Dictionary:

tragedy

  (trăj'ĭ-dē)

1. 1. A drama or literary work in which the main character is brought to ruin or suffers extreme sorrow, especially as a consequence of a tragic flaw, moral weakness, or inability to cope with unfavorable circumstances.
   2. The genre made up of such works.
   3. The art or theory of writing or producing these works.
2. A play, film, television program, or other narrative work that portrays or depicts calamitous events and has an unhappy but meaningful ending.
3. A disastrous event, especially one involving distressing loss or injury to life: an expedition that ended in tragedy, with all hands lost at sea.
4. A tragic aspect or element.

[Middle English tragedie, from Old French, from Latin tragoedia, from Greek tragōidiā : tragos, goat + aoidē, ōidē, song.]

noun

An occurrence inflicting widespread destruction and distress: calamity, cataclysm, catastrophe, disaster. See help/harm/harmless.

Definition: disaster
Antonyms: advantage, blessing, boon, success, victory

tragedy, a serious play (or, by extension, a novel) representing the disastrous downfall of a central character, the protagonist. In some ancient Greek tragedies such as the Eumenides of Aeschylus, a happy ending was possible, provided that the subject was mythological and the treatment dignified, but the more usual conclusion, involving the protagonist's death, has become the defining feature in later uses of the term. From the works of the Greek tragedians Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles, the philosopher Aristotle arrived at the most influential definition of tragedy in his Poetics (4th century BCE): the imitation of an action that is serious and complete, achieving a catharsis (‘purification’) through incidents arousing pity and terror. Aristotle also observed that the protagonist is led into a fatal calamity by a hamartia (‘error’) which often takes the form of hubris (excessive pride leading to divine retribution or nemesis). The tragic effect usually depends on our awareness of admirable qualities—manifest or potential—in the protagonist, which are wasted terribly in the fated disaster. The most painfully tragic plays, like Shakespeare's King Lear, display a disproportion in scale between the protagonist's initial error and the overwhelming destruction with which it is punished. English tragedy of Shakespeare's time was not based directly on Greek examples, but drew instead upon the more rhetorical Roman precedent of Senecan tragedy (see also revenge tragedy). Shakespearean tragedy thus shows an ‘irregular’ construction in the variety of its scenes and characters, whereas classical French tragedy of the 17th century is modelled more closely on Aristotle's observations, notably in its observance of the unities of time, place, and action. Until the beginning of the 18th century, tragedies were written in verse, and usually dealt with the fortunes of royal families or other political leaders. Modern tragic drama, however, normally combines the socially inferior protagonist of domestic tragedy with the use of prose, as in the plays of Henrik Ibsen and Arthur Miller. Some novels, like Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) and Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano (1947) can be described as tragedies, since they describe the downfall of a central character.

For more information on tragedy, visit Britannica.com.

tragedy (i.e. tragic drama), from Greek tragōidia, ‘goat song’. There is no satisfactory explanation of this name. It may have arisen because, it has been suggested, the chorus in tragedy originally wore goat-skins, or in connection with a goat-sacrifice, or even because there was a competition with a goat as prize.

The Monk in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales defines the essence of tragedy as he knew it, and as it is in most surviving Greek tragedies:

Tragedie is to seyn a certeyn storie,
As olde bookes maken us memorie,
Of hym that stood in greet prosperitee,
And is yfallen out of heigh degree
Into myserie, and endeth wrecchedly.
And they ben versified communely,
Of six feet, which men clepen exametron.

(Tragedy is, as old books inform us, a kind of story concerning someone who has enjoyed great prosperity but has fallen from his high position into misfortune and ends in wretchedness. Tragedies are commonly written in verse with six feet, called hexameters.)

1. The origin of Greek tragedy. The only Greek tragedy we possess is Athenian; for that reason it is known as ‘Attic’ tragedy (from the state of Attica, of which Athens was the chief city). Tragedy was usually regarded as an Attic invention (but not always; see below). It is very difficult to trace its history back beyond the fifth century BC. There were several different accounts of its origin current in antiquity. Aristotle thought that it originated ‘in the improvisations of those who led the dithyramb’, but adds that it was said by some to have evolved from choral performances in the (Dorian) Peloponnese. Certainly choral song remained an important constituent of tragedy, and the dialect of the choruses, (literary) Doric, attests the origin of the choral element in a Doric-speaking region (see DIALECTS). Drama, however, requires actors. A tradition followed by Horace in the Ars poetica attributed the invention of the actor to Thespis, who came to Athens from Icaria in Attica and won the tragedy competition in 533 or a little earlier. Thus Attic tragedy may be thought to have originated no earlier than the mid-sixth century BC.

