Popular quotes about French! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
In the province of Quebec where I come from, we speak French and the only cosmopolitan city is Montreal. Every time we tackle the subject of immigration and racial tension, it's an issue that concerns Montreal. Also, in Quebec, we have this added issue that we want people to speak French, because French is always on the verge of disappearing to some extent. I work, play and do everything in French.
Philippe FalardeauThe 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 DuboisMy way of remaining French was the financing scheme I used for Quest for Fire, with Fox funds, since it started as a 100% American production. The film was not in French and yet was French in style, reflecting my personality.
Jean-Jacques AnnaudThe 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 BartoliFrance 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 MichnikThe key to the U.N.'s global warming study was man's use of aerosol spray. You have to know the French were involved in a study concluding that Arrid Extra Dry is destroying the Earth. In a world in which everyone smelled, the French would be at no disadvantage. Aerosol spray. How convenient.
Ann CoulterThe most important quote about poetry and politics that I know is from a different situationist, Guy Debord. He was locked in a debate with the French Surrealists, many of whom by the 40s and 50s were part of the French communist party apparatus. Many Surrealists eventually argued for instrumentalizing art for political ends. Debord countered, "I don't want to put poetry in the service of revolution. I want to put revolution in the service of poetry".
Joshua CloverI don't know French at all. I took some lessons when I was younger but all I know are the numbers. I've been told basically everyone in Monaco speaks English because of it being a huge vacation spot so I'm excited about that. I might not need to learn French after all.
Freddy AduOne of the greatest things I've ever seen happen was the morning I opened the newspaper and it said that some very powerful government officials had decided to change the name of โfrench friesโ to โfreedoom friesโ and โfrench toastโ to โfreedom toastโ. It was impressive. I wanted to write a letter to them just to thank them, just for proving globally that they were absolute imbeciles.
Johnny DeppThere was French kissing, and then there was Cajun French kissing. Spicier, harder, wilder.
Kresley Coleall the French speak French - even the children. Many Americans and Britishers who visit the country never quite adjust to this, and the idea persists that the natives speak the language just to show off or be difficult.
Olivia de HavillandI've wanted to make a film about French youth since I went to Cannes with my first film 'Kids' in 1995 ... Scribe's screenplay is about French kids today, and the world today. Just like my films 'Kids' and 'Ken Park', this will be a movie like you have never seen before.
Larry ClarkThe French legend is a very simple one. All really beautiful clothes are designed in the houses of the French couturiers and all women want those clothes.
Elizabeth HawesI have tried to lift France out of the mud. But she will return to her errors and vomitings. I cannot prevent the French from being French.
Charles de GaulleThe 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 BraudelChildren don't just play any more - they're far too busy learning to fence and taking extra French classes. In the end, you're actually doing more damage to your children by trying to hot-house them. It's far better to remain a calm parent.
Shirley HendersonReactions [on my 1979 Massey lectures] were from Anglophones. I'm one. But I'm terrible at French. In fact, there was practically no reaction.
Jane JacobsNothing is as depressing as absolute logic. Look at the maze of French politics perpetrated by a logical people.
Rae FoleyI 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 GregoryOne thing I can say about the French language is that no one in the world loves their language as much as they do.
Mads MikkelsenThe Treatise of the Three Impostors is a book that enjoyed centuries of notorious nonexistence until (as Voltaire would say) it became necessary to invent it. Georges Minois writes with empathy, erudition, and a novelist's sense of buildup and timing, weaving in the parallel story of Europe's courageous freethinkers. In the face of today's social and even legal pressures against criticizing religion, it is good to see an honorable French tradition asserting itself.
Joscelyn GodwinI still feel that French cooking is the most important in the world, one of the few that has rules. If you follow the rules, you can do pretty well.
Julia ChildThe fact is, beneath the hype, Iraqis will soon appreciate American help and idealism far more than French perfidy. It is never wrong to be on the side of freedom - never.
Victor Davis HansonDo you realize that in the past sixty years, the only foreigners the French have been able to drive out are American tourists?
Robert OrbenThink of the French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron, Ciudadanos in Spain, Nowoczesna in Poland. These are early efforts to reimagine a liberalism which is neither right-wing nor left-wing in the traditional sense.
