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Quotes & Sayings About Tragedy And Comedy

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Top Tragedy And Comedy Quotes

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Rose A. Zimbardo

Mankind is immortal
in the comic perspective not by virtue of man's subjugation of nature
but by virtue of man's subjection to it. The "fall" in tragedy ends in
death; the fall in comedy ends in bed, where, by natures's arithmetic,
one and one make a brand new one. — Rose A. Zimbardo

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Erica Jong

Mothers and daughters
it's a comedy, but also a tragedy. We fill our daughters with all the chutzpah we wish for ourselves. We want them to be free as we were not. And then we resent them for being so free. We resent them for being what we have made! With granddaughters, it's so much easier. And great-granddaughters. — Erica Jong

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Frederick Buechner

Let the preacher tell the truth. Let him make audible the silence of the news of the world with the sound turned off so that in the silence we can hear the tragic truth of the Gospel, which is that the world where God is absent is a dark and echoing emptiness; and the comic truth of the Gospel, which is that it is into the depths of his absence that God makes himself present in such unlikely ways and to such unlikely people that old Sarah and Abraham and maybe when the time comes even Pilate and Job and Lear and Henry Ward Beecher and you and I laugh till the tears run down our cheeks. And finally let him preach this overwhelming of tragedy by comedy, of darkness by light, of the ordinary by the extraordinary, as the tale that is too good not to be true because to dismiss it as untrue is to dismiss along with it that catch of the breath, that beat and lifting of the heart near to or even accompanied by tears, which I believe is the deepest intuition of truth that we have. — Frederick Buechner

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Woody Allen

If I got a paper cut, that's a tragedy. If you fell down an open manhole and died, that's comedy. — Woody Allen

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Karen Harper

The rendering of my thoughts, emotions, and experiences is part comedy and part tragedy as well as history, for life is such a mingling. — Karen Harper

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Robyn Schneider

You know how they categorize Shakespeare's plays, right? If it ends with a wedding, it's a comedy. And if it ends with a funeral, it's a tragedy. — Robyn Schneider

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Virginia Woolf

The writer seems constrained, not by his own free will but by some powerful and unscrupulous tyrant who has him in thrall, to provide a plot, to provide comedy, tragedy, love interest, and an air of probability embalming the whole so impeccable that if all his figures were to come to life would find themselves dressed down to the last button of their coats in the fashion of the hour. The tyrant is obeyed; the novel is done to a turn. But sometimes, more and more often as time goes by, we suspect a momentary doubt, a spasm of rebellion, as pages fill themselves in the customary way. Is life like this? Must novels be like this? — Virginia Woolf

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Katie Kacvinsky

Comedy and tragedy are basically the same thing. Comedy is just the art of making light of life's sufferings. Turning all your pain into a joke. — Katie Kacvinsky

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Lykke Li

Some people watch comedy to relax. I watch '21 Grams.' I can recognize sadness and tragedy really easily because it's been with me forever. — Lykke Li

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Gore Verbinski

I think comedy is drama, often. It's hard to have comedy over a period of time - commercials are one thing, but over a period of time - comedy and tragedy go hand in hand. — Gore Verbinski

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Megan Squires

Maybe he was a softy, but that was okay. Being hardened by this world, I figured, was a true tragedy, and Lincoln didn't belong in a tragedy. A comedy of errors, possibly, but not a tragedy. For as long as I was in his life, I wouldn't let that be the outcome. — Megan Squires

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Harold Ramis

Groundhog Day was pretty clean. It may have to do with some puritanical feeling that comedy is a forbidden pleasure in a certain way. They make you laugh, and laughter is somehow an inferior emotion to tragedy. — Harold Ramis

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Yuval Noah Harari

Each of us has a sophisticated system that throws away most of our experiences, keeps only a few choice samples, mixes them up with bits from movies we've seen, novels we've read, speeches we've heard, and daydreams we've savoured, and out of all that jumble it weaves a seemingly coherent story about who I am, where I came from and where I am going. This story tells me what to love, whom to hate and what to do with myself. This story may even cause me to sacrifice my life, if that's what the plot requires. We all have our genre. Some people live a tragedy, others inhabit a never-ending religious drama, some approach life as if it were an action film, and not a few act as if in a comedy. But in the end, they are all just stories. What, — Yuval Noah Harari

