Popular quotes about French! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 28
OSS 117 and maybe Un Balcon Sur La Mer directed by Nicole Garcia. It's a typical French movie with typical French themes with French actors, a French director.
Jean DujardinThe image foreigners have of French cuisine is fattening and very fancy food. But it's not true - French food isn't just rich. The word "healthy" doesn't exist in French. We have many, many words, but not that one. To me, healthy means paying close attention to feeding people.
Alain DucasseFrench women have been made beautiful by the French people - they're very aware of their bodies, the way they move and speak, they're very confident of their sexuality. French society's made them like that
Charlotte RamplingThe French fried potato has become an inescapable horror in almost every public eating place in the country. 'French fries', say the menus, but they are not French fries any longer. They are a furry-textured substance with the taste of plastic wood.
Russell BakerStrange bent over these things, with a concentration to rival Minervois's own, questioning, criticizing and proposing. Strange and the two engravers spoke French to each other. To Strange's surprize Childermass understood perfectly and even addressed one or twoquestions to Minervois in his own language. Unfortunately, Childermass's French was so strongly accented by his native Yorkshire that Minervois did not understand and asked Strange if Childermass was Dutch.
Susanna ClarkeI 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 WarnerIt's true that the French have a certain obsession with sex, but it's a particularly adult obsession. France is the thriftiest of all nations; to a Frenchman sex provides the most economical way to have fun. The French are a logical race.
Anita LoosI never dream in French, but certain French words seem better or more fun than English words - like 'pois chiches' for chick peas!
Lydia DavisTo me there are two Hitlers: one who existed until the end of the French war; the other begins with the Russian campaign. In the beginning he was genial and pleasant. He would have extraordinary willpower and unheard-of influence on people. The important thing to remember is that the first Hitler, the man who I knew until the end of the French war, had much charm and goodwill. He was always frank. The second Hitler, who existed from the beginning of the Russian campaign until his suicide, was always suspicious, easily upset, and tense. He was distrustful to an extreme degree.
Hermann GoringWhen actually, you have one identity made of different parts. Depending on where you are, at what time in your life, some things are higher or deeper. That's what I understood later: that I'm French and Tunisian, and I'm accepting the French part of my identity.
eL SeedI could wish there were a treaty made between the French and the English theatres, in which both parties should make considerableconcessions. The English ought to give up their notorious violations of the unities, and all their massacres, racks, dead bodies, and mangled carcasses, which they so frequently exhibit upon their stage. The French should engage to have more action, and less declamation, and not to cram and to crowd things together to almost a degree of impossibility from a too scrupulous adherence to the unities.
Lord ChesterfieldFrench is not a language that lends itself naturally to the opaque and ponderous idiom of nature-philosophy, and Teilhard has according resorted to the use of that tipsy, euphoristic prose-poetry which is one of the more tiresome manifestations of the French spirit.
Peter MedawarJohn Kerry speaks French fluently. Democrats are saying he's one in a million. A war hero who speaks French, isn't it more like one in a trillion?
Jay Leno(T)he most important reason American leftists love France is that French elites say bad things about America. French intellectuals call us racist, stupid, imperialistic, simplistic, etc. ' and that alone is proof of their intellectualism. So long as you call America โracist,โ you could add that an enema is as good as a toothbrush and some professor of โcommunications theoryโ would applaud.
Jonah GoldbergIn the same period that the Americans have lived under one constitution our French friends notched up five. A Punch cartoon has a 19th century Englishman asking a librarian for a copy of the French constitution, only to be told: 'I am sorry Sir, we do not stock periodicals.'
Margaret ThatcherThe French need a thrashing. If the Prussians win, the centralization of state power will be useful for the centralization of the German working class. German predominance would also transfer the center of gravity of the workers' movement in Western Europe from France to Germany, and one has only to compare the movement in the two countries from 1866 until now to see that the German working class is superior to the French both theoretically and organizationally.
Karl MarxIn France you cannot not have lunch. If you stopped the French from having lunch, you will have a second revolution, I can tell you this. Not going to work - it is part of the French privilege.
Christian LouboutinIn order to translate a sentence from English into French two things are necessary. First, we must understand thoroughly the English sentence. Second, we must be familiar with the forms of expression peculiar to the French language. The situation is very similar when we attempt to express in mathematical symbols a condition proposed in words. First, we must understand thoroughly the condition. Second, we must be familiar with the forms of mathematical expression.
George PolyaI 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 BroadbentThere is no English equivalent for the French word flรขneur. Cassell's dictionary defines flรขneur as a stroller, saunterer, drifter but none of these terms seems quite accurate. There is no English equivalent for the term, just as there is no Anglo-Saxon counterpart of that essentially Gallic individual, the deliberately aimless pedestrian, unencumbered by any obligation or sense of urgency, who, being French and therefore frugal, wastes nothing, including his time which he spends with the leisurely discrimination of a gourmet, savoring the multiple flavors of his city.
Cornelia Otis SkinnerMy sisters like cooking at my place. It has a bit more room, and the food tastes a little bit better. A big pot of spaghetti and sauce, some warm French bread - works all the time. I think I've been eating pasta for 26 years.
