Quotes about france

Dixon was not unconscious of this awed reverence which was given to her nor did she dislike it it flattered her as much as Louis the Fourteenth was flattered by his courtiers shading their eyes from the dazzling light of his presence.

France is not poetic; she even feels, in fact, a congenital horror of poetry. Among the writers who use verse, those whom she will always prefer are the most prosaic.

Do not be surprised,' she said. 'It is I, and it is not I; You shall find me again, and you shall lose me; Once more shall I come among you; for few men have seen me, and none has understood me; And you shall forget me, and you shall recognize me, and you shall forget me.

The French political class has been relentlessly myopic, if not completely blind, about the concerns of those who work and mine and farm. .... To cite Eugene Weber, "One thing that we learn from history is that people seldom learn from history.

Yes, sir, there are things to see and do on the French Riviera without spending money.

Oh poor Octave, no luck at all, as usual," said Madame Rocher, "he is still with his regiment, still only a captain. Of course, if it hadn't been for this wretched war, he would be at least a colonel by now.

Seuls les poissons morts suivent le courant' - Only dead fish follow the current

How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?

It was like the first time I visited Versailles. There was an eerieness, like I'd been there before. I don't know if I was Louis XIV or Marie Antoinette or a lowly groundskeeper, but I lived there.

Only eight months had gone since Henry VIII of England had been suspended in death, there to lie like Mohammed’s coffin, hardly in the Church nor out of it, attended by his martyrs and the acidulous fivefold ghosts of his wives. King Francis of France, stranded by his neighbour’s death in the midst of a policy so advanced, so brilliant and so intricate that it should at last batter England to the ground, and be damned to the best legs in Europe—Francis, bereft of these sweet pleasures, dwindled

The facts of religion were convincing only to those who were already convinced.

Historians are lenient to those who succeed and stern to those who fail; in this, and this alone, they display strong political sense.

The two main criminals are France and the United States. They owe Haiti enormous reparations because of actions going back hundreds of years. If we could ever get to the stage where somebody could say, 'We're sorry we did it,' that would be nice. But if that just assuages guilt, it's just another crime. To become minimally civilized, we would have to say, 'We carried out and benefited from vicious crimes. A large part of the wealth of France comes from the crimes we committed against Haiti, and

France, stop throwing awards at me! I have so many already, give them to people who need them.

My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece

To my mind, a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful, and pretty, yes pretty! There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them.

If you feel joy when you do something unselfish for him, and would just as soon do it in secret as openly, then that rings of the true metal

For gypsies do not like to stay -They only come to go away.

... she was a pudding of immaturity and precocious wisdom that had not yet set into a stable mold.

How can you be kissing at a time like this? Have you no respect for the dead?

When you’re used to being in dangerous situations, you develop a sixth sense about your surroundings, about where possible enemies might be lurking, how many steps it will take to reach the next corner on a dead run, the best hiding places if bullets start to fly...

Never run upstairs when someone’s chasing you. Don’t try to quick-draw a man who already has his gun out. Never light a match in the dark in a strange building. Half of staying safe is just keeping your head and being prudent.

It wasn’t playing both sides of the fence – it was betting against yourself but still playing to win – and it encapsulated everything absurd and paradoxical that I loved about the French.

And I had just kissed my ex-girlfriend, who had cried, while my current girlfriend was in jail. So far, it had not been my best day.

I congratulate you on your success stealing the painting.

There are only two things in life,' Bergé said. 'Love and beauty.

This was a crime of passion, but unlike most crimes of passion, it had been meticulously and diabolically well-planned.

Bergé’s yelling had attracted the attention of everyone in the Kibati hall: champagne flutes stopped halfway to heavily painted lips, eyes widened, massive diamonds groaned scornfully in their settings. It was a stationary riot.

My motto? Don’t trust someone who is just as cagey as yourself." "What kind of detective are you?” “A lousy one and proud of it. I write, remember?” She looked down at her hand & laughed. “Berretta doesn’t make lighters.” "Why I was a writer! My life revolved around fiction. I could make something up""She looked down at her hand & laughed. “Berretta doesn’t make lighters.” "So they're not Tolstoy, they're a little shorter...Okay, okay a lot. Go ahead, read my mystery series anyway." "A detective

In French culture, the best way of buying time or getting off the hook entirely in a thorny personal situation is to claim that it’s complicated. The French did not invent love, but they did invent romance, so they’ve had more time than any other culture on earth to refine the nuances of its language.

The French have a penchant for absolutism, for thinking that things are all one way or all another, which is why their politics are marked by a general inability to compromise and why they tend to hold their personal opinions until the bitter end, even after they have clearly lost an argument.

The wind blowing through the cracks in the walls was fitting for this isolated and lonely place.

Dear heart,” he murmured, “do not look on me with those dear, scared eyes of yours. If there is aught that puzzles you in what I said, try and trust me a little longer. Remember, I must save the Dauphin at all costs; mine honor is bound with his safety. What happens to me after that matters but little, yet I wish to live for your dear sake.

Second: them poor things well out o' this, and never no more will I interfere with Mrs. Cruncher's flopping, never no more!""Whatever housekeeping arrangement that may be," said Miss Pross, striving to dry her eyes and compose herself, "I have no doubt it is best that Mrs. Cruncher should have it entirely under her own superintendence.—O my poor darlings!""I go so far as to say, miss, moreover," proceeded Mr. Cruncher, with a most alarming tendency to hold forth as from a pulpit—"and let my word

To a common man, the opulence of the day makes no sense but to a philosopher, it is as clear as a night in the southern France.

Who ought to be the king of france-the person who has the title, or the man who has the power?

... you’ll have to fall in love at least once in your life, or Paris has failed to rub off on you.

Laissez faire laissez passer.

The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.

Laissez faire, laissez passer.

The guillotine is the ultimate expression of Law, and its name is vengeance; it is not neutral, nor does it allow us to remain neutral. All social questions achieve their finality around that blade. The scaffold is an image. It is not merely a framework, a machine, a lifeless mechanism of wood, iron, and rope. It is as though it were a being having its own dark purpose, as though the framework saw, the machine listened, and the mechanism understood; as though that arrangement of wood and iron an

Hope is a beautiful and magical thing. Grasp it tight, monsieur, and never let go.

When Hitler marched across the RhineTo take the land of France,La dame de fer decided,‘Let’s make the tyrant dance.’Let him take the land and city,The hills and every flower,One thing he will never have,The elegant Eiffel Tower.The French cut the cables,The elevators stood still,‘If he wants to reach the top,Let him walk it, if he will.’The invaders hung a swastikaThe largest ever seen.But a fresh breeze blewAnd away it flew,Never more to be seen.They hung up a second mark,Smaller than the first

With heart at rest I climbed the citadel'sSteep height, and saw the city as from a tower,Hospital, brothel, prison, and such hells,Where evil comes up softly like a flower.Thou knowest, O Satan, patron of my pain,Not for vain tears I went up at that hour;But like an old sad faithful lecher, fainTo drink delight of that enormous trullWhose hellish beauty makes me young again.Whether thou sleep, with heavy vapors full,Sodden with day, or, new appareled, standIn gold-laced veils of evening beautifu

People wonder why so many writers come to live in Paris. I’ve been living ten years in Paris and the answer seems simple to me: because it’s the best place to pick ideas. Just like Italy, Spain.. or Iran are the best places to pick saffron. If you want to pick opium poppies you go to Burma or South-East Asia. And if you want to pick novel ideas, you go to Paris.

... the old Berlin – last vestige of a mysterious fête – wheeled away from the gravelled road and went lurching noiselessly across country over a grass-grown track. Beyond the hedge nothing could be seen of it but the driver's cap bobbing up and down.

You know, sometimes I don't understand what's wrong with us. This is just about the most creative and imaginative country on earth—and yet sometimes we just don't seem to have the gumption to exploit our intellectual property. We split the atom, and now we have to get French or Korean scientists to help us build nuclear power stations. We perfected the finest cars on earth—and now Rolls-Royce is in the hands of the Germans. Whatever we invent, from the jet engine to the internet, we find that so

I've got one thing to say: I killed a lot of germans, and I'm only sorry I didn't kill more.

The love of all people except the French people, is deep in the mind of the great doctors of the French Republic.

Lebedev: France has a clear and defined policy... The French know what they want. They just want to wipe out the Krauts, finish, but Germany, my friend, is playing a very different tune. Germany has many more birds in her sights than just France...Shabelsky: Nonsense! ...In my view the German are cowards and the French are cowards... They're just thumbing their noses at each other. Believe me, things will stop there. They won't fight.Borkin: And as I see it, why fight? What's the point of these

...all the men in the photograph wear puttees. All the men in the picture are bound, trying to keep themselves together. That is how considerate they are, for the love of God and country and women and the other men--for the love of all that is good and true--they keep themselves together because they have to. They are afraid but they are not cowards.

If your arteries are good, eat more ice cream. If they are bad, drink more red wine. Proceed thusly.

You are hard at work madam ," said the man near her.Yes," Answered Madam Defarge ; " I have a good deal to do."What do you make, Madam ?"Many things."For instance ---"For instance," returned Madam Defarge , composedly ,Shrouds."The man moved a little further away, as soon as he could, feeling it mightily close and oppressive .

We're becoming slaves; the war scatters us in all directions, takes away everything we own, snatches the bread from out of our mouths; let me at least retain the right to decide my own destiny, to laugh at it, defy it, escape it if I can. A slave? Better to be a slave than a dog who thinks he's free as he trots along behind his master. She listened to the sound of men and horses passing by. They don't even realise they're slaves, she said to herself, and I, I would be just like them if a sense o

I do not admire the excess of a virtue like courage unless I see at the same time an excess of the opposite virtue, as in Epaminondas, who possessed extreme courage and extreme kindness. We show greatness not by being at one extreme, but by touching both at once and occupying all the space in between.

This medical view of an ideal male who was insulated from pathogens was inextricably bound up with a parallel discourse about the maintenance of strong ego boundaries, a psychic investment in one’s bodily peripheries that effected a gradual closing (and, one might say, a closing off) of the male body, at once from the outer world of dangerous stimuli and from the inner world of threatening passions. Without a doubt, as Norbert Elias has shown, in the western world both men and women experienced

Of course, my Christmas is (so much more) gorgeous and romantic (than Germany's)!! And unlike the rest of the world, we leave wine behind for Santa Claus!""So Santa-san is delivering gifts to children while driving under the influence . . . ?

...the weather was atrocious. A frightful storm burst upon us. We camped literally in water...To cap our woe, there was no means to light a single fire. We had to imagine dinner.

...it has always been my temperament to prefer a tiny amount of the excellent to a plenitude of the mediocre...

Most of [her ashes] fell into the river in a long gray curtain. But some was caught by the wind and blown upward toward the blue spring sky where it swirled a moment in the air, before dissolving into sunlight.

Above Constance's desk were nude photographs of women in 1930s France, draped in provocative poses. She had put them there for Bob's viewing pleasure and in return he had placed African art of naked men above his desk for her.

bullshit french post-war rationalizing

I observed on most collected stones the imprints of innumerable plant fragments which were so different from those which are growing in the Lyonnais, in the nearby provinces, and even in the rest of France, that I felt like collecting plants in a new world... The number of these leaves, the way they separated easily, and the great variety of plants whose imprints I saw, appeared to me just as many volumes of botany representing in the same quarry the oldest library of the world.

He was enraged and bitter and hoped for a personal meeting with Sarkozy where he would recount to him France's colonial history in Africa and make him see reasons why her policy of assimilation was a voyage to the destruction of Africa, its people, land, culture and sense of belonging.

If I’m a monster, mademoiselle, it’s because man’s cruelty has made me so.

Oh! do look at Miss Oriel's bonnet the next time you see her. I cannot understand why it should be so, but I am sure of this—no English fingers could put together such a bonnet as that; and I am nearly sure that no French fingers could do it in England.

They have a very low rate for attempted murder and a high rate for successfully concluded murder. It seems that when a French person sets out to kill someone, they make a good job of it.

It's about more than us, now, can't you see? I love you, of course I do, but some things...some things just have to be done.

It was then I thought of Corsica, the place we had discovered together. I craved the wind, the sun and salt, the simplicity of the island.

New Rule: Conservatives have to stop rolling their eyes every time they hear the word "France." Like just calling something French is the ultimate argument winner. As if to say, "What can you say about a country that was too stupid to get on board with our wonderfully conceived and brilliantly executed war in Iraq?" And yet an American politician could not survive if he uttered the simple, true statement: "France has a better health-care system than we do, and we should steal it." Because here,

You're the best gay friend I've ever had!

To evoke another great phrase of the American revolutionary heritage — widely though inconclusively attributed to Thomas Jefferson — the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Such a phrase is merely trite, however, unless we consider its deeper implications. For the French revolutionaries, as for so many regimes that have succeeded them across the world up to the present day, the call for vigilance against enemies, both external and internal, was the first step on the road to the loss of libert

France is to me the heroine in the romance of all the nations of all time. This feeling was born in me years ago when I read how her noble sons had defended America in its cradle. Today I am proud that I am one of the millions who will come to save our heroine from the clutches of the villain from across the Rhine.

Thomas Jefferson asked himself “In what country on earth would you rather live ” He first answered “Certainly in my own where are all my friends my relations and the earliest and sweetest affections and recollections of my life.” But he continued “which would be your second choice ” His answer “France.

Islam will aim to establish itself as the majority in France, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Any country, in which they successfully establish themselves will serve as their primary base for the invasion of neighbouring countries (such as Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Denmark, Hungary and the Mediterranean)

There's nowhere that life feels more eternal, your dimwit youth more important, than Paris.

... far be it from a French man to interfere with love.

