Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.
--
As quoted in his obituary in The Guardian (28 December 1977)Charlie Chaplin (Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin)
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"Leaf by Niggle" ends as a comedy, even as a "divine comedy," on more levels than one. But while it looks forward to "divine comedy", it incorporates and springs from a sense of earthly tragedy: failure, anxiety, and frustration.
J. R. R. Tolkien
Farce may often border on tragedy; indeed, farce is nearer tragedy in its essence than comedy is.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man. ...Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachment to the forms... the two are the terms of a single mythological theme... the down-going and the up-coming (kathados and anodos), which together constitute the totality of the revelation that is life, and which the individual must know and love if he is to be purged (katharsis=purgatorio) of the contagion of sin (disobedience to the divine will) and death (identification with the mortal form).
Joseph Campbell
In the absence of understanding, that was a good a reason as any for living together and making babies and raising them up and throwing them out of the house and then going through the long slow decline together until one of them died and left the other alone again, understanding as little as ever about what their spouses really wanted, who they really were. Was that tragedy? Or was that comedy? Was there really any difference?
Orson Scott Card
Comedy is tragedy that happens to other people.
Angela Carter
Chaplin, Charlie (Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin)
Chapman, Arthur
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