Quotes about french

I should point out, creating one's own style, as much as is required to illustrate one of the aspects, the golden seam of language, involves beginning again at once, in a different manner, adopting the guise of a pupil when one risked becoming pedantic - thus by a shrugging of one's shoulders, disconcerting some with their genuflecting stance, and immortalizing oneself in multiple, impersonal, or even anonymous forms in response to the gesture of arms raised in stupefaction.

This compulsion to an activity without respite, without variety, without result was so cruel that one day, noticing a swelling over his stomach, he felt an actual joy in the idea that he had, perhaps, a tumor that would prove fatal, that he need not concern himself with anything further, since it was this malady that was going to govern his life, to make a plaything of him, until the not-distant end. If indeed, at his period, it often happened that, though without admitting it even to himself, h

In your opinion, where do private and political life, personal history and History meet? You know the answer, Maya. You say it unhesitatingly - in art and literature.

I transform "Work" in its analytic meaning (the Work of Mourning, the Dream-Work) into the real "Work" - of writing.

That’s the key, you know, confidence. I know for a fact that if you genuinely like your body, so can others. It doesn’t really matter if it’s short, tall, fat or thin, it just matters that you can find some things to like about it. Even if that means having a good laugh at the bits of it that wobble independently, occasionally, that’s all right. It might take you a while to believe me on this one, lots of people don’t because they seem to suffer from self-hatred that precludes them from imaginin

An old walrus-faced waiter attended to me; he had the knack of pouring the coffee and the hot milk from two jugs, held high in the air, and I found this entrancing, as if he were a child's magician. One day he said to me - he had some English - "Why are you sad?""I'm not sad," I said, and began to cry. Sympathy from strangers can be ruinous."You should not be sad," he said, gazing at me with his melancholy, leathery walrus eyes. "It must be the love. But you are young and pretty, you will have t

The only French word I know is oui, which means “yes,” and only recently did I learn it’s spelled o-​u-​i and not w-​e-​e.

Boy, those French! They have a different word for everything.

Speak in French when you can’t think of the English for a thing--turn your toes out when you walk---And remember who you are!

We are not our own light.

In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

...[G]reat progress was evident in the last Congress of the American 'Labour Union' in that among other things, it treated working women with complete equality. While in this respect the English, and still more the gallant French, are burdened with a spirit of narrow-mindedness. Anybody who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without the feminine ferment. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex (the ugly ones included).

There is only one cure for grey hair. It was invented by a Frenchman. It is called the guillotine.

Etre dans le vent, c'est avoir le destin des feuilles mortes.

L'utilité du vivre n'est pas en l'espace: elle est en l'usage.

Heureuse la mort qui oste le loisir aux apprests de tel equipage.

D'autant que nous avons cher, estre, et estre consiste en mouvement et action.

L'honneste est stable et permanent.

J'accuse toute violence en l'education d'une ame tendre, qu'on dresse pour l'honneur, et la liberté.

Je hay entre autres vices, cruellement la cruauté, et par nature et par jugement, comme l'extreme de tous les vices.

Il n'est rien qui tente mes larmes que les larmes.

Les naturels sanguinaires à l'endroit des bestes, tesmoignent une propension naturelle à la cruauté.

Nature a, (ce crains-je) elle mesme attaché à l'homme quelque instinct à l'inhumanité

Présente je vous fuis; absente, je vous trouve;Dans le fond des forêts votre image me suit

Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling.

My grandpa, unlike Jarod Kintz, was an Elder. Now that he's dead and gone, he's a ghost French wizard. And no one knows what French wizards are good at…

Have I..." I venture, terrified of the potential answer. "Have I gone mad?" "No, no, no." She says. "Okay, oui, peut-être, that depends. Maybe you have gone a little mad, and only for a little spell.

High heels? Painful pleasure.

Children learn to speak Male or Female the way they learn to speak English or French.

One day I have a revelation. ‘I think we’re actually quite compatible,’ I tell him. ‘You’re irritable, and I’m irritating.

I wonder why I ever bothered with sex, he thought; there’s nothing in this breathing world so gratifying as an artfully placed semicolon.