When, as happened recently in France, an attempt is made to coerce women out of the burqa rather than creating a situation in which a woman can choose what she wishes to do, it’s not about liberating her, but about unclothing her. It becomes an act of humiliation and cultural imperialism. It’s not about the burqa. It’s about the coercion. Coercing a woman out of a burqa is as bad as coercing her into one. Viewing gender in this way, shorn of social, political and economic context, makes it an is

We are all very much alike in France in this respect; we still remain knights, knights of love and fortune, since God has been abolished whose bodyguard we really were. But nobody can ever get woman out of our hearts; there she is, and there she will remain, and we love her, and shall continue to love her, and go on committing all kinds of follies on her account as long as there is a France on the map of Europe; and even if France were to be wiped off the map, there would always be Frenchmen lef

There was no justice in rebellion. This Javert had come to believe after seeing Marseille fall headfirst into the abyss of the revolution.

A breath of laughter will blow a Government out of existence in Paris much more effectually than a whiff of cannon-smoke

Sometimes a revolution turns into an actual government, or at the very least an actual way of life that contrasts with days past like blood on snow. Such was the case in France, where even as the guillotine released a steady river of gore, Royalist insurrections were suppressed by what had become a sophisticated military.In Toulon, the Royalist insurrection in 1793 led to an actual siege by republicans, spearheaded by none other than Napoleon Bonaparte. The Royalists in Toulon, supported by the

They stamped their own pattern of lovers onto the fabric of Paris.

She loves filming and taking photographs. I can imagine her making beautiful films in France or India or somewhere with a gorgeously colourful culture. She somehow reminds me of my favourite place in the world, she and Paris I can romanticize and immortalize in ceaseless poetry for the rest of my life.

There are matters in that book, said to be done by the express command of God, that are as shocking to humanity, and to every idea we have of moral justice, as any thing done by Robespierre, by Carrier, by Joseph le Bon, in France, by the English government in the East Indies, or by any other assassin in modern times. When we read in the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, etc., that they (the Israelites) came by stealth upon whole nations of people, who, as the history itself shews, had given them

There are matters in that book, said to be done by the express command of God, that are as shocking to humanity, and to every idea we have of moral justice, as any thing done by Robespierre, by Carrier, by Joseph le Bon, in France, by the English government in the East Indies, or by any other assassin in modern times. When we read in the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, etc., that they (the Israelites) came by stealth upon whole nations of people, who, as the history itself shews, had given them

I hate France. It's like the whole country's on a diet

(We loved Mother too, completely, but we were finding out, as Father was too, that it is good for parents and for children to be alone now and then with one another...the man alone or the woman, to sound new notes in the mysterious music of parenthood and childhood.)That night I not only saw my Father for the first time as a person. I saw the golden hills and the live oaks as clearly as I have ever seen them since; and I saw the dimples in my little sister's fat hands in a way that still moves m

My first encounter with a baguette, torn still warm from its paper sheathing, shattered and sighed on contact. The sound stopped me in my tracks, the way a crackling branch gives deer pause; that’s what good crust does. Once I began to chew, the flavor unfolded, deep with yeast and salt, the warm humidity of the tender crumb almost breathing against my lips.

When I ask French parents what they most want for their children, they say things like "to feel comfortable in their own skin" and "to find their path in the world." They want their kids to develop their own tastes and opinions. In fact, French parents worry if their kids are too docile. They want them to have chara

The French believe that kids feel confident when they're able to do things for themselves, and do those things well. After children have learned to talk, adults don't praise them for saying just anything. They praise them for saying interesting things, and for speaking well.

The French have the right respect for dogs--in France we chiens get to go to lunch and dinner anytime, anywhere.

It is at a time like this, when crisis threatens the stomach, that the French display the most sympathetic side of their nature. Tell them stories of physical injury or financial ruin and they will either laugh or commiserate politely. But tell them you are facing gastronomic hardship, and they will move heaven and earth and even restaurant tables to help you.

{...]I began to feel tears of frustration build up in my eyes, yearning to free themselves from their glandular prisons.

Earlier maps had underestimated the distances to other continents and exaggerated the outlines of individual nations. Now global dimensions could be set, with authority, by the celestial spheres. Indeed, King Louis XIV of France, confronted with a revised map of his domain based on accurate longitude measurements, reportedly complained that he was losing more territory to his astronomers than to his enemies.

It looks like a funeral parlour in here. Am I dead?

They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together.

Finding a taxi, she felt like a child pressing her nose to the window of a candy store as she watched the changing vista pass by while the twilight descended and the capital became bathed in a translucent misty lavender glow. Entering the city from that airport was truly unique. Charles de Gaulle, built nineteen miles north of the bustling metropolis, ensured that the final point of destination was veiled from the eyes of the traveller as they descended. No doubt, the officials scrupulously plan

We believed Paris was the start of us. It's the kind of city that makes you think of beginnings, or even juicy middles. Paris is a book to savor, in whole or in part, at any time and in any season. At age ninety or at thirty-four, you can open any chapter and read from there.