Top 100 Rostand Quotes
#1. In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one's party three times a day.
Jean Rostand
#2. The biologist passes. The frog stays the same.
Jean Rostand
#4. To live is often to struggle toward goals one has no desire to reach.
Jean Rostand
#5. My pessimism extends to the point of even suspecting the sincerity of the pessimists.
Jean Rostand
#6. I sing, not to hear the echo repeat, a shade fainter, my song! I think of light and not of glory! Singing is my fashion of waging war and bearing witness. And if my song is the proudest of songs, it is that I sing clearly to make the day rise clear!
Edmond Rostand
#7. A kiss is a secret which takes the lips for the ear.
Edmond Rostand
#8. The least one can say of power is that a vocation for it is suspicious.
Jean Rostand
#11. I love you, but I should poorly serve the work to which I devote myself anew at the side of one to whom it were less than the greatest thing in the world!
Edmond Rostand
#12. Far too often the choices reality proposes are such as to take away one's taste for choosing.
Jean Rostand
#13. Kill one man and you are a murderer. Kill millions and you are a conqueror. Kill all and you are a God.
Jean Rostand
#14. I am what I am because early in life I decided that I would please at least myself in all things.
Edmond Rostand
#15. In art as in life the valid sacrifices are those that bring no income.
Jean Rostand
#16. The obligation to endure gives us the right to know.
Jean Rostand
#17. Science has made us gods even before we are worthy of being men.
Jean Rostand
#18. It may offend us to hear our own thoughts expressed by others: we are not sure enough of their souls.
Jean Rostand
#19. Kill one man and you're a murderer, kill a million and you're a conqueror.
Jean Rostand
#20. To say of men that they are bad is to say they are worse than we think we are, or worse than the ideal man whose image we have built up on the basis of a certain few.
Jean Rostand
#21. A large nose is in fact the sign of an affable man, good, courteous, witty, liberal, courageous, such as I am.
Edmond Rostand
#22. All my laurels you have riven away, and my roses; yet in spite of you, there is one crown I bear away with me ... One thing without stain, unspotted from the world, in spite of doom mine own! And that is ... my white plume.
Edmond Rostand
#23. In our ideals we unwittingly reveal our vices.
Jean Rostand
#24. I still understand a few words in life, but I no longer think they make a sentence.
Jean Rostand
#25. A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us worthy of using it.
Jean Rostand
#26. You must believe me when I believe, and not when I doubt.
Edmond Rostand
#27. Science had better not free the minds of men too much, before it has tamed their instincts.
Jean Rostand
#28. I was wondering aimlessly; too many road were open ... too many resolves, too complex, allowed of being taken. I took ... by far the simplest of them all.
Edmond Rostand
#29. Renown? I've already got more of it than those I respect, and will never have as much as those for whom I feel contempt.
Jean Rostand
#30. When a scientist is ahead of his times, it is often through misunderstanding of current, rather than intuition of future truth. In science there is never any error so gross that it won't one day, from some perspective, appear prophetic.
Jean Rostand
#31. One must either take an interest in the human situation or else parade before the void.
Jean Rostand
#32. A kiss, when all is said, what is it? An oath that's given closer than before; A promise more precise; the sealing of Confessions that till then were barely breathed; A rosy dot placed on the i in loving.
Edmond Rostand
#33. To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should.
Jean Rostand
#34. Cyrano: The leaves
Roxane: What color
Perfect Venetian red! Look at them fall.
Cyrano: Yes
they know how to die. A little way
From the branch to the earth, a little fear
Of mingling with the common dust
and yet
They go down gracefully
a fall that seems
Like flying!
Edmond Rostand
#35. It takes a very deep-rooted opinion to survive unexpressed.
Jean Rostand
#36. Stale words, what are they worth?
A moment comes and God help those for whom it never comes.
When love of such nobility possesses this shaking frame
That even the sweetest word, the ultimate honey, stings like vinegar.
Edmond Rostand
#38. In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's.
Jean Rostand
#39. I love you more than yesterday, less than tomorrow.
Edmond Rostand
#40. Greatness, in order to gain recognition, must all too often consent to ape greatness.
Jean Rostand
#41. To joke in the face of danger is the supreme politeness, a delicate refusal to cast oneself as a tragic hero; panache is therefore a timid heroism, like the smile with which one excuses one's superiority.
Edmond Rostand
#43. A body of work such as Pasteur's is inconceivable in our time: no man would be given a chance to create a whole science. Nowadays a path is scarcely opened up when the crowd begins to pour in.
Jean Rostand
#44. Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one the feeling that nothing remains to be said.
Jean Rostand
#45. A married couple are well suited when both partners usually feel the need for a quarrel at the same time.
Jean Rostand
#46. And if kisses in these words could travel too, Madam, you'd read this letter with your lips.
Edmond Rostand
#47. I would die at the stake rather than change a semi-colon!
Edmond Rostand
#48. A man is not old as long as he is seeking something.
Jean Rostand
#49. We find it easy to believe that praise is sincere: why should anyone lie in telling us the truth?
