To joke in the face of danger is the supreme politeness, a delicate refusal to cast oneself as a tragic hero.
My soul, be satisfied with flowers, with fruit, with weeds even; but gather them in the one garden you may call your own.
Proclaim your pride and bitterness loudly to the world, but to me speak softly, and tell me simply that she doesn’t love you.
A kiss, when all is said, what is it? A rosy dot placed on the ‘I’ in loving; Tis a secret told to the mouth instead of to the ear.
My wit is more polished than your mustache. The truth which I speak strikes more sparks from men’s hearts than your spurs do from the cobblestones.
I am what I am because early in life I decided that I would please at least myself in all things.
A kiss is a rosy dot placed on the “i” in loving.
And what is a kiss, specifically? A pledge properly sealed, a promise seasoned to taste, a vow stamped with the immediacy of a lip, a rosy circle drawn around the verb ‘to love.’ A kiss is a message too intimate for the ear, infinity captured in the bee’s brief visit to a flower, secular communication with an aftertaste of heaven, the pulse rising from the heart to utter its name on a lover’s lip: ‘Forever.
Watching other people making friends, everywhere, as a dog makes friends. I mark the manner of these canine courtesies and think, here comes, thank Heaven, another enemy!
I know that in the end you’ll overwhelm me, but I’ll still fight you as long as there’s a breath in my body... Yes, you’ve robbed me of everything: the laurels of glory, the roses of love! But there’s one thing you can’t take away from me. When I go to meet God this evening, and doff my hat before the lofty gates, my salute will sweep the blue threshold of heaven, because I’ll still have one thing intact, without a stain, something that I’ll take with me in spite of you: My white plume.
A man stands straighter under hostile eyes.
If our friend steals our ideas, it proves that he esteems us: He would not take them unless he thought they were good. We are wrong in being annoyed that, for want of children of his own, he adopts ours.
Christian gets to kiss Roxane, and Cyrano gets to pluck lots of rhetorical flowers while keeping his precious plume unblemished.
Anyone who has seen her smile has known perfection. She instills grace in every common thing and divinity in every careless gesture.
She is a mortal danger to all men. She is beautiful without knowing it, and possesses charms that she’s not even aware of. She is like a trap set by nature – a sweet perfumed rose in whose petals Cupid lurks in ambush!
CYRANO Yes, it is there, you may be sure, I shall be sent for my Paradise. More than one soul of those I have loved must be apportioned there... There I shall find Socrates and Galileo!
I am never away from you. Even now, I shall not leave you. In another world, I shall be still that one who loves you, loves you beyond measure.
Yes, I’d rather be shy than smart; a foolish diffidence constrains my heart. I reach for a star; then, from a morbid dread of ridicule, I pluck a flower instead.
If we could once forget the conventional things, the roses, the pierced hearts, the fairy wings and get to something larger, something true; instead of sipping from exhausted springs to drink from the full river in its flow.
Wit now would be to insult the night, nature itself, the jasmine scent, the moonlight; one glimpse of the heavens and their infinite spaces reveals the absurdity of our artifices. What scares me is that the alchemy we share may fail to distil true love, the real, the rare, wasting its time on fanciful pastimes while our sophistication destroys our dreams.