"Tragedy arises then when, as in Periclean Greece or Elizabethan England, a people fully aware of the calamities of life is nevertheless serenely confident of the greatness of man, whose mighty passions and supreme fortitude are revealed when one of these calamities overtakes him." This is the most important quote for me because it explains to us when the most important event of this entire unit occurs. Without context on when tragedy occurs, we would be missing a key element on a subject we are trying to fully understand. In order to fully understand something, you need to be able to understand when it occurs.
The quote really makes a lot of sense. Basically the quote is describing a perfect storm for tragedy or more than one to occur. When man becomes confident of the greatness and "mighty passions" form. This is generally when you are eligible to be exposed to tragedy. When you love something or someone, losing it becomes tragic. Falling in love is a mighty passion, and losing that person becomes tragic. This gives you a hint, the key to avoiding tragedy in your life is never loving anything or anyone.
This tells you that avoiding tragedy is very difficult. If you want to go your whole life no loving your family and never finding a significant other, then I guess you can do it, but I'm not sure I've ever met anyone that wants to live like that. I guess this just tells me that tragedy is the result of the pursuit of or possession of good things in life. I don't mean money or cars, but actually valuable things that you can't drive or spend.
This piece changes my mindset a little bit. I think from now on I'm going to spend my time preparing for tragedy, rather than trying to prevent it. I think it's more important to give myself a better ability to handle it rather than trying to prevent it, because as I see in this piece, it is very difficult to avoid and I don't think I'll be able to consistently do that. Rather than remaining indecisive on an issue, I'm going to make my decision and brace myself for the consquences.