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By George Bernard Shaw

A third variety of drama ... begins as tragedy with scraps of fun in it ... and ends in comedy without mirth in it, the place of mirth being taken by a more or less bitter and critical irony. — George Bernard Shaw

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Lauren Groff

Storytelling is a landscape, and tragedy is comedy is drama. It simply depends on how you frame what you're seeing. — Lauren Groff

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Sarah Winman

I was transfixed by the possibility of imagination within this home, no matter how strange it appeared to be. This wasn't the quiet symmetry of my everyday, the rows of terraced houses with their rectangular gardens and the routines as reliable as sturdy hairs. This wasn't the world in which things matched, or even went with. This was a world devoid of harmony. This was a world of drama, where comedy and tragedy fought for space. — Sarah Winman

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By John Turturro

I come from a very expressive family, so it's really not surprising that we became actors. There was a lot of real-life drama in our house. Some of it was drama, some of it was comedy and some of it was comic-tragedy. — John Turturro

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Amos Bronson Alcott

Wherever comes man comes tragedy and comedy also. — Amos Bronson Alcott

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Arthur Conan Doyle

It may have been a comedy, or it may have been a tragedy. It cost one man his reason, it cost me a blood-letting, and it cost yet another man the penalties of the law. Yet there was certainly an element of comedy. Well, you shall judge for yourselves. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Rollo May

On the contrary, as Miller also notes, "Tragedy implies more optimism in its author than does comedy, and ... its final result ought to be the reinforcement of the onlooker's brightest opinions of the human animal." For the tragic view indicates that we take seriously man's freedom and his need to realize himself; it demonstrates our belief in the "indestructible will of man to achieve his humanity. — Rollo May

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By John Guare

Avoiding humiliation is the core of tragedy and comedy. — John Guare

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By N.D. Wilson

What is the world? What is it for?
It is an art. It is the best of all possible art, a finite picture of the infinite. Assess it like prose, like poetry, like architecture, sculpture, painting, dance, delta blues, opera, tragedy, comedy, romance, epic. Assess it like you would a Faberge egg, like a gunfight, like a musical, like a snowflake, like a death, a birth, a triumph, a love story, a tornado, a smile, a heartbreak, a sweater, a hunger pain, a desire, a fufillment, a desert, a waterfall, a song, a race, a frog, a play, a song, a marriage, a consummation, a thirst quenched.
Assess it like that. And when you're done, find an ant and have him assess the cathedrals of Europe. — N.D. Wilson

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Jeannette Walls

Life is a drama full of tragedy and comedy. You should learn to enjoy the comic episodes a little more. — Jeannette Walls

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Michael Lewis

The institutions at the centre of capitalism are bigger than they've ever been, the pay is much greater, the ability of society to get its arms around it is much less. The political clout of the financial class is unbelievable. I'd say the story is darker than when I was there. When I was there it felt like a comedy - and now it feels more like a tragedy. — Michael Lewis

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Susanne Katherina Langer

Tragedy dramatizes human life as potentiality and fulfillment. Its virtual future, or Destiny, is therefore quite different from that created in comedy. Comic Destiny is Fortune — Susanne Katherina Langer

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Kilroy J. Oldster

I seek to sensitize and clarify the essential elements of my soul. I will leave striving for the flags of fame and fortune behind and go where the soul beckons without fearing the decisive outcome. I will travel in a world without boundaries and embrace danger and awe. I will stand as a witness to comedy, beauty, and tragedy and apply the principles of artistic and ascetic forms of awareness to overcome the inherent frustration of enduring a fundamentally painful human existence. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Penelope Fitzgerald

