Popular quotes about French! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 11
The songs of Bizet are by a French peer of Rossini. When Rossini stopped composing, he was living in Paris. He also wrote some beautiful songs in French.
Cecilia BartoliAnd if you remember the other part of the context is we were then all deceived about the French position and told the French had said they'd veto any second resolution - which wasn't true, we now know.
Clare ShortI'd had a French education for three years, my father being in the army. From 9 to 12, I went to French school. I've been sort of part of the culture, part of the geography, since I was quite young - the imprint was there. And I loved it.
Charlotte RamplingI have many, many editions of the books, and they are all rather different. In the end, the one I used was the most recent French translation. French suits the tales well, and it's a beautiful translation. The Italian one is good as well... English has fallen short.
Marina WarnerThat certain snobbery of certainly the Parisian - combined with a complete denial of your historical legacy, is just awful. That's a funny thing about France. Saul Bellow wrote somewhere that he saw right through the French. He lived there. He wrote The Adventures of Augie March in Paris, and there's no one better than him to say what's unbearable about the French.
Martin AmisFrench fries kill more people than guns and sharks, yet nobody's afraid of French fries.
Robert KiyosakiA French politician once wrote that it was a peculiarity of the French language that in it words occur in the order in which one thinks them.
Ludwig WittgensteinI even watched Mulholland Drive in French... it didn't make much more sense in French, but I have to say, it didn't make any less sense either.
Tom DunneJustice has its anger, my lord Bishop, and the wrath of justice is an element of progress. Whatever else may be said of it, the French Revolution was the greatest step forward by mankind since the coming of Christ. It was unfinished, I agree, but still it was sublime. It released the untapped springs of society; it softened hearts, appeased, tranquilized, enlightened, and set flowing through the world the tides of civilization. It was good. The French Revolution was the anointing of humanity.
Victor HugoI think I get really into comfort music: '60s stuff, '50s stuff like Frankie Avalon. I love it - such simple songs, but so well written. That, and old French pop. I love that, because I don't speak French. It's all just pop music! But I love it because it just makes me focus on the melodies.
Michael Benjamin LernerMost, actually, German actors have like some speaking of French. So, the French wasn't the problem. But, I was having a problem with them doing my dialogue in English. And it wasn't a matter of fluency.
Quentin TarantinoI don't flatter myself with much dependence upon the present disposition of the Eastern Indians, who are many ways liable to be drawn into a rupture with us by the artifices of the French, their own weakness and the influence which the French Missionary Priests have over them.
William ShirleyDespite history, despite English, despite the noteworthies, and a little bit also despite ourselves, alas!, the Quebecois people have stayed French. I had violently returned. This people had no need of directives to affirm its French pride in the face of the whole world
Pierre BourgaultThe French are funny, sex is funny, and comedies are funny, yet no French sex comedies are funny.
Matt GroeningI love French films, and European films. They're not any bigger, but there's just a sort of definition, and a confidence, and strength to them. I'd always, given the option, go and see a French drama. Obviously, we probably get the better ones. But they're just sophisticated on many levels, and grown up, and quite profound - and we don't make films like that.
Jim BroadbentThe French probably invented the very notion of discretion. It's not that they feel that what you don't know won't hurt you; they feel that what you don't know won't hurt them. To the French lying is simply talking.
Fran LebowitzIn France, they make you feel that you cannot be two things at the same time. You can't be French and Arabic; you can't be French and Muslim.
eL SeedIt is rarely remembered now that socialism in its beginnings was frankly authoritarian. It began quite openly as a reaction against the liberalism of the French Revolution. The French writers who laid its foundation had no doubt that their ideas could be put into practice only by a strong dictatorial government. The first of modern planners, Saint-Simon, predicted that those who did not obey his proposed planning boards would be 'treated as cattle'.
Friedrich August von HayekI became a pedant of the form. I did my graduate work in art history and particularly in the history of French satirical cartooning. And that made me aware of what a rich and resilient tradition this seemingly scabrous sacrilegious magazine still represented in French life.
Scott SimonThis (French-Kissing) is a really sexy thing to do, according to the French people, although you should bear in mind that they also like to eat snails.
