Popular quotes about French! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 71
Eleanor Roosevelt loved to write. She was a wonderful child writer. I mean, she wrote beautiful essays and stories as a child. And Marie Souvestre really appreciated Eleanor Roosevelt's talents and encouraged her talents. Also, she spoke perfect French. She grew up speaking French. She's now at a french-speaking school where, you know, girls are coming from all over the world. Not everybody speaks French.
Blanche Wiesen CookI 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.
Nicolas GhesquiereIt 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 GibbsWhen I am with French people, I am not aloof because I belong to them. My view is that the French president belongs to the French people, because he emanates from them. What I do is this: I am putting an end to the cronyism between politics and the media. For a president, constantly speaking to journalists, constantly being surrounded by journalists, has nothing to do with closeness to the people. A president should keep the media at arm's length.
Emmanuel MacronI cut the ribbon in Paris, and everyone in Paris speaks French โ maybe you knew that. But I'm from Tennessee, and Tennessee girls don't speak French. So suddenly I'm stuck onstage with Minnie and Mickey and everyone is yelling at me in French โ I guess they're telling me to get off the stage, but I didn't know what they were saying at the time, so I start dancing with Minnie and Mickey like on the show and finally my aunt comes and gets me off.
Miley CyrusWe know that the French are very different from the Americans in their satisfaction with life. They're much less satisfied. Americans are pretty high up there, while the French are quite low - the world champions in life satisfaction are actually the Danes.
Daniel Kahnemanall 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 HavillandSome words, you know, it's amazing but some words would come only in French, and when I speak French, it would only come in English. And so the adjustment is very difficult sometimes.
Juliette BinocheI'd rather be thought as an international actress rather than a French one. Because I don't know what's coming up for me, my ambition is not to be typecast. So I'm working on my English accent, as well as my American one. I don't want to be like 'Okay, I'm French, and I want to succeed in Hollywood!'
Eva GreenBecause 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 RenoI see myself as universal, not as a German, American, French or whatever, because we all live on this planet. We're all living on the earth.
Klaus NomiPeople 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.
Anthony GearyNapoleon had been fighting this army of slaves and free people in Haiti and it depleted his forces. And after the Revolution, when the French were driven out, they stopped and sold this big chunk of North America to the Americans for very little money.
Edwidge DanticatI know never to take a wine for granted. Drawing a cork is like attendance at a concert or at a play that one knows well, when there is all the uncertainty of no two performances ever being quite the same. That is why the French say, 'There are no good wines, only good bottles.'
Gerald AsherObviously, I would have been happier if Canada had not been conquered in the past by the English, if this part of North America had remained French, but you can't rewrite history.
Jean ChretienHow could they think Noel was hot? If this was REALLY Versailles, Noel SO would not be Louis XIV, he would be the French version of the village idiot
Sara ShepardThis is the end and the beginning of an age. This is something far greater than the French Revolution or the Reformation and we live in it.
H. G. WellsI've always wondered why there isn't a great French novel about the German occupation. The nouveau roman authors weren't interested in telling that sort of thing.
Manuel PuigAfrican films should be thought of as offering as many different points of view as the film of any other different continent. Nobody would say that French film is all European film, or Italian film is all European film. And in the same way that those places have different filmmakers that speak to different issues, all the countries in Africa have that too.
Elvis MitchellI am definitely pro-European, even pro-global, and house music and electronic music has developed a network all over the world, between record shops in Berlin, Tokyo, London, Chicago, Minneapolis and L.A. That's really what I feel part of, rather than being French.
Thomas BangalterSomebody was telling me about the French Army rifle that was being advertised on eBay the other day - the description was, 'Never shot. Dropped once.
Roy BluntThey were singing in French, but the melody was freedom and any American could understand that.
