“To me, tragedy is if I'll cut my finger, that's tragedy…Comedy is if you walk into an open sewer and die.”

— Mel Brooks

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.

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Mel Brooks72

American director, writer, actor, and producer 1926

Angela Carter book Wise Children

Source: Wise Children (1991), ch. 5 (p.213).

“Farce may often border on tragedy; indeed, farce is nearer tragedy in its essence than comedy is.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

20 August 1833
Table Talk (1821–1834)

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

Libba Bray (1964) American teen writer

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

Sholem Aleichem (1859–1916) Yiddish author and playwright

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

Horace Walpole (1717–1797) English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician

Letter to Anne, Countess of Ossory, (16 August 1776)
A favourite saying of Walpole's, it is repeated in other of his letters, and might be derived from a similar statement attributed to Jean de La Bruyère, though unsourced: "Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think". An earlier form occurs in another published letter:
I have often said, and oftener think, that this world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel — a solution of why Democritus laughed and Heraclitus wept.
Letter to Sir Horace Mann (31 December 1769)
Variant: The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel.