Popular quotes about French! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
The transformations of the French empire itself or of French power structures themselves as well as the emergence of a kind of language of equal rights starting with the American Revolution and the French Revolution provided an opportunity and in some ways connected with other kinds of ground level desires or hopes and ideologies for freedom that were coming out of the plantation regime itself.
Laurent DuboisIt was announced as a French victory by the French Minister of War. I did not see any sign of victory but only the retreat of the French forces engaged in the battle.
Philip GibbsEddie Izzard is doing his show in French... Will he be able to fake ad-lib as well in other languages? He's been speaking French for a while now, but he's talking about doing his act in German. Haven't the German people suffered enough?
Andy KindlerIn France cooking is a serious art form and a national sport. I think the French enjoy the complication of the art form and the cooking for cooking's sake. You can talk with a concierge or police officer about food in France as a general rule. It is not the general rule here. Classical cuisine, which I hope we are going back to, means certain ways of doing things and certain ways of not doing things. If you know classical French cooking you can do anything. If you don't know the basics, you turn out slop.
Julia ChildFrance can never accept that it is no longer a dominating power in the world of culture. This is true both of the French right and the French left. They keep thinking that Americans are primitive cowboys or farmers who do not understand anything.
Adam MichnikWhen we strengthen our relations with the Gulf states, when we cooperate with the Arabs, everybody asks if we are looking for a new geopolitical place. But in the Middle East and the Gulf, you can find German, French and British goods everywhere. German relations to these states are very good, as are English and French relations. Does this make them Arab-oriented?
Recep Tayyip ErdoganStrange 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 ClarkeWhen I was a young man, my friends and I and all of us in New York were very influenced by French cinema. French cinema played an enormous influence on those of us who wanted to be filmmakers.
Woody AllenI have defended the interests of France at the G8 in Washington; afterwards I was at Chicago to announce the withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan; I have participated in two European summits, so I have fully respected the engagements I made to the French.
Francois HollandeThe real reason French women don't get fat is not genetic, but cultural, and if the French subjected themselves to the American extremes of eating and dieting, the obesity problem in France would be much worse than what has struck America.
Mireille GuilianoFrench 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 MedawarI think that what people abroad want from French film, inside French film becomes our worst fear, "Oh, another film about love!"
Louis GarrelAnybody who French bashes just might as well wear a badge that says 'I am a follower! I don't think for myself and I have no idea what I'm talking about.' That would be a French basher.
Janeane GarofaloThere is no word in English for chic. Why should there be? Everything chic is by legend French. Perhaps everything chic is in reality French.
Elizabeth HawesThere 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 SkinnerIn New York I pretty much live in diners - I order French Fries, Diet Coke floats and lots of coffee.
Lana Del ReyThe frontiers are not east or west, north or south; but wherever a man fronts a fact, though that fact be a neighbor, there is anunsettled wilderness between him and Canada, between him and the setting sun, or, farther still, between him and it. Let him build himself a log house with the bark on where he is, fronting IT, and wage there an Old French war for seven or seventy years, with Indians and Rangers, or whatever else may come between him and the reality, and save his scalp if he can.
Henry David ThoreauAmong the lessons taught by the French revolution, there is none sadder or more striking than this--that you may make everything else out of the passions of men except a political system that will work, and that there is nothing so pitilessly and unconsciously cruel as sincerity formulated into dogma.
James Russell Lowell[The Women's Room by Marilyn French] was in my house somewhere, blew my mind, I was changed forever. And then I continued to read it at various points in my life, and it sort of opens up in a different way.
June Diane RaphaelFrench is, in many ways, more difficult for an English-speaking person to sing. It is so full of complex and trying vowels. It requires the utmost subtlety.
Alma GluckThe whole history between Haiti and the Dominican Republic is complicated. We share the island of Hispaniola, and Haiti occupied the Dominican Republic for twenty-two years after 1804 for fear that the French and Spanish would come back and reinstitute slavery. So we have this unique situation of being two independent nations on the same island, but with each community having its own grievance.
Edwidge DanticatI mean, already in the French Revolution, the harpsichord becomes identified with the aristocracy, with the ancien regime. Plus, hey, you know, I mean, harpsichord is a really easy target, isn't it? I mean, it's - it's just how it is.
