“It's better to die laughing than to live each moment in fear.”
Michael Crichton (1942–2008) American author, screenwriter, film producer
“Better to be a laughing-stock than lose the fort for fear of being one.”
Source: The Eagle of the Ninth
Last update June 3, 2021. History
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Rosemary Sutcliff3
English author 1920–1992Related quotes
“The fear of being laughed at makes cowards of us all.”
Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified
“The phoney [sic] electoral college made a laughing stock out of our nation. The loser one!”
Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America
2010s, 2012
“I hasten to laugh at everything, for fear of being obliged to weep.”
Pierre Beaumarchais book The Barber of Seville
Je me presse de rire de tout, de peur d'être obligé d'en pleurer.
Act I, scene ii
Variant translations:
I quickly laugh at everything, for fear of having to cry.
I force myself to laugh at everything, for fear of having to cry.
Le Barbier de Séville (1773)
Carl Andre (1935) American artist
Source: Artists talks 1969 – 1977, p. 15
“Is it not better to die valiantly, than ignominiously to lose our wretched and dishonoured lives after being the sport of others’ insolence?”
Nonne emori per virtutem praestat quam vitam miseram atque inhonestam, ubi alienae superbiae ludibrio fueris, per dedecus amittere?
Catiline (-109–-62 BC) ancient Roman Senator
Quoted in Sallust, Catiline's War, Book XX, pt. 9 (trans. J. C. Rolfe).
Variant translation: Is it not better to die in a glorious attempt, than, after having been the sport of other men's insolence, to resign a wretched and degraded existence with ignominy?
Lewis H. Lapham (1935) American journalist
Source: Money And Class In America (1989), Chapter 5, Social Hygiene, p. 125