Topics
L. P. JacksThe hills are like shouts of children who raise their arms, trying to catch stars.
Rabindranath TagoreI sat there for a long, long time, feeling like a fairy on a rosy cloud.
Helen KellerBaseball always has been and always will be a game demanding team play.
Babe RuthI was born for soccer, just as Beethoven was born for music.
PeléThe main ingredient of stardom, is the rest of the team.
John WoodenWe are on the field doing what we love to do.
Roberto ClementeAll work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.English proverbIt's kind of fun to do the impossible.
Walt DisneyIt ain't over till it's over.
Yogi BerraThus, as soon as our attention is fixed on gesture and not on action, we are in the realm of comedy.Henri BergsonWe cannot suppress the smile on the lip; but the tear should also stand ready to start from the eye.William HazlittWe must make a distinction, however, between the comic EXPRESSED and the comic CREATED by language.Henri BergsonThe comic character is often one with whom, to begin with, our mind, or rather our body, sympathises.Henri BergsonIt laughs through the mind, for the mind directs it; and it might be called the humour of the mind.George MeredithNow step aside, look upon life as a disinterested spectator: many a drama will turn into a comedy.Henri BergsonHowever far, moreover, comic fancy may seem to go, reality at times undertakes to improve upon it.Henri BergsonIn every wit there is something of a poet—just as in every good reader there is the making of an actor.Henri BergsonThe truth is, the comic character may, strictly speaking, be quite in accord with stern morality.Henri BergsonHis humour (so to speak) bubbles, sparkles, and finds its way in all directions, like a natural spring.William HazlittHe had by far the most wit and elegance, with less of other things, of humour, character, incident, &c.William HazlittThe comic, we said, appeals to the intelligence, pure and simple; laughter is incompatible with emotion.Henri BergsonHere we are in a world which holds much pain and many pleasures, oceans of tears and echoes of laughter.Agnes RepplierBefore we can laugh at a thing, its absurdity must at least be open and palpable to common apprehension.William HazlittThe greatest single production of wit of this period, I might say of this country, is Butler’s Hudibras.William HazlittTo myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me.
Isaac NewtonAs a matter of fact, exaggeration, like degradation, is only one form of one kind of the comic.Henri BergsonWhat healthy exultation, what genial warmth, what loyal brotherhood of mirth, attends the friendly sound!Agnes RepplierFalstaff himself is so great a joke, rather from his being so huge a mass of enjoyment than of absurdity.William HazlittA landscape may be beautiful, charming and sublime, or insignificant and ugly; it will never be laughable.Henri BergsonBut the art of the story-teller or the playwright does not merely consist in concocting jokes.Henri BergsonThe difficulty lies in giving to a joke its power of suggestion, i.e. in making it acceptable.Henri BergsonBoth are forms of satire, but irony is oratorical in its nature, whilst humour partakes of the scientific.Henri BergsonThus, to depict characters, that is to say, general types, is the object of high-class comedy.Henri BergsonIt may not be given us to add to the treasury of mirth; but there is considerable merit in not robbing it.Agnes RepplierHumour is, as it were, the growth of nature and accident; wit is the product of art and fancy.William HazlittThe reader laughs (as well he may) in reading the passage, but he lays down the book to think.William HazlittHow often has it been said that the fuller the theatre, the more uncontrolled the laughter of the audience!Henri BergsonThe comic of Jonson is a scholar’s excogitation of the comic; that of Massinger a moralist’s.George MeredithMolière’s laughter, in his purest comedies, is ethereal, as light to our nature, as colour to our thoughts.George MeredithAmuse! amuse! amuse! is the plea of a weariness as wide as the world, and as old as humanity.Agnes RepplierI do not, indeed, as I have been accused of doing, employ the word “pleasure” as synonymous with amusement.Agnes RepplierAs we laugh from a spontaneous impulse, we laugh the more at any restraint upon this impulse.William HazlittThe fault, then, of Shakspeare’s comic Muse is, in my opinion, that it is too good-natured and magnanimous.William HazlittThe originality of a comic artist is thus expressed in the special kind of life he imparts to a mere puppet.Henri BergsonComedy, we said, combines events so as to introduce mechanism into the outer forms of life.Henri BergsonIn like manner, an affectation of wit by degrees hardens the heart, and spoils good company and good manners.William HazlittWinning is an important thing, but to have your own style, to have people copy you, that is the greatest gift.
Johan CruyffThe laughter of Comedy is impersonal and of unrivalled politeness, nearer a smile; often no more than a smile.George MeredithThe Misanthrope and the Tartuffe have no audible laughter; but the characters are steeped in the comic spirit.George MeredithGenteel comedy is the comedy of fashionable life, and of artificial character and manners.William HazlittBut the humourist of high has an embrace of contrasts beyond the scope of the Comic poet.George MeredithI have never seen any thing, in the expression of comic humour, equal to Hogarth’s pictures, but Liston’s face!William HazlittAs a general rule, and speaking roughly, laughter doubtless exercises a useful function.Henri BergsonThe juxtaposition of the knight and squire is a Comic conception, the opposition of their natures most humorous.George MeredithThe stroke of the great humourist is world-wide, with lights of Tragedy in his laughter.George MeredithWit can be expressed only in language; humor can be developed sufficiently in situation.Agnes RepplierFor humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals.Agnes RepplierMoreover, to touch and kindle the mind through laughter, demands more than sprightliness, a most subtle delicacy.George MeredithThe Femmes Savantes is a capital instance of the uses of comedy in teaching the world to understand what ails it.George MeredithHis humour is, in general, broader, his characters more natural, and his incidents more striking than Congreve’s.William HazlittIndifference is its natural environment, for laughter has no greater foe than emotion.Henri BergsonWhen a comic scene has been reproduced a number of times, it reaches the stage of being a classical type or model.Henri BergsonIn fact, amusements which do not amuse are among the most depressing of earthly evils.Agnes RepplierThe School for Scandal is, if not the most original, perhaps the most finished and faultless comedy which we have.William HazlittAny form or formula is a ready-made frame into which the comic element may be fitted.Henri BergsonThere are many ways of being witty, almost as many as there are of being the reverse.Henri BergsonBy organising laughter, comedy accepts social life as a natural environment, it even obeys an impulse of social life.Henri BergsonSo we see that absurdity, when met with in the comic, is not absurdity IN GENERAL.Henri BergsonSo, comic absurdity gives us from the outset the impression of playing with ideas.Henri BergsonThey are as different as the two hemispheres in the time of Columbus, yet they touch and are bound in one by laughter.George MeredithSo we were probably right in saying that comedy lies midway between art and life.Henri BergsonI'm proud of myself for the way I pushed through and even learned that dismount.
