Explore popular quotes and sayings by a French inventor Pierre Beaumarchais.
Last updated on April 16, 2025.
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais was a French polymath. At various times in his life, he was a watchmaker, inventor, playwright, musician, diplomat, spy, publisher, horticulturist, arms dealer, satirist, financier, and revolutionary.
It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them.
These days what's not worth saying gets set to music.
I hasten to laugh at everything, for fear of being obliged to weep.
Vilify, Vilify, some of it will always stick.
I quickly laugh at everything for fear of having to cry.
Because you are a great lord, you believe yourself to be a great genius. You took the trouble to be born, but no more.
Drinking when we are not thirsty and making love at all seasons, madam: that is all there is to distinguish us from other animals.
Where love is concerned, too much is not even enough.
If a thing isn't worth saying, you sing it.
As long as I don't write about the government, religion, politics, and other institutions, I am free to print anything.
Without pleasure man would live like a fool and soon die.
A writer's inspiration is not just to create. He must eat three times a day.
It is by no means necessary to understand things to speak confidently about them.
To make a living, craftiness is better than learnedness.
I would rather worry without need than live without heed.
Plays, gentlemen, are to their authors what children are to women: they cost more pain than they give pleasure.
Can love and peace live in the same heart? Youth is unhappy because it is faced with this terrible choice; love without peace, or peace without love.
The same wind that extinguishes a light can set a brazier on fire.
Vilify! Vilify! Some of it will always stick.
To obtain a woman who loves you, you must treat her as if she didn't.
Honest men love women; those who deceive them adore them.
Be commonplace and creeping and you'll be a success.
Today if something is not worth saying, people sing it.
Without the freedom to criticize, there is no true praise.
I make myself laugh at everything, so that I do not weep.
Nowadays what isn't worth saying is sung.
Calumniate, calumniate; there will always be something which sticks.
I grant men the land, the government, the wealth, all the chances. I accept that you have to hold all the cards, since that's the only way you know how to play; but I refuse to swallow your disrespect.