The physical shape of Mollies paralyses and contortions fit the pattern of late-nineteenth-century hysteria as well — in particular the phases of "grand hysteria" described by Jean-Martin Charcot, a French physician who became world-famous in the 1870s and 1880s for his studies of hysterics...""The hooplike spasm Mollie experienced sounds uncannily like what Charcot considered the ultimate grand movement, the arc de de cercle (also called arc-en-ciel), in which the patient arched her back, balan

Bonjour madame!” , he was coming out of the bathroom when he saw her in the corridor. He was in his blue towel, wrapped around his well built waistline. Rrlene blushed as she saw him semi naked but couldn’t help looking at his bare chest, which ran down to his flat stomach, further covered down by his long towel. His hair all wet, and there were still droplets on his shoulders. She was moving her eyes carefully from one part to another, appreciating everything she saw with her soft gaze, which w

Maybe that was why the French called orgasms “las petites morts”: because the things that bring us passion tend to slip past our defenses, to creep insidiously into every facet of our consciousnesses and kill us as ruthlessly, and efficiently, as any drug.

You know what politique is? It is the French word for a lie. Kdoub! Politique! When you hear the French say: our politique, you know they mean: our lies. And when you hear the Moslems, the Friends of Independence, say: our politique, you know they mean: our lies. All lies are sins. And so, which displeases Allah more, a lie told by a Nazarene, who doesn’t know the true faith from the false, or a lie told by a Moslem, who does?

The past has given us much too many bad answers for us not to see that the mistakes were in the questions themselves. There is no need to choose between the fetishism of spontaneity and the organization control; between the "come one, come all" of activist networks and the discipline of hierarchy; between acting desperately now and waiting desperately for later; between bracketing that which is to be lived and experimented in the name of paradise that seems more and more like a hell the longer i

He had carefully avoided her out of the natural cowardice that characterizes the stronger sex.

If there were no Frenchwomen, life wouldn't be worth living.

He showed the words “chocolate cake” to a group of Americans and recorded their word associations. “Guilt” was the top response. If that strikes you as unexceptional, consider the response of French eaters to the same prompt: “celebration.

You will do well to take advantage of Madame's short residence to get up your French a little... You will be glad of this, my dear, when you have reached France, where you will find they speak nothing else.

So it was perfectly possible that there were men who liked shopping, men who understood exactly what it was all about, but Mma Ramotwe had yet to meet such a man. Maybe they existed elsewhere - in France, perhaps - but they did not seem to be much in evidence in Botswana.

The French say you get hungry when you’re eating, and I get inspired when I’m working. It’s my engine

Tous mes anciens amours vont me revenir.'- All my old loves will be returned to me

Rien ne va arrêter ma quête pour te trouver" No one will stop my quest to find you.

The scent of him was subtle, beautifully fresh, and she couldn’t think clearly. No man had ever brought out these intense feelings in her. Chris Augustine was dangerous and she could get lost in his arms.

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

Que les poètes morts laissent la place aux autres. Et nous pourrions tout de même voir que c'est notre vénération devant ce qui a été déjà fait, si beau et si valable que ce soit, qui nous pétrifie, qui nous stabilise et nous empêche de prendre contact avec la force qui est dessous, que l'on appelle l'énergie pensante, la force vitale, le déterminisme des échanges, les menstrues de la lune ou tout ce qu'on voudra.

I have not been able to discover whether there exists a precise French equivalent for the common Anglo-American expression 'killing time.' It's a very crass and breezy expression, when you ponder it for a moment, considering that time, after all, is killing us.

Nothing is more difficult than competing with myth

Les rêves sont seuls les réalités de la vie.

Un soir qu'ils étaient couchés l'un près de l'autre, comme elle lui demandait d'inventer un poème qui commencerait par je connais un beau pays, il s'exécuta sur-le-champ. Je connais un beau pays Il est de l'or et d'églantine Tout le monde s'y sourit Ah quelle aventure fine Les tigres y sont poltrons Les agneaux ont fière mine À tous les vieux vagabonds Ariane donne des tartines. Alors, elle lui baisa le la main, et il eut honte de cette admiration.

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

Haleine contre haleine, échauffe-moi la vie,Mille et mille baisers donne-moi je te prie,Amour veut tout sans nombre, amour n’a point de loiTranslated: Breath against breath warms my life.A thousand kisses give me I pray thee.Love says it all without number,love knows no law.