Simone BilesFor the comic spirit has a logic of its own, even in its wildest eccentricities.Henri BergsonYou would hardly appreciate the comic if you felt yourself isolated from others.Henri BergsonComedy depicts characters we have already come across and shall meet with again.Henri BergsonWe have shown that "series of events" may become comic either by repetition, by inversion, or by reciprocal interference.Henri BergsonThis is the reason comic observation instinctively proceeds to what is general.Henri BergsonThere is a constant ebullition of gay, laughing invention, cordial good humour, and fine animal spirits, in his writings.William HazlittAmusement is merely one side of pleasure, but a very excellent side, against which, in truth, I have no evil word to urge.Agnes RepplierHow profound is the comic element in the over-romantic, Utopian bent of mind!Henri BergsonFor, obviously, the comic element in a drawing is often a borrowed one, for which the text supplies all the stock-in-trade.Henri BergsonAs we hinted at the outset of this study, it would be idle to attempt to derive every comic effect from one simple formula.Henri BergsonAnd so we see why action is essential in drama, but only accessory in comedy.Henri BergsonThere are questions, as well as persons, that only the Comic can fitly touch.George MeredithComedy, on the other hand, is an interpretation of the general mind, and is for that reason of necessity kept in restraint.George MeredithThose who detect irony in Comedy do so because they choose to see it in life.George MeredithTo read a good comedy is to keep the best company in the world, where the best things are said, and the most amusing happen.William HazlittIndeed, transposition is to ordinary language what repetition is to comedy.Henri BergsonEmbrace them both, and you have the whole scale of laughter in your breast.George MeredithIt is only very sensible or very honest people, who laugh as freely at their own absurdities as at those of their neighbours.William HazlittKeeping in comic character is consistency in absurdity; a determined and laudable attachment to the incongruous and singular.William HazlittA quotation or a hackneyed phrase dextrously turned or wrested to another purpose, has often the effect of the liveliest wit.William HazlittAfter all, verbal and accidental strokes of wit, though the most surprising and laughable, are not the best and most lasting.William HazlittComedy, we have to admit, was never one of the most honoured of the Muses.George MeredithThe Stage is one great source of public amusement, not to say instruction.William HazlittYou can melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn't be a plating on the 24-karat friendship I felt for Luz Long.
Jesse OwensContempt is a sentiment that cannot be entertained by comic intelligence.George Meredithfor wit is as infinite as love, and a deal more lasting in its qualities.Agnes RepplierYou cannot force people to laugh: you cannot give a reason why they should laugh: they must laugh of themselves, or not at all.William HazlittThe first point to which attention should be called is that the comic does not exist outside the pale of what is strictly HUMAN.Henri BergsonIt might almost be said that every fashion is laughable in some respect.Henri BergsonSeveral authors, Jean Paul amongst them, have noticed that humour delights in concrete terms, technical details, definite facts.Henri BergsonWithout effort, and with no dazzling flashes of achievement, it is full of healing, the wit of good breeding, the wit of wisdom.George MeredithWit is born of conscious effort; humor, of the allotted ironies of fate.Agnes RepplierMenander and Molière have given the principal types to Comedy hitherto.George MeredithHumourists touching upon History or Society are given to be capricious.George MeredithHazlitt is so sure that laughter is our inalienable right, that he takes no pains to soften its cadences or to justify its mirth.Agnes RepplierNevertheless, an understanding of the differences in nations and in epochs helps us to the enjoyment of many humorous situations.Agnes RepplierWe weep at what thwarts or exceeds our desires in serious matters: we laugh at what only disappoints our expectations in trifles.William HazlittThe reasonings at which we laugh are those we know to be false, but which we might accept as true were we to hear them in a dream.Henri BergsonWe have gone over many varieties of the comic, and there is not one of them that is incapable of being volatilised into a witticism.Henri BergsonThe higher the Comedy, the more prominent the part they enjoy in it.George MeredithHeart and mind laugh out at Don Quixote, and still you brood on him.George MeredithWit is the plaything of the intellectual, or the weapon of nimble minds; humor is the possession of all sorts and conditions of men.Agnes RepplierWit is the salt of conversation, not the food, and few things in the world are more wearying than a sarcastic attitude towards life.Agnes RepplierThe Tatler contains only half the number of volumes, and, I will venture to say, nearly an equal quantity of sterling wit and sense.William HazlittExaggeration is always comic when prolonged, and especially when systematic; then, indeed, it appears as one method of transposition.Henri BergsonThere is much greater mixture, however, of the pathetic and sentimental with the quaint and humorous, than there ever is in Fielding.William HazlittTo realise this more fully, it need only be noted that a comic character is generally comic in proportion to his ignorance of himself.Henri BergsonLaughter must be something of this kind, a sort of SOCIAL GESTURE.Henri BergsonWe said that repetition is the favourite method of classic comedy.Henri BergsonLanguage only attains laughable results because it is a human product, modelled as exactly as possible on the forms of the human mind.Henri BergsonHumour is the describing the ludicrous as it is in itself; wit is the exposing it, by comparing or contrasting it with something else.William HazlittBelieve that idle empty laughter is the most desirable of recreations, and significant Comedy will seem pale and shallow in comparison.George MeredithThe Comic spirit is not hostile to the sweetest songfully poetic.George MeredithHer severities of judgment—and who more severe than she?