While we have the gift of life, it seems to me that only tragedy is to allow part of us to die — whether it is our spirit, our creativity, or our glorious uniqueness.

While we have the gift of life, it seems to me the only tragedy is to allow part of us to die—whether it is our spirit, our creativity or our glorious uniqueness.

"The tragedy of life is not death, the tragedy of life is what dies in one when still alive".

Life is filled with tragedy; if you let it overwhelm you, you cannot enjoy life’s innocent pleasures.

Life can only be understood going backward, but must be lived going forward.

Life is a dream from which we wake only when we meet death.

Tragedy occurs when a human soul awakes and seeks, in suffering and pain, to free itself from crime, violence, infamy, even at the cost of life. The struggle is the tragedy - not defeat or death. That is why the spectacle of tragedy has always filled men, not with despair, but with a sense of hope and exaltation. (pp. 4-5)

Life can only be understood backward; the trouble is, it has to be lived forward.

Tragedy is when someone ends up dead.
Everything else is just a bump in the road.

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death — ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.

Can one be fully human without experiencing tragedy? The only tragedy there is in the world is ignorance; all evil comes from that. The only tragedy there is in the world is unwakefulness and unawareness. From them comes fear, and from fear comes comes everything else, but death is not a tragedy at all. Dying is wonderful; it's only horrible to people who have never understood life. It's only when you're afraid of life that you fear death. It's only dead people who fear death.

That we cannot rise equal to situations when we are in them — that is the tragedy of life.

The tragedy of life is that it gives us wisdom only when it has stolen youth. Si jeunesse savait, et vieillesse pouvait! — “If youth knew how, and old age could!

Life-as-it-could-be is a territory we can only study by first creating it.