The tradition which gives tragedy a Peloponnesian origin claims that the decisive step towards drama was taken by Arion (possibly of the seventh century BC and also credited with the development of the dithyramb into a recognized literary form), who brought on stage ‘satyrs speaking verse’. Aristotle also says that tragedy acquired dignity by development from the style of satyr-plays (see SATYRIC DRAMA). Arion may provide a tenuous link between dithyramb, tragedy, and satyr-plays, but it is still not clear whether (and how) Attic dithyramb and tragedy evolved from the same background as satyr-plays, and to what extent the choral performances in the Peloponnese became dramatic; nothing as specific is said of Arion's supposed innovation as is said of the introduction of an actor by Thespis. The Greek word for actor, hypokritēs, probably means ‘answerer’ (rather than the possible meaning ‘interpreter’); the actor's answers to the questions of the chorus provided the occasion for their song, and their exchanges (by this account) brought drama into existence (see CHORUS).

By 472 (the date of the earliest surviving play, Aeschylus' Persians) tragedy had acquired the dignity and seriousness of which Aristotle spoke (see above), stemming from its concern with the human condition and the latter's relation to divine ordinance. It is impossible to know how much its development was shaped by Aeschylus, since we know so very little of his predecessors and contemporaries (see 4 below). The plot of a Greek tragedy is nearly always based on an episode from myth (for exceptions see PERSIANS, PHRYNICHUS, and AGATHON), and the influence of Homer is marked.

2. Performances of Greek tragedies. Performances of tragedies in Attica were part of religious celebrations and, until the Hellenistic age, appear to have been confined to the festivals of Dionysus. (For the close connection between the god and the performance of drama see DIONYSIA and DIONYSUS, THEATRE OF.) Thus plays were produced on only a few occasions during the year, and for a single performance on each occasion. The most important setting for new tragedies was the Great Dionysia in March, but tragedies were also produced at the Lenaea in January, and second productions might be staged at the Rural Dionysia. In the fifth century the only second productions at the Great Dionysia (with one exception; see below) were revised versions of plays which had been unsuccessful in their original form, such as Euripides' Hippolytus, but it may be that comedies were more often restaged than tragedies. The one notable exception was in the case of Aeschylus: after his death it was decreed that his plays might be produced at the Great Dionysia by anyone who wished. From 386 BC it was permitted to produce an earlier tragedy and from 339 an earlier comedy.

Tragedy was produced under the auspices of the state, supervised by magistrates. Drama at Athens was a matter for competition. Since dramatic competitions at the Dionysia were known to be in existence in the 530s (see 1 above) it is likely that they were instituted (and the festival itself first organized) by the tyrant Peisistratus and his sons. Three tragic poets were selected from all those applying and ‘granted a chorus’ by the archon, i.e. given permission to compete for the prize of best tragic poet. A main actor (‘protagonist’) was allocated to each poet by lot, from three chosen and paid for by the state. Apart from that the costs of production were borne by the choregoi. Each poet staged three tragedies (the trilogy) followed by a satyr-play, the set of four being known as the tetralogy. (These terms we owe to the Alexandrian scholars.) The contests were decided by judges, five in number, chosen by lot from lists of names selected by each tribe; no doubt the judges were influenced on occasion by the expressed views of the audience. The successful poet was rewarded with a crown of ivy; from the mid-fifth century the best actor among the protagonists also received a prize. Actors and chorus were all male, and only Athenian citizens were allowed to take part, although metics were admitted at the Lenaea at a later date.

