In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.


Wislawa Szymborska

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

In tragedy every moment is eternity; in comedy, eternity is a moment.
CHRISTOPHER FRY
Comedy is tragedy - plus time.
CAROL BURNETT
Comedy is tragedy plus time.
CAROL BURNETT
Comedy is tragedy - plus time
CAROL BURNETT
Tragedy is actually untimely comedy
ADHISH MAZUMDER
Comedy is a tragedy plus time.
CAROL BURNETT
The difference between tragedy and comedy: Tragedy is something awful happening to somebody else, wh...
AARON ALLSTON
Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred.
PICO IYER
Human life is a combination of tragedy and comedy. The shapes and designs that surround us are the m...
ALVAR AALTO
Avoiding humiliation is the core of tragedy and comedy.
JOHN GUARE
Comedy is tragedy that happens to other people.
ANGELA CARTER
Life is a tragedy without comedy, but the comedy is nothing but the truth and reality only.
ANUJ SOMANY
Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot.
BUSTER KEATON
I have always felt comedy and tragedy are roommates. If you look up comedy and tragedy, you will fin...
GILBERT GOTTFRIED
The same distinction marks off Tragedy from Comedy; for Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tr...
ARISTOTLE
There's more truth in comedy than in tragedy.
VANNA BONTA
There's obviously a lot of tragedy in comedy; I really enjoy the paradox of what a really good c...
ELLEN PAGE
Life is neither comedy or tragedy, life is what you make of it.
RADHA MITCHELL
We participate in tragedy. At comedy we only look.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
We participate in tragedy. At comedy we only look.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Life is a mixing of all kind of things: comedy and tragedy going together.
ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.
MEL BROOKS
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.
MEL BROOKS
Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.
CHARLIE CHAPLIN
Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot
CHARLIE CHAPLIN
The only difference between a comedy and a tragedy is at which point the story ends.
CORRINE PLIETH
[Comedies], in the ancient world, were regarded as of a higher rank than tragedy, of a deeper truth,...
JOSEPH CAMPBELL
There is a point in portraying surface vulgarity where tragedy and comedy are very close.
BARBARA STANWYCK
A farce or comedy is best played; a tragedy is best read at home.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
We participate in a tragedy; at a comedy we only look.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.
JEAN RACINE
I learned early on that in the real world, the masks of tragedy and comedy adorn the proscenium of e...
WALTER CRONKITE
I just thought here is comedy, here is tragedy. That is the way life is. I just tried to do it true ...
BILLY WILDER
This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.
HORACE WALPOLE
Life is a comedy for those who think... and a tragedy for those who feel.
HORACE WALPOLE
I've come to realize that life is not a musical comedy, it's a Greek tragedy.
BILLY JOEL
The world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.
HORACE WALPOLE
Life is a tragedy for those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.
HORACE WALPOLE
Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.
UNKNOWN
Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.
JEAN DE LA BRUYèRE
There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.
ERMA BOMBECK
The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.
HORACE WALPOLE
Why do we laugh at such terrible things? Because comedy is often the sarcastic realization of inesca...
BRYANT H. MCGILL
Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.
ARISTOTLE
There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest e...
MARK TWAIN
Life is a drama full of tragedy and comedy. You should learn to enjoy the comic episodes a little mo...
JEANNETTE WALLS
A tragedy is a tragedy, and at the bottom, all tragedies are stupid. Give me a choice and I'll take ...
STEPHEN KING
What after all Is a halo? It's only one more thing to keep clean
CHRISTOPHER FRY
The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant f...
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
A few people have ventured to imitate Shakespeare's tragedy. But no audacious spirit has dreamed or ...
G.K. CHESTERTON
The really interesting people we meet in our lives are mixed with comedy and tragedy,
CALLIE THORNE
Life is a comedy when watching and a tragedy when experiencing. I try and share anything I have.
ERIC IDLE
I trained in Shakespeare, and that's all comedy, even when it's tragedy.
OLIVIA THIRLBY
One can play comedy, two are required for melodrama, but a tragedy demands three.
ELBERT HUBBARD
The most protean aspect of comedy is its potentiality for transcending itself, for responding to the...
HARRY LEVIN
