Cyrano de Bergerac: Trending quotes (page 2)

“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.”

Cyrano de Bergerac

The Other World (1657)
Context: 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.

Soul , Flowers , Heart

“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?”

Cyrano de Bergerac

The Other World (1657)
Context: 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.

God , Birth , Thinking

“Even if a king defeats his enemy in battle, that still doesn't settle anything. There are other, less numerous armies of philosophers and scientists, and their contests determine the true triumph or defeat of nations.”

Cyrano de Bergerac

The Other World (1657)
Context: Even if a king defeats his enemy in battle, that still doesn't settle anything. There are other, less numerous armies of philosophers and scientists, and their contests determine the true triumph or defeat of nations.
One scholar is matched with another; one creative mind with another; and one judicious temperament with his counterpart. A victory won on that field counts for three won by force of arms.

“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?”

Cyrano de Bergerac

The Other World (1657)
Context: 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.

Way , Flowers , Personality

“You imagine that what you can't understand is either spiritual or does not exist. The conclusion is quite wrong; rather there are obviously a million things in the universe that we would need a million quite different organs to understand.”

Cyrano de Bergerac

The Other World (1657)
Context: You imagine that what you can't understand is either spiritual or does not exist. The conclusion is quite wrong; rather there are obviously a million things in the universe that we would need a million quite different organs to understand. For example, I perceive by my senses what makes a magnet point north, what makes tides rise and fall, and what becomes of an animal after death. Your people are not proportioned to perceive such miracles, just as someone blind from birth cannot imagine the beauty of a landscape, the colors of a painting or the shadings of an iris. He will imagine them as something palpable, edible, audible or olfactory. Likewise, if I were to explain to you what I perceive by the senses you do not have, you would interpret it as something that could be heard, seen, touched, smelled or tasted; but it is not like that.

Imagination , Understanding , Universe

“I have noticed that far-seeing Nature has made all great, brave and intelligent people favor the delicacies of love”

Cyrano de Bergerac

The Other World (1657)
Context: 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.

Love , People , Intelligence , Nature

“On top of that, insufferable vanity has convinced humans that nature has been made only for them, as though the sun, a huge body four hundred and thirty-four times as large as the earth, had been lit only to ripen our crab apples and cabbages.”

Cyrano de Bergerac

The Other World (1657)
Context: Most men judge only by their senses and let themselves be persuaded by what they see. Just as the man whose boat sails from shore to shore thinks he is stationary and that the shore moves, men turn with the earth under the sky and have believed that the sky was turning above them. On top of that, insufferable vanity has convinced humans that nature has been made only for them, as though the sun, a huge body four hundred and thirty-four times as large as the earth, had been lit only to ripen our crab apples and cabbages.
I am not one to give in to the insolence of those brutes. I think the planets are worlds revolving around the sun and that the fixed stars are also suns that have planets revolving around them. We can't see those worlds from here because they are so small and because the light they reflect cannot reach us. How can one honestly think that such spacious globes are only large, deserted fields? And that our world was made to lord it over all of them just because a dozen or so vain wretches like us happen to be crawling around on it? Do people really think that because the sun gives us light every day and year, it was made only to keep us from bumping into walls? No, no, this visible god gives light to man by accident, as a king's torch accidentally shines upon a working man or burglar passing in the street.

Nature , Time , Sun

“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.”

Cyrano de Bergerac

The Other World (1657)
Context: 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.

Personality

“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.”

Cyrano de Bergerac

The Other World (1657)
Context: 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.

Tree , Chance

“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.”

Cyrano de Bergerac

The Other World (1657)
Context: 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."

Life , Parting , Country

“I could scarcely keep from laughing at this scrupulous manner of waging war. I cited the European example as a much more forceful policy. A monarch is careful not to overlook any advantage for victory. She had some questions about that: "Tell me," she said, "do your princes have no other pretext for war than might makes right?"
"Yes," I answered, "the justice of their cause."
"Why, then," she continued, "do they not choose to be reconciled by impartial judges? And if it is determined that both sides are in the right, then why not maintain the status quo? Or why not play a game of gin rummy for the town or province they're arguing over? But no, while they cause the death of four million men who are better than they, they stay in their strategy rooms making light of the way the poor fellows are being massacred. But I'm wrong to criticize the valour of your brave men. It's important to die for one's country when it means being the subject of a king who wears a ruffled collar or a pleated one."”

Cyrano de Bergerac

The Other World (1657)

Death , Men , War , Justice

“In the evening, as I was going to bed, I saw him come into my room.
"I would not have come," he told me, "and interrupt your rest unless I believed that someone who could travel nine hundred leagues in half a day could have done so without getting tired. You don't know of the fine argument I've been having about you with our Jesuit priests?" he added. "They insist you are a magician. The best you can hope for from them is to pass only for an impostor."”

Cyrano de Bergerac

The Other World (1657)

Hope , Travel

“I had scarcely entered the room when I saw on my table an open book I had not put there. It was the works of Cardano. I did not intend to read it, but my gaze fell as though compelled on a story told by that philosopher. He writes that he was studying one night by candlelight when he saw two tall old men come in through the closed doors of his room. He asked them many questions, and they finally told him they were from the Moon; whereupon they disappeared.
I was so surprised, both by the book that had put itself on my table and by the page it was open to, that I took this chain of events for an inspiration from God, who was urging me to tell people that the Moon is a world.”

Cyrano de Bergerac

The Other World (1657)