“The only thing necessary for the continuance of evil is for a good man to do nothing.”

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

“The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.”

“The pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes: and in proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false. The rights of men are in a sort of middle, incapable of definition, but not impossible to be discerned. The rights of men in government are their advantages; and these are often in balances between differences of good; in compromises between good and evil, and sometimes between evil and evil. . . . Men have no right to what is not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit. . . .”

“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”

“It is very hard to live with silence. The real silence is death and this is terrible. To approach this silence, it is necessary to journey to the desert. You do not go to the desert to find identity, but to lose it, to lose your personality, to be anonymous. You make yourself void. You become silence. You become more silent than the silence around you. And then something extraordinary happens: you hear silence speak.”

“Roxane: His face is like yours, burning with spirit and imagination. He is proud and noble and young and fearless and beautiful-Cyrano:(losing all his colour.) Beautiful!Roxane: Yes. What's wrong?Cyrano: With me? Nothing. It's only... only... (Displaying his bandaged hand, with a little smile.) This fatal wound.”