Quotes & Sayings About Tragic Comedy

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

Most people go on living their everyday life: half-frightened, half indifferent, they behold the ghostly tragic-comedy that is being performed on the international stage before the eyes and ears of the world. — Albert Einstein

Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect that life is no farce; that it is not genteel comedy even; that it flowers and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundest tragic depths of the essential dearth in which its subject's roots are plunged. The natural inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters. — Henry James Sr.

Perhaps Aristotle's most widely-read work is his esoteric treatise on aesthetics, the Poetics. According to his analysis of tragic poetry (a section on comedy was either lost or never completed), the theatrical audience experiences katharsis ("purgation") of the heightened emotions of pity and fear as the tragic hero, a basically good but flawed aristocrat, is brought down by his own "error of judgment. — The New York Times

We always wanted to make a comedy that was a little bit more than that, which had tragic elements to it ... that people engaged with - an intelligent comedy essentially. — Alice Lowe

People are funny, and in the most tragic situations, when comedy erupts from nowhere, it can turn on its head within the space of a second or a minute. You're laughing one minute and you're crying the next and that's just life for me, and that is what people are like. — Sally Hawkins

A comedy that is ironic, sometimes bitter, in some cases even dramatic, tragic: This is what Italian comedy is. — Mario Monicelli

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

My tutors at drama school commended and criticised my use of comedy in my acting for a long time at drama school. They said I had a tendency to somehow perform the most tragic of scenes in a slightly flippant way. — John Bradley-West

Dogs have fleas; people have each other. We are born to die. Life is a continuing tragic comedy. Everything and everyone we love suffers. Anybody who doesn't see that has not grown up and known life. — Frederick Lenz

God help us, God help all of us, each one, every one, all of us'. Patrick Hamilton at the concusion of 'The Slaves of Solitude'. — Patrick Hamilton

When I first started acting, I started in opera and had a great desire to play grand, tragic characters. I got sidetracked in musical theater and ended up doing a lot of comedy. — Leslie Easterbrook

The key is just to ignore the pain, because physical comedy only works if you see someone get hurt and they aren't actually hurt. If someone gets hit in the face with a bat, falls down, and gets back up, it's funny. If they stay down and their jaw is wired shut in the next scene, it's really tragic and weird. You have to pretend it doesn't hurt. — Chris Pratt

I have my own stories. A few are known and some untold. Be a tragic one or a comedy one, stories are meant to end at a certain point. Stories ... teach us whether we are the option or we are comparing. — Upasana Banerjee

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

It's a tremendous feeling walking on to a set with a live audience and making them laugh, but I love drama, and I love drama where there's the ability to bring comedy into it because in a lot of tragic circumstances in life there is comedy to be had. — Julia Sawalha

I'd like to start writing scripts. I think I'd probably be inclined to write a very dark comedy or a tragic romance. As a kid, I used to write really dark stuff. — Jessica Biel

The human comedy is always tragic, but since its ingredients are always the same - dupe, fox, straight, like burlesque skits - the repetition through the ages is comedy. — Dawn Powell

Richard leans on his stick. He takes a deep breath and begins to speak. "What a fucked up night? We get this tip that some clown is moving in, I fly off the handle, and off some poor schmuck's wife and I shoot the bastard. To make matters worse, I chop his fucking arm off." Vincent takes a shot and retorts. "The whole scene was fucking Shakespearean. Comedy juxtaposed against a tragic backdrop. — Z.S. Kaplan

In comedy, reconcilement with life comes at the point when to the tragic sense only an inalienable difference or dissension with life appears. — Constance Rourke

After making several tragic movies in a row, I was looking to do a comedy, and one without cynicism. — Ang Lee

I can't go on, I'll go on. — Samuel Beckett

Some stories are sudden like an inhale, some are overcoming like the tides, some, we name mistake, some are called lessons. Stories ... tragic, romantic, comedy. We make them, they make us . — Upasana Banerjee

Any comic is a tragic soul. Comedy is one of the things that allows one to survive. Particularly if one has been in the process of separating off the emotions, it's one place you can process them. — Twyla Tharp

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

And because she worshipped joy, Kira seldom laughed and did not go to see comedies in theaters. And because she felt a profound rebellion against the weighty, the tragic, the solemn, Kira had a solemn reverence for those songs of defiant gaiety. — Ayn Rand

The older I've gotten, the more the need to exert comedy no matter how tragic a character I may be portraying because they are essentials for presenting truth. — Ed Asner

The dimension of space and time, represented by what is transpiring in the here and now, is all that we will ever know. Unlike the continuum of perpetual time and infinite space, everything that we know will experience disruption, dissolution, disintegration, dismemberment, and death. The inevitability of our ending represents the tragic comedy of life. Much of our needless suffering emanates from resisting our impermanence rather than embracing our fate. Only through acceptance of the events and situations that occur in a person's life including suffering, and by releasing our attachments, will a person ever experience enlightenment. — Kilroy J. Oldster

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

My style of comedy is very real and bittersweet, and sort of always on the verge of kind of being tragic. — Paul Feig

Life is tragic comedy, in a way. There is humor. — Tcheky Karyo

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

No matter how beneficial a disappearing act might be for me, I could never tear myself away from a show in progress. Even when the plot's tragic ending is apparent to the entire audience. Perhaps there's a deus ex machina that will lower from the ceiling and turn the whole debacle into a romantic comedy. never can tell. Paid the full ticket price, might as well stay. — Josh Kilmer-Purcell