Farce Quotes - Page 2

• If we admit that some infinite being has controlled the destinies of persons and peoples, history becomes a most cruel and bloody farce.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  God, Destiny, Infinite

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1873). “An Oration on the Gods”, p.33

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• The animals that depend on instinct have an inherent knowledge of the laws of economics and of how to apply them; Man, with his powers of reason, has reduced economics to the level of a farce which is at once funnier and more tragic than Tobacco Road.

  James Thurber

  Animal, Men, Law

  James Thurber (1990). “Collecting Himself: James Thurber on Writing and Writers, Humor and Himself”

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• Farce is nearer tragedy in its essence than comedy is.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Essence, Tragedy, Comedy

  1833 Table Talk (published 1835), entry for 25 Aug.

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• The NT, compared with the Old, is like a farce of one act.

  Thomas Paine

  Religion

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• Black Comedy is a farce that is played in the dark, as you know, with the lights full on. It's the Chinese convention of reversing light and dark, and exactly where anybody is at any given moment is the play.

  Peter Shaffer

  Dark, Light, Play

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• Inspiration is a farce that poets have invented to give themselves importance.

  Jean Anouilh

  Fake People, Inspiration, Giving

  Jean Anouilh (1960). “Becket or the Honor of God”

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• Fashion as a whole is a farce, completely. The people behind it are perverted, the styles are created by freaked out people, just natural weirdos. I know this because I worked with all those people while I was modeling.

  Edie Sedgwick

  Fashion, People, Style

  "Edie : American Girl". Book by Jean Stein and George Plimpton, 1982.

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• We are either a United people, or we are not. If the former, let us, in all maters of general concern act as a nation, which have national objects to promote, and a national character to support. If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending to it.

  George Washington

  Character, America, People

  George Washington, John Clement Fitzpatrick, David Maydole Matteson (1784). “The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799”

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• Even in the things that look most frivolous there has to be the threat of something quite painful to make the comedy work. I suppose the play of mine that's best know is NOISES OFF, which everyone thinks is a simple farce about actors making fools of themselves. But I think it makes people laugh because everyone is terrified inside themselves of having some kind of breakdown, of being unable to go on. When people laugh at that play, they're laughing at a surrogate version of the disaster which might occur to them.

  Michael Frayn

  Simple, Thinking, Play

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• Like dreams, farces show the disguised fulfillment of repressed wishes.

  Eric Bentley

  Dream, Wish, Comedy

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• Most of us live for the critic, and he lives on us. He doesn't sacrifice himself. He gets so much a line for writing a criticism. If the birds should read the newspapers, they would all take to changing their notes. The parrots would exchange with the nightingales, and what a farce it would be!

  William Morris Hunt

  Writing, Sacrifice, Bird

  William Morris Hunt (1878). “W.M. Hunt's Talks about Art: With a Letter from J.E. Millais”

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• Running my show is really like an actor being in repertory but where, in one day in one performance, you do scenes from a drama, a farce, a low comedy and a tragedy.

  Dick Cavett

  Running, Drama, Tragedy

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• The number who actually consented to the Constitution of the United States, at the first, was very small. Considered as the act of the whole people, the adoption of the Constitution was the merest farce and imposture, binding upon nobody.

  Lysander Spooner

  Numbers, People, Adoption

  Lysander Spooner (1867). “No Treason: No. 1-”

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• Life is the farce we are all forced to endure.

  Arthur Rimbaud

  Life Is, Endure

  "A Season in Hell". Book by Arthur Rimbaud, 1873.

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• For there is a growing apprehension that existence is a rat-race in a trap: living organisms, including people, are merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out. So to keep the farce going, the tubes find ways of making new tubes, which also put things in at one end and let them out at the other.

  Alan Watts

  Running, Race, Long

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• Calvin: They say the world is a stage. But obviously the play is unrehearsed and everybody is ad-libbing his lines. Hobbes: Maybe that’s why it’s hard to tell if we’re living in a tragedy or a farce. Calvin: We need more special effects and dance numbers.

  Bill Watterson

  Play, Numbers, Special

  "There's Treasure Everywhere". Book by Bill Watterson, March 1996.

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• The vault above us is not deaf because the universe is an idiot; the silence is not the heartless silence of an endless and aimless world. Rather the silence around us is a small and pitiful stillness like the prompt stillness of a sick room. We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy, because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Christian, Laughter, Angel

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• 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.

  Oscar Wilde

  People, Tragedy, Way

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.823, GENERAL PRESS

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• My critique of democracy begins and ends with this point. Kids must be educated to disrespect authority or else democracy is a farce.

  Abbie Hoffman

  Kids, Disrespect, Democracy

  "Soon to be a Major Motion Picture". Book by Abbie Hoffman, p. 64, 1980.

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• So that is what hell is. I would never have believed it. You remember: the fire and brimstone, the torture. Ah! the farce. There is no need for torture: Hell is other people.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Fire, People, Needs

  "No Exit". Book by Jean-Paul Sartre, Garcin, act 1, sc. 5, 1944.

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• In the United States...politics is purged of all menace, all sinister quality, all genuine significance, and stuffed with such gorgeous humors, such inordinate farce that one comes to the end of a campaign with one's ribs loose, and ready for King Lear, or a hanging, or a course of medical journals.

  H. L. Mencken

  Kings, Political, Quality

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• I have observed that in comedies the best actor plays the droll, while some scrub rogue is made the fine gentleman or hero. Thus it is in the farce of life. Wise men spend their time in mirth; it is only fools who are serious.

  Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

  Wise, Hero, Men

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• Believers often forget that most atheists used to be religious, that many non-believers used to think they had a personal relationship with their God and they used to 'feel' the power of prayer. They've since learned that it was all a farce, that their feelings were internal emotions and not some external force.

  David G. McAfee

  Religious, Atheist, Prayer

  FaceBook post by David G. McAfee from Oct 27, 2012

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• Each waking day is a stage dominated for good or ill, comedy, farce, or tragedy, by a dramatis personae, the 'self', and so it will be until the curtain drops.

  Charles Scott Sherrington

  Life, Philosophy, Self

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• Life is a huge farce, and the advantage of possessing a sense of humour is that it enables one to defy fate with mocking laughter.

  George Gissing

  Laughter, Fate, Life Is

  George Gissing (2015). “New Grub Street”, p.153, Booklassic

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