A Quote by W. H. Auden

The truly tragic kind of suffering is the kind produced and defiantly insisted upon by the hero himself so that, instead of making him better, it makes him worse and when he dies he is not reconciled to the law but defiant, that is, damned. Lear is not a tragic hero, Othello is.

W. H. Auden

Quote Topics

Better Dies Hero Him Himself Insisted Instead Kind Law Lear Makes Making Produced Suffering Tragic Tragic Hero Truly Worse

Quote Author

W. H. Auden
English - Poet
February 21, 1907 - September 29, 1973

Such exceptional suffering and calamity, then, affecting the hero, and-we must now add-generally extending far and wide beyond him, so as to make the whole scene a scene of woe, are an essential ingredient in tragedy and a chief source of the tragic emotions, and especially of pity. But the proportions of this ingredient, and the direction taken by tragic pity, will naturally vary greatly.

A. C. Bradley

For a while he'd tried molding himself into the tragic Romantic hero, brooding and staring clench-jawed off into space as he composed dark verse in his head. But it turned out that trying to appear tragic in Incontinence, Indiana, was redundant, and his mother kept shouting at him and making him forget his rhymes. "Tommy, if you keep grinding your teeth like that, they'll wear away and you'll have to have dentures like Aunt Ester." Tommy only wished his beard was as heavy as Aunt Ester's---then he could stare out over the moors while he stroked it pensively.

Christopher Moore

When you see the violence of Hollywood movies, there is a tendency that the hero is combating and confronting many people, without much harm to himself. But in my films, the hero takes a lot of hits so the very act of the hero being the one on the receiving end, makes the audience cheer and connect with him.

Takashi Miike

The great thing about Burgess's work is the dichotomy of making the hero or anti-hero an immoral man. And that's what makes it interesting. Because, you know, you are sucked into kind of like this guy.

Malcolm McDowell

You go to someone and you think, 'I'll tell him this.' But why? The impulse is that the telling is going to relieve you. And that's why you feel awful later--you've relieved yourself, and if it truly is tragic and awful, it's not better, it's worse---the exhibitionism inherent to a confession has only made the misery worse.

Philip Roth

Indiana Jones is very much an old-world kind of hero. He doesn't really have any kind of superpower or rely on any kind of technology to help him out of things.

Jamie Bell

I don't really distinguish between a fictional hero and a real life hero as a basis for any comparison. To me, a hero is a hero. I like making pictures about people who have a personal mission in life or at least in the life of a story who start out with certain low expectations and then over achieve our highest expectations for them. That's the kind of character arc I love dabbling in as a director, as a filmmaker.

Steven Spielberg

When you have a popular hero in your film, you have to think of what the masses expect from him. You have to portray the hero in such a way that they should adore him.

P. Vasu

Figo was my hero. Then he joined Madrid. Barca fans hated him for that. It was impossible for him to be a hero any more, but now that I'm a professional, I see things differently.

Sergio Busquets

When you accept your imperfections-and still are willing to brush yourself off and start again-you can make changes...for you are on a heroic journey of the heart. To me this is the best kind of hero. The kind of hero I strive to be.

Denise Linn

There's a million and one things an actor can do with a villain. He can go for all kinds of quirks and tricks. The hero is much harder to define for an actor. When you play a straight role or a hero, you're kind of stuck, It's much more difficult to give a good guy interesting qualities or to make him unusual.

Lorne Greene

The mere fact that [Tommy Atkins] saw himself as a hero, and not as the rough he was, enlisted, more probably, through hunger, and disciplined by fear, tended to make him behave like a hero, as he did on the Ridge of Delhi and in the fog at Inkermann.

Esme Cecil Wingfield-Stratford

Norman Lear is my all-time, ultimate hero. He's an amazing man. That's one person I'm looking forward to meeting. What he did, with shows and sitcoms, he's my hero.

Tyler Perry

The catastrophe of the tragic hero thus becomes the catastrophe of the fifth-century man; all his furious energy and intellectual daring drive him on to this terrible discovery of his fundamental ignorance - he is not the measure of all things but the thing measured and found wanting.

Robert Fagles

Battle is the soldier's vital breath! Peace turns him into a stooping asthmatic. War makes him a whole man again, and gives him the heart, strength, and vigor of a hero.