No one can make the most of himself until he looks upon his life as a magnificent possibility, the materials for a great masterpiece, to mar or spoil which would be a great tragedy.
Great tragedy has come to us, and we are meeting it with the best that is in our country, with courage and concern for others because this is America. This is who we are.
The Vietnam War was a great tragedy for our country. And it is now far enough away so that one can study without using the slogans to see what's really happened.
The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
I always thought the point of life was something richer than that. Something full of great tragedy or comedy, reversal of fortune, ecstasy, that kind of thing. But no, contemporary urban theorists seem satisfied with the merely livable, which always sounds to me like the merely survivable, the not so bad.
I've enjoyed my life. There has been great tragedy but also moments of great happiness. I've taken both in my stride, and if I were to replay my life, I would do it all over again.
Modern day slavery is the great tragedy of our time and the U.S. cannot turn a blind eye to it on our soil or another nation's.
It is in times of great tragedy when the true spirit of our wonderful country unites as one.
Food is about communal togetherness. Our family does sit at the table. I think it's a great tragedy if a family doesn't have a table, as there is such an atmosphere of good will and warmth when we have eight people sitting around it.
Our planet is dying. Whales will be extinct before we ever get to know them. They say these creatures are so intelligent. They may disappear from the face of the Earth before we know them, and that is a great tragedy.
The histories which we have of the great tragedy give no idea of the general wretchedness, the squalid misery, which entered into every individual life in the region given up to the war. Where the armies camped the destruction was absolute.
Unemployment is a great tragedy. The man who goes about hopelessly seeking work in order to earn bread for his children is a living reproach to civilization.
Well, I think the great tragedy in American politics is what is legal, not what is illegal.
The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark. The small truth has words which are clear; the great truth has great silence.
A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth.
Both need each other: The agnostic cannot be content to not know, but must be in search of the great truth of faith; the Catholic cannot be content to have faith, but must be in search of God all the time, and in the dialogue with others, a Catholic can learn more about God in a deeper fashion.
I was a very good baseball and football player, but my father always told me I was much more interested in how I looked playing baseball or football than in actually playing. There's great truth in that.
We have a tendency to think everyone's idiotic and everyone's only doing something idiotic, and the world is controlled by a not-so-secret group of morons. There's great truth in that, I suppose, but then it's also not true.
Stephen Sondheim told me that Oscar Hammerstein believed everything that he wrote. So there's great truth in the songs, and that's what was so wonderful to find.
Economics has revealed a great truth about the natural law of human interaction: that not only is production essential to man's prosperity and survival, but so also is exchange.
