You see tragedy requires persons of heroic stature. It works on the principle of people being more than humanösuper-humanöand also being only too human. But there just aren't many great figures around now, so the tragic mechanisms can't work.

-Amis, Martin Louis
  Explaining why only comedy can reflect contemporary reality. Quoted in an interview in The Scotsman,7  Apr.

Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the L seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the L looketh on the heart.

-Bible (Old Testament)
ORDORD1 Samuel16:7.

   Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you,That even Solomon in all hisglory was not arrayed like one of these.

-Bible (NewTestament)
St Matthew 6:26^9.

And Jesus increased inwisdomand stature, and in favour with God and man.

-Bible (NewTestament)
St Luke 2:52.

Malice is of a low stature, but it hath very long arms.

-Halifax, George Savile, 1st Marquis of
c.1687  Political Thoughts and Reflections,'Of Malice and Envy'.

   Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool His mighty stature; on each hand the flames Driv'n backward slope their pointing spires, and rolled In billows, leave i'th'midst a horrid vale.

-Milton,John
  Of Satan. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.1, l.221.

Stalin†that great lover of peace, a man of giant stature who moulded, as few other men have done, the destinies of his age† The occasion is not merely the passing away of a great figure but perhaps the ending of an historic era.

-Nehru,Jawaharlal
   Tribute, Indian Parliament, 9 Mar.

So that in the end there were the trees. The boy walking through them with his head drooping as he increased in stature. Putting out shoots of green thought. So that, in the end, there was no end.

-White, Patrick Victor Martindale
  TheTree of Man, ch.26.