Cyrano De Bergerac Quotes
CYRANO DE BERGERAC QUOTES
ACT 1
FIRST MARQUIS: Pretty
Enough, but rather provincial.
SECOND MARQUIS: Hm, a pity.
(Style & Intro to Christian)
RAGUENEAU: Poet.
CUIGY: Fighter.
BRISSAILE: Physician.
LE BRET: Musician.
LIGNIERE: Ah-
His appearance, though – isn’t it truly bizarre?
RAGUENEAU : Bizarre, excessive, hyperbolic, droll, with his triple-waving plume, his visible soul […]
That is Cyrano de Bergerac.
Cocky, insolent, Gascony-proud he goes,
Flaunting that Punchinello strawberry nose
(Introduction to Cyrano without his presence)
LIGNIERE: Totally smitten with her but irreparably wed
To the niece of none other than Cardinal Richelieu.
If he cant marry Roxanna, he proposes to hitch her
Instead
(Superficiality of marriage)
CHRISTIAN: Good as dead
(About Valvert who later dies)
CYRANO (kindly):
Consider my poor scabbard, please, I pray.
She loves me sword and wants my sword to stay
Inside her. Off that stage! A bleat? A bray?
Do any of you have anything to say?
(Comedy)
CYRANO: Raise your right hands, all those who wish to die.
(Panache)
CYRANO (respectfully)
The work to which you refer,
You ass, is worth rather less than an ass’s bray.
I silenced it without compunction. Sir.
(Panache)
CYRANO: My nose, sir, is enormous. Ignorant clod,
Cretinous moron, a man ought to be proud,
Yes, proud, of having so proud an appendix
Of flesh and bone to crown his countenance
(Panache & Humour)
CYRANO: Nothing more?
Just a fatuous smirk? Oh, come, there are fifty-score
Varieties of comment you could find
If you possessed a modicum of mind.
(Humour)
CYRANO: Sir, thus my proposal goes:
To fight and at the same time to compose
A ballade of strict classical design,
And then to kill you in the final line.
VALVERT: Oh, no.
CYRANO: No? ‘Ballade of a Fencing Bout
Between de Bergerac and a Foppish Lout.’
(Humour & Style & Character development)
CYRANO: My dear,
The pride of a Gascon, you must understand,
Forbids my taking from your lily hand
The tiniest morsel.
(Character development)
CYRANO: I’m going to take the simplest
Approach to life of all, simplest and best.
Best is the word. I’ve decided to excel
In everything.
(Character development, Panache)
CYRANO: Of divinities
She’s most divine. O Venus, amorous queen,
You never stepped into your shell; Dian –
You never glided through the summer’s green
As she steps into her chair and then is seen
Gliding through dirty Paris –
(Allusion to greek gods?)
CYRANO: This – gross pertuberance.
Look at it, and tell me what exuberance
Of hope can swell the rest of me. I’m under
No illusion.
(Style & Character development)
CYRANO: There was
A question: why do five-score enemies
Seek to stick five-score dagger in the back
Of one poor poet? Answer: it’s because
They know this poor defenseless rhymer is
A friend of Cyrano de Bergerac!
To the Port de Nesle!
(Character development & Style)
ACT 2
Lise: Ridic-
Ulous
…
Ragueneau: God, woman, this poetry – how could
You desecrate – dismember my friends’ verse? (Page 47)
Cyrano: Letter written a hundred times in my heart –
It’s ready enough. Why hesitate to start?
My soul on paper – hope unmarked by doubt.
A simple matter of copying it out. (Page 50)
Ragueneau: Will c – ome.
(Later on)
Ragueneau: They’re welc – ome. (Page 53)
Cyrano: Your generous-hearted husband happens to be
A friend of mine. And I will not let you
Ridicule him, cuckold him, the two –
Ridicuckold – (Page 54)
Roxane: Beanfields in the air,
Green plums and perpetual playtime.
Cyrano: Puppies and mulberries. Heavens, how I’m taken back. (Page 57)
Roxane: I’m in love with someone.
Cyrano: Ah.
Roxane: With someone who
Doesn’t know, doesn’t suspect.
Cyrano: Ah.
Roxane: But he will know. Soon.
Cyrano: Ah.
…
Roxane: And such a man – intelligent,
Young, proud, brave, beautiful.
Cyrano (pale, rising): Beautiful? (Page 58)
Roxane: Oh, but his
Curls are the curls of a Greek god.
Cyrano: There’s a chance
That his brains may be curly too. (Page 60)
Roxane: For our friendship’s sake
You’ll protect him? Defend him? You’ll make
Him your friend? (Page 60)
Roxane (to Cyrano): Oh, how I love you. Oh, and tell him to write.
Cyrano: Yes, yes. (Page 61)
Poet: See –
Cyrano: these vassals of emotion.
Poet: Why –
Cyrano: do you suppose they’re there?
Poet: Are –
Cyrano: they come to bring devotion,
Poet: Eh?
Cyrano: Or see a talking bear?
Poet: En –
Cyrano: y monsters, sirs, will do. But
Poet: Oh –
Cyrano: the real monster’s you. (Page 64)
De Guiche: – Who wishes to convey his necessarily impartial
Felicitations on your flamboyant bravery. (Page 65)
Le Bret: No, to be quite accurate, when
A man has achieved an unprecedented ecstasy
Of excess, you can’t say he’s done it again.
Cyrano: I did it on principle. Excess, you see,
Is not excessive when it’s been conceived
On principle. My success is achieved
Only by excess. (Page 69)
Cyrano (on making his way to the “top”): … No, no, no,
Thank you, no. No, thank you… (Page 70)
Cyrano: So black that a man couldn’t see even as far as his –
Christian: Nose. (Page 74)
Cyrano: Who is that man there?
Carbon: The new man who came
This morning.
Cyrano: This morning
Carbon: This morning.
Cyrano: This morning.
Carbon: His name
is Christian de neuvi–
Cyrano (in control): Oh, I see. Where was I? (Page 74)
Christian: Oh, if you only knew how much
I admire you, sir.
Cyrano: How about all those noses?
Christian: I take them back, every single nostril. (Page 77 – just after Christian finds out Cyrano is Roxane’s “cousin”)
Christian: I ruin everything if I write.
Cyrano: How?
Chrstian: Because I’m such a damned fool.
Cyrano (on his wit/eloquence): Well, why not borrow it?
And, in return, I’ll borrow your good looks.
There’s promising algebra here: you plus I
Equal one hero of the story books. (Page 78)
Cyrano: Call it a lie,
If you like, but a lie is a sort of myth
And a myth is a sort of truth… (Page 78)
Christian (on Cyrano’s pre-written love letter): Will these words fit her?
Cyrano: Like a pair of gloves. (Page 79)
Le Bret (in wonder): Our devil changed into a Christian brother.
Attack one nostril, and he turns the other.
Christian: Her address – you didn’t give me her address! (Page 81)
ACT 3
1. Cyrano: B Natural, not B felt, you flat-headed naturals - Page 83
2. Roxane: Oh, my Christian - he is beautiful, brilliant - I love him desperately.
Cyrano: Brilliant?
Roxane: More brilliant even than you.
Cyrano: I agree. - Page 84
3. Christian: No, I'm feeling rebellious tonight. I'm tired, yes tired of borrowing your lines, your letters, saying what you tell me to say, dithering with stage fright. Oh, it was fine at first, it was like playing a sort of game. But now, at last, tonight, I'm past all my fear. Tonight I feel inspired with my ow inspiration. I no longer doubt that she loves me. My own words crash out. - page 92
4. Cyrano: A great success. Felicitations.
Christian: For God's sake help me
Cyrano: Ah, no. - page 95
5. Cyrano's Speech On Page 101
Roxane: Yes - this is - love. - page 101
6. De Guiche: You monsieur, you did that well. You have charmed a saint poised on the sill of heaven. You ought to write that book.
Cyrano: I will - page 114
7. Roxane: No! And make him write to me every day.
Cyrano: Madame, I can certainly promise you that. - page 116
ACT 4
Cyrano: There are bigger things than food. Still - one salad bowl.
Second Cadet: I don't see any salad.
Cyrano: Feed your soul…WITH HOMER'S ILIAD!
Cyrano: This spot - this little circle - to me, it looks very much like a tear. (In reference to Cyrano crying when writing Christian's letter to Roxanne).
Roxane: It's all there in my coach…Partridges, pheasants, creme brulee - the lot.
De Guiche: (after seeing the food that Roxane brought in to the regiment) I fight, sir, and I fast. This condemned man requires no breakfast, not Pocapdedious - like this motherless brood.
Roxane: Your beauty is a barrier to you. If you were ugly, twisted all askew, dwarfish, deformed, I feel, I know I should be able to love you more. The greater good needs not the lesser good.
Christian: I want to be loved for what I am, comely and dumb, or else not loved at all. Can't you see, clever as you are, that basic simplicity?
Cyrano: And I must die today, knowing that she, unknowing, weeps for him but mourns for me.
Cyrano: (With Requiem for a Tower playing in the background)
THESE ARE THE GASCONY CADETS,
CAPTAIN CASTEL-JALOUX'S THEIR CHIEF-
BARONS WHO SCORN MERE BARONETS-
THESE ARE THE GASCONY CADETS-
ACT 5
Le Bret: He writes those satires of his. Determined to make more and more enemies. He attacks false saints, false nobles, false heroes, plagiaristic poets – in fact, more or less everyone
Le Bret: Everyday he has to tighten his belt by one more notch. Even his poor old nose isn’t the same – it’s like discoloured ivory
Roxane (referring to Cyrano’s letter): You read it – you read it in such a way… in such a voice -… A voice, I know, I am not hearing for the first time, speaking such words -… So it was you.
Cyrano: Look at me – ambushed, taken in the rear in a gutter for a battlefield, my heroic foe a scullion, his weapon a mere firelog. My life has played a consistent tune. I’ve missed everything – even my death.
Cyrano: It happened again and again – the shadow for me, for others the applause, the fame. There’s a kind of justice somewhere.
Roxane: I never loved but one man in my life. Now I must lose him twice.
Cyrano: When the final cold sniffs at my heart and licks my bones, perhaps you might impart a double sense to your long obsequies, and make those tears, which have been wholly his, mine too, just a little.
Cyrano: All my old enemies – falsehood, compromise, prejudice, cowardice. You ask for my surrender? Ah no, never, no, never.