—were due to the same melancholy cause; for humor is the kindliest thing alive.Agnes RepplierAmong other things, this little piece contains an exquisite, and almost unanswerable defence of the superiority of comedy over tragedy.William HazlittThe four principal writers of this style of comedy (which I think the best) are undoubtedly Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar.William HazlittLaughter must answer to certain requirements of life in common.Henri BergsonHe put his strength into his tragedies, and played with comedy.William HazlittThis accounts for the comic being so frequently dependent on the manners or ideas, or, to put it bluntly, on the prejudices, of a society.Henri BergsonSuch treasuries of sparkling laughter are wells in our desert.George MeredithTo explain the nature of laughter and tears, is to account for the condition of human life; for it is in a manner compounded of these two!William HazlittPicture to yourself certain characters in a certain situation: if you reverse the situation and invert the roles, you obtain a comic scene.Henri BergsonHence the following general rule: A COMIC MEANING IS INVARIABLY OBTAINED WHEN AN ABSURD IDEA IS FITTED INTO A WELL-ESTABLISHED PHRASE-FORM.Henri BergsonIn particular, there is in laughter a movement of relaxation which has often been noticed, and the reason of which we must try to discover.Henri BergsonBut it does not therefore follow that laughter always hits the mark or is invariably inspired by sentiments of kindness or even of justice.Henri BergsonIt enters you like fresh air into a study; as when one of the sudden contrasts of the comic idea floods the brain like reassuring daylight.George Meredith“Hudibras,” for example, is witty; “Don Quixote” is humorous.Agnes RepplierBut humor stands on common soil, and breathes our common air.Agnes RepplierLamb laughs at so many people, and never once wrongs any one.Agnes RepplierEvery page presents a shower of brilliant conceits, is a tissue of epigrams in prose, is a new triumph of wit, a new conquest over dulness.William HazlittOur laughing at him does not once lessen our respect for him.William HazlittNo one would presume to say that we are deficient in jokers.George MeredithWith the exception, however, of a few special instances to which we shall recur later, the repetition of a word is never laughable in itself.Henri BergsonComedy, or the Comic element, is the specific for the poison of delusion while Folly is passing from the state of vapour to substantial form.George MeredithIt is in its simplest forms, however, that humor enjoys a world-wide actuality, and is the connecting link of all times and places and people.Agnes RepplierThe essence of the laughable then is the incongruous, the disconnecting one idea from another, or the jostling of one feeling against another.William HazlittHowever spontaneous it seems, laughter always implies a kind of secret freemasonry, or even complicity, with other laughers, real or imaginary.Henri BergsonThe idealistic conceptions of Comedy gives breadth and opportunities of daring to Comic genius, and helps to solve the difficulties it creates.George MeredithDream as big as you can dream, and anything is possible.
Michael PhelpsWe then find the same connection between the comic and the witty as exists between a regular scene and the fugitive suggestion of a possible one.Henri BergsonMolière’s wit is like a running brook, with innumerable fresh lights on it at every turn of the wood through which its business is to find a way.George MeredithInstead of treating his ideas as mere symbols, the wit sees them, he hears them and, above all, makes them converse with one another like persons.Henri BergsonWe laugh, when children, at the sudden removing of a pasteboard mask: we laugh, when grown up, more gravely at the tearing off the mask of deceit.William HazlittIn each of them there is a conception of the Comic that refines even to pain, as in the Menedemus of the Heautontimorumenus, and in the Misanthrope.George MeredithThe accidental contradiction between our expectations and the event can hardly be said, however, to amount to the ludicrous: it is merely laughable.William HazlittThat wit is the most refined and effectual, which is founded on the detection of unexpected likeness or distinction in things, rather than in words.William HazlittIt is not worth while to deny or even to soften the cruel side of humor, though it is a far more grievous error to overlook its generous forbearance.Agnes RepplierThe four chief names for comic humour out of our own language are Aristophanes and Lucian among the ancients, Moliere and Rabelais among the moderns.William HazlittNow, laughter is simply the result of a mechanism set up in us by nature or, what is almost the same thing, by our long acquaintance with social life.Henri BergsonWe owe to one another all the wit and good humour we can command; and nothing so clears our mental vistas as sympathetic and intelligent conversation.Agnes RepplierIt might be made an argument of the intrinsic superiority of poetry or imagination to wit, that the former does not admit of mere verbal combinations.William HazlittAnd to love Comedy you must know the real world, and know men and women well enough not to expect too much of them, though you may still hope for good.George MeredithA word is said to be comic when it makes us laugh at the person who utters it, and witty when it makes us laugh either at a third party or at ourselves.Henri BergsonHe was unquestionably one of the greatest comic geniuses that ever lived; a man of infinite wit, gaiety, and invention—full of life, laughter, and whim.William HazlittIncidents of a kind casting ridicule on our unfortunate nature instead of our conventional life, provoke derisive laughter, which thwarts the Comic idea.George MeredithWit is, in fact, a voluntary act of the mind, or exercise of the invention, shewing the absurd and ludicrous consciously, whether in ourselves or another.William HazlittIt is one of the French titles to honour that this quintessential comedy of the opposition of Alceste and Célimène was ultimately understood and applauded.George MeredithMost of doubtful causes in contest are open to Comic interpretation, and any intellectual pleading of a doubtful cause contains germs of an Idea of Comedy.George MeredithThe superiority of Shakspeare’s natural genius for comedy cannot be better shewn than by a comparison between his comic characters and those of Ben Jonson.William HazlittThe ceremonial side of social life must, therefore, always include a latent comic element, which is only waiting for an opportunity to burst into full view.Henri BergsonA similar treasury (be it reverently spoken) holds for us all the stored-up laughter of the world, and from it comes human help in hours of black dejection.Agnes RepplierSo either our analysis is incorrect, or it must be capable of being stated in the following theorem: Comic absurdity is of the same nature as that of dreams.Henri BergsonThis essential difference between tragedy and comedy, the former being concerned with individuals and the latter with classes, is revealed in yet another way.Henri BergsonMan is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.William HazlittIn like manner, any thing we must not think of makes us laugh, by its coming upon us by stealth and unawares, and from the very efforts we make