I have remained true to my deepest convictions. I mean the courage of those who are born to be defeated, the weaknesses of the strong, and the tragedy of misunderstandings and missed opportunities, which I have done my best to treat as comedy - for otherwise how can we manage to bear it? — Penelope Fitzgerald

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Megan McCafferty

The stories teach them valuable life lessons. That good things happen to bad people. That it's possible to make a bad situation even worse if you don't think it through. That parents are clueless except when they're not. That it's good to try new things even when a new thing is kind of disgusting, because new experiences make you a well-rounded person. That art can be transcendent. That lust is all-powerful, that drugs are fun, and that not everyone who does them is a loser. That losing people is part of life. That where comedy goes, tragedy isn't far behind. That everyone has issues with their bodies, but some take it too far, almost to death. That fear can be exhilarating. That boys are assholes. That it's important to look forward and never look back ... — Megan McCafferty

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Laurence Olivier

The office of drama is to exercise, possibly to exhaust, human emotions. The purpose of comedy is to tickle those emotions into an expression of light relief; of tragedy, to wound them and bring the relief of tears. Disgust and terror are the other points of the compass. — Laurence Olivier

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Harold Ramis

Well, for me, it's the relationship between comedy and life - that's the edge I live on, and maybe it's my protection against looking at the tragedy of it all. It's seeing life in balance. Comedy and tragedy co-exist. You can't have one without the other. I'm of the school that anything can be funny, if seen from a comedic point of view. — Harold Ramis

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Joyce Maynard

More than any other setting - more than battlefields or boardrooms or a spaceship headed for intergalactic travel - I'll put my money on the family to provide an endless source of comedy, tragedy and intrigue. — Joyce Maynard

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Dawn Powell

The basis of tragedy is man's helplessness against disease, war and death; the basis of comedy is man's helplessness against vanity (the vanity of love, greed, lust, power). — Dawn Powell

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is doubtless a vice to turn one's eyes inward too much, but I am my own comedy and tragedy. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Frederick Buechner

Sin and grace, absence and presence, tragedy and comedy, they divide the world between them and where they meet head on, the Gospel happens. — Frederick Buechner

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Elijah Noble El

I moonlight as the greatest actor. I smile. I choose the comedy mask every time. I tell those who worry that I am fine, that I always will be. There is nothing to gain from these lies. I win no awards, yet I bow. On that stage I tell my life story with the lightest of words, the heaviest of hearts. I bleed for the people who stay and watch. Behold: the comedy, the tragedy. They smile and cheer. They clap for this. And I bow, and I bow, and I bow. — Elijah Noble El

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Donald Sinden

I've been very fortunate. I've been in theater, films, television, radio, tragedy, comedy, farce - I've been in a musical and in music halls, in pantomime. I was once ringmaster in a circus. — Donald Sinden

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Artie Lange

Vegas means comedy, tragedy, happiness and sadness all at the same time. — Artie Lange

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Black Tragedy lets slip her grim disguise and shows you laughing lips and roguish eyes; but when, unmasked, gay Comedy appears, how wan her cheeks are, and what heavy tears! — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Jose Ortega Y Gasset

The tapestry of history that seems so full of tragedy when viewed from the front has countless comic scenes woven into its reverse side. In truth, tragedy and comedy are the twin masks of history - its mass appeal. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By John Updike

Is it not the singularity of life that terrifies us? Is not the decisive difference between comedy and tragedy that tragedy denies us another chance? Shakespeare over and over demonstrates life's singularity - the irrevocability of our decisions, hasty and even mad though they be. How solemn and huge and deeply pathetic our life does loom in its once-and doneness, how inexorably linear, even though our rotating, revolving planet offers us the cycles of the day and of the year to suggest that existence is intrinsically cyclical, a playful spin, and that there will always be, tomorrow morning or the next, another chance. — John Updike

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Steven Jay Schneider

The Gold Rush(1925) affirmed Charlie Chaplin's belief that tragedy and comedy are never far apart. — Steven Jay Schneider

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Subcomandante Marcos Laura Castellanos

