Chinua Achebe Quotes

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

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

If you have ever been in a real tragic or sad situation, the words that come out are hopelessly inadequate and kind of cliched.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked.

Sometimes, I can myself be frustrated by books that seem to me to be insufficiently realistic about the world's potential for just being totally a randomly bad place.

It was a time when only the dead smiled, happy in their peace.

The world is a heartbreaking place, without any question.

If you're a movie star, you get the girl, you lose the girl, and then you get her back. But if you're a character like me, you lose the girl, then you get another one, then you get another one, then you lose them all, then you lose your life.

I watched children dying. That will be the image that will stay with me.

Nobody likes a child to die or losing an election.

Life is painful, nasty and short... in my case it has only been painful and nasty.

Much melancholy has devolved upon mankind, and it is detestable to me that might will triumph in the end.

When we have lost everything, including hope, life becomes a disgrace, and death a duty.

We don't live in the Garden. We live far from Eden. Every life is full of heartaches. Every life, frankly, is unspeakably sad.

I mean, whose songs don't focus on tragedy and loss?

This whole country is a graveyard, and we are all constantly walking on the bones

Life is hard. Not great. Kind of tragic.

It is easy to fall into despair thinking about all that is wrong with the world. The joys seems so small in comparison. Internet videos of cats riding Roombas just can't compete with a father talking about how his dead 13-year-old son had wanted to be a pilot.

When tragedy strikes, feeling helpless is understandable.

Life is a jest of the Gods and there is no justice. You must learn to laugh… or else you'll weep yourself to death.

If the whole world is evil, then the tragedy that befell you is justified," she went on. "That would make it easier for you to accept the deaths of your wife and daughters. But if good people do exist, then, however much you deny it, your life will be unbearable; because fate set a trap for you, and you know you didn't deserve it. It isn't the light you want to recover, it's the certainty that there is only darkness.

Real misery cuts off all paths to itself.

A dungeon horrible, on all sides round, As one great furnace, flamed; yet from those flames No light, but rather darkness visible Serv'd only to discover sights of woe, Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace And rest can never dwell, hope never comes That comes to all; but torture without end.

It is restful, tragedy, because one knows that there is no more lousy hope left. You know you're caught, caught at last like a rat with all the world on its back. And the only thing left to do is shout - not moan, or complain, but yell out at the top of your voice whatever it was you had to say. What you've never said before. What perhaps you don't even know till now.

The living will envy the dead.