to exclude it.William HazlittIt seems as though the comic could not produce its disturbing effect unless it fell, so to say, on the surface of a soul that is thoroughly calm and unruffled.Henri BergsonThe laugh will come again, but it will be of the order of the smile, finely tempered, showing sunlight of the mind, mental richness rather than noisy enormity.George MeredithThere is nothing more powerfully humorous than what is called keeping in comic character, as we see it very finely exemplified in Sancho Panza and Don Quixote.William HazlittCross-readings, where the blunders are designed, are wit: but if any one were to light upon them through ignorance or accident, they would be merely ludicrous.William HazlittBesides the wit and ingenuity of this play, there is a genial spirit of frankness and generosity about it, that relieves the heart as well as clears the lungs.William HazlittIndeed, it is not difficult to see that any PLAY OF IDEAS may afford us amusement if only it bring back to mind, more or less distinctly, the play of dreamland.Henri BergsonWithout undervaluing other writers of Comedy, I think it may be said that Menander and Molière stand alone specially as comic poets of the feelings and the idea.George MeredithANY ARRANGEMENT OF ACTS AND EVENTS IS COMIC WHICH GIVES US, IN A SINGLE COMBINATION, THE ILLUSION OF LIFE AND THE DISTINCT IMPRESSION OF A MECHANICAL ARRANGEMENT.Henri BergsonPlay is really the work of childhood.
Fred RogersFor this were our poets and dramatists, our painters and novelists, sent to us,—to make us lawfully happier in a hard world, to help us smilingly through the gloom.Agnes RepplierMany of the jests and witticisms in the best comedies are moral aphorisms and rules for the conduct of life, sparkling with wit and fancy in the mode of expression.William HazlittIt is the often-expressed opinion of Leigh Hunt that although wit and humor may be found in perfection apart from each other, yet their best work is shared in common.Agnes RepplierI do not, in short, consider comedy as exactly an affair of the heart or the imagination; and it is for this reason only that I think Shakspeare’s comedies deficient.William HazlittHe has humour, character, and invention, in common with the other, with a more unaffected gaiety and spirit of enjoyment, which overflows and sparkles in all he does.William HazlittThe kindly contagion of its mirth lifts our hearts from their personal apprehension of life’s grievances, and links us together in a bond of mutual tears and laughter.Agnes RepplierThe source of his wit is clear reason: it is a fountain of that soil; and it springs to vindicate reason, common-sense, rightness and justice; for no vain purpose ever.George MeredithThe humorist’s view of life is essentially genial; but he has given stout blows in his day, and the sound of his vigorous warfare rings harshly in our unaccustomed ears.Agnes RepplierThe humorous descriptions of Steele resemble loose sketches, or fragments of a comedy; those of Addison are rather comments or ingenious paraphrases on the genuine text.William HazlittSlow and steady wins the race.
AesopGood Comedies are such rare productions, that notwithstanding the wealth of our literature in the Comic element, it would not occupy us long to run over the English list.George MeredithWhat monstrous absurdities and paradoxes have resisted whole batteries of serious arguments, and then crumbled swiftly into dust before the ringing death-knell of a laugh!Agnes RepplierHogarth was, in one sense, strictly an historical painter: that is, he represented the manners and humours of mankind in action, and their characters by varied expression.William HazlittInadvertently to say or do what we have no intention of saying or doing, as a result of inelasticity or momentum, is, as we are aware, one of the main sources of the comic.Henri BergsonStrive as we may, we cannot put a new construction on those vigorous old jokes, and to be simply and barefacedly amusing is no longer considered a sufficient raison d’être.Agnes RepplierHogarth, on the contrary, is essentially a comic painter; his pictures are not indifferent, unimpassioned descriptions of human nature, but rich, exuberant satires upon it.William HazlittBetween these two stand Shakespeare and Cervantes, with the richer laugh of heart and mind in one; with much of the Aristophanic robustness, something of Molière’s delicacy.George MeredithNow, to look about us in the present time, I think it will be acknowledged that in neglecting the cultivation of the Comic idea, we are losing the aid of a powerful auxiliar.George MeredithIn an age when everybody is writing Reminiscences, and when nothing is left untold, we hear a great deal about the wit and brilliancy of former days and former conversations.Agnes RepplierTo understand laughter, we must put it back into its natural environment, which is society, and above all must we determine the utility of its function, which is a social one.Henri BergsonI do not know that the fly in amber is of any particular use, but the Comic idea enclosed in a comedy makes it more generally perceptible and portable, and that is an advantage.George MeredithSo wit is often the more forcible and pointed for being dry and serious, for it then seems as if the speaker himself had no intention in it, and we were the first to find it out.William HazlittHow delicate the touch which puts everything before us with a certain gentle, loving malice, winning us to laughter, without for a moment alienating our sympathies from the right.Agnes RepplierIn turning over the pages of the best comedies, we are almost transported to another world, and escape from this dull age to one that was all life, and whim, and mirth, and humour.William HazlittThus, certain professions have a technical vocabulary: what a wealth of laughable results have been obtained by transposing the ideas of everyday life into this professional jargon!Henri BergsonHazlitt’s definition of wit and humor is perhaps as good as any definition is ever likely to be; that is, it expresses a half-truth with a great deal of reasonableness and accuracy.Agnes RepplierLastly, there is a wit of sense and observation, which consists in the acute illustration of good sense and practical wisdom, by means of some far-fetched conceit or quaint imagery.William HazlittIt is difficult, at any time, to deprive wit of its social or political surroundings; it is impossible to drive it back to those deeper, simpler sources whence humor springs unveiled.Agnes RepplierFor exaggeration to be comic, it must not appear as an aim, but rather as a means that the artist is using in order to make manifest to our eyes the distortions which he sees in embryo.Henri BergsonThe more exactly these two images, that of a person and that of a machine, fit into each other, the more striking is the comic effect, and the more consummate the art of the draughtsman.Henri BergsonSometimes, on the contrary, we describe with scrupulous minuteness what is being done, and pretend to believe that this is just what ought to be done; such is often the method of HUMOUR.Henri BergsonThe ancient philosophers also abounded in the same kind of wit, in telling home truths in the most unexpected manner.