comedy quotes

Happy is the country which has no history, and happier still is that musical comedyabout which one can find nothing to say.

-James Agate
  In the Sunday Times.

Plaudite, amici, comedia finita est. Applaud, my friends, the comedy is over. SeeAugustus 42:48.

- Aphra ne  e  Amis Behn
  Quoted in Ian Crofton and Donald Fraser A Dictionary of Musical Quotations (1985), quoting the last words of  Augustus as he lay dying.

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

- Mel pseudonym of  Melvin Kaminsky Brooks
Attributed.

All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.

-Chao
  My  Autobiography, ch.10.

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

- Geoffrey Chaucer
c.1385  Troilus and Criseyde, bk.5, l.1786^8.

Farce is nearer tragedy in its essence than comedy is.

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  Table Talk (published1835), entry for 25  Aug.

Comedy is a very serious thing.

- David Garrick
Attributed, in conversation with the actor  Jack Bannister.

Fictional comedy tells us that the writer is remarkable. Factual comedy tells us that the world is remarkable. I suppose I prefer to live in a remarkable world.

- Dave Gorman
  In Varsity, 23  Jan.

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.

-Victor Marie Hugo
  Ruy Blas, pre  face.

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

- Aldous Leonard Huxley
  The Devils of Loudun, ch.11.

   Drama is a complete meal, vitamins, proteins, carbohydrates. It's a slow burn thing. It's got an arc. Comedy is more like coke.

- Eddie Izzard
  In The Guardian,17 May.

Talking of the Comedy of 'The Rehearsal', he said 'It has not enough wit to keep it sweet.' This was easy;he therefore caught himself, and pronounced a more rounded sentence; 'It hasnot vitalityenoughtopreserve it from putrefaction.'

- Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
  Remark,  Jun. Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.4.

Une ample Come  die a'   cent actes divers, Et dont la sce'  ne est l'Univers. A grand comedy in one hundred different acts, On the stage of the universe.

-Jean de La Fontaine
  Fables, pt.5, no.1,'Le bu"   cheron et Mercure'.

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

- Bernard Malamud
  Interview in Paris Review, Spring.

Comedy is an imitation of the common errors of our life, which he representeth in the most ridiculous and scornful sort that may be, so as it is impossible that any beholder can be content to be such a one.

- Sir Philip Sidney
  The Defence of Poetry.

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

-James Grover Thurber
  Letter to Frances Glennon, Jun.

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

-James Grover Thurber
Lanterns and Lances,'The Case for Comedy'.

The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel.

-James Grover Thurber
Lanterns and Lances,'The Duchess and the Bugs'.

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

- Horace, 4th Earl of Orford Walpole
  Letter to Lady Ossory,11 Dec. InW S Lewis (ed) Selected Letters of HoraceWalpole (1973).