“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)
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Pierre Beaumarchais11
French playwright diplomat and polymath 1732–1799Related 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
Ella Wheeler Wilcox book Poems of Passion
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.”
William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist
“Man is the animal who weeps and laughs — and writes.”
John Cowper Powys (1872–1963) British writer, lecturer and philosopher
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.”
Rosemary Sutcliff book The Eagle of the Ninth
Source: The Eagle of the Ninth