—In this sense Æsop was the greatest wit and moralist that ever lived.William HazlittWe laugh, but even in our laughter we know that not for the space of a passing breath does Goldsmith yield his own sympathy, or divert ours, away from the just cause of innocence and truth.Agnes RepplierLaughter, then, does not belong to the province of esthetics alone, since unconsciously (and even immorally in many particular instances) it pursues a utilitarian aim of general improvement.Henri BergsonEvery one knows how easily the comic spirit exercises its ingenuity on social actions of a stereotyped nature, from an ordinary prize-distribution to the solemn sitting of a court of justice.Henri BergsonThey quicken the mind through laughter, from coming out of the mind; and the mind accepts them because they are clear interpretations of certain chapters of the Book lying open before us all.George MeredithA witty saying makes us at least smile; consequently, no investigation into laughter would be complete did it not get to the bottom of the nature of wit and throw light on the underlying idea.Henri BergsonAbsentmindedness, indeed, is not perhaps the actual fountain-head of the comic, but surely it is contiguous to a certain stream of facts and fancies which flows straight from the fountain-head.Henri BergsonI cannot help thinking, for instance, that Moliere was as great, or a greater comic genius than Shakspeare, though assuredly I do not think that Racine was as great, or a greater tragic genius.William HazlittWhat is here called WIT is a gift for dashing off comic scenes in a few strokes—dashing them off, however, so subtly, delicately and rapidly, that all is over as soon as we begin to notice them.Henri BergsonFor any ceremony, then, to become comic, it is enough that our attention be fixed on the ceremonial element in it, and that we neglect its matter, as philosophers say, and think only of its form.Henri BergsonWe said that wit often consists in extending the idea of one's interlocutor to the point of making him express the opposite of what he thinks and getting him, so to say, entrapt by his own words.Henri BergsonIn manner, the extreme simplicity and graceful uniformity of modern dress, however favourable to the arts, has certainly stript comedy of one of its richest ornaments and most expressive symbols.William HazlittNow, if comic illusion is similar to dream illusion, if the logic of the comic is the logic of dreams, we may expect to discover in the logic of the laughable all the peculiarities of dream logic.Henri BergsonIn a comedy, we feel any other situation might equally well have been chosen for the purpose of introducing the character; he would still have been the same man though the situation were different.Henri BergsonSurely, to express a truth humorously is to rob that truth of all offensive qualities, and Lucian himself would be prepared to admit that, in a case like this, it is almost as pleasant as falsehood.Agnes RepplierThis is perhaps enough to show us at least one cause of the endless triumph of humor over wit,—a triumph due to its closer affinity with the simple and elementary conditions of human nature and life.Agnes RepplierOne excellent test of the civilization of a country, as I have said, I take to be the flourishing of the Comic idea and Comedy; and the test of true Comedy is that it shall awaken thoughtful laughter.George MeredithMisunderstandings, ( malentendus ) where one person means one thing, and another is aiming at something else, are another great source of comic humour, on the same principle of ambiguity and contrast.William HazlittWe turn with an incredulous smile from a story that staggers our belief: and we are ready to split our sides with laughing at an extravagance that sets all common sense and serious concern at defiance.William HazlittWit hovers round the borders of the light and trifling, whether in matters of pleasure or pain; for as soon as it describes the serious seriously, it ceases to be wit, and passes into a different form.William HazlittAnd yet there is something esthetic about it, since the comic comes into being just when society and the individual, freed from the worry of self-preservation, begin to regard themselves as works of art.Henri BergsonThus, as might have been expected and may be seen from the foregoing, the comic in words follows closely on the comic in situation and is finally merged, along with the latter, in the comic in character.Henri BergsonAssuming that the stage is both a magnified and a simplified view of life, we shall find that comedy is capable of furnishing us with more information than real life on this particular part of our subject.Henri BergsonModern French comedy is commendable for the directness of the study of actual life, as far as that, which is but the early step in such a scholarship, can be of service in composing and colouring the picture.George MeredithNow, comic fancy is indeed a living energy, a strange plant that has nourished on the stony portions of the social soil, until such time as culture should allow it to vie with the most refined products of art.Henri BergsonYou must, as I have said, believe that our state of society is founded in common-sense, otherwise you will not be struck by the contrasts the Comic Spirit perceives, or have it to look to for your consolation.George MeredithOn the other hand, how often has the remark been made that many comic effects are incapable of translation from one language to another, because they refer to the customs and ideas of a particular social group!Henri BergsonBut a remarkable instinct, on the contrary, impels the comic poet, once he has elaborated his central character, to cause other characters, displaying the same general traits, to revolve as satellites round him.Henri BergsonIf amusement can help us so materially in our daily life, which is a daily struggle as well, how much more pleasure!