Don Quixote is the best book out there on political theory, followed by Hamlet and Macbeth. There is no better way to understand the tragedy and the comedy of the Mexican political system than Hamlet, Macbeth and Don Quixote. They're much better than any column of political analysis. — Subcomandante Marcos Laura Castellanos

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Toby Jones

The script for 'Infamous' was so poised between tragedy and comedy. It's a dream part. One reads those scripts with a sense of melancholia. When you read a script that good ... I remember thinking, 'Oh, this script is too good. They'll never give it to me.' — Toby Jones

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Friedrich Nietzsche

Meanwhile, however, it is quite otherwise, meanwhile the comedy of existence has not yet " become conscious " of itself, meanwhile it is still the period of tragedy, the period of morals and religions. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Oscar Wilde

Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications. Our Guildensterns play Hamlet for us, and our Hamlets have to jest like Prince Hal. The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast. — Oscar Wilde

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Jeanine Basinger

The business didn't trust it, audiences didn't want it, but marriage could never be ignored. It was everywhere and nowhere, the genre that dared not speak its name, the ghost that hung over the happy ending of every romantic comedy. As a subject, it existed to be achieved (jolly comedy, great love story), destroyed (death, murder, tragedy), or denied (divorce). If it was achieved, the movie was over. If it was destroyed, it was no longer there, gotten rid of and abandoned once and for all. If it was denied, it was only temporarily shelved (for some fun) and could be reassuringly restored. — Jeanine Basinger

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Erma Bombeck

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt. — Erma Bombeck

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Dick Cavett

Running my show is really like an actor being in repertory but where, in one day in one performance, you do scenes from a drama, a farce, a low comedy and a tragedy. — Dick Cavett

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Robyn Schneider

Life is the tragedy,' she said bitterly. 'You know how they categorize Shakespeare's plays, right? If it ends with a wedding, it's a comedy. And if it ends with a funeral, it's a tragedy. So we're all living tragedies, because we all end the same way, and it isn't with a goddamn wedding. — Robyn Schneider

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Gavriel David Rosenfeld

Originally the premise of killing Hitler was fueled by deep traumatic feelings of wishing and fantasizing that if only things had been different, we could have spared ourselves all kinds of suffering. More recently it's been turned into a comedic trope. As we go forward, tragedy plus time equals comedy. — Gavriel David Rosenfeld

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Mark Helprin

If Shakespeare thought comedy worthwhile, that means the rest of us can take a break from tragedy now and then without betraying our calling, even if the modern professional intellectual, a poseur by nature, has yet to discover this. — Mark Helprin

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Vivien Leigh

Comedy is much more difficult than tragedy-and a much better training, I think. It's much easier to make people cry than to make them laugh. — Vivien Leigh

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Rita Mae Brown

Tragedy massages the human ego even as comedy deflates it ... Tragedy pits us against large foes and the trip wire is our own character ... In comedy we fall afoul of one another. Comedy depends on social life, on our behavior in groups. In tragedy you can observe one human against the gods. In comedy it's one human versus other humans and often one man (or woman if I'm writing it) against her own worst impulses. — Rita Mae Brown

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By G.K. Chesterton

A few people have ventured to imitate Shakespeare's tragedy. But no audacious spirit has dreamed or dared to imitate Shakespeare's comedy. No one has made any real attempt to recover the loves and the laughter of Elizabethan England. The low dark arches, the low strong pillars upon which Shakespeare's temple rests we can all explore and handle. We can all get into his mere tragedy; we can all explore his dungeon and penetrate into his coal-cellar, but we stretch our hands and crane our necks in vain towards that height where the tall turrets of his levity are tossed towards the sky. Perhaps it is right that this should be so; properly understood, comedy is an even grander thing than tragedy. — G.K. Chesterton

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Harold Ramis

You can perceive life as tragic, or you can laugh at the tragedy of it and that turns it into comedy. It doesn't change the circumstances. — Harold Ramis

