I think it's tragic that we have this human capacity, which appears to be hardwired, or so the evolutionary biologists say, for collective joy. We have these techniques for generating it that go back thousands of years, and yet we tend not to use thi...
There's something about Michael J. Fox that I loved when he did all the '80s stuff. His way of performing all the physicality, which is why it's so tragic now, but the way he used his body so much as well, I loved.
Stand-up came naturally to me because people in Ireland talk. But that's not talking on panel shows; it is structured fun. It reminds me of some tragic aunt clapping her hands and bouncing into a room and announcing we should all play games... and if...
At this stage in my career, I don't have to take any big risks. You want to take a calculated risk, not one that leads to people saying 'yes, but there was that one time when she made that big mistake.' It's always a shame when that happens, especial...
When we study Shakespeare on the page, for academic purposes, we may require all kinds of help. Generally, we read him in modern spelling and with modern punctuation, and with notes. But any poetry that is performed - from song lyric to tragic speech...
Our children think our world will end. It's a tragic thing. Adults don't think that. They don't see that we are eating the planet. But we are. If you take all the biomass of vertebrates on the planet, 98% are men and their domestic animals. All the w...
Rather than idolizing perfection, we must choose to cherish what is real. To truly live is to love deeply, to get messy, to sometimes get hurt, and to stumble and fall. It is worth it. The alternative of living a life barren of these things in the pu...
In the wake of his breakdown, Oswaldo had become hyperattuned to the way he, and people like him, were perceived. For his first three years at Yale, he'd been frustrated by these perceptions, feeling that they were inescapable, allowing that caged fe...
What a tragic realm this is, he reflected. Those down here are prisoners, and the ultimate tragedy is that they don't know it; they think they are free because they have never been free, and do not understand what it means.
I listened as she talked, thinking that the worse the tragedy, the more people wanted to forget it--and the harder that became. Maybe that's what made it tragic; not losing the person, but losing your peace of mind. The living suffer more than the de...
I only wanted absolute quiet to think out why I had developed a sad attitude toward sadness, a melancholy attitude toward melancholy and a tragic attitude toward tragedy — why I had become identified with the objects of my horror or compassion.
Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings ...
One's thoughts are one's most crucial adventures. Seriously and strongly and intently to contemplate doing murder is everyway more exciting, more romantic, more profoundly tragic than the murder done.
When I moved, I unearthed the diaries I kept for ten years. I sat and went through them and they were a worthless burden to own. People will say it's tragic I threw them out, but I know it isn't.
Look. (Grown-ups skip this paragraph) I'm not about to tell you this book has a tragic ending. I already said in the very first line how it was my favorite in all the world. But there's a lot of bad stuff coming.
That Crawford Tilinghast should ever have studied science and philosophy was a mistake. These things should be left to the frigid and impersonal investigator for they offer two equally tragic alternatives to the man of feeling and action; despair, if...
Right after 'Backspacer,' my best friend got killed tragically. Something happened to me then where I got super motivated. I had a shelf of all this unfinished music... So I just went to work and made a conscious decision that I was going to finish a...
Mournier defined his own position as one of 'tragic optimism--' a Christian attitude of absolute engagement in the struggles of history, despite the fact that the Absolute cannot be contained in history.
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.
The most tragic consequence of our criticism of a man is to block his way to humiliation and grace, precisely to drive him into the mechanisms of self justification and into his faults instead of freeing him from them. For him, our voice drowns the v...
We have all read tragic stories in our local papers about gun accidents as a result of misuse. As lawmakers we can better promote safety and responsibility by encouraging gun owners to purchase gun safes to store firearms and keep them from falling i...