—pleasure which is the rightful goal of art, just as knowledge is the rightful goal of science.Agnes RepplierMenander, then; with him, through the affinity of sympathy, Terence; and Shakespeare and Molière have this beautiful translucency of language: and the study of the comic poets might be recommended, if for that only.George MeredithIf the comic poet's object is to offer us types, that is to say, characters capable of self-repetition, how can he set about it better than by showing us, in each instance, several different copies of the same model?Henri BergsonThe first and most obvious cause of laughter is to be found in the simple succession of events, as in the sudden shifting of a disguise, or some unlooked-for accident, without any absurdity of character or situation.William HazlittThat is, Shakspeare was a greater poet than wit: his imagination was the leading and master-quality of his mind, which was always ready to soar into its native element: the ludicrous was only secondary and subordinate.William HazlittThe gratification of the fancy, ‘and furnishing matter for innocent mirth,’ are, therefore, the chief object of this and other characters like it, rather than reforming the moral sense, or indulging our personal spleen.William HazlittIf men of real wit have been more numerous in the world than men of real humor, it is because discernment and lenity, mirth and conciliation, are qualities which do not blend easily with the natural asperity of our race.Agnes RepplierIt is even possible that although we may find “Don Quixote” dull, and “The Excursion” vapid, another reader, no whit cleverer, we are sure, than ourselves, may enjoy them both, with honest laughter and with keen delight.Agnes RepplierThe principle of contrast is, however, the same in all the stages, in the simply laughable, the ludicrous, the ridiculous; and the effect is only the more complete, the more durably and pointedly this principle operates.William HazlittComedy naturally wears itself out—destroys the very food on which it lives; and by constantly and successfully exposing the follies and weaknesses of mankind to ridicule, in the end leaves itself nothing worth laughing at.William HazlittWho, then, has not felt that sudden lifting of the spirits, that quick purging of black, melancholy vapors from the brain, as wise old Burton would express it, when some fine jest appeals irresistibly to one’s sense of humor!Agnes RepplierThis amounts to saying that the comic in speech should correspond, point by point, with the comic in actions and in situations, and is nothing more, if one may so express oneself, than their projection on to the plane of words.Henri BergsonThe Comic poet is in the narrow field, or enclosed square, of the society he depicts; and he addresses the still narrower enclosure of men’s intellects, with reference to the operation of the social world upon their characters.George MeredithFor my own reading, I like Vanbrugh’s City Wives’ Confederacy as well, or (‘not to speak it profanely’) better than the Merry Wives of Windsor, and Congreve’s Way of the World as well as the Comedy of Errors or Love’s Labour Lost.William HazlittCowley’s Essays are among the most agreeable prose-compositions in our language, being equally recommended by sense, wit, learning, and interesting personal history, and written in a style quite free from the faults of his poetry.William HazlittComedy is an exhibition of their battle with men, and that of men with them: and as the two, however divergent, both look on one object, namely, Life, the gradual similarity of their impressions must bring them to some resemblance.George MeredithLaughter is open to perversion, like other good things; the scornful and the brutal sorts are not unknown to us; but the laughter directed by the Comic spirit is a harmless wine, conducing to sobriety in the degree that it enlivens.George MeredithPerhaps it might be defined as follows: A situation is invariably comic when it belongs simultaneously to two altogether independent series of events and is capable of being interpreted in two entirely different meanings at the same time.Henri BergsonOn the other hand, we are told that Miss Austen owed her lively sense of humor to her habit of dissociating the follies of mankind from any rigid standard of right and wrong; which means, I suppose, that she never dreamed she had a mission.Agnes RepplierOne of the reasons that must have given rise to many erroneous or unsatisfactory theories of laughter is that many things are comic de jure without being comic de facto, the continuity of custom having deadened within them the comic quality.Henri BergsonIn giving instances of different sorts of wit, or trying to recollect good things of this kind, they are the first which stand ready in the memory; and they are those which furnish the best tests and most striking illustrations of what we want.William HazlittThe exquisite pleasure of interchanging ideas, of awakening to suggestions, of finding sympathy and companionship, is as remote from the languid amusement yielded by story-telling as a good play is remote from the bald diversion of the music hall.Agnes RepplierPerhaps we ought even to carry simplification still farther, and, going back to our earliest recollections, try to discover, in the games that amused us as children, the first faint traces of the combinations that make us laugh as grown-up persons.Henri BergsonIf we could make up our minds to spare our friends all details of ill health, of money losses, of domestic annoyances, of altercations, of committee work, of grievances, provocations, and anxieties, we should sin less against the world’s good-humour.Agnes RepplierPerhaps one reason for the scanty tolerance that humor receives at the hands of the disaffected is because of the rather selfish way in which the initiated enjoy their fun; for there is always a secret irritation about a laugh in which we cannot join.Agnes RepplierThe aim and business of the Comic poet are misunderstood, his meaning is not seized nor his point of view taken, when he is accused of dishonouring our nature and being hostile to sentiment, tending to spitefulness and making an unfair use of laughter.George MeredithSo there is a logic of the imagination which is not the logic of reason, one which at times is even opposed to the latter,—with which, however, philosophy must reckon, not only in the study of the comic, but in every other investigation of the same kind.Henri BergsonAs with the singing of the sky-lark out of sight, you must love the bird to be attentive to the song, so in this highest flight of the Comic Muse, you must love pure Comedy warmly to understand the Misanthrope: you must be receptive of the idea of Comedy.George MeredithOn the one hand, indeed, we find there is no essential difference between a word that is comic and one that is witty; on the other hand, the latter, although connected with a figure of speech, invariably calls up the image, dim or distinct, of a comic scene.Henri BergsonThose girlish confidences of Jane Austen to Cassandra, so frank and gay, so full of jokes and laughter, and country gossip, and sisterly affection, what a contrast they afford to the attitude of unbroken reserve which Miss Austen always presented to the world!Agnes RepplierGoldsmith’s Good-natured Man is inferior to She Stoops to Conquer; and even this last play, with all its shifting