Yquotes.com

 

To be comic is merely to be playful, but wit is a serious matter. To laugh at it is to confess that you do not understand.
--
p. 346

 

Ambrose Bierce

» Ambrose Bierce - all quotes »

Similar quotes

 

Human life is basically a comedy. Even its tragedies often seem comic to the spectator, and not infrequently they actually have comic touches to the victim. Happiness probably consists largely in the capacity to detect and relish them. A man who can laugh, if only at himself, is never really miserable.

 

H. L. Mencken

 

I repeat, bullshit. Pull your head out of your ass for a moment and look at this not as a long time comic book reader, but as a civilian. This looks like a comic book, feels like a comic book, smells like a comic book, tastes like a comic book. No “uninitiated” person is going to look at this and think “Ah! This lurid cover illustration indicates this book must be intended for mature readers!” They are going to think “Look what they are selling to my children!!”* And those children are going to think “Co-o-o-o-o-o-ol!!!”

 

John Byrne

 

I think the reason I choose the comic approach so often is because it's harder, therefore affording me the opportunity to show off. Also, a comic vision is my natural world view, but I've grown up in spite of myself and I can pass the comic twist if it detracts from what the characters need. Yes, the life of a saint is hard.

 

Rita Mae Brown

 

The more one suffers, the more sense, I believe, one gains for the comic. Only by the most profound suffering does one gain real competence in the comic, which with a word magically transforms the rational creature called man into a Fratze [caricature]. This competence is like a policeman’s self-assurance when he abruptly grips his club and does not tolerate any talk or blocking of traffic. The victim protests, he objects, he insists on being respected as a citizen, he demands a hearing-immediately there is a second rap from the club, and that means: Please move on! Don’t stand there! In other words, to want to stand there to protest, to demand a hearing, is just a poor pathetic wretch’s attempt to really amount to something, but the comic turns the fellow around, just as the policeman who gets him turned around in a hurry and, by seeing him from behind, with the help of his club makes him comic. Yet this sense of the comic has to be acquired so painfully that one cannot quite wish to have it. But the sense of the comic presses in on me particularly every time my suffering brings me in contact with other people.

 

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard

 

I don't think I shall ever forget my first sight of Hercule Poirot. Of course, I got used to him later on, but to begin with it was a shock, and I think everyone else must have felt the same! I don't know what I'd imagined — something like Sherlock Holmes — [...] Of course, I knew he was a foreigner, but I hadn't expected him to be quite as foreign as he was, if you know what I mean. When you saw him you just wanted to laugh! He was like something on the stage or at the pictures. [...] He looked like a hairdresser in a comic play!

 

Agatha Christie