tragedy

The power that created the poodle, the platypus and people has an integrated sense of both comedyand tragedy.

—Thurber,James Grover

One cannot balance tragedy in the scales Unless one weighs it with the tragic heart.

—Bene¤  t, StephenVincent

Comedy, I imagine, is harder to do consistently than tragedy, but I like it spiced in the wine of sadness.

—Malamud, Bernard

Farce is nearer tragedy in its essence than comedy is.

—Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

Does history repeat itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce? No, that's too grand, too considered a process. History just burps, and we taste again that raw-onion sandwich it swallowed centuries ago.

—Barnes,Julian Patrick

   Hegel says somewhere that all great events and personalities in the world reappear in one fashion or another. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.

—Marx, Karl Heinrich

Mr Creston Clarke played King Lear at theTabor Grand last night. All through five acts of Shakespeare's tragedy he played the king as though under momentary apprehension that someone else was about to play the ace.

—Field, Eugene

Go, litel bok, go, litel myn tragedye, Ther God thi makere yet, er that he dye, So sende myght to make in som comedye!

—Chaucer, Geoffrey

A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won. A new era is upon us† We have had our last chance. If we do not devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door.

—MacArthur, Douglas

   The great tragedy of Scienceöthe slaying of a beautiful hypothesis byan ugly fact.

—Huxley,T(homas) H(enry)

Life is not all Beer and Skittles. The inherent tragedy of things works itself out from white to black and blacker, and the poor things of a day look ruefully on. Does it shake my cast-iron faith? I cannot say it does. I believe in an ultimate decency of things: ay, and if I woke in hell, should still believe it!

—Stevenson, Robert Louis

Fate wrote her a most tremendous tragedy, and she played it in tights.

—Beerbohm, Sir (Henry) Max(imilian)

Our own death wish is our only real tragedy.

—Puzo, Mario

: I suppose society is wonderfully delightful! :To be in it is merelya bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy.

—Wilde, Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills

We participate in a tragedy; at a comedy we only look.

—Huxley, Aldous Leonard

A perfect tragedy is the noblest production of human nature.

—Addison,Joseph

Religion isthetragedy of mankind† But I do know, from the inside as well as from personal observation, that religion appeals to something deep and irrational and strong within us, and that is what makes it so dangerous.

—Wilson, A(ndrew) N(orman)

Onegoestoseeatragedy tobe moved, tothe opera one goes either for want of any other interest or to facilitate digestion.

—Voltaire pseudonym of  Fran c° ois Marie Arouet

At times I suffer from the strangest sense of detachment from myself and the world about me; I seem to watch it all from the outside, from somewhere inconceivably remote, out of time, out of space, out of the stress and tragedy of it all.

—Wells, H(erbert) G(eorge)

The command 'Thou shalt not kill'must be binding on the conscience of humanity if the terrible tragedy and destiny of Cain is not to be repeated.

—PopeJohn Paul II originally Karol Jozef Wojtyla

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.

—Wilde, Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills

Dinner at the Huntercombes possessed 'only two dramatic featuresöthe wine was a farce and the food a tragedy.'

—Powell, Anthony Dymoke

   The true aristocracyand the true proletariat of the world are both in understanding with tragedy. To them it is the fundamental principle of God, and the key, the minor key, to existence. They differ in this way from the bourgeoisie of all classes, who deny tragedy, who will not tolerate it, and to whom the word tragedy means in itself unpleasantness.

—Blixen, Karen, Baroness pseudonym Isak Dinesen

I am not interested in relationships of color or form or anything else† I am interested only in expressing the basic human emotionsötragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so onöand the fact that lots of people breakdown and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I communicate with those basic human emotions. The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationships, then you miss the point!

—Rothko, Mark originally Marcus Rothkovitch

   We donot expect peopletobe deeply moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind.

—Eliot, George pseudonym of  MaryAnn Evans

Tragedy isthus a representationof anactionthat isworth serious attention, complete in itself and of some amplitude†by means of pityand fear bringing about the purgation of such emotions.

—Aristotle

Tragedy is if I cut my finger.Comedy is if I walk into an open sewer and die.

—Brooks, Mel pseudonym of  Melvin Kaminsky

The tragedy of life is not that man loses, but that he almost wins.

—Broun, (Matthew) Heywood Campbell

Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor†not that men are wicked†but that men know so little of men.

—Du Bois,W(illiam) E(dward) B(urghardt)

It is the tragedy of the world that no one knows what he doesn't know; and the less a man knows, the more sure he is that he knows everything.

—Cary, (Arthur) Joyce Lunel

Le drame tient de la trage¤  die par la peinture des passions et de la come¤  die par la peinture des caracte'  res. Le drame est la troisie'  me grande forme de l'art. Indrama, tragedy paintsthepassions and comedy paints characters. Drama is the third great form of art.

—Hugo,Victor Marie

   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

The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.

—Walpole, Horace, 4th Earl of Orford

It would indeed be the ultimate tragedy if the history of the human race proved to be nothing more noble than the story of an ape playing with a box of matches on a petrol dump.

—Harlech,William David Ormsby Gore, 5th Baron

Le pire drame pour un poe'  te, c'est d'e"  tre admire¤   par malentendu. The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.

—Cocteau,Jean

Writers of comedy have outlook, whereas writers of tragedy have, according to them, insight.

—Thurber,James Grover

Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.

—Fitzgerald, F(rancis) Scott Key