Edmond Rostand Quote

To joke in the face of danger is the supreme politeness, a delicate refusal to cast oneself as a tragic hero.


Speaking to the Académie française in 1903, as quoted by John Lahr in "Fighting and Writing" in The New Yorker (12 November 2007)


To joke in the face of danger is the supreme politeness, a delicate refusal to cast oneself as a tragic hero.

To joke in the face of danger is the supreme politeness, a delicate refusal to cast oneself as a tragic hero.

To joke in the face of danger is the supreme politeness, a delicate refusal to cast oneself as a tragic hero.

To joke in the face of danger is the supreme politeness, a delicate refusal to cast oneself as a tragic hero.