Happy ending

[S]ome Gentlemen, declared againſt Tragedies in general, and in favour of Comedies, […] And hovv vvas this happy ending to be brought about? VVhy, by this very eaſy and trite expedient; to vvit, by reforming Lovelace, and marrying him to Clariſſa— […]

The heroine was killed, and since then the happy ending has only been preserved in an appendix in the play.

[A]nother would say that it [a novel being good] depends on a "happy ending," on a distribution at the last of prizes, pensions, husbands, wives, babies, millions, appended paragraphs, and cheerful remarks.

Life is not to be conceived on the analogy of a melodrama in which the hero and heroine go through incredible misfortunes for which they are compensated by a happy ending.

[A]s we left the theatre, he [William Dean Howells] summed up the reason of the play's failure. "Yes—what the American public always wants is a tragedy with a happy ending".

Death ends all things and so is the comprehensive conclusion of a story, but marriage finishes it very properly too and the sophisticated are ill-advised to sneer at what is by convention termed a happy ending.

Modern romance, like Greek tragedy, celebrates the mystery of dismemberment, which is life in time. The happy ending is justly scorned as a misrepresentation; for the world, as we know it, as we have seen it, yields but one ending: death, disintegration, dismemberment, and the crucifixion of our heart with the passing of the forms that we have loved.

Well, what did you expect in an opera? A happy ending?

On the return journey the engine ran short of coal, and came to a stand near Penygroes through shortage of steam. Fortunately, there was some peat in a nearby field, which the enginemen dug and the directors helped to carry to the engine. Steam was soon raised and the story had a happy ending!

And she said: / "Don't you know that storybook loves, / Always have a happy ending."