Happiness Quote by Pierre Beaumarchais

Laugh, fast, and you can outrun the sob. Beaumarchais compresses an entire survival strategy into one nervous reflex: comedy as a preemptive strike against despair. The speed in "quickly" matters. This isn't the leisurely laughter of someone amused; it's the snap of a trap shutting before the mind can wander into grief. The line admits that emotion is not chosen so much as managed, and the management is frantic.

The subtext is a sly indictment of the world that makes such a tactic necessary. If crying is the default outcome of honest attention, then laughter becomes less a mood than a mask, a social technology. It keeps you functioning, keeps you palatable. It also keeps others at a distance: the one who laughs first controls the room, sets the tone, dodges pity. There's wit here, but it's a weaponized wit, sharpened by fear.

Context helps. Beaumarchais lived in the pressure cooker of late ancien regime France, a period where fortunes, reputations, and legal standing could swing violently. His own life was a tangle of lawsuits, court intrigue, censorship battles, and theatrical brinkmanship. In that milieu, levity isn't decoration; it's tactical. The line reads like a private confession from a public entertainer: the person paid to produce laughter quietly revealing that the joke is also a tourniquet. It works because it flips laughter from joy into defense, and makes that defense instantly recognizable.