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Farce Quotes

Browse 124 quotes about Farce.

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Farce Quotes

“You finally complete your first paper, but even its appearance in a “highly respected” and thick biweekly journal sandwiched between two other equally dull and opaque articles fails to alleviate your growing boredom and disillusionment with a career in physics, a career that once seemed to promise excitement, glamor and importance. Are you going to spend your whole life in a mad, cutthroat ego trip just to see your name in print every six months? Or is the real pleasure in seeing your name referenced in someone else’s useless article?”

WorkMeaningAcademiaFarce
Book:Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System That Shapes Their Lives
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“Ever since it became clear to me that my kidnapping would be the exploit most desired not only by the various bands of specialist crooks but also by my leading colleagues and rivals in the world of high finance, I have realized that only by multiplying myself, multiplying my person, my presence, my exits from the house, and my returns, in short the opportunities for an ambush, could I make my falling into enemy hands more improbable. So I then ordered five Mercedes sedans exactly like mine, which enter and leave the armored gate of my villa at all hours, escorted by the motorcyclists of my bodyguard, and bearing inside a shadow, bundled up, dressed in black, who could be me or an ordinary stand-in. The companies of which I am president consist of initials with nothing behind them and some headquarters in interchangeable empty rooms; therefore my business meetings can be held at constantly varying addresses which for greater safety I order changed at the last minute each time. More delicate problems stem from my extramarital relationship with a twenty-nine-year-old divorcée, Lorna by name, to whom I devote two and sometimes three weekly sessions of two and three-quarters hours. To protect Lorna the only thing to do was to make it impossible to locate her, and the system to which I have resorted is that of parading a multiplicity of simultaneous amorous encounters, so that it is impossible to understand which are my counterfeit mistresses and which is the real one.”

HumorHumourFarce
Book:If on a winter's night a traveler
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“That fence has gotta 'lectric charge runnin' through it!" Duffy whispered. "Felt like I got struck by lightnin' right b'tween my shoulder blades! It crackled like when the barber turns on his trimmer." Ott had had his suspicions about the electric fence, but there had been only one way to know for sure. That's why some people were generals and others were sergeants, after all.”

HumorMountainComicGeorgiaFarceAppalachianDahlonega
Book:Moon of the White Tears
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“I saw exactly one picture of Marx and one of Lenin in my whole stay, but it's been a long time since ideology had anything to do with it. Not without cunning, Fat Man and Little Boy gradually mutated the whole state belief system into a debased form of Confucianism, in which traditional ancestor worship and respect for order become blended with extreme nationalism and xenophobia. Near the southernmost city of Kaesong, captured by the North in 1951, I was taken to see the beautifully preserved tombs of King and Queen Kongmin. Their significance in F.M.-L.B. cosmology is that they reigned over a then unified Korea in the 14th century, and that they were Confucian and dynastic and left many lavish memorials to themselves. The tombs are built on one hillside, and legend has it that the king sent one of his courtiers to pick the site. Second-guessing his underling, he then climbed the opposite hill. He gave instructions that if the chosen site did not please him he would wave his white handkerchief. On this signal, the courtier was to be slain. The king actually found that the site was ideal. But it was a warm day and he forgetfully mopped his brow with the white handkerchief. On coming downhill he was confronted with the courtier's fresh cadaver and exclaimed, 'Oh dear.' And ever since, my escorts told me, the opposite peak has been known as 'Oh Dear Hill.' I thought this was a perfect illustration of the caprice and cruelty of absolute leadership, and began to phrase a little pun about Kim Jong Il being the 'Oh Dear Leader,' but it died on my lips.”

ReligionCrueltyIdeologyCommunismNationalismKoreaTotalitarianismNorth KoreaXenophobiaFarceConfucianismCapriceAbsolutismKarl MarxKim Jong IlKim Il SungVladimir Lenin14th CenturyQueen NogukTomb Of King KongminVeneration Of The Dead
Book:Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays
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“On the stage . . . masks are assumed with some regard to procedure; in everyday life, the participants act their parts without consideration either for suitability of scene or for the words spoken by the rest of the cast: the result is a general tendency for things to be brought to the level of farce even when the theme is serious enough.”

