We laughed hard at real stories of tragedy. It had to be real and it had to be funny. Somebody getting hurt was wonderful. Later, as the 2000 Year Old Man with Carl Reiner I explained the difference between comedy and tragedy: If I cut my finger, that’s tragedy. Comedy is if you walk into an open sewer and die.

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. The objective world remains what it was, but, because of a shift of emphasis within the subject, is beheld as though transformed.

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.

On the contrary, as Miller also notes, “Tragedy implies more optimism in its author than does comedy, and . . . its final result ought to be the reinforcement of the onlooker’s brightest opinions of the human animal.” For the tragic view indicates that we take seriously man’s freedom and his need to realize himself; it demonstrates our belief in the “indestructible will of man to achieve his humanity.

Tragedy.
She considered that word. On the whole, she felt, life was more comedy than tragedy. Nearly everything that happened had its comic element, not too well buried, either. Sooner or later one could find something to laugh at in almost every situation. That was what, in the last analysis, could keep folks from going mad. The truth was, if you got a good Tragedy out of a lifetime, one good, ripping tragedy, thorough, unridiculous, bottom-scraping, not the issue of human stupidity, you were doing, she thought, very well, you were doing very well.

And by this very difference tragedy stands apart in relation to comedy, for the latter intends to imitate those who are worse, and the former better, than people are now.

Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.

Dor. So you think, Lysidas, that all the wit and beauty are to be found in serious poems, and that comic pieces are trifles which deserve no praise? Ur. I certainly do not think so. Tragedy no doubt is very fine when it is well written; but comedy has also its charms, and I believe that one is no less difficult than the other.

Comedy = tragedy + time.

Life is a tragedy to those who feel and a comedy to those who think.

I recall a discussion with a highly-respected psychotherapist colleague and friend on the significance of the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. My friend stated that the trouble with Romeo and Juliet was that they hadn't had adequate counseling. If they had had, they would not have committed suicide. Taken aback, I protested that I didn't think that was Shakespeare's point at all, and that Shakespeare, as well as the other classical writers who have created and molded the literature which speaks to us age after age, is in this drama picturing how sexual love can grasp a man and woman and hurl them into heights and depths — the simultaneous presence of which we call tragic.

But my friend insisted that tragedy was a negative state and we, with our scientific enlightenment, had superseded it — or at least ought to at the earliest possible moment. I argued with him, as I do here, that to see the tragic in merely negative terms is a profound misunderstanding. Far from being a negation of life and love, the tragic is an ennobling and deepening aspect of our experience of sexuality and love. An appreciation of the tragic not only can help us avoid some egregious oversimplifications in life, but it can specifically protect us against the danger that sex and love will be banalized also in psychotherapy.

Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think.

This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.

In tragedy anything comic is a blemish and in comedy anything tragic is ugly