Chapter Thirty Nine: Tragic, but Funny

Life is a comedy to those who think,

a tragedy to those who feel.

Jean Racine

Weeping is not the same thing as crying.

It takes your whole body to weep, and

when it's over, you feel like you don't have

any bones left to hold you up.

Sarah Ockler, Twenty Boy Summer

A single death is tragic;

a million deaths is a statistic.

Joseph Stalin

A tragedy is a tradegy, and at the bottom,

all tragedies are stupid. Give me a choice

and I'll take A Midsummer Night's Dream over

Hamlet every time. Any fool with steady

hands and a working set of lungs can build

up a house of cards and then blow it down,

but it takes a genius to make people laugh.

Stephen King

Life is a drama full of tragedy and comedy.

You should learn to enjoy the

comic episodes a little more.

Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

One of the greatest tragedies in life is

to lose your own sense of self and

accept the version of you

that is expected by everyone else.

K.L. Toth

They know that tragedy is not glamorous.

They know it doesn't play out in life as it does

on a stage or between the pages of a book.

It is neither a punishment meted out nor

a lesson conferred. Its horrors are not

attributable to one single person. Tragedy is

ugly and tangled, stupid and confusing.

E. Lockheart, We Were Liars

I know that you are selfish, selfish beyond

words, and I know that you haven't the nerve

of a rabbit, I know you're a liar and a humbug,

I know that you're utterly contemptible.

And the tragic part is--her face was on sudden

distraught with pain--the tragic part is that

notwithstanding I love you with all my heart.

W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

The life of every individual, viewed as a whole

and in general, and when only its most

significant features are emphasized, is really

a tragedy; but gone through in detail

it has the character of comedy.

Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as

Will and Representation, Vol. 1

Humanity can be divided into madmen

and cowards. My personal tragedy is in being

born into a world where sanity is held to be

a character flaw.

Mark Lawrence, Prince of Fools

Who is to decide which is the grimmer sight:

withered hearts, or empty skulls?

Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot

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