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He said they that were serious in ridiculous matters would be ridiculous in serious affairs.
--
Cato the Elder.

 

Plutarch

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Nor is there any embarrassment in the fact that we're ridiculous, isn't it true? For it's actually so, we are ridiculous, light-minded, with bad habits, we're bored, we don't know how to look, how to understand, we're all like that, all, you, and I, and they! Now, you're not offended when I tell you to your face that you're ridiculous? And if so, aren't you material? You know, in my opinion it's sometimes even good to be ridiculous, if not better: we can the sooner forgive each other, the sooner humble ourselves; we can't understand everything at once, we cant start right out with perfection! To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand well. This I tell you, you, who have already been able to understand. .. and not understand ... so much. I'm not afraid for you now;

 

Fyodor Dostoevsky

 

The worth of any deed depends on how it is assessed by the onlookers . . . once you have made yourself look ridiculous, you go on being ridiculous whatever you do, perhaps for the rest of your life.

 

Halldor Laxness

 

Of all ridiculous things, it seems to me the most ridiculous is to be a busy man of affairs, prompt to meals, and prompt to work. Hence when I see a fly settle down in a crucial moment on the nose of a business man, or see him bespattered by a carriage which passes by him in even greater haste, or a drawbridge opens before him, or a tile from the roof falls down and strikes him dead, then I laugh heartily. And who could help laughing? What do they accomplish, these hustlers? Are they not like the housewife, when her house was on fire, who in her excitement saved the fire-tongs? What more do they save from the great fire of life?

 

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard

 

Do not fear being ridiculous in relation to the ridiculous.

 

Jean Cocteau

 

The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again.

 

Thomas Paine