War & Peace Quote by Martin Farquhar Tupper

Ridicule, Tupper suggests, is less an argument than a social reflex: a low-effort way to police boundaries when reason or evidence runs thin. The first clause draws a clean line between intellectual resilience and public sneering. A "strong mind" isn’t merely intelligent; it’s internally anchored, capable of absorbing mockery without outsourcing its self-worth to the crowd. Ridicule glances off because it can’t penetrate conviction that’s been earned.

The second clause shifts from psychological observation to moral indictment. "Common people" is Victorian shorthand for the unexamined majority, and Tupper doesn’t spare them: cowards who dread "an empty laugh". That phrase does heavy lifting. The laugh is "empty" because it carries no content, no critique, no truth claim - just the sound of group contempt. Yet it’s still feared, because social humiliation is often more coercive than formal punishment. The subtext is about conformity: people will abandon sincere belief, taste, or conscience to avoid becoming the day’s punchline.

Context matters. Tupper wrote in a 19th-century Britain where respectability functioned like currency and public opinion was a disciplining force in churches, salons, newspapers, and increasingly mass print culture. The line reads like a warning to readers who equate popularity with correctness: when ridicule becomes your compass, you’ll never find anything original. It also flatters the reader with a challenge - be the strong mind, and the crowd’s laughter becomes background noise rather than a verdict.