Religion can make it worse. Are you supposing that if people were encouraged to believe in a transcendent reality and to be encouraged by grand rituals and music and preaching to love their neighbors then they would put jealousy and frustration aside?

I'm sure there are people who survive tragedy without humor but I've never met any of them. Nor would I be particularly interested in writing about them if I did meet them.

I don't think it's possible to have a sense of tragedy without having a sense of humor.

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain comedy and tragedy humor and hurt.

Humor is merely tragedy standing on its head with its pants torn.

Tragedy is restful: and the reason is that hope that foul deceitful thing has no part in it.

I can only hope to be 10 percent of the mom mine was to me. She encouraged me to be confident and enjoy life. That's what I want for my son.

Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope by a limit imposed from without but falsely identified as lying within.

It is often easier to become outraged by injustice half a world away than by oppression and discrimination half a block from home.

The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.

History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats.

History repeats itself first as tragedy second as farce.

We therefore here in Britain stand shoulder to shoulder with our American friends in this hour of tragedy and we like them will not rest until this evil is driven from our world.

It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.

Congress is attempting to eviscerate women's health care. Like many women across America I am outraged.

Vegas means comedy tragedy happiness and sadness all at the same time.

I've had at least my share of tragedy but I have had far more than my share of happiness.

How often we fail to realize our good fortune in living in a country where happiness is more than a lack of tragedy.

I don't understand why Europeans and South Americans can take more sophistication. Why is it that Americans need to hear their happiness major and their tragedy minor and as jazzy as they can handle is a seventh chord? Are they not experiencing complex emotions?

The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.

Fables should be taught as fables myths as myths and miracles as poetic fantasies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them.

Greek philosophy seems to have met with something with which a good tragedy is not supposed to meet namely a dull ending.

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people but the appalling silence of the good people.