Greek tragedy contained two elements, choral song in lyric metres, with musical accompaniment, and dramatic spoken exchanges between characters, which were mainly in iambic trimeters (Chaucer's ‘hexameters’; see METRE, GREEK 5). Some parts were a blend of the two. The importance of the chorus varied from play to play (in Aeschylus' Eumenides it might be considered corporately as one of the main characters); on the whole its role declined in significance towards the end of the fifth century. In general the chorus plays the part of spectators of the action, humble in rank, taking a limited part in but rarely initiating action, sympathizing with one or other of the chief characters, and commenting on or interpreting the dramatic situation. The choral songs were composed in a variety of lyric metres arranged in strophēs and antistrophēs, occasionally with epodes added (see TRIAD). The chorus comprised twelve performers in the plays of Aeschylus, increased to fifteen by Sophocles. It was drawn up in a rectangular form (in contrast with the circular chorus of the dithyramb) and its movements were based on this arrangement. It was accompanied by the flute. Very little is known about the dances performed by the chorus after the early fifth century when, we are told, Phrynichus and Aeschylus invented many dances. The term emmeleia (‘gracefulness’) was often used to denote the grave and dignified dance of tragedy. At the end of the fifth century BC the dance degenerated. Choruses continued to form a part of tragedies throughout the fifth and for part at least of the fourth century BC, after choruses in comedy had been discontinued; but it is not known precisely how long they survived.

To the single actor of Thespis' invention Aeschylus added a second and Sophocles a third, and three actors seem to have remained the norm. Originally the poet acted in his own plays; this is recorded of Thespis and Aeschylus, and of Sophocles in his earliest plays (not extant). From the time of Sophocles the relative importance of the actors was indicated by the names protagonist (‘first actor’), deuteragonist (‘second actor’), and tritagonist. To the first was assigned the longest and most difficult part, together with such other parts as could be combined with it. All the actors and the chorus wore masks (according to one tradition introduced by Thespis) appropriate to their parts; this feature was perhaps a relic of Dionysiac cult, for some parts of which the worshippers were masked. Only the flute-player was unmasked. No fifth-century masks have survived, but it is clear from vase-paintings that they covered the whole front half of the head including the ears and had wigs attached. They seem to have been made of linen stiffened with plaster and painted. The wearing of masks facilitated the doubling of parts by a single actor, or even the splitting of a single part between two actors. In Euripides' Bacchae, for example, Dionysus and the messenger were probably played by the same actor; in Sophocles' Oedipus Coloneus the doubling and splitting of parts has become extremely complicated, with Theseus played by perhaps three actors, and Ismenē by a silent extra (kōphon prosōpon, ‘dumb mask’) unless, exceptionally, a fourth actor was allowed. Nonspeaking extras were used, and known, like their modern equivalents, as ‘spear-carriers’ (doryphorēmata). Aeschylus was said to have given the actors a more dignified costume; by the end of the fifth century they were wearing heavy, long-sleeved, ornamented robes reaching to the ground; Euripides was notorious for clothing his heroes in rags when the plot suggested it. Actors in classical times either went barefooted or wore tall laced boots (cothurni). Female characters were played by men.

3. Construction of Greek tragedy. A Greek tragedy normally contained the following parts.

(i) The prologue (prologos), the part preceding the entrance of the chorus, a monologue or dialogue which sets out the subject of the drama and the situation from which it starts. In the earliest tragedies the play begins with the entrance of the chorus, who set the scene without prologue.
(ii) The parodos, the song which the chorus sings as it enters. Once on stage, the chorus does not usually leave before the end of the play.
(iii) The episodes (epeisodia), scenes in which one or more actors take part, with the chorus. The word epeisodion probably meant originally the entrance of an actor to announce something to the chorus. The episodes might also contain lyrical passages, such as lamentations or incidental songs by the chorus, but they were divided from each other by the songs of the chorus known as stasima (see below).
(iv) Stasima, songs of the chorus ‘standing in one place’, i.e. in the orchestra, in contrast with the parodos which was sung during its entrance. In the earlier extant tragedies the stasima are usually connected, if only obliquely, with the events of or emotions aroused by the preceding episode. But this connection became more tenuous, until Agathon became reputedly the first to introduce choral lyrics which had nothing to do with the plot (and could fit any tragedy), called by Aristotle embolima, ‘interpolations’.
(v) The exodos or final scene, after the last stasimon.

For Aristotle's analysis of the nature of tragedy and its qualitative elements see POETICS.

