There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.

More from Man and Superman (1903)

• There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it.
• An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.
• Do you know what a pessimist is? A man who thinks everybody as nasty as himself, and hates himself for it. An Unsocial Socialist (1950)
• The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
• There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
• When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.