"Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy." F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Their being finely aware--as Hamlet and Lear, say, are finely aware--makes absolutely the intensity of their adventure, gives the maximum of sense to what befalls them. We care, our curiosity and our sympathy care, comparatively little for what happens to the stupid, the coarse and the blind . . . ." Henry James

"For life is a Tragedy, wherein we sit as Spectators awhile, and act out our own Part in it." Jonathan Swift