4. Principal Greek tragedians. Before Aeschylus the principal tragic poets were Phrynichus, Pratinas, and Choerilus. None of their plays survives. Apart from Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides the most famous was Agathon, and after him perhaps Ion of Chios and Critias. There were about a dozen others who won the fifth-century tragedy competitions from time to time. The descendants of Aeschylus and Sophocles included some able tragedians. A younger Euripides produced posthumous plays by the elder Euripides and was himself a dramatist. But inspiration was failing by the end of the fourth century, and although tragedy was still being written in the third century at Athens, Alexandria (on a grand scale), and elsewhere, we know nothing except the (otherwise unknown) names of some of the writers and about forty lines of their work; nothing more was thought worthy of preservation.

5. Roman tragedy. For the origins of Roman drama see COMEDY, ROMAN 1. A new impulse was given when in 240 BC Livius Andronicus first staged rough adaptations of a Greek tragedy and a Greek comedy, to be followed by other adaptations from Greek. Naevius, his contemporary, appears to have been the first to compose, besides tragedies on Greek subjects, fabulae praetextae, dramas whose themes were drawn from Roman history or legend. His successors Ennius, Pacuvius, and Accius also wrote occasional praetextae as well as tragedies modelled on Greek originals. After them Roman tragedy declined, and there was no important tragedian in the later years of the republic. Under the emperor Augustus, Asinius Pollio wrote tragedies which have perished, as have also the Medea of Ovid and the Thyestes of Varius Rufus, both of them popular plays praised by Quintilian. To the age of the emperor Nero belong the highly rhetorical tragedies of Seneca the Younger; like most of his predecessors he borrowed his subjects from Greek sources, and it is improbable that his tragedies were intended for the stage. The ordinary metre of Roman tragedy was the iambic senarius (see METRE, LATIN 2); this was used in dialogue. The sung portions were in simple lyrical metres adapted from the Greek. The chorus, where there was one, appeared on the stage, not, as in Greek tragedy, in the orchestra, and could take a greater part in the action.

Horace in his Ars poetica gives critical advice on the writing of tragedy, perhaps because the Pisonēs to whom the poem is addressed were interested in the genre. But conditions at Rome were unfavourable to the development of tragedy. Performances were not, as at Athens, part of a religious festival with cultic associations and social significance. There was no homogeneous audience in sympathy with the poet's view of things, religious, national, ethical, and social. Greek themes did not greatly interest the Roman spectator, and tragedies on Roman themes were perhaps problematical for political reasons; they were certainly few. Tragedy at Rome was moral and didactic, inculcating energy and fortitude, valued for its displays of oratory, and occasionally as appealing to national or political sentiment. But it does not appear to have produced any great original conceptions or the subtlety and character-drawing of its Greek prototype, though Quintilian rated the lost Thyestes of Varius as equal to any Greek tragedy. Roman tragedy was further inhibited by the extinction of political life under the empire, which made it difficult for the playwright to choose a subject that was not liable to sinister interpretation by a suspicious emperor. See also THEATRE.

Tragedy flourished in France over a period of about 250 years, between 1550 and the Revolution, with a high point in the middle of the 17th c. It differs from other dramatic genres in having given rise to a great deal of theorizing, most of it related to Aristotle's Poetics as mediated through the scholars of the Renaissance [see Classicism].

French tragedy is characterized not so much by the emotional effects (pity, terror, catharsis) mentioned by Aristotle or the ideological schemes developed by modern criticism from Hegel onward, as by the notion of grandeur. It was, with epic, the most elevated literary genre. Until the 18th c. it presented only persons of high rank, usually given lustre by being drawn from the distant world of Greek, Roman, or biblical myth, legend, or history. It was almost always written in verse (for the most part, alexandrines), at least until the 18th c., when La Motte and others made unsuccessful attempts to launch prose tragedy [for the mould-breaking ‘tragédie bourgeoise’ of Diderot see Drame].

