1950 film:
Vicomte de Valvert: Monsieur, your nose... your nose is rather large.
Cyrano de Bergerac: Rather?
Vicomte de Valvert: Oh, well...
Cyrano de Bergerac: Is that all?
Vicomte de Valvert: Well of course...
Cyrano de Bergerac: Oh, no, young sir. You are too simple. Why, you might have said a great many things. Why waste your opportunity? For example, thus: AGGRESSIVE: I, sir, if that nose were mine, I'd have it amputated on the spot. PRACTICAL: How do you drink with such a nose? You must have had a cup made especially. DESCRIPTIVE: 'Tis a rock, a crag, a cape! A cape? Say rather, a peninsula! INQUISITIVE: What is that receptacle? A razor case or a portfolio? KINDLY: Ah, do you love the little birds so much that when they come to see you, you give them this to perch on. CAUTIOUS: Take care! A weight like that might make you top-heavy. ELOQUENT: When it blows, the typhoon howls, and the clouds darken! DRAMATIC: When it bleeds, the Red Sea. SIMPLE: When do they unveil the monument? MILITARY: Beware, a secret weapon. ENTERPRISING: What a sign for some perfumer! RESPECTFUL: Sir, I recognize in you a man of parts. A man of... prominence! Or, LITERARY: Was this the nose that launched a thousand ships? These, my dear sir, are things you might have said, had you some tinge of letters or of wit to color your discourse. But wit? Not so, you never had an atom. And of letters, you need but three to write you down: A, S, S. Ass!
Vicomte de Valvert: Insolent puppy, dolt, bunpkin, fool!
Cyrano de Bergerac: How do you do? And I, Cyrano Savinien Hercule de Bergerac.
Antoine Comte de Guiche: Vicomte, come.
Vicomte de Valvert: Such arrogance, this scarecrow. Look at him! No ribbons, no lace, not even gloves!
Cyrano de Bergerac: True! I carry my adornments only on my soul, decked with deeds instead of ribbons. Manful in my good name, and crowned with the white plume of freedom.
Vicomte de Valvert: But...
Cyrano de Bergerac: But, I have no gloves. A pity too. I had one - the last of an old pair - and lost that. Very careless of me. A gentleman offered me an impertinence. I left it - in his face.
Vicomte de Valvert: [Drawing his rapier] So be it!
Cyrano de Bergerac: You shall die exquisitely!
Vicomte de Valvert: Oh, a poet?
Cyrano de Bergerac: Oh, yes, a poet. So, while we fight, I'll improvise a ballade for you, and as I end the refrain, thrust home.
Vicomte de Valvert: Will you?
Cyrano de Bergerac: I will. Ballade of the duel at the Theatre of the Burgoyne, between de Bergerac and... a barbarian.
Vicomte de Valvert: What do you mean by that?
Cyrano de Bergerac: Oh, that? The title.
cyrano de bergerac by Edmond Rostand(might be...and I don't know who translated into english :p)
And what would you have me do?
Seek for the patronage of some great man,
And like a creeping vine on a tall tree
Crawl upward, where I cannot stand alone?
No thank you! Dedicate, as others do,
Poems to pawnbrokers? Be a buffoon
In the vile hope of teasing out a smile
On some cold face? No thank you! Eat a toad
For breakfast every morning? Make my knees
callous, and cultivate a supple spine,-
Wear out my belly grovelling in the dust?
No thank you! Scratch the back of any swine
That roots up gold for me? Tickle the horns
of Mammon with my left hand, while my right
Too proud to know his partner’s business
Takes in the fee? No thank you! Use the fire
God gave me to burn incense all day long
Under the nose of wood and stone? No thank you!
Shall I go leaping into ladies laps
And licking fingers?-or-to change form-
Navigating with madrigals for oars,
My sails full of the sighs of dowagers?
No thank you! Publish verses at my own
Expense? No thank you! Be the patron saint
Of a small group of leterary souls
Who dine together every Tuesday? No
I thank you! Shall I labor night and day
To build a reputation on one song,
And never write another? Shall I find
True genius only among Geniuses,
Palpitate over little paragraphs,
And struggle to insinuate my name
In the columns of the Mercury?
No thank you! Calculate, scheme, be afraid,
Love more to make a visit than a poem,
Seek introductions, favors, influences?-
No thank you! No, I thank you! And again
I thank you!- But…
To sing, to laugh, to dream,
To walk in my own way and be alone,
Free, with an eye to see things as they are,
A voice that means manhood- to cock my hat
Where I choose- At a word, a Yes, a No,
To fight- or write. To travel any road
Under the sun, under the stars, nor doubt
If fame or fortune lie beyond the bourne-
ever to make a line I have not heard
In my own heart; yet, with all modesty
To say: “My soul, be satisfied with flowers,
With fruit, with weeds even; but gather them
In the one garden you may call your own.”
So, when I win some triumph, by some chance,
Render no share to Caesar- in a word,
I am too proud to be a parasite,
And if my nature wants the germ that grows
Towering to heaven like the mountain pine,
Or like the oak, sheltering multitudes-
I stand, not high it may be- But alone!
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"My nose is Gargantuan! You little Pig-snout, you tiny Monkey-Nostrils, you virtually invisible Pekinese-Puss, don't you realize that a nose like mine is both scepter and orb, a monument to me superiority? A great nose is the banner of a great man, a generous heart, a towering spirit, an expansive soul--such as I unmistakably am, and such as you dare not to dream of being, with your bilious weasel's eyes and no nose to keep them apart! With your face as lacking in all distinction--as lacking, I say, in interest, as lacking in pride, in imagination, in honesty, in lyricism--in a word, as lacking in nose as that other offensively bland expanse at the opposite end of your cringing spine--which I now remove from my sight by stringent application of my boot!"
- Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Act 1
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"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.'"
- Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Act 3
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"God's whiskers! Your face is hideous as the demon's in my storybook!"
- Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Act 3
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