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Joseph Campbell

[Comedies], in the ancient world, were regarded as of a higher rank than tragedy, of a deeper truth, of a more difficult realization, of a sounder structure, and of a revelation more complete. The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man ... Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachments to the forms; comedy, the wild and careless, inexhaustible joy of life invincible. — Joseph Campbell

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Frank Frankfort Moore

Fate never knows when comedy ends and tragedy begins. — Frank Frankfort Moore

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Dan Brown

In the fourteenth century, Italian literature was, by requirement, divided into two categories: tragedy, representing high literature, was written in formal Italian; comedy, representing low literature, was written in the vernacular and geared toward the general population. — Dan Brown

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By N.D. Wilson

Tragedy isn't an easy thing to kill. It takes more than a turtle. Tragedy must be destroyed by someone willing to be swallowed by it, willing to be broken, torn out of the flesh, but able to return to it. Someone must be able to shatter the tragic from within and exit into comedy, able to rip a hole so wide that a train of souls, a parade, could follow after, banging drums and throwing candy as they strolled into the sun. — N.D. Wilson

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Horace Walpole

Life is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy for those who feel. — Horace Walpole

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Nicole Holofcener

I never get tired of looking at her [Catherine Keener] and it always surprises me, despite how many hours of film I've shot on that face. She's fantastic. She does comedy and tragedy so equally well. She wears her feeling so on the surface for both. I try to stop myself from casting her but I just keep coming back to her. She's just so fantastic to work with. — Nicole Holofcener

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Michael Douglas

'King of California' was just, I thought, a really great, fresh, original kind of script. I loved the tone, the mix of tragedy, comedy, and drama, and that it was a good part. — Michael Douglas

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Horace Walpole

Plot, rules, nor even poetry, are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitation of nature, of character, of the passions and their operations in diversified situations. — Horace Walpole

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Tina Packer

[Shakespeare realized that] Women are able to understand themselves better on a personal level and survive in the world if they dress in men's clothing, thus living underground, safe (...). The presence of women disguising themselves as men dictates that the play be a comedy; women remaining in their frocks, a tragedy. In four great tragedies -Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear- almost all the women die (...).
How much the women have to adhere to the rules and regulations of their enviroment makes a large difference. Once Rosalind [disguised as a man in As You Like It] has run away from the court, she has no institutional structures to deal with. Ophelia [in her frocks] is surrounded tightly by institutional structures of family, court, and politics; only by going mad can be get out of it all. — Tina Packer

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

Life is moral responsibility. Life is several other things, we do not deny. It is beauty, it is joy, it is tragedy, it is comedy, it is psychical and physical pleasure, it is the interplay of a thousand rude or delicate motions and emotions, it is the grimmest and the merriest motley of phantasmagoria that could appeal to the gravest or the maddest brush ever put to palette; but it is steadily and sturdily and always moral responsibility. — Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Libba Bray

It's so laughable that it's somewhere beyond comedy and right into tragedy again. — Libba Bray

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By William Hazlitt

Poetry is only the highest eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of expression that can be given to our conception of anything, whether pleasurable or painful, mean or dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the perfect coincidence of the image and the words with the feeling we have, and of which we cannot get rid in any other way, that gives an instant "satisfaction to the thought." This is equally the origin of wit and fancy, of comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and pathetic. — William Hazlitt

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Bob Newhart

There are a lot of questions I keep asking myself about why I do comedy. I guess I laugh to keep from crying. And I guess if you ever get me crying, I might not stop. This is the way I look at tragedy or else I'll cry. — Bob Newhart

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Eckhart Tolle

Tragedy turns into comedy when you watch your own drama and realizing it as a mind-created fiction designed to create you a sense of identity. — Eckhart Tolle

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Oscar Wilde

LORD ILLINGWORTH: The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life.
MRS ALLONBY: And the body is born young and grows old. That is life's tragedy. — Oscar Wilde

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Michael Chabon

He thought of his own by-now legendary novel, American Disillusionment, that cyclone which, for years, had woven its erratic path across the flatlands of his imaginary life, always on the verge of grandeur or disintegration, picking up characters and plotlines like houses and livestock, tossing them aside and moving on. It had taken the form, at various times, of a bitter comedy, a stoical Hemingwayesque tragedy, a hard-nosed lesson in social anatomy like something by John O'Hara, a bare-knuckles urban Huckleberry Finn. It was the autobiography of a man who could not face himself, an elaborate system of evasion and lies unredeemed by the artistic virtue of self-betrayal — Michael Chabon

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Luke McShane

Chess is a game sufficiently rich in meaning that it is easily capable of containing elements of both tragedy and comedy. — Luke McShane

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Aristotle.

