Quotes About French

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.

In 1494, King Charles VIII of France invaded Italy. Within months, his army collapsed and fled. It was routed not by the Italian army but by a microbe. A mysterious new disease spread through sex killed many of Charles’s soldiers and left survivors weak and disfigured. French soldiers spread the disease across much of Europe, and then it moved into Africa and Asia. Many called it the French disease. The French called it the Italian disease. Arabs called it the Christian disease. Today, it is called syphilis.

I don't feel French at all. That was never really a concern, and it's limiting to think that way. I think Paris is more of a playground for international designers, so I don't really feel French. And I don't really want to feel French.

I love French style from the Thirties and Forties. French movie stars like Jean Gabin and Yves Montand had so much natural, effortless style.

When 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.

I was a French Quarter rat from the moment I could get on a bus by myself and go to the French Quarter. I played music most of my early life and it just seemed that to entertain people was a really good thing to do.

That 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.

I am not a great French woman. George Sand, Marguerite Duras and Simone de Beauvoir are great French women.

I 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.

If I am right the Germans will say I was a German, and the French will say I was a Jew; If I am wrong the Germans will say I was a Jew and the French will say I was a German.

It'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.

While I'm sure people in Britain have money worries, they don't have them like the French do. The French, however much money they have, are worried. They're a very stressed people. It seems to be a very essential component of the national psyche.

A 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.

Ho joined the French socialist party, the first Vietnamese to be a member of a French political party.

She's French, so she's teaching them French, and their previous nanny was Spanish, so they're fluent in Spanish.

Just remember, what the French say. No, probably not the French, they've got a president or something. The Brits, maybe, or the Swedes. You know what I mean?" "No, Matthew. What do they say?" "The king is dead, that's what they say. The king is dead. Long live the king.

I like French fries," I say. I like French fries? I sound like a slow child in a made-for-TV movie.

In 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.

I started to write because of my dream to become a filmmaker. I got to know about a film school in Paris and it was my goal to get there. To do that I knew I had to learn French. In order to practice I started to write journals in French. The effort I made to master what I regarded a bad thing - a language owned by the rich Moroccans - brought me the ability to write.

The 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.

I would argue, by the way, if the French citizens knew exactly what that was about, they would be applauding and popping Champagne corks. It's a good thing. It keeps the French safe. It keeps the U.S. safe.

I cannot prevent the French from being French

It may be a blessing in disguise...Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. Haitians were originally under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon the third, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you will get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it's a deal. Ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other.

Because 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.

It was always said that the big distinction between the French and the English is that the English are intelligent and the French are intellectual.

I dont think theres a back lot here in Hollywood anymore that has those streets, like a French Quarter.

The only way the French are going in is if we tell them we found truffles in Iraq.

You 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.

Among 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.

Reactions [on my 1979 Massey lectures] were from Anglophones. I'm one. But I'm terrible at French. In fact, there was practically no reaction.

People say 'Why would you learn Dutch? Nobody speaks it. Why not French?' Even the Dutch say that to me! I say because I want to live here, I think it's only common courtesy that I speak the language.

Well, I think they're going to learn that an awful lot of French people changed their minds. In 1940, the Third Republic had made a miserable mess of it.

After the French Revolution, it was not the treason of the king that was in question; it was the existence of the king. You have to be very careful when you judge and execute somebody for being a symbol.

The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.

Now, now. Southern ladies don’t French-kiss and tell.

The word impossible is not French.

18th century scientists, the French in particular, seldom did things simply if an absurdly demanding alternative was available.

Why would we expect the French to fight to liberate the Iraqis when they wouldn't fight to liberate themselves?

The new French theme park based on Napoleon is named Napoleon's Bivouac, and will honor Napoleon with rides, battle reenactments, and the brutal March on Moscow ride. That's a walk-in freezer you stand in for 18 months while you try to eat a dead horse.

Because French is the language of love, my boy. Something you should keep in mind, but will soon forget.

The difference between the extras here and in France is the French extras read books. Actually, they hide the book and pretend that they're acting. Here (in Hollywood), you can see everybody wants his break.

English 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.

I have made an art form of the interview. The French are the best interviewers, despite their addiction to the triad, like all Cartesians.

those two wholesome defects of the French people, malice and curiosity, both of which are essential to its greatness.

Richard Stark writes a harsh and frightening story of criminal warfare and vengeance with economy, understatement and a deadly amoral objectivity-a remarkable addition to the list of the shockers that the French call roman noirs.

I was inspired by Colin Farrell in the fact that he's Irish and has freckles but with black hair. I'm a bunch of different things, Irish Polish, Native American, and French, but I wanted to tap into that Irish side and be freckle-y with black hair, so that's what I did.

Oh, the Germans classify, but the French arrange.

You don’t want a general houseworker, do you? Or a traveling companion, quiet, refined, speaks fluent French entirely in the present tense? Or an assistant billiard-maker? Or a private librarian? Or a lady car-washer? Because if you do, I should appreciate your giving me a trial at the job. Any minute now, I am going to become one of the Great Unemployed. I am about to leave literature flat on its face. I don’t want to review books any more. It cuts in too much on my reading.