“I hasten to laugh at everything, for fear of being obliged to weep.”
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)
Original
Je me presse de rire de tout, de peur d'être obligé d'en pleurer.
Le Barbier de Séville (1773)
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Pierre Beaumarchais 11
French playwright diplomat and polymath 1732–1799Related quotes
“The fear of being laughed at makes cowards of us all.”
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified
Solitude
Poetry quotes
Source: Poems of Passion
Context: Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For this brave old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.
“Excessive sorrow laughs. Excessive joy weeps.”
“Man is the animal who weeps and laughs — and writes.”
If the first Prometheus brought fire from heaven in a fennel-stalk, the last will take it back — in a book.
The Pleasures of Literature (1938), p. 17
“Better to be a laughing-stock than lose the fort for fear of being one.”
Source: The Eagle of the Ninth