Dave BarryBecause I was born in Casablanca and my parents were from the south of Spain, I do not have a big central root in France. I feel French but in a few ways, not at all French.
Jean RenoIt was always said that the big distinction between the French and the English is that the English are intelligent and the French are intellectual.
Kenneth Baker, Baron Baker of Dorking"Let us find the dam snack bar," Zoe said. "We should eat while we can." Grover cracked a smile. "The dam snack bar?" Zoe blinked. "Yes. What is funny?" "Nothing," Grover said, trying to keep a straight face. "I could use some dam French fries." Even Thalia smiled at that. "And I need to use the dam restroom."... I started cracking up, and Thalia and Grover joined in, while Zoe just looked at us "I do not understand." "I want to use the dam water fountain," Grover said. "And..." Thalia tried to catch her breath. "I want to buy a dam T-shirt."
Rick RiordanBecause I cannot write my native language and have no native home anymore, and am amazed by that horrible homelessness of all French-Canadian s abroad in America.
Jack KerouacThey [ French] still have an open border in Europe. And they have a Europe which doesn't have an integrated intelligence system like we do in the United States.
Michael LeiterWords were written out for me phonetically. I learned to quack in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese and German.
Clarence NashThe companies only developed if the state did not intervene in the French fashion. If on the contrary a certain degree of economic freedom was the rule, capitalism moved in firmly and adapted itself to all administrative quirks and difficulties
Fernand BraudelI studied French in high school and German in college and I once took a 24-hour Italian crash course. English has by far the most words in it of any other language. Our money might not be worth anything anymore, but the language is.
Roy Blount, Jr.After 10 years of French torture - psychological torture - it's great to do an American movie.
Emmanuelle BeartYou can't have a novel without real, believable people, and once you get into either too theoretical a novel or too philosophical a novel, you get into the dangers that the French novel has discovered in the past 50 or 60 years. And you get into a sort of aridity. No, you have to have real, identifiable people to whom the reader reacts in a way as if they were real people.
Julian BarnesThe consequences of things are not always proportionate to the apparent magnitude of those events that have produced them. Thus the American Revolution, from which little was expected, produced much; but the French Revolution, from which much was expected, produced little.
Charles Caleb ColtonShe reached inside the wide ruffle and pulled out a little vial. โPoison?โ asked Lady Maccon, tilting her head to one side. โCertainly not. Something far more important: perfume. We cannot very well have you fighting crime unscented, now, can we?โ โOh.โ Alexia nodded gravely. After all, Madame Lefoux was French. โCertainly not.
Gail CarrigerIn the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence and which the Polish Government accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces, His Majesty's Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power. They have given the Polish Government an assurance to this effect. I may add that the French Government have authorized me to make it plain that they stand in the same position in this matter.
Neville ChamberlainI like to be in a huis clos, as the French say - in one place. It's something that in general can create a bit of claustrophobia. But for me, claustrophobia becomes almost immediately claustrophilia. I love it!
Bernardo BertolucciMy father's Peruvian! I actually have a lot of family in Cuzco. I'm also Swiss, Alaskan, French, Spanish and Italian.
Q'orianka KilcherThe stubby French painter Toulouse-Lautrec supposedly invented chocolate mousse - I find that rather hard to believe, but there you have it.
Alton BrownI speak French with timidity, and not flowingly--except when excited. When using that language I have often noticed that I have hardly ever been mistaken for a Frenchman, except, perhaps, by horses; never, I believe, by people.
Mark TwainEnglish is a forgiving language. It's not like Classical Arabic and it's not like French. You can speak broken English and be expressive and no one will hold it against you.
Elliott CollaMainly I was able to perform with music - I played the French horn, I would sing, and I was a drummer in the pipe band. So I think it was a way to show off.
Ewan McGregorI cling to the basic set of tenets laid out in Tom Wolfe's 'New Journalism' - to get out there like the great French novelists of the 19th century and study life. I am a Tom Wolfe fan of the first order.
Peter YorkJean-Marie Le Pen is a holocaust denier who was convicted and fined for dismissing Nazi concentration camps as a, quote, "Detail in History." But he kept running this anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, populist unapologetic xenophobic far right party in French politics.
Rachel Maddow