Jean Rostand
#50. What scientist would not long to go on living, if only to see how the little truths he has brought to light will grow up?
Jean Rostand
#51. One must credit an hypothesis with all that has had to be discovered in order to demolish it.
Jean Rostand
#52. The dream, alone, is of interest. What is life, without a dream?
Edmond Rostand
#53. ROXANE. One hundred men against one: you! - So, good bye! - We are the best of friends, are we not? CYRANO. Assuredly, we are!
Edmond Rostand
#54. 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.
Edmond Rostand
#55. The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn't write them again, and wouldn't want to.
Jean Rostand
#56. While master of myself, I'll not permit
The soothing beauty of a tear to roll
Along the crooked contours of this nose.
There's a sublimity in tears; and I
Would not debase them;
I would never turn
Something sublime to the ridiculous.
Edmond Rostand
#57. It is horrible to see everything that one detested in the past coming back wearing the colors of the future.
Jean Rostand
#58. We spend our time envying people whom we wouldn't wish to be.
Jean Rostand
#59. It is not easy to imagine how little interested a scientist usually is in the work of any other, with the possible exception of the teacher who backs him or the student who honors him.
Jean Rostand
#60. We bestow on others praise in which we do not believe, on condition that in return they bestow upon us praise in which we do.
Jean Rostand
#61. When I was young I pitied the old. Now old, it is the young I pity.
Jean Rostand
#63. Never feel remorse for what you have thought about your wife; she has thought much worse things about you.
Jean Rostand
#65. Being right is less important to us than the freedom to be wrong.
Jean Rostand
#66. Think? Why think! We have computers to do that for us.
Jean Rostand
#67. It is sometimes well for a blatant error to draw attention to overmodest truths.
Jean Rostand
#68. 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.
Edmond Rostand
#70. What makes our opponents useful is that they allow us to believe that without them we would be able to realize our goals.
Jean Rostand
#72. Speak to me ... be eloquent, be brilliant for me. Improvise! Rhapsodize! ... I ask for cream and you give me milk and water ... Please gather your dreams together into words. - Roxanne, Cyrano de Bergerac
Edmond Rostand
#73. Always the answer - yes! Let me die so -
Under some rosy-golden sunset, saying
A good thing, for a good cause! By the sword,
The point of honor - by the hand of one
Worthy to be my foeman, let me fall -
Steel in my heart, and laughter on my lips!
Edmond Rostand
#75. Where lurk sweet echoes of the dear homevoices, Each note of which calls like a little sister, Those airs slow, slow ascending, as the smokewreaths Rise from the hearthstones of our native hamlets Cyrano Act 5.
Edmond Rostand
#76. 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!
Edmond Rostand
#77. I-I am going to be a storm-a flame- I need to fight whole armies alone; I have ten hearts; I have a hundred arms; I feel too strong to war with mortals- BRING ME GIANTS!
Edmond Rostand
#78. Stay awhile! 'Tis sweet, ...
The rare occasion, when our hearts can speak
Our selves unseen, unseeing!
Edmond Rostand
#79. The ideal, without doubt, varies, but its enemies, alas, are always the same.
Jean Rostand
#80. A man does not fight to win; it is better to fight in vain ...
Edmond Rostand
#81. There are things that don't deserve to be said briefly.
Jean Rostand
#82. The nobility of a human being is strictly independent of that of his convictions.
Jean Rostand
#83. Already at the origin of the species man was equal to what he was destined to become.
Jean Rostand
#84. I prefer the honest jargon of reality to the outright lies of books.
Jean Rostand
#86. There are certain moments when we might wish the future were built by men of the past.
Jean Rostand
#87. The writer's voice, the honesty and candor that is present in that voice, is what must be written upon the page.
Edmond Rostand
#88. Somebody told me I should put a pebble in my mouth to cure my stuttering. Well, I tried it, and during a scene I swallowed the pebble. That was the end of that.
Jean Rostand
#89. Kill a man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a god.
Jean Rostand
#90. Prerequisite for rereadability in books: that they be forgettable.
Jean Rostand
#91. Falsity cannot keep an idea from being beautiful; there are certain errors of such ingenuity that one could regret their not ranking among the achievements of the human mind.
Jean Rostand
#92. Quotations
always inexact. I don't trust people who cannot even copy out.
Jean Rostand
#93. There are some persons we could not cut down to size without diminishing ourselves as well.
Jean Rostand
#94. Well when I write my book, and tell the tale of my adventures
all these little stars that shake out of my cloak
I must save those to use for asterisks!
Edmond Rostand
#95. Stupidity, outrage, vanity, cruelty, iniquity, bad faith, falsehood - we fail to see the whole array when it is facing in the same direction as we.
Jean Rostand
#97. On the brink of being satiated, desire still appears infinite.
Jean Rostand
#98. My soul, be satisfied with flowers,
With fruit, with weeds even; but gather them
In the one garden you may call your own.
Edmond Rostand
#99. Kill a man and you're a murderer. Kill many and you're a conqueror. Kill them all, you're a god.
Jean Rostand
#100. I think I am one of those who can manage not to take on a completely different appearance under their own glance.
Jean Rostand
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