vivacity, is rather a sportive and whimsical effusion of the author’s fancy, a delightful and delicately managed caricature, than a genuine comedy.William HazlittYou may estimate your capacity for Comic perception by being able to detect the ridicule of them you love, without loving them less: and more by being able to see yourself somewhat ridiculous in dear eyes, and accepting the correction their image of you proposes.George MeredithWe may thus surmise that a phrase is likely to become comic if, though reversed, it still makes sense, or if it expresses equally well two quite independent sets of ideas, or, finally, if it has been obtained by transposing an idea into some key other than its own.Henri BergsonBut if an isolated phrase is to be comic in itself, when once separated from the person who utters it, it must be something more than ready-made, it must bear within itself some sign which tells us, beyond the possibility of doubt, that it was uttered automatically.Henri BergsonNot only are we entitled to say that comedy gives us general types, but we might add that it is the ONLY one of all the arts that aims at the general; so that once this objective has been attributed to it, we have said all that it is and all that the rest cannot be.Henri BergsonThe public are, after all, not the worst judges.—Farquhar’s Letters, prefixed to the collection of his plays, are lively, good humoured, and sensible; and contain, among other things, an admirable exposition of the futility of the dramatic unities of time and place.William HazlittThere appears to have been in Sterne a vein of dry, sarcastic humour, and of extreme tenderness of feeling; the latter sometimes carried to affectation, as in the tale of Maria, and the apostrophe to the recording angel: but at other times pure, and without blemish.William HazlittBy literary comedies, I mean comedies of classic inspiration, drawn chiefly from Menander and the Greek New Comedy through Terence; or else comedies of the poet’s personal conception, that have had no model in life, and are humorous exaggerations, happy or otherwise.George MeredithThey are to be studied as works of science as well as of amusement; they satisfy our love of truth; they fill up the void in the mind; they form a series of plates in natural history, and of that most interesting part of natural history, the history of our own species.William HazlittThe Comic poet dares to show us men and women coming to this mutual likeness; he is for saying that when they draw together in social life their minds grow liker; just as the philosopher discerns the similarity of boy and girl, until the girl is marched away to the nursery.George MeredithThis is a broad statement; yet to endure life smilingly is no ignoble task; and if the humors of mankind are inseparably blended with all their impulses and actions, it is worth while to consider bravely the value of qualities so subtle and far-reaching in their influences.Agnes RepplierThere is a general law, the first example of which we have just encountered, and which we will formulate in the following terms: when a certain comic effect has its origin in a certain cause, the more natural we regard the cause to be, the more comic shall we find the effect.Henri BergsonThe height of comic elegance and refinement is not to be found in the general diffusion of knowledge and civilization, which tends to level and neutralize, but in the pride of individual distinction, and the contrast between the conflicting pretensions of different ranks in society.William HazlittIn a word, the shrewd separation or disentangling of ideas that seem the same, or where the secret contradiction is not sufficiently suspected, and is of a ludicrous and whimsical nature, is wit just as much as the bringing together those that appear at first sight totally different.William HazlittI think that both Rabelais and Cervantes, the one in the power of ludicrous description, the other in the invention and perfect keeping of comic character, excelled Shakspeare; that is, they would have been greater men, if they had had equal power with him over the stronger passions.William HazlittIf, then, the above law holds good here, it should be stated as follows: "A comic effect is obtained whenever we pretend to take literally an expression which was used figuratively"; or, "Once our attention is fixed on the material aspect of a metaphor, the idea expressed becomes comic."Henri BergsonIf the quantity of amusement, or of matter for more serious reflection which their works have afforded, is that by which we are to judge of precedence among the intellectual benefactors of mankind, there are, perhaps, few persons who can put in a stronger claim to our gratitude than Hogarth.William HazlittIn reading the one, we are let into the minds of his characters, we see the play of their thoughts, how their humours flow and work: the author takes a range over nature, and has an eye to every object or occasion that presents itself to set off and heighten the ludicrous character he is describing.William HazlittImagination may be said to be the finding out something similar in things generally alike, or with like feelings attached to them; while wit principally aims at finding out something that seems the same, or amounts to a momentary deception where you least expected it, viz. in things totally opposite.William HazlittShakespeare is a well-spring of characters which are saturated with the comic spirit; with more of what we will call blood-life than is to be found anywhere out of Shakespeare; and they are of this world, but they are of the world enlarged to our embrace by imagination, and by great poetic imagination.George MeredithThere is a benefit to men in taking the lessons of Comedy in congregations, for it enlivens the wits; and to writers it is beneficial, for they must have a clear scheme, and even if they have no idea to present, they must prove that they have made the public sit to them before the sitting to see the picture.George MeredithWit possesses a species of immortality, and for many generations holds its own; humor is truly immortal, and as long as the eye sees, and the ear hears, and the heart beats, it will be our privilege to laugh at the pleasant absurdities which require no other seed or nurture than man’s endless intercourse with man.Agnes RepplierThere are many things in life so radically unwholesome that it is not safe to approach them save with laughter as a disinfectant; and when people cannot laugh, the moral atmosphere grows stagnant, and nothing is too morbid, too preposterous, or too mischievous to meet with sympathy and solemn assurances of good will.Agnes RepplierThat which must be borne had best be borne cheerfully, and sometimes a single telling stroke of wit, a single word rich in manly humor, reveals to us that true courage, that fine