1. Before 1630

The early 16th-c. idea of tragedy was still close to that of Chaucer's ‘Monk's Tale’, insisting on the morality to be drawn from the fall of great men; it was only after 1570 that La Taille and Vauquelin de la Fresnaye outlined a theory of tragic drama inspired by Aristotle. Tragedy in French was preceded by the Latin works of Buchanan at Bordeaux, and by Lazare de Baïf's French translation of Sophocles' Electra (1537). The first original French tragedy was Bèze's Abraham sacrifiant (1550), but it was Jodelle's Senecan Cléopâtre captive (1552/3) which set the pattern for humanist tragedy with its very simple plot, extremely long speeches interspersed with passages of rapid dialogue (stichomythia), moralizing choruses, and rhetorical elaboration. Similar plays were written over the next 50 years, sometimes with more elaborate plots and greater psychological interest, by Grévin, La Taille, Montchrestien, and above all Garnier, whose plays possess considerable poetic power. His Les Juives represents a high point in Renaissance tragedy.

This type of tragedy has in recent years been increasingly appreciated on its own terms rather than as a preparation for later achievements. It was a literary rather than a theatrical phenomenon, remaining virtually unperformed outside the humanist colleges. On the other hand, in the later years of the 16th c. tragedies began to be performed in the provinces, and then at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in Paris, which showed little attempt to conform to the new rules of tragedy. This ‘tragédie irrégulière’ is best exemplified in the many plays of Hardy. Such action-packed, free tragedies, together with the popular new genre of tragicomedy, came near to eclipsing regular tragedy altogether (significantly, in 1628 Schelandre rewrote his tragedy Tyr et Sidon as a tragicomedy, and Ogier defied learned criticism in his preface to this reworking).

2. 1630-1700

The 1630s saw a remarkable revival of tragedy. New works were produced during this decade by Mairet, Scudéry, Rotrou, Du Ryer, La Calprenède, Tristan, and above all Pierre Corneille. All of these respected, though with some freedom, the rules for the genre which had been outlined by Renaissance theorists, but were now reiterated by Mairet in his preface to Silvanire and more dogmatically by Chapelain. In the years that followed, writers such as La Ménardière, Sarasin (‘Discours sur la tragédie’, 1639), d' Aubignac, and eventually Boileau completed the theoretical code of French tragedy. The most famous rules concerned the unities of place, time, and action: a tragedy should take place in a single setting, within a period of time not exceeding 24 hours, and should confine itself to a single plot. There were other stipulations concerning language and form, e.g. that within each of the five acts all the scenes should be linked, and more general recommendations for the construction of well-made plays. But the cardinal precepts were those insisting on vraisemblance and bienséance. The former ensured that the actions of the stage characters would seem credible; this meant, above all, conforming to audience preconceptions—or prejudices—about human psychology and the limits of probability. Bienséance worked in a similar way: ‘la bienséance interne’ laid down that characters should act in accordance with their rank, situation, and nature (as understood by contemporary audiences); ‘la bienséance externe’, that they should observe a proper decorum. And finally, it was axiomatic to classical critics that tragedy should be morally improving.

It was these rules that were invoked by Chapelain in his critique of Corneille's Le Cid. Corneille, the dominant figure in French tragedy before 1660, was often at odds with scholars and purists over the unities and other matters; in his three 1660 Discours (on dramatic poetry, tragedy, and the three unities) he asserted his independence, arguing in particular that truth, even when improbable, was as good a basis for tragedy as vraisemblance. He also claimed that ‘admiration’ was as valid a tragic emotion as the Aristotelian pity and terror. His own tragedies, particularly those written before 1651, often seem remote from modern ideas of tragedy, with their optimistic images of heroic self-creation—or alternatively their pictures of such self-proclaimed monsters as Cléopâtre in Rodogune. In his later tragedies, on the other hand, confusion and failure are more in evidence, and the tragic outcome of Suréna is as irrevocable as anything in Racine.

It is, of course, the latter who is the great tragic playwright of the later 17th c., although one should also mention such figures as Thomas Corneille and Quinault; these both contributed to the revival of tragedy in 1656 after a brief eclipse, and managed at their best to produce moving and effective drama. In Racine's case, an apparently easy observation of classical precepts goes with a probing of the dark core of human nature that makes him, in plays such as Andromaque, Britannicus, and Phèdre, more obviously akin than Corneille to the great tragedians of Greece. Only in the early Alexandre le Grand and in the late and untypical religious tragedies, Esther and Athalie, do we find endings that could be called optimistic.