And by this very difference tragedy stands apart in relation to comedy, for the latter intends to imitate those who are worse, and the former better, than people are now. — Aristotle.

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Barbara Stanwyck

There is a point in portraying surface vulgarity where tragedy and comedy are very close. — Barbara Stanwyck

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By John Updike

Is not the decisive difference between comedy and tragedy that tragedy denies us another chance? — John Updike

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Arthur Schopenhauer

The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant features are emphasized, is really a tragedy; but gone through in detail it has the character of a comedy. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Oscar Wilde

The one charm of the past is that it is the past. But women never know when the curtain has fallen. They always want a sixth act, and as soon as the interest of the play is entirely over, they propose to continue it. If they were allowed their own way, every comedy would have a tragic ending, and every tragedy would culminate in a farce. They are charmingly artificial, but they have no sense of art. — Oscar Wilde

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Alejandro Jodorowsky

Life is a mixing of all kind of things: comedy and tragedy going together. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Virginia Woolf

That perhaps is your task
to find the relation between things that seem incompatible yet have a mysterious affinity, to absorb every experience that comes your way fearlessly and saturate it completely so that your poem is a whole, not a fragment; to re-think human life into poetry and so give us tragedy again and comedy by means of characters not spun out at length in the novelist's way, but condensed and synthesized in the poet's way
that is what we look to you to do now. — Virginia Woolf

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Mel Brooks

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die. — Mel Brooks

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Karen Blixen

No," he said after a pause, "the true art of the gods is the comic. The comic is a condescension of the divine to the world of man; it is the sublime vision, which cannot be studied, but must ever be celestially granted. In the comic the gods see their own being reflected as in a mirror, and while the tragic poet is bound by strict laws, they will allow the comic artist a freedom as unlimited as their own. They do not even withhold their own existence from his sports. Jove may favor Lucianos of Samosata. As long as your mockery is in true godly taste you may mock at the gods and still remain a sound devotee. But in pitying, or condoling with your god, you deny and annihilate him, and such is the most horrible of atheisms. — Karen Blixen

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Conan O'Brien

Today's tragedy in Paris reminds us very viscerally that it's a right that some people are inexplicably forced to die for. So it's very important tonight that I express that everybody who works at our comedy show, all of us are terribly sad for the families and people of France and anybody in the world tonight who now has to think twice before making a joke. It's not the way it's supposed to be. — Conan O'Brien

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Stewart Lee

I just think it's fortunate that Sir Isaac Newton didn't share the sense of humor of a member of the public, because had he done so, he would of been so amused by the simple effects of gravity, that he would of never gotten round making a comprehensive study of it's causes.
That's the punchline! 'a comprehensive study of it's courses'! I worked for that! Will you be telling this joke at work? I don't think so!
And yes, I am aware that I say this to you while hanging precariously of this art-deco balcony. And I do so deliberately in the hope that I will fall to my death, and that you will learn about the thin line between slap-stick and tragedy. — Stewart Lee

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Doug Stanhope

I watched 60 Minutes ... and they showed this woman, she's in every kind of..thing like that. 'This woman', they say, 'she lost her first four children
died from malnutrition
and, now, she's afraid that her new six-month-old newborn twins will suffer the same fate' ... Who's going to step in and say ... 'kick her in the cunt 'til it doesn't work', 'that woman is a sociopath! that is a sick human being!' ... How much of a sociopath do you need to be? That is the slow ritual torture-murder of children, one after another! At what point does cause-and-effect not kick in? How many bulb-headed skeletons have to go stiff in your arms?! ... 'what? this one's not working ... oh, well let's try again', one after another. At what point do you not go 'I think this is bad'? ... How many kids are you going to fuckin' kill, lady? ... If you impregnate someone under those conditions, they should abort the parents! that's sick! — Doug Stanhope

