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Happiness Quote by Pierre Beaumarchais

"I hasten to laugh at everything, for fear of being obliged to weep"

About this Quote

A nervous kind of laughter powers this line: not the chuckle of ease, but the speed-laugh you deploy before reality catches you. “I hasten” makes it kinetic, almost athletic - as if humor is a reflex you can train to outrun despair. The punch is in the bargain it proposes: laugh now, or life will collect its payment in tears. It’s a philosophy of emotional triage, delivered with the lightness of someone who knows lightness is a tactic.

Beaumarchais lived in a France where wit wasn’t just entertainment; it was camouflage. As the playwright behind Figaro, he understood that jokes can smuggle criticism past censors and social gatekeepers. In that world, laughter becomes both shield and weapon: you mock power to survive it, and you survive it by pretending you’re only mocking. The line’s subtext is pragmatic, even a little paranoid: if you let yourself feel the full weight of what you see - inequality, hypocrisy, the fragility of status - you might not come back from it.

Calling him an “inventor” fits, even if it misdirects. This is an engineered response to pressure, a device for living under conditions that don’t reward sincerity. The sentence also carries a quiet indictment of the society that makes such speed necessary. When laughter is preventative medicine, the diagnosis is bleak: the world isn’t merely sad; it’s structured to make sadness inevitable unless you stay one joke ahead.

Quote Details

TopicSadness
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APA Style (7th ed.)
Beaumarchais, Pierre. (2026, January 14). I hasten to laugh at everything, for fear of being obliged to weep. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-hasten-to-laugh-at-everything-for-fear-of-being-115811/

Chicago Style
Beaumarchais, Pierre. "I hasten to laugh at everything, for fear of being obliged to weep." FixQuotes. January 14, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-hasten-to-laugh-at-everything-for-fear-of-being-115811/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I hasten to laugh at everything, for fear of being obliged to weep." FixQuotes, 14 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-hasten-to-laugh-at-everything-for-fear-of-being-115811/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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I hasten to laugh at everything - Pierre Beaumarchais
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Pierre Beaumarchais (January 24, 1732 - May 17, 1799) was a Inventor from France.

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