C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Tragedy
Tragedy has the great moral defect of giving too much importance to life and death.
Chamfort.
Tragedy warms the soul, elevates the heart, can and ought to create heroes. In this sense, perhaps, France owes a part of her great actions to Corneille.
Napoleon.
The pleasure arising from an extraordinary agitation of the mind is frequently so great as to stifle humanity; hence arises the entertainment of the common people at executions, and of the better sort at tragedies.
L’Abbé du Bois.