By the time of Racine tragicomedy had disappeared from the stage, and regular tragedy was in competition with the machine plays and their successor, the increasingly popular opera (often called tragédie lyrique), in which psychological drama is subordinate to spectacle, music, and dance. When Racine retired from the secular stage in 1677 there was no tragic author to fill the gap. Pradon, who had challenged Phèdre, continued to write tragedies, as did, with varying degrees of contemporary success—but no posthumous recognition— Campistron, La Grange-Chancel, Longepierre, and others.

3. After 1700

While Racine, and to a lesser extent Corneille, retained their classic status throughout most of the 18th c., they found few successors worthy of note. The tragedies of La Motte, Lemierre, and de Belloy enjoyed success in their time. Crébillon père won a great reputation with his horror-filled tragedies on the classical model, but his fame was soon eclipsed by that of Voltaire, who set out to become Racine's heir, and was seen as such by contemporaries, if not by posterity. He too conformed to classical rules, making some innovations (e.g. use of spectacular effects and exotic settings) and seeking both to move audiences and to win them over to progressive causes (e.g. Mahomet). For all their skilful construction, his plays too have been consigned to literary history.

Tragedy was challenged in the mid-18th c. by the drame. Even if this new genre had no great successes at the time, the future belonged to it [see Drama In France After 1789]. Tragedies continued to be written, from M.-J. Chénier's patriotic Charles IX (1789) to the workof Raynouard, Lemercier, and Casimir Delavigne, and the briefly successful Lucrèce of Ponsard (1843), but tragedy as a genre was dead. This did not mean, of course, the disappearance of the tragic element in literature, however the notoriously slippery word ‘tragic’ is defined. There is more that is truly tragic, as most people understand the word today, in the novels and plays of the 19th and 20th c. than in most plays called tragedies. To speak only of the theatre, one sees a powerful tragic element in certain Romantic dramas, notably Musset's Lorenzaccio, in Becque's Les Corbeaux, or in some of Claudel's Symbolist works (e.g. Partage de midi). In more recent times, Giraudoux and Anouilh, among others, have reworked such tragic subjects as Electra and Antigone, though with a twist, while Sartre and Camus at times convey an apparently tragic vision of the world in their plays. And the playwrights associated with the Theatre of the Absurd, above all Beckett, offer haunting images (at once comic and tragic) of a humanity deprived of the old comforts of belief.

[Peter France]

Bibliography

• J. Scherer, La Dramaturgie classique (1950)
• J. Truchet, La Tragédie classique en France (1973)
• C. J. Gossip, An Introduction to French Classical Tragedy (1981)
• G. Jondorf, French Renaissance Tragedy: The Dramatic Word (1990)

The genre of drama in which the principal action is an unfolding catastrophe. According to Aristotle the audience then feels pity and fear, and this has a cathartic effect with value of its own. In his essay ‘On Tragedy’, David Hume pondered the fact that were the events of a tragedy to unfold in real life they would be most unpleasant to us, yet we derive pleasure from their dramatic representation. His solution is not that we do not ‘really’ feel the pity and terror, thinking that after all it is only a fiction, but that we do, yet at the same time admire the form of the presentation, and this admiration accounts for our pleasure.

A serious drama in which a central character, the protagonist — usually an important, heroic person — meets with disaster either through some personal fault or through unavoidable circumstances. In most cases, the protagonist's downfall conveys a sense of human dignity in the face of great conflict. Tragedy originated in ancient Greece in the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. In modern times, it achieved excellence with William Shakespeare in such works as Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello. Twentieth-century tragedies include Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller, and Murder in the Cathedral, by T. S. Eliot.

A medieval narrative poem or tale typically describing the downfall of a great person; a drama, usually in verse, portraying a conflict between a strong-willed protagonist and a superior force such as destiny, culminating in death or disaster.

Quotes:

"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." - Jean Anouilh

"The true end of tragedy is to purify the passions." - Aristotle

"Tragedy on the stage is no longer enough for me, I shall bring it into my own life." - Antonin Artaud

"Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy." - Jacques Barzun

"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." - Juliette Binoche

"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." - Dale Carnegie

See more famous quotes about Tragedies