definition. What must be eliminated from the human situation is the inevitability of death as a result and natural end of the aging process. I am speaking of the inescapable parabolic arching from birth to death. But we must clearly understand that any given unit of life -- my individual existence and yours -- can never be guaranteed eternity. ~ Alan Harrington

How do we imagine a great love?
Perhaps something along the lines of Gone with the Wind or Titanic is what comes to mind. But those aren't really about love itself, but about a situation. Everything becomes more grand when it takes place in the context of a civil war, a shipwreck, or natural catastrophe. But that is like judging the painting by the frame. That the Mona Lisa should be judged a masterpiece largely because of the carvings that surround it.
Love is love. In the dramatic stories, the people involved are physically willing to give up their lives for each other, but that is exactly what happens in the great but everyday love also. You give your lives to each other the whole way and every day, until death. ~ John Ajvide Lindqvist

Buddhist nirvana ... is based on egolessness and is not anthropocentric but rather cosmological. In Buddhism, humans and the things of the universe are equally subject to change, equally subject to transitoriness or transmigration. A person cannot achieve emancipation from the cycle of birth and death until he or she can eliminate a more universal problem: the transience common to all things in the universe. ~ Masao Abe

Ten strong things were created in the world (of which the one that comes after is stronger than that which preceded). A mountain is strong, but iron can hew it in pieces; the fire weakens the iron; the water quenches the fire; the clouds carry off the water; the wind disperses the clouds; the living body resists the wind; fear enervates the body; wine abolishes fear; sleep overcomes wine, and death is stronger than all together; yet it is written (Prov. x. 2), "And alms delivereth from death" (the original word has two meanings, righteousness and alms). Bava Bathra, fol. 10, col. 1. ~ Maurice H. Harris

Every moment I've spent living, I've been waiting to die. I'm not afraid of death. Life is an inconvenience. Brings nothing but disappointment, pain, sadness, and injustice. Death is just a few seconds of physical pain before you are relieved of it all. It's always seemed like the better deal to me." -Billy Johns ~ Rosie Scott

If untimely death came only those who deserved that fate, Keturah, where would choice be? No one would do good for its own sake, but only to avoid an early demise. No one would speak out against evil because of his own courageous soul, but only to live another day. The right to choose is man's great gift, but one thing is not his to choose
the time and means of death. ~ Martine Leavitt