Simon Van Booy Quotes

Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy.

The key element in tragedy is that heroes and heroines are destroyed by that which appears to be their greatest strength.

It did remind me of something out of Greek mythology - the richest king who gets everything he wants, but ultimately his family has a curse on it from the Gods.

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

I used to think 'King Lear' was an analysis of insanity, but I don't really think it is. When Lear is supposed to be at his most insane, he is actually understanding the world for the first time.

Shakespeare's idea of the tragic fact is larger than this idea and goes beyond it; but it includes it, and it is worth while to observe the identity of the two in a certain point which is often ignored.

What then is tragedy? In the Elizabethan period it was assumed that a play ending in death was a tragedy, but in recent years we have come to understand that to live on is sometimes far more tragic than death.

Being somebody who's like a theater geek that I am, I can just go right back to Aeschylus and Euripides and Sophocles: they were writing about gods and goddesses versus humans, and how gods could distort, pervert, or help people get what they want.

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.

Every time one can write a self-deluded song, you are way ahead of the game, way ahead. Self-delusion is the basis of nearly all the great scenes in all the great plays, from 'Oedipus' to 'Hamlet.'

Tragedy is a literary concept.

A little too wise, they say, do ne'er live long.

The tragedy of Eliot Spitzer is almost Greek: Ascendant son of wealth and privilege dedicates his life to social justice, warns of the corruption lurking among us, and falls victim to his inner demons at the very moment of vindication.

The subject of a good tragedy must not be realistic.

It is a little disappointing to see that your legs are not as strong. But I like the idea of growing old, and the thought of approaching death is not particularly daunting to me.

I have never believed much in luck, and my sense of humor has tended to walk on the dark side.

The very strength of a nation eventually proves to be its weakness.

I saw that all beings are fated to happiness: action is not life, but a way of wasting some force, an enervation. Morality is the weakness of the brain.

I consider tragedy the highest form of art.

In Shakespearean tragedy the main source of the convulsion which produces suffering and death is never good: good contributes to this convulsion only from its tragic implication with its opposite in one and the same character.

Avoiding humiliation is the core of tragedy and comedy.

All interesting heroes have an Achilles' heel.

Beyond its romance, 'Titanic' offers an indelibly wrenching story of blind arrogance and its terrible consequences. It's the rare Hollywood adventure film that brings mythic images of tragedy - the fall of Icarus, the ruin of Ozymandias - so easily to mind.

Greek tragedy was pre-Freudian, so every emotion has to be so raw; there are no psychological undertones.

A Shakespearean tragedy as so far considered may be called a story of exceptional calamity leading to the death of a man in high estate. But it is clearly much more than this, and we have now to regard it from another side.