Popular quotes about French! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 79
It 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 GibbsFrench women love to shop and prepare food. They love to talk about what they have bought and made. It's a deeply natural love, but one that is erased in many other cultures. Most French women learn it from their mothers, some from their fathers. But if your parents aren't French, you can still learn it yourself.
Mireille GuilianoI studied French forever, and when do I ever speak French? I clearly should have studied Spanish. I wish I had stuck with music, because that would still be great. I really wish I had learned to surf earlier in my life.
Edward NortonIn 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 ChildThe Second World War had a precipitating effect in that it discredited the empires, as well as bankrupting them. Not only could you no longer, if you were a colonial subject of France in Africa, look to France as a model of power and influence and civility after what had happened in the war. Nor could the French any longer afford to run their empire. And nor could the British, although they were not discredited in the way that the French were.
Tony JudtBy county, there's like 14 different accents in Mississippi alone. And now, present day, a Mississippi accent is different than in 1963. So we had a dialect coach, which is like going to visit France and having to translate all your emotions into French, and French isn't your first language. I had to go through that filter, so it was interesting.
Emma StoneI 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 HollandeI was always interested in French poetry sort of as a sideline to my own work, I was translating contemporary French poets. That kind of spilled out into translation as a way to earn money, pay for food and put bread on the table.
Paul AusterShe set about preparing her supper. It would have to be one of those classically simple meals, the sort that French peasants are said to eat and that enlightened English people sometimes enjoy rather self-consciously - a crusty French loaf, cheese, and lettuce and tomatoes from the garden. Of course there should have been wine and a lovingly prepared dressing of oil and vinegar, but Dulcie drank orange squash and ate mayonnaise that came from a bottle.
Barbara PymHo joined the French socialist party, the first Vietnamese to be a member of a French political party.
Wilfred BurchettShe's French, so she's teaching them French, and their previous nanny was Spanish, so they're fluent in Spanish.
Gwyneth PaltrowSome French politicians have said that the European Union should drop sanctions against Russia so everybody can join together in this fight against the Islamic State. But we're hearing from French officials that [Francois] Hollande hasn't changed his stance. He's - he's still saying that sanctions shouldn't be lifted until the Minsk agreement has been implemented.
Corey FlintoffThe more English is heard in the world, the more gratifying it seems to speak French, and above all to know the culture of our country. They find a kind of French social grace in the language and culture.
Bernard PivotMany Europeans think that all Moroccans speak French, but no. I had to make an effort to learn it when I studied French literature at the university in Rabat.
Abdellah TaiaI became a pedant of the form. I did my graduate work in art history and particularly in the history of French satirical cartooning. And that made me aware of what a rich and resilient tradition this seemingly scabrous sacrilegious magazine still represented in French life.
Scott SimonThe 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 ThoreauSteven Soderbergh really likes Irrรฉversible, that's about all I can tell you. About the making, well, it was a very particular situation, because those people all know each other, and they're all big stars. I felt like the little French guy, really. And I was very flattered to be called on that, of course, but I felt like if I didn't find something to be a little original, different, particular in the movie, I would just disappear.
Vincent CasselAmong 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 LowellI don't have to 'freedom-kiss' my wife when what I really want to do is French-kiss her.
Woody AllenIf you look at the Oscars and look at the Best Foreign Language series, you see that the films are coming from everywhere - from Quebec, Israel, Poland, and Belgium. It's not the usual French, German, etc. This category is opening up to socially engaged and political films. I think we're going to see a cross over to the main categories also. It's part of this global environment now and I'm grateful that the Academy is having this window on world cinema.
Philippe FalardeauFrench girls still have the Jane Birkin culture. You can go just like that, without makeup, without managing your hair.
Emmanuelle AltChildren 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 HendersonThe French are a smallish, monkey-looking bunch and not dressed any better, on average, than the citizens of Baltimore. True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large glasses of whiskey I don't know.
P. J. O'RourkeAfter 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.
Adam MichnikFrom the 15th century to 1688, England and Wales, like Scotland, had been peripheral kingdoms in the European power game, more often at war with each other that with Continental powers, and - except under Oliver Cromwell - scarcely very successful on those occasions when they did engage the Dutch, or the French, or the Spanish.
Linda ColleyYou get the feeling that many of my guests feel that the French language gives them entry into a more cultivated, more intelligent world, more highly civilised too, with rules.
Bernard PivotWe the undersigned, intend to establish an instruction and training institution which differs from the common elementary schools principally in that it will embrace, outside of (in addition to) the general and elementary curriculum, all branches of the classical high school, which are necessary for a true Christian and scientific education, such as: Religion, the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German, French and English languages; History, Geography, Mathematics, Physics, natural history, Introduction to Philosophy, Music, and Drawing.
C. F. W. WaltherTheatre has no national identity. It is something for the world, whether it is Irish, English, or French.
Cyril Cusack18th century scientists, the French in particular, seldom did things simply if an absurdly demanding alternative was available.
Bill BrysonUnicorn. Old French, unicorne. Latin, unicornis. Literally, one-horned: unus, one and cornu,a horn. A fabulous animal resembling a horse with one horn.
Peter S. BeagleThe 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.
Berenice BejoEnglish 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.
Elliott CollaRichard 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.
Anthony BoucherI 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 ChildIn language gender is particularly confusing. Why, please, should a table be male in German, female in French, and castrated in English?
Marlene DietrichDo 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 ApplebaumThe French philosopher Pierre-Hyacinthe Azaรฏs (1766-1845) formalized the statement that good and evil fortune are exactly balanced in that they produce for each person an equivalent result.
Richard Arnold EpsteinAfrican 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 MitchellJean-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 MaddowI'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 DeschanelItโs the opening of Manderlay in Cannes, and Iโm sitting next to this guy whoโs writing for a tiny fictitious French paper called โOn the Sunny Side,โ and heโs writing a review on the film, and heโs obviously bored. Then he tells me about all the cars he owns, and how rich he is, and all these things... So, at a certain point, he says, "So what do you do?" Then I take out this very strange hammer we have in the Danish building business, and I say, "I kill." And then I kill him. It is as stupid as it sounds.
Lars von TrierSo we know she's safe and taken care of?" Daniel asked, and she nodded. "Good. Then why don't we do something that you want to do?" "Like what?" "I don't know. What do you like to do?" "Um...." Her stomach rumbled, since crying always made her hungry. "I like eating breakfast." "That's so weird." Daniel grinned. "Because I like making French toast." "That works out, doesn't it?
Amanda HockingThe story of my grandmother is that of a French woman from the provinces who through her perseverance and thirst for knowledge worked her way up to become the head of a school. She belonged to a generation that didn't travel much. But she believed in Europe and she wanted Europe. And she read a lot - she knew mythology, literature and the classics very well. She passed that on to me, along with the conviction that you can earn your own position in society.
Emmanuel MacronI 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 Eisenstein