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Christopher Walken

Laurence Olivier said in an interview once that when he plays a tragedy he always aims for the funny parts, and the other way around. Because in a comedy you look for what's serious. I think that's true. Sometimes things are really funny if you're absolutely earnest. If you're really serious, it's hilarious. — Christopher Walken

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Harry Treadaway

There's comedy in tragedy, and tragedy in comedy. There's always light and dark in most jobs. Whether it's framed as a comedy, drama or tragedy, you try to mix it up within that. You can work on a comedy and it's not laugh-a-minute off set. You can work on a tragedy that's absolutely hilarious. — Harry Treadaway

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Derek R. Audette

Life is replete with comedy, drama, horror, suspense, tragedy, romance, mystery, fantasy and a good dose of fiction. While at times the plot may seem to be lacking, the special effects alone are well worth the price of admission. — Derek R. Audette

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Jennifer Stone

Human comedy is more profound than tragedy. In tragedy we die and it is very sad. In comedy we avoid death, and it is even sadder. — Jennifer Stone

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Chris Kyle

It was always a delicate balance, life and death, comedy and tragedy. — Chris Kyle

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Eleanor Robson Belmont

An actor must communicate his author's given message
comedy, tragedy, serio- comedy; then comes his unique moment, as he is confronted by the looked-for, yet at times unexpected, reaction of the audience. This split second is his; he is in command of his medium; the effect vanishes into thin air; but that moment has a power all its own and, like power in any form, is stimulating and alluring. — Eleanor Robson Belmont

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Craig D. Lounsbrough

There is something of tragedy and a 'comedy of eternal errors' when we attempt to write great scripts of rescue when we are the ones in need of rescue. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Jill McCorkle

I am very interested in that fine line between fiction and reality and between comedy and tragedy - and pushing the line as much as possible. — Jill McCorkle

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Maryln Schwartz

Get up every day and consider the stage you're on. Only you can decide whether it will be a tragedy, a comedy or a drama. — Maryln Schwartz

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Javier Camara

The energy in a comedy is very serious. Somebody said comedy is a tragedy plus time. When you have a tragedy, for example, like this, like, 'We're going to die,' and you have time, like, five hours to die, it becomes a comedy. — Javier Camara

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Joseph Campbell

The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man. The objective world remains what it was, but, because of a shift of emphasis within the subject, is beheld as though transformed. — Joseph Campbell

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Paul Di Filippo

The constituents of tragedy may be universally acknowledged, easily invoked and deeply felt, but the elements of comedy are, I think, more widely variable from person to person. — Paul Di Filippo

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Anthony Trollope

No novel is anything, for the purposes either of comedy or tragedy, unless the reader can sympathise with the characters whose names he finds upon the pages. Let an author so tell his tale as to touch his reader's heart and draw his tears, and he has, so far, done his work well. Truth let there be, --truth of description, truth of character, human truth as to men and women. If there be such truth, I do not know that a novel can be too sensational. — Anthony Trollope

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Frederick Buechner

The preacher speaks both the word of tragedy and the word of comedy because they are both of them the truth and because Jesus speaks them both ... — Frederick Buechner

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Anya Wylde

After an hour of gliding though the crowd and two glasses of tepid wine later, Penelope had reached the spiritual state of being merrily tipsy. It was that perfect state when everything starts looking wonderful and every tragedy turns into a comedy. — Anya Wylde

Tragedy And Comedy Quotes By Sarah Moss

Fiction is the enemy of history. Fiction makes us believe in structure, in beginnings and middles and endings, in tragedy and comedy. There is neither tragedy nor comedy in war, only disorder and harm. — Sarah Moss