The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane. Each sentence we produce, whether we know it or not, is a mongrel mouthful of Chaucerian, Shakespearean, Miltonic, Johnsonian, Dickensian and American. Military, naval, legal, corporate, criminal, jazz, rap and ghetto discourses are mingled at every turn. The French language, like Paris, has attempted, through its Academy, to retain its purity, to fight

He suffered greatly from being shut up among all these people whose stupidity and absurdities wounded him all the more cruelly since, being ignorant of his love, incapable, had they known of it, of taking any interest, or of doing more than smile at it as at some childish joke, or deplore it as an act of insanity, they made it appear to him in the aspect of a subjective state which existed for himself alone, whose reality there was nothing external to confirm; he suffered overwhelmingly, to the

But genius, and even great talent, springs less from seeds of intellect and social refinement superior to those of other people than from the faculty of transforming and transposing them. To heat a liquid with an electric lamp requires not the strongest lamp possible, but one of which the current can cease to illuminate, can be diverted so as to give heat instead of light. To mount the skies it is not necessary to have the most powerful of motors, one must have a motor which, instead of continui

I think Lafayette wants to rap in French now. I have to go learn some French.Damn it, Lafayette

I think Lafayette wants to rap in French now. I have to go learn some French.Damn it, Lafayette.

No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence

Jean smirked, and delicately swirled the mic in his hands, careful not to make a sound. “Oui. C’est normal. C'est pas spécial. I will give you something worthy of Holmes.” Jean set down the mic and proceeded toward the couple. As he approached them, he fiddled with his mustache for a moment, and then pulled it sharply. He winced at the sensation. “I have it,” he declared confidently. “You sir, are a thief.

Sunday lay so heavily in the air as to become almost nauseating. Maigret used to claim openly, half seriously, half in fun, that he had always had the knack of sensing a Sunday from his bed, without even having to open his eyes.

The very fact that a Frenchman was prepared, after tow minutes of conversation, to be so friendly towards anyone, especially one who had come from England, made me restless.

What is the French word for rain? Le rain? La rain? Is the rain masculine or feminine? It’s such a bother that it must be masculine.

Occasionally, merely for the pleasure of being cruel, we put unoffending Frenchmen on the rack with questions framed in the incomprehensible jargon of their native language, and while they writhed, we impaled them, we peppered them, we scarified them, with their own vile verbs and participles.

Going through the customs dampened them further. Customs inspectors must have a mental twist that makes them suspicious of innocence. Dewy-eyed honeymooners, red-cheeked provincials, and helpless little old ladies lash them into frenzied investigation while slinking Orientals hugging small black bags are passed with scarcely a glance. George and Harriet stood under the letter “R” and watched reproachfully while a muttering little man flung their underclothes and dirty laundry right and left, lea

I said, “Je parle français.” Indira gave me a weird look. Or a look that said I was weird. Whichever. The point is, I don’t really speak French, but it’s a useful phrase for confusing people you don’t wish to speak with. However, it’s apparently more useful in Europe, where no one enjoys speaking to the French.

Go to the theater, to museums, and to concerts as often as possible; it gives you a healthy glow.

A lie travels round the world while truth is putting her boots on.

My favorite of all was still the place on Vermont, the French cafe, La Lyonnaise, that had given me the best onion soup on that night with George and my father. The two owners hailed from France, from Lyon, before the city had boomed into a culinary sibling of Paris. Inside, it had only a few tables, and the waiters served everything out of order, and it had a B rating in the window, and they usually sat me right by the swinging kitchen door, but I didn't care about any of it.There, I ordered ch

If anyone does not have three minutes in his life to make an omelette, then life is not worth living.

Perhaps the most important thing I came to understand during my decade at HoJo's was that Americans had extremely open palates compared to French diners. They were willing to try items that lay outside their normal range of tastes. If they liked the food, that was all that mattered. I wasn't constantly battling ingrained prejudices as I would have been in France, where doing something as simple as adding carrots to boeuf bourguignon could have gotten me guillotined, not because carrots make the

On this matter I'm inclined to agree with the French, who gaze upon any personal dietary prohibition as bad manners.

Never doubt the courage of the French. They were the ones who discovered that snails are edible.

There exists a bastard cuisine that is too often assumed to be real French cooking.

Garlic is divine. Few food items can taste so many distinct ways, handled correctly. Misuse of garlic is a crime. Old garlic, burnt garlic, garlic cut too long ago and garlic that has been tragically smashed through one of those abominations, the garlic press, are all disgusting. Please treat your garlic with respect. Sliver it for pasta, like you saw in Goodfellas; don't burn it. Smash it, with the flat of your knife blade if you like, but don't put it through a press. I don't know what that ju

Almost anything is edible with a dab of French mustard on it.

Back in New York I took full advantage of my status as a native speaker. I ran my mouth to shop clerks and listened in on private conversations, realising I’d gone an entire month without hearing anyone complaint that they were “stressed out”.