Audie MurphyI think the term "interbeing" has cropped up in a lot of places. It's in the atmosphere, because it's just so true, and the time for that truth to be revealed to mass society is here. It's like in those French bakeries where they don't need to add yeast to the dough, because the yeast is so ambient in the air that the dough gets quickened whether or not you add yeast to it. Many people, even without doing a whole lot of study and reading, are coming to the same kinds of conclusions and perceptions about the world as I am.
Charles EisensteinMy favorite way to wake up is to have a certain French movie star whisper to me softly at two-thirty in the afternoon that if I want to get to Sweden in time to pick up my Nobel Prize for Literature, I had better ring for breakfast. This occurs rather less often than one might wish.
Fran LebowitzMy 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 AdamsWe're going to draw a new map of the world, with French Polynesia as the centre of the Aquatic Age.
Joe QuirkIt is Toussaint's supreme merit that while he saw European civilisation as a valuable and necessary thing, and strove to lay its foundations among his people, he never had the illusion that it conferred any moral superiority. He knew French, British, and Spanish imperialists for the insatiable gangsters that they were, that there is no oath too sacred for them to break, no crime, deception, treachery, cruelty, destruction of human life and property which they would not commit against those who could not defend themselves.
C. L. R. JamesIn movies, there are some things the French do that Americans are increasingly incapable of doing. One is honoring the complexities of youth. It's a quiet, difficult undertaking, requiring subtlety in a filmmaker and perception and patience from us.
Wesley MorrisFrench, for example, is declining as an international language, but Spanish, Mandarin and Arabic are all languages of the future. Ethnic minority groups in the UK may well prove to be a major asset in this effort.
David GraddolI don't think Russia will follow the United States's way. I don't think Russia will follow the French way. I'm sure Russia will find its own way.
Anatoly ChubaisDo not imagine that Art is something which is designed to give gentle uplift and self-confidence . Art is not a brassiere. At least, not in the English sense. But do not forget that brassiere is the French word for life-jacket.
Julian BarnesAt the Royall Oake Taverne, I drank a sort of French wine called Ho Bryan, that hath a good and most particular taste that I never met with.
Samuel PepysFollowing the attacks in Paris, French President Franรงois Hollande has a completely different set of concerns. France needs more police, more security personnel and a greater emphasis on integration. He says that security is more important than the Stability Pact.
Martin SchulzDuring the First World War, I told her, Hitler had been a runner, delivering messages between the German trenches, and he was disgusted by seeing his fellow soldiers visit French brothels. To keep the Aryan bloodlines pure,and prevent the spread of venereal disease, he commissioned an inflatable doll that Nazi troops could take into battle. Hitler himself designed the dolls to have blond hair and large breasts. The Allied firebombing of Dresden destroyed the factory before the dolls could ever go into wide distribution.
Chuck PalahniukI got my first Charvet knit tie when I was 15. I actually stole it from my father. I love them because you can wear them day to night. They're French and preppy and have been around since the 1800s.
Nate BerkusI'm an avid cook. Brazilian, some Italian, a little French. And I often throw dinner parties.
Morena BaccarinMayonnaise, like hollandaise, was invented by the French to cover up the flavor of spoiled flesh, stale vegetables, rotten fish. Beware the sauce! Where food comes beslobbered with an elegant slime you may well suspect the integrity of the basic ingredients.
Edward AbbeyTime. Time. What is time? Swiss manufacture it, French hoard it, Italians squander it, Americans say it is money. Hindus say it does not exist. Know what I say? I say time is a crook.
Truman CapoteFrench cinema audiences usually don't express anything. Certainly not satisfaction.
Michel HazanaviciusIt seemed to me singularly ill-contrived for the British government to be going to war with Hitler when Hitler might have been about to attack the Russians, and even more ill-contrived that, when Hitler did attack the Russians, he had already defeated the French army. What I'm saying is that the war shouldn't have been started in September 1939...from the point of view of Britain, the war was really not a good thing and I would regard it as, in effect, a defeat.
Maurice Cowling