Tom BradyWhen I warned them [the French] that Britain would fight on alone whatever they did, their generals told their Prime Minister and his divided Cabinet, In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken. Some chicken! Some neck!
Winston ChurchillOne of the richest and largest markets in the world, Europe can set global standards. And if a French president is prepared to at least consider clear rules in the Eurozone, then it would be fatal if Germany were not to react.
Martin SchulzThe 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 BraudelWe're all nothing but unified arrangements of atoms and particles, drifting around, enjoying consciousness every now and then for a second or so before splitting up to become bits and pieces of trees and stars and french fries.
Alan Dean FosterWith a very few exceptions, every word in the French vocabulary comes straight from the Latin.
Lytton StracheyIn 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 ChamberlainThe scientific and societal achievements of the modern age are undisputable. But after the French Revolution, modernity increasingly emancipated itself from Christian roots, thereby becoming rootless itself.
Walter KasperI would prefer to listen to a French classical composer like Olivier Messiaen than to the pop hits of the day.
Matt GroeningI loved American universities. In many ways, they are better organized - certainly than French universities.
Thomas PikettyThe great French Marshall Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardner objected that the tree was slow growing and wouldn't reach maturity for 100 years. The Marshall replied, "In that case, there is no time to lose; plant it this afternoon!
John F. KennedyLet's be honest - Bill Murray was onto something when he laughed at Andie MacDowell's degree in 19th century French poetry in 'Groundhog Day'.
Marco RubioI have made an art form of the interview. The French are the best interviewers, despite their addiction to the triad, like all Cartesians.
Orson WellesI 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 MaddowWhen I hear myself speak French, I look at myself differently. Certain aspects will feel closer to the way I feel or the way I am and others won't. I like that - to tour different sides of yourself. I often find when looking at people who are comfortable in many languages, they're more comfortable talking about emotional stuff in a certain language or political stuff in another and that's really interesting, how people relate to those languages.
Francois ArnaudI'm a vegan, but you can be really unhealthy as a vegan, too. Vegan just means that you don't use animal products, so you don't wear leather, you don't wear wool, and you don't eat animal products. But you can eat french fries and stuff like that all day long.
Emily DeschanelJohn XXI was a very great pope and he's the one who actually corrected the liturgy. He did so because of his friend Jules Isaac, a French Jewish historian who was a friend of John Paul, of John 23rd, and he convinced him and he changed the liturgy, no more Jew, the perfidious Jew and so forth and now, and don't speak any more of the Jews killing Christ. Things have changed.
Elie WieselI have a nice little house in LA. Well, the bedroom is nice. I have French doors in the bedroom. They don't open unless I lick them.
Judy GoldI was with Brian De Palma at the time, and he said he wrote the role specifically for me. I don't know what that says about the way he saw me, since the role was of a castrating killer. Brian came one morning to the house, said "Here's your Christmas present." He wrote the character to have a Swedish accent, but since I couldn't pull that off, he switched it to French-Canadian. It was such a romantic time in my life. Everyone was young and passionate and convinced they were going to change film forever.
Margot KidderWhat makes international cinema so interesting is that each territory has its own sensibility. When you look at an Indian or French film, there's a certain flavor. And even though the language is different, if the film is successful, it has something very common and understandable.
Wong Kar-waiAlthough most of us know Vincent van Gogh in Arles and Paul Gauguin in Tahiti as if they were neighbors -- somewhat disreputable but endlessly fascinating -- none of us can name two French generals or department store owners of that period. I take enormous pride in considering myself an artist, one of the necessaries.
James A. MichenerI love languages (I speak French and Spanish and have been studying Russian) and accents; so one definite dream role would be being able to combine those elements into a character.
Sundra OakleyShe had died peacefully, in her sleep, after an evening of listening to all of her favorite Fred Astaire songs, one crackling record after another. Once the last chord of the last piece had died out, she had stood up and opened the French doors to the garden outside, perhaps waiting to breathe in the honeysuckle one more time.
Anne Fortier[on going to Sunday school:] It looks like rain, and I hope it will rain cats and dogs and hammers and pitchforks and silver sugar spoons and hay ricks and paper-covered novels and picture frames and rag carpets and toothpicks and skating rinks and birds of paradise and roof gardens and burdocks and French grammars before Sunday school time.
Edna St. Vincent MillayThe French revolution was a .eune invented and constructed for the purpose of manufacturing liberty; but it had neither lever cogs, nor adjusting powers, and the consequences were that it worked so rapidly that it destroyed its own inventors, and set itself on fire.
Charles Caleb ColtonThroughout our history, there has been a long list of those we've been conditioned to hate. The British, French, Spanish, Germans, Japanese, Russians, Communists, Northern Koreans, Vietnamese, Iranians, Taliban, and both northerners and southerners in America are some of the people we've been encouraged at various times to call enemies and to hate. The list is long, and as time passes, those we were assigned to hate we later were told should be removed from our hate list. The enemy is obviously hatred itself. Have empathy for your assigned enemy.
Wayne Dyer