“Even amidst tragedy there is laughter, sometimes farce. The degree of farce depends on who is running the tragedy.”
“A farce or comedy is best played; a tragedy is best read at home.”
“This then was English fiction, this was English criticism, and farce, after all, was but an ill-played tragedy.”
“The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy. ”
“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.”
“For life is terribly deficient in form. Its catastrophes happen in the wrong way and to the wrong people. There is a grotesque horror about its comedies, and its tragedies seem to culminate in farce.”