“Farce may often border on tragedy; indeed, farce is nearer tragedy in its essence than comedy is.”
20 August 1833
Table Talk (1821–1834)
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge 220
English poet, literary critic and philosopher 1772–1834Related quotes

(1993), Epilogue, p. 155
The First Three Minutes (1977; second edition 1993)

This has been compared to Horace Walpole's statement: "This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel."
Variant translation: Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as a tragedy, the second time as farce.
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)

The 2,000 Year Old Man (and sequels)
Variant: Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.

Letter to W.T. Barry http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch18s35.html (4 August 1822), in The Writings of James Madison (1910) edited by Gaillard Hunt, Vol. 9, p. 103; these words, using the older spelling "Governours", are inscribed to the left of the main entrance, Library of Congress James Madison Memorial Building.
1820s

Letter 123 To Robert Jephson (13 July 1777)

“It's so laughable that it's somewhere beyond comedy and right into tragedy again.”

“Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.”