Tragedy and comedy are but two aspects of what is real, and whether we see the tragic or the humor...
ARNOLD BEISSER
Tragedy and comedy are but two aspects of what is real, and whether we see the tragic or the humoro...
ARNOLD BEISSER
It really seems to me that in the midst of great tragedy, there is always the horrible possibility t...
PHILIP K. DICK
Poetry is only the highest eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of expression that can be given...
WILLIAM HAZLITT
It is the custom on the stage: in all good, murderous melodramas: to present the tragic and the comi...
CHARLES DICKENS
There is nothing in human affairs that is a true subject for ridicule. Beneath comedy lies the ferme...
GABRIEL CHEVALLIER
Tragedy dramatizes human life as potentiality and fulfillment. Its virtual future, or Destiny, is th...
SUSANNE K. LANGER
The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life. And the body is born young and gro...
OSCAR WILDE
Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.
SHOLOM ALEICHEM
I've always been drawn to discomfort and that limbo of unease you get between comedy and tragedy...
STEVE COOGAN
Running my show is really like an actor being in repertory but where, in one day in one performance,...
DICK CAVETT
Comedy and tragedy are two sides of the same coin. A talent in one area might also lead to a predisp...
JACK DEE
The gods we ourselves have created ruled us for centuries! What a great comedy! And what a great tra...
MEHMET MURAT ILDAN
Plot, rules, nor even poetry, are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitatio...
HORACE WALPOLE
If life is just a stage, then we are all running around ad-libbing, with absolutely no clue what the...
BILL WATTERSON
The basis of tragedy is man's helplessness against disease, war and death; the basis of comedy i...
DAWN POWELL
Comedy is much more difficult than tragedy-and a much better training, I think. It's much easier...
VIVIEN LEIGH
The first part of the story is very funny and very full of gags ... then the second part is not a co...
ROBERTO BENIGNI
The tragedy suffered by the United States is a tragedy to every democratic nation.
FERENC MADL
Laughter and weeping, the Greek masks of comedy and tragedy, mark the extremes of a continuous spect...
ARTHUR KOESTLER
Fate cast me to play the role of an ugly duckling with no promise of swanning. I have played my life...
MARIE DRESSLER
The human comedy is always tragic, but since its ingredients are always the same—dupe, fox, straig...
DAWN POWELL
The cheapness of man is every day's tragedy
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The constituents of tragedy may be universally acknowledged, easily invoked and deeply felt, but the...
PAUL DI FILIPPO
God always comes up with a third act twist -- and we won't know until we die whether the play was a ...
JOAN RIVERS
I'm a storyteller: the crux of the matter is to reach beauty, poetry; it doesn't matter if t...
ROBERTO BENIGNI
Comedy ages quicker than tragedy, to the extent that we can't know if the 10 commandments may or...
ARTHUR SMITH
I believe every abortion is a tragedy.
DIANE ABBOTT
extremely pleased with the response that every element of the federal government, all of our federal...
MICHAEL CHERTOFF
There is no essential difference between the material of comedy and tragedy. All depends on the poin...
GEORGE PIERCE BAKER
And by this very difference tragedy stands apart in relation to comedy, for the latter intends to im...
ARISTOTLE
The office of drama is to exercise, possibly to exhaust, human emotions. The purpose of comedy is to...
LAURENCE OLIVIER
The key element in tragedy is that heroes and heroines are destroyed by that which appears to be the...
ROBERT SHEA
Life is the tragedy,' she said bitterly. 'You know how they categorize Shakespeare's plays, right? I...
ROBYN SCHNEIDER
I was interested in the subject largely because it is a great saga with a great cast, many cinematic...
DAVID BROWN
I've always been drawn to discomfort and that limbo of unease you get between comedy and tragedy...
STEVE COOGAN
Comedy and tragedy co-exist. You can't have one without the other. I'm of the school that an...
HAROLD RAMIS
We want to make sure that this evidence ... is preserved in such a way that NASA can come in afterwa...
MICHAEL BROWN
Humankind’s pathetic life supplies the poetry of our existence. Just as without tragedy comedy wou...
KILROY J. OLDSTER
Disappointment is an endless wellspring of comedy inspiration.
MARTIN FREEMAN
I will do comedy until the day I die: inappropriate comedy, funny comedy, gender-bending, twisting c...
SANDRA BULLOCK
This is just an unspeakable event, an unspeakable tragedy that unfortunately occurred right in front...
WILLIAM MCMANUS
Tragedy is an imitation not just of a complete action, but of events that evoke pity and fear.
ARISTOTLE
I have changed my definition of tragedy. I now think tragedy is not foul deeds done to a person (usu...
RITA MAE BROWN
Every tragedy contains the seeds of triumph.
SCOTT SORRELL