Anne ApplebaumAll my life, I have loved and been inspired by French cinema, and as a studio head it has been my pride and joy to have the ability to bring movies to audiences around the world.
Harvey WeinsteinThe study of motivation goes back to the Greeks. Their sports were essential to their education. They saw in sports the integration of body, mind and soul, the creation of beauty, the mastering of athletics, and the challenge of competition. A French sociologist points this out. "Sports," he wrote, was part of the education of the citizen. He was expected to engage in exercise for a whole series of reasons that had to do with the shaping of the citizen; the relation between moral good and physical good; and the growth of a person.
George A. SheehanA certain type of critic doesn't really want French movies to be visual. They think movies started from books and they forgot this part of moviemaking, like Chaplin and Buster Keaton, which I didn't forget.
Audrey TautouIf you go back a century in Europe, all over the place people were speaking different languages. There were dozens of languages in France and Italy, and they're all called French [and Italian], but they were not mutually comprehensible. They were different languages. And they have mostly disappeared in the last century or so. Some are being preserved, like Welsh, some are being revived, like Basque or Catelan to some extent. There are plenty of people in Europe who can't talk to their grandmother because they talk a different language.
Noam ChomskyI lifted my eyes to the heavens and asked for help because if God exists, there's no way he's French.
Andrea PirloOne difference between French appeasement and American appeasement is that France pays ransom in cash and gets its hostages back while the United States pays ransom in arms and gets additional hostages taken.
William SafireThe wisest man I ever knew in my whole life could not read or write. At four o'clock in the morning, when the promise of a new day still lingered over French lands, he got up from his pallet and left for the fields, taking to pasture the half-dozen pigs whose fertility nourished him and his wife.
Jose SaramagoI feel pretty stupid that I don't know any foreign languages. I wish I knew French or Arabic or Chinese.
Bill GatesI should warn you, Iโm an expert on vampires. Iโve seen every episode made of Buffy, Angel, and Forever Knight, so donโt think a little fang-flashing is going to scare me.โ โ Nell to Adrian Oh, my God! You bit me on the leg! You drank my blood! I am not an appetizer!โ You are much more then an appetizer. You are a twelve-course banquet. โ Nell & Adrian I slid my tongue around the glossy enamel of his teeth, pausing to stroke down the length of an elongated canine tooth. Yeah. I know. How stupid is it to French kiss a vampire and not expect sharp teeth? โ Nell
Katie MacAlisterBryn 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 CaineGregory Peck was so charismatic. I saw a woman fall down - fall down! - when she saw him in a restaurant. And Brando. We were in London, and by then he was about 380 pounds. There was a gorgeous waitress, and off he went, in direct competition with me for this young girl's attention, speaking French, making her blush.
Val KilmerThe odour of Burgundy, and the smell of French sauces, and the sight of clean napkins and long loaves, knocked as a very welcome visitor at the door of our inner man.
Jerome K. JeromeRenzo Piano and Richard Rogers's Centre Georges Pompidou of 1971-1977 - the true prototype of the modern museum as popular architectural spectacle - wound up costing so much more than planned that the French government solved the shortfall by cutting support for several regional museums.
Martin FillerI met this wonderful guy who owned an old pub near the Eiffel Tower called Malone's (he's French but it's an Irish name). He had a cellar with a piano and told me I could use it whenever I wanted to. I played lots of gigs down there. When I came back I played a show at the Knitting Factory.
Regina SpektorWe were only there for five days and during that time Tom was a bit annoyed that the French were more interested in me and my schoolgirl outfit than him and his long scarf.
Lalla WardThe best way to execute French cooking is to get good and loaded and whack the hell out of a chicken.
Julia ChildI learned this one growing up in Texas and, subsequently, living in Los Angeles: always use the 'usted' form when speaking to a Spanish official. Mexican border patrol cops don't like it when you call them 'amigo,' give them a hardy pat on the back, slip a $20 in their pocket. No bueno, it doesn't fly. By the way, those of you not laughing at that obviously took French in high school, and that was a gay choice.
Iliza ShlesingerAnecdotally his fitness reports rated him well above average in the classroom, excellent in the field, fluently bilingual in English and French, passable in Spanish, outstanding on all man-portable weaponry, and beyond outstanding at hand-to-hand combat. Susan knew what that last rating meant. Like having a running chainsaw thrown at you
Lee Child