LifeEnoughLevelsResultsStageSeriousSceneRegardEverydayCastsTendenciesAssumptionThemeConsiderationMaskEveryday LifeProceduresParticipantsFarce
Book:A Question of Upbringing: Book 1 of A Dance to the Music of Time
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“To describe love-making is immoral and immodest; you know it is. To describe it as it really is, or would appear to you and me as lookers-on, would be to describe the most dreary farce, to chronicle the most tautological twaddle. To take note of sighs, hand-squeezes, looks at the moon, and so forth--does this business become our dignity as historians? Come away from those foolish young people--they don't want us; and dreary as their farce is, and tautological as their twaddle, you may be sure it amuses them, and that they are happy enough without us.”

PeopleKnowsWantLoveLooksMayDoeEnoughHandsWould BeYoungMoonDignityNotesFoolishHistorianSighImmoralWant ULove MakingDrearyChroniclesFarce
Book:Works
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“The myriad-minded man, our, and all men's, Shakespeare, has in this piece presented us with a legitimate farce in exactest consonance with the philosophical principles and character of farce, as distinguished from comedy and from entertainments. A proper farce is mainly distinguished from comedy by the licence allowed, and even required, in the fable, in order to produce strange and laughable situations. The story need not be probable, it is enough that it is possible.”

MenNeedsEnoughCharacterStoriesOrderSituationPrinciplesComedyPiecesProduceStrangePhilosophicalEntertainmentDistinguishedFablesFarceLaughableConsonance
Book:Shakespeare, With Introductory Matter on Poetry, The Drama, and The Stage by S.T. Coleridge: Coleridge’s Essays and Lectures on Shakespeare and Other Old Poets and Dramatists
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“[Vathek] has, in parts, been called, but to some judgments, never is, dull: it is certainly in parts, grotesque, extravagant and even nasty. But Beckford could plead sufficient "local colour" for it, and a contrast, again almost Shakespearean, between the flickering farce atrocities of the beginning and the sombre magnificence of the end. Beckford's claims, in fact, rest on the half-score or even half-dozen pages towards the end: but these pages are hard to parallel in the later literature of prose fiction.”

EndsHardFactsLiteratureHalfFictionJudgmentPagesClaimsLocalsSufficientColourDullProseScoreDozenContrastNastyParallelsAtrocitiesExtravagantGrotesqueMagnificenceFarce
Author:William Thomas Beckford
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“Art, not less eloquently than literature, teaches her children to venerate the single eye. Remember Matsys. His representations of miser-life are breathing. A forfeited bond twinkles in the hard smile. But follow him to an altar-piece. His Apostle has caught a stray tint from his usurer. Features of exquisite beauty are seen and loved; but the old nature of avarice frets under the glow of devotion. Pathos staggers on the edge of farce.”

ChildrenArtHardEyeRememberLiteratureTeachPiecesEdgesCaughtDevotionBreathingFeaturesRepresentationAltarsExquisiteApostlesAvariceMisersPathosFarceSingle Eye
Book:Pleasures,objects and advantages of literature
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“A hilarious academic novel that'll send you laughing (albeit ruefully) back into the trenches of the classroom. . . . [A] mordant minor masterpiece. . . . Like the best works of farce, academic or otherwise, Dear Committee Members deftly mixes comedy with social criticism and righteous outrage. By the end, you may well find yourself laughing so hard it hurts.”

WellsMayEndsHardSocialHurtNovelLaughingComedyMembersCriticismDearFinding YourselfAcademicClassroomRighteousMinorsCommitteesIt HurtsMasterpieceOutrageBest WorkTrenchesFarceLaughing So Hard
Author:Maureen Corrigan
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“A lot of writers tired of doing kind of hip, slick, funny, dark, exploding hypocrisy, underlining once again the point that life is a farce and we're all in it for ourselves and that the point of life is to amass as much money/fame/sexual gratification, you know, whatever your personal thing is, and that everything else is just glitter or PR image - that we're tired of sort of doing that stuff over and over again.”

KnowsKindLife IsStuffDarkFameTiredHipsHypocrisyGratificationGlitterExplodingFarceSlickPersonal Things
Author:David Foster Wallace
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