More Wislawa Szymborska

All imperfection is easier to tolerate if served up in small doses.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
Keep up the good work, if only for a while, if only for the twinkling of a tiny galaxy.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
This terrifying world is not devoid of charms, of the mornings that make waking up worthwhile.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
I have sympathy for young people, for their growing pains, but I balk when these growing pains are p...
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
Each of us has a very rich nature and can look at things objectively, from a distance, and at the sa...
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
I started earning a living as a poet rather early on.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
I've reached the age of self-knowledge, so I don't know anything. People who claim that they...
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
There's simply too much fuss about myself.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison. I am near, too near for him to dream of me.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
Poets yearn, of course, to be published, read, and understood, but they do little, if anything, to s...
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
Carry on, then, if only for the moment that it takes a tiny galaxy to blink!
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
No one in my family has ever died of love. What happened, happened, but nothing myth-inspiring.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and ...
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
You can find the entire cosmos lurking in its least remarkable objects.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
I slide my arm from under the sleeper's head and it is numb, full of swarming pins, on the tip of ea...
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
Someone sits at a table or lies on a sofa while staring motionless at a wall or ceiling. Once in a w...
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
Existentialists are monumentally and monotonously serious; they don't like to joke.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the im...
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
I slide my arm from under the sleeper's head and it is numb, full of swarming pins, on the tip o...
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
I cannot imagine any writer who would not fight for his peace and quiet.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
When I was young I had a moment of believing in the Communist doctrine. I wanted to save the world t...
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
Take it not amiss, O speech, that I borrow weighty words, and later try hard to make them seem light...
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
In the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single sto...
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
Any knowledge that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temp...
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
After every war someone has to tidy up.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

Wh...
WISłAWA SZYMBORSKA
Bez tej miłości można żyć,
mieć serce suche jak orzeszek,
malutki los naparstkiem pi...
WISłAWA SZYMBORSKA
Czytanie książek to najpiękniejsza zabawa, jaką sobie ludzkość wymyśliła.
WISłAWA SZYMBORSKA
Dividing earth and sky
is not the right way
to think about this wholeness.
It only al...
WISłAWA SZYMBORSKA
At the very beginning of my creative life I loved humanity. I wanted to do something good for mankin...
WISłAWA SZYMBORSKA
The buzzard has nothing to fault himself with.
Scruples are alien to the black panther.
Pi...
WISłAWA SZYMBORSKA
The Three Oddest Words

When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already ...
WISłAWA SZYMBORSKA
Possibilities

I prefer movies.
I prefer cats.
I prefer the oaks along the Warta...
WISłAWA SZYMBORSKA
Dojela sem tudi, da je ljubezen do človeštva zelo nevarno čustvo, ker najpogosteje vodi v nasilno...
WISłAWA SZYMBORSKA
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.
WISłAWA SZYMBORSKA
... in daily speech, where we don't stop to consider every word, we all use phrases like "the ordina...
WISłAWA SZYMBORSKA
Czemu ty się, zła godzino,
z niepotrzebnym mieszasz lękiem?
Jesteś - a więc musisz mi...
WISłAWA SZYMBORSKA
They're both convinced
that a sudden passion joined them.
Such certainty is beautiful,
WISłAWA SZYMBORSKA
-A Word On Statistics-


Out of every hundred people,

those who always kn...
WISłAWA SZYMBORSKA
Kucam na vrata kamena.
-To sam ja, pusti me.
Hoću da uđem u tvoju unutrašnjost,
da...
WISłAWA SZYMBORSKA