Mahan EsfahaniI shall be dark and French and fashionable and difficult. And you shall be sweet and open and English and fair. What a pair we shall be! What man can resist us?
Philippa GregoryIn spite of all the skills that I do have, to relate to the normal world I have no applicable skills. I can speak Russian, I can speak French. I know about Chanel. Especially vintage Chanel. I know what Halston is. All of these things, but they can't really be applied to a nine-to-five.
Johnny WeirWhy would we expect the French to fight to liberate the Iraqis when they wouldn't fight to liberate themselves?
Rush LimbaughBoys, welcome to the wonderful world of talking to women about their feelings. As a handy primer, here are a few things you should know: 1) Women have feelings. 2) You will spend the next seventy years or so trying to guess what they're feeling and why. 3) You will be wrong most of the time. 4) I like French Fries.
Brandon SandersonBecause French is the language of love, my boy. Something you should keep in mind, but will soon forget.
William W. JohnstoneThere is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits. (Preface to the French edition).
Karl MarxI 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 GoldEconomically and politically, Germany is extremely stable. There are countries with functioning governments whose institutions don't work. My only concern is about Europe. There's a risk we will run out of time. We have been blessed with a pro-European French president, but we are also approaching the next elections for the European Parliament in 2019, and it will be important for pro-European parties present a credible answer to the anti-Europeans on the left and the right.
Sigmar GabrielHe put his hand on his forehead and scoured the French department of his memory for a word. He knew it was in there. He'd put it in almost fifty years before and hadn't had cause to remove it. But for the life of him he couldn't find it.
Colin CotterillSo we came to the Ritz hotel and the Ritz Hotel was divine. Because when a girl can sit in a delightful bar and have delicious champagne cocktails and look at all the important French people in Paris, I think it is divine.
Anita LoosI'm all self-taught. I never had a teacher. Even for English, and French, and German, I hardly went to school.
Karl LagerfeldWhether it's destiny or fate or whatever, I don't think I could do a French Laundry anywhere else.
Thomas KellerI wish I had taken Spanish instead of French in high school. I could eavesdrop on a lot more conversations on the subway if I knew Spanish.
Meg CabotWe French-Canadians belong to one country, Canada: Canada is for us the whole world: but the English-Canadians have two countries, one here and one across the sea.
Wilfrid LaurierShe 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 FortierPeople want their own laws to take precedence over those of the European Union. The French have understood that the EU does not live up to the utopia they were sold. It has distanced itself significantly from a democratic mode of operation.
Marine Le PenI had a meal last night. I ordered everything in French, surprised everybody. It was a Chinese restaurant. I said to this Chinese waiter, 'Look, this chicken I got here is cold.' He said, 'It should be, it's been dead two weeks.'
Tommy CooperIf we can sleep without dreaming, it is well that painful dreams are avoided. If, while we sleep, we can have any pleasing dreams, it is as the French say, tant gagne, so much added to the pleasure of life.
Benjamin FranklinBryn ate her bagel in silence, and by the time she was finished, Liam had already neatly packed her overnight bag and loaded it in MacAllister's car. He even included a new dog bed for Mr. French to travel in confort. Lunch was in moducal little boxes. "I think he is Alfred." "Actually, I often wonder if he's Batman.
Rachel CaineBranson ate his salad, and left the rest of his fish untouched, while Grace tucked into his steak and kidney pudding with relish. 'I read a while ago,' he told Branson, 'that the French drink more red wine than the English but live longer. The Japanese eat more fish than the English but drink less wine and live longer. The Germans eat more red meat than the English, and drink more beer and they live longer too. You know the moral of this story? 'No' 'It's not what you eat or drink - it's speaking English that kills you.
Peter JamesMy History of the Jesuits is in four volumes.... This society has been a greater calamity to mankind than the French Revolution, or Napoleon's despotism or ideology. It has obstructed progress of reformation and the improvement of the human mind in society much longer and more fatally.
John AdamsHaving wallowed in a delightful orgy of anti-French sentiment, having deplored and applauded the villains themselves, having relished the foibles of bankers, railwaymen, diplomats, and police, the public was now ready to see its faith restored in the basic soundness of banks, railroads, government, and police.
Michael Crichton