to "set the standard for beauty in classical and modem cookery, and attest to the distant future that the French chefs of the 19th century were the most famous in the world. — Marie-Antoine Careme
There's always something fishy about the French. — Noel Coward
Never doubt the courage of the French. They were the ones who discovered that snails are edible. — Doug Larson
French is a language that makes those who speak it both calm and dynamic. — Bernard Pivot
Close with a Frenchman, but out-maneuver a Russian. — