Even a woman may be good, and also a slave; though the woman may be said to be an inferior being, and the slave quite worthless.
poeticsby aristotle
For the laughable is a sort of error and ugliness that is not painful and destructive, just as, evidently, a laughable mask is something ugly and distorted without pain.
Comedy, as we said, is an imitation of people of a lower sort, though not in respect to every vice; rather, what is ridiculous is part of what is ugly.
A sign of this is what happens in our actions, for we delight in contemplating the most accurately made images of the very things that are painful for us to see, such as the forms of the most contemptible insects and of dead bodies.
The laughable is a species of what is disgraceful.
And by this very difference tragedy stands apart in relation to comedy, for the latter intends to imitate those who are worse, and the former better, than people are now.
All human happiness or misery takes the form of action; the end for which we live is a certain kind of action.