Famous quotes containing the word tragic:
“There is something tragic about the enormous number of young men there are in England at the present moment who start life with perfect profiles, and end by adopting some useful profession.”
—Oscar Wilde (18541900)
“Behind us, as we go, all things assume pleasing forms, as clouds do far off. Not only things familiar and stale, but even the tragic and terrible, are comely, as they take their place in the pictures of memory.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“As the tragic writer rids us of what is petty and ignoble in our nature, so also the humorist rids us of what is cautious, calculating, and priggishabout half of our social conscience, indeed. Both of them permit us, in blessed moments of revelation, to soar above the common level of our lives.”
—Robertson Davies (b. 1913)