To pronounce French properly you must have within you a deep antipathy, not to say scorn, for some of the most sacred of the Anglo-Saxon prejudices.

It was the French of the Normans that, grafting itself onto the barbaric Saxon tongue, gave it its most magnificent blossoming. And, in these new countries, where both English and French are intertwined again, it is as if English were bathing itself in the fountain of its own youth, and as if French were remembering the buried treasures it had thought forgotten.

Adam was charming and spoke perfect French. Like many anglophones in Montréal, he actually spoke French better than we did. They knew exactly which verbs to use in the same way that people knew which utensils to use while eating at a fancy dinner. It was very proper because they learned it from books. They didn’t know slang or how to curse. They didn’t know how to do anything other than be proper and reserved. It was state-sponsored, dry-clean-only French.

The true structure of the Welsh grammar will be revealed only when we look at sentences slightly more complicated than its basic VSO pattern. Welsh is no different from the rest of the world: it does involve an extra step, but even that isn't all that unusual. Welsh is like Shakespearean English on acid: the verb always - not just in questions - moves to the beginning. Alternatively, it can be viewed as taking the French grammar a step further. While the verb stops at tense in French, it moves f

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

Language is the source of misunderstandings.

What's the trick to remembering that a sandwich is masculine? What qualities does it share with anyone in possession of a penis? I'll tell myself that a sandwich is masculine because if left alone for a week or two, it will eventually grow a beard.

Let me put it this way. Canada is not so much a country as a holding tank filled with the disgruntled progeny of defeated peoples.

He was thirty-six years old, and six foot three. He spoke English to people and French to cats, and Latin to the birds. He had once nearly killed himself trying to read and ride a horse at the same time.

I beg your pardon, sir, said the Frenchman. I am not a coloniser.Well, let’s talk Algeria then. Let’s talk about your culture and your celebrated writers.

The French cook we open tins.

When I opened my eyes I saw nothing but the pool of nocturnal sky, for I was lying on my back with out-stretched arms, face to face with that hatchery of stars. Only half awake, still unaware that those depths were sky, having no roof between those depths and me, no branches to screen them, no root to cling to, I was seized with vertigo and felt myself as if flung forth and plunging downward like a diver.

People pretend not to like grapes when the vines are too high for them to reach.

I think we are wise, we English speakers, to savor accents. They teach us things about our own tongue.

Impossible,'" Matthew said."'Impossible n'est pas français,' Ysabeau said, her tone tart as vinegar. 'And it certainly was not a word in your father's vocabulary.

There's a little war in progress here. There won't be anything left of the place if it goes on at this rate." (But it's hard to feign innocence if you've eaten the apple, he reflected.) "And it looks to me as if it is going to go on, because the French aren't going to give in, and certainly the Arabs aren't, because they can't. They're fighting with their backs the the wall.""I thought maybe you meant you expected a new world war," he lied."That's the least of my worries. When that comes, we've

The situation is like this: they hired our parents to destroy this world, and now they'd like to put us to work rebuilding it, and -- to add insult to injury -- at a profit.

We have been expropriated from our own language by television, from our songs by reality TV contests, from our flesh by mass pornography, from our city by the police and from our friends by wage-labor.

Hauriou, became a crown witness for us when he confirmed this connection in 1916, in the midst of WWI: “The revolution of 1789 had no other goal than absolute access to the writing of legal statutes and the systematic destruction of customary institutions. It resulted in a state of permanent revolution because the mobility of the writing of laws did not provide for the stability of certain customary institutions, because the forces of change were stronger than the forces of stability. Social and

The essence and value of the law lies in its stability and durability (...), in its “relative eternity.” Only then does the legislator’s self-limitation and the independence of the law-bound judge find an anchor. The experiences of the French Revolution showed how an unleashed pouvoir législatif could generate a legislative orgy.

Je pensais de meme que notre jeunesse etait finie et le bonheur manqué. I thought too that our youth was over and we had failed to find happiness.

O dieses ist das Tier, das es nicht giebt.Sie wußtens nicht und habens jeden Falls– sein Wandeln, seine Haltung, seinen Hals,bis in des stillen Blickes Licht – geliebt.Zwar war es nicht. Doch weil sie’s liebten, wardein reines Tier. Sie ließen immer Raum.Und in dem Raume, klar und ausgespart,erhob es leicht sein Haupt und brauchte kaumzu seinÈ questo l’animale favoloso, che non esiste. Non veduto mai, ne amaron le movenze, il collo, il passo: fino la luce dello sguardo calmo.Pure “non era”. Ma p