philosophy, which endures and even tolerates the vicissitudes of fortune, without for a moment relinquishing its honest hold upon the right.Agnes RepplierOn the contrary, it is only in its lower aspects, in light comedy and farce, that comedy is in striking contrast to reality: the higher it rises, the more it approximates to life; in fact, there are scenes in real life so closely bordering on high-class comedy that the stage might adopt them without changing a single word.Henri BergsonThe ludicrous, or comic, is the unexpected loosening or relaxing this stress below its usual pitch of intensity, by such an abrupt transposition of the order of our ideas, as taking the mind unawares, throws it off its guard, startles it into a lively sense of pleasure, and leaves no time nor inclination for painful reflections.William HazlittWit is, in fact, the eloquence of indifference, or an ingenious and striking exposition of those evanescent and glancing impressions of objects which affect us more from surprise or contrast to the train of our ordinary and literal preconceptions, than from anything in the objects themselves exciting our necessary sympathy or lasting hatred.William HazlittThe Suspicious Husband by Hoadley, the Jealous Wife by Colman, and the Clandestine Marriage by Colman and Garrick, are excellent plays of the middle style of comedy; which are formed rather by judgment and selection, than by any original vein of genius; and have all the parts of a good comedy in degree, without having any one prominent, or to excess.William HazlittHis incidents succeed one another with rapidity, but without premeditation; his wit is easy and spontaneous; his style animated, unembarrassed, and flowing; his characters full of life and spirit, and never overstrained so as to ‘o’erstep the modesty of nature,’ though they sometimes, from haste and carelessness, seem left in a crude, unfinished state.William HazlittIf we think we must not laugh, this perverse impediment makes our temptation to laugh the greater; for by endeavouring to keep the obnoxious image out of sight, it comes upon us more irresistibly and repeatedly; and the inclination to indulge our mirth, the longer it is held back, collects its force, and breaks out the more violently in peals of laughter.William HazlittOf the four writers here classed together, we should perhaps have courted Congreve’s acquaintance most, for his wit and the elegance of his manners; Wycherley’s, for his sense and observation on human nature; Vanbrugh’s, for his power of farcical description and telling a story; Farquhar’s, for the pleasure of his society, and the love of good fellowship.William HazlittWhat a gap between Queen Victoria and Queen Bess, what a thorough and far-reaching change in everything that goes to make up the life and habits of men; and yet Shakespeare’s fine strokes of humor have become so fitted to our common speech that the very unconsciousness with which we apply them proves how they tally with our modern emotions and opportunities.Agnes RepplierThe style of Roderick Random is more easy and flowing than that of Tom Jones; the incidents follow one another more rapidly (though, it must be confessed, they never come in such a throng, or are brought out with the same dramatic effect); the humour is broader, and as effectual; and there is very nearly, if not quite, an equal interest excited by the story.William HazlittEven though a list of all the peculiarities that have ever been found ridiculous were drawn up, comedy would manage to add to them, not indeed by creating artificial ones, but by discovering lines of comic development that had hitherto gone unnoticed; thus does imagination isolate ever fresh figures in the intricate design of one and the same piece of tapestry.Henri BergsonLook closely: you will find that the art of the comic poet consists in making us so well acquainted with the particular vice, in introducing us, the spectators, to such a degree of intimacy with it, that in the end we get hold of some of the strings of the marionette with which he is playing, and actually work them ourselves; this it is that explains part of the pleasure we feel.Henri BergsonFor instance, take the Médecin malgré lui (the Mock Doctor), in which a common wood-cutter takes upon himself, and is made successfully to support through a whole play, the character of a learned physician, without exciting the least suspicion; and yet, notwithstanding the absurdity of the plot, it is one of the most laughable and truly comic productions that can well be imagined.William HazlittThe mere suddenness of the transition, the mere baulking our expectations, and turning them abruptly into another channel, seems to give additional liveliness and gaiety to the animal spirits; but the instant the change is not only sudden, but threatens serious consequences, or calls up the shape of danger, terror supersedes our disposition to mirth, and laughter gives place to tears.William HazlittI conceive, therefore, that the golden period of our comedy was just after the age of Charles ii. when the town first became tainted with the affectation of the manners and conversation of fashionable life, and before the distinction between rusticity and elegance, art and nature, was lost (as it afterwards was) in a general diffusion of knowledge, and the reciprocal advantages of civil intercourse.William HazlittBut where women are on the road to an equal footing with men, in attainments and in liberty—in what they have won for themselves, and what has been granted them by a fair civilization—there, and only waiting to be transplanted from life to the stage, or the novel, or the poem, pure Comedy flourishes, and is, as it would help them to be, the sweetest of diversions, the wisest of delightful companions.George MeredithWe know the degree of refinement in men by the matter they will laugh at, and the ring of the laugh; but we know likewise that the larger natures are distinguished by the great breadth of their power of laughter, and no one really loving Molière is refined by that love to despise or be dense to Aristophanes, though it may be that the lover of Aristophanes will not have risen to the height of Molière.George MeredithThe knight’s great aims and constant mishaps, his chivalrous valiancy exercised on absurd objects, his good sense along the highroad of the craziest of expeditions; the compassion he plucks out of derision, and the admirable figure he preserves while stalking through the frantically grotesque and burlesque assailing him, are in the loftiest moods of humour, fusing the Tragic sentiment with the Comic narrative.George MeredithI always swing at the ball with all my might.Babe RuthI decided I wasn't going to come down. I was going to fly.Jesse OwensI only have one superstition: I make sure to touch all the bases when I hit a home run.Babe Ruth