Top 15 Cyrano de Bergerac Quotes

I marveled repeatedly at the providence of God, who had put these naturally impious people in a place where they could not corrupt his beloved ones and had punished them for their pride by leaving them to their own devices. That is why I don't doubt He has put off having the Gospel preached to them: He knows they would abuse it, and their resistance to it would only earn them a harsher punishment in the other world.

His ridiculous and diabolical opinions made me shudder. I began to look a little more closely at this person and was amazed to see something frightening in his face that I had not noticed before: his eyes were small and sunken, his skin dark, his mouth big, his chin hairy and his nails black. Oh God, I thought immediately, this miserable creature is condemned already and may even be the Antichrist that people talk about so much in our world.

"I ask you only why you find the belief inconvenient. I'm quite sure you can find no reason. Since it can only be useful, why do you not let yourself be persuaded? If God exists and you don't believe in Him, you will have made a mistake and disobeyed the commandment to believe in Him. If there is no God, you won't be any better off than the rest of us."
"Oh yes I will be better off than you," he answered, "because if there is no God, the game is tied. But, on the contrary, if there is one, I can't have offended something I thought did not exist. Sin requires knowing or willing. Don't you see? Even the least wise would not take offense if some uncouth man insulted him as long as the man hadn't intended to, or had mistaken him for someone else, or wine had loosened his tongue. All the more reason then to ask: will God, who is all-imperturbable, get mad at us for not having recognized Him when He, himself, has denied us the means of knowing Him?
"But by all you believe, my little animal, if belief in God were so necessary and were of eternal importance to us, would God himself not infuse in everyone enlightenment as bright as the Sun, which hides from no one? Do we pretend that God wants to play hide-and-seek with us, like children calling 'Peekaboo, I see you!'? Does God put on a mask and then take it off? Does He disguise himself to some and reveal himself to others? That would be a God who is either silly or malicious.

The most competent physician of our world advises the patient to listen to an ignorant doctor who the patient thinks is very competent rather than to a competent doctor who the patient thinks is ignorant. He reason is that our imagination works for our good health, and as long as it is supplemented by remedies, it is capable of healing us. But the most powerful remedies are too weak when the imagination does not apply them.

All that has sensation and growth — all matter, in short — will pass through man. When that has happened, the great Day of Judgment will come, and that is the end point of the mysteries in the philosophy of the prophets.

I spoke to my young host: "If you would, tell me the meaning of the bronze figure in the shape of shameful parts hanging from the man's belt. I had seen a number of them at court when I was living in a cage, but as I was almost always in the company of the Queen's daughters, I was afraid I might show disrespect to the women and their social status if I brought up such a gross subject of conversation in their presence.
"Here, neither females nor males are so ungrateful as to blush at the sight of what has given them being; and virgins are not ashamed to like to see us wear the only thing that goes by that name, as a token of mother nature.
"The sash that honors that man carries a medallion in the form of a virile member. It is the sign of a nobleman and distinguishes the noble from the commoner."
I admit that this paradox seemed so outlandish that I could not keep from laughing at it. "This custom seems quite extraordinary to me," I said to my young host, "because in our world the mark of nobility is to wear a sword."
He replied calmly, "O little man, how insane the nobles of your world must be if they pride themselves on a tool used by executioners, one that is made only to destroy and that is, in the end, the sworn enemy of all that lives. And they hide, on the contrary, a part of the body without which we would not exist, one that is the Prometheus of every animal and tirelessly repairs the weaknesses of nature! How unfortunate a country is where the marks of generation are ignominious and those of annihilation are honorable! And you call that member one of the 'shameful parts', as though anything were more glorious than to give life and anything more infamous than to take it away."

We have observed for thirty centuries that a large nose is a sign on the door of our face that says 'Herein dwells a man who is intelligent, prudent, courteous, affable, noble-minded and generous'. A small nose is a cork on the bottle of the opposite vices.

When I opened a box, I found inside something made of metal, somewhat like our clocks, full of an endless number of little springs and tiny machines. It was indeed a book, but it was a miraculous one that had no pages or printed letters. It was a book to be read not with eyes but with ears. When anyone wants to read, he winds up the machine with a large number of keys of all kinds. Then he turns the indicator to the chapter he wants to listen to. As though from the mouth of a person or a musical instrument come all the distinct and different sounds that the upper-class Moon-beings use in their language. When I thought about this marvelous way of making books, I was no longer surprised that the young people of that country know more at the age of sixteen or eighteen than the greybeards of our world. They can read as soon as they can talk and are never at a loss for reading material. In their rooms, on walks, in town, during voyages, on foot or on horseback, they can have thirty books in their pockets or hanging on the pommels of their saddles. They need only wind a spring to hear one or more chapters or a whole book, if they wish. Thus you always have with you all the great men, both living and dead, who speak to you in their own voices.

Give thought to life and liberty.

You are amazed that matter can form a man when matter is all mixed up at random and so many things go into making a person. But do you not realize that before matter forms someone it has also stopped along the way to make a stone, lead, coral, a flower, or a comet because there was too much or too little of it to make a human being? No wonder, then, that an infinite amount of incessantly moving and changing matter makes up the few animals, vegetables and minerals that we see. No wonder, either, that if you throw dice a hundred times, they will all show the same numbers at some point. This movement of matter, then, could not fail to produce something, and whatever it is will always be admired by the unthinking person who does not realize how close it came to not being made.

You will say, 'How can chance assemble in one place all the things necessary to produce an oak tree?' My answer is that it would be no miracle if the matter thus arranged had not formed an oak. But it would have been a very great miracle if, once the matter was thus arranged, an oak had not been formed. A few less of some shapes, and it would have been an elm, a poplar, a willow, an elder, heather or moss. A little more of some other shapes and it might have been a sensitive plant, an oyster in its shell, a worm, a fly, a frog, a sparrow, an ape or a man.

I will prove that there are infinite worlds in an infinite world. Imagine the universe as a great animal, and the stars as worlds like other animals inside it. These stars serve in turn as worlds for other organisms, such as ourselves, horses and elephants. We in our turn are worlds for even smaller organisms such as cankers, lice, worms and mites. And they are earths for other, imperceptible beings. Just as we appear to be a huge world to these little organisms, perhaps our flesh, blood and bodily fluids are nothing more than a connected tissue of little animals that move and cause us to move. Even as they let themselves be led blindly by our will, which serves them as a vehicle, they animate us and combine to produce this action we call life.

I signaled to my host to try to have the philosophers expound on some aspect of their knowledge. As a good friend he immediately rose to the occasion. I won't go into the conversation that accompanied his request, and the difference between the comic and the serious was too slight to translate.

Tell me, is the cabbage you mention not as much a creature of God as you? Do you not both have God and potentiality for your father and mother? For all eternity has God not occupied His intellect with the cabbage's birth as well as yours? It also seems that He has necessarily provided more for the birth of the vegetable than for the thinking being... Will anyone say that we are born in the image of the Sovereign Being, while cabbages are not? Even if it were true, we have effaced that resemblance by soiling our soul in the way in which we resembled Him, because there is nothing more contrary to God than sin. If our soul, then, is no longer His image, we still do not resemble Him by our hands, feet, mouth, face and ears any more than the cabbage does by its leaves, flowers, stem, heart or head.

According to your religion, is any part of the body more sacred or unholy than another? Why will I commit a sin if I touch myself on the part in the middle and not when I touch my ear or heel? Because it tickles? Then I should not defecate into a pot, because that can't be done without some sort of sensual pleasure. Nor should mystics elevate themselves to the contemplation of God, because they enjoy a great pleasure of imagination. I am indeed astounded at how much the religion of your country is against nature and is jealous of all the pleasures of men. I am surprised that your priests haven't made it a crime to scratch oneself, because one feels a pleasurable pain. And yet I have noticed that far-seeing Nature has made all great, brave and intelligent people favor the delicacies of love: witness Samson, David, Hercules, Caesar, Hannibal and Charlemagne. Did Nature do so in order that they might harvest the organ of that pleasure with a sickle? Alas, Nature even went under a washtub to debauch Diogenes, who was thin, ugly and flea-bitten, and make him compose sighs to Lais with the breath he blew upon carrots. No doubt Nature did so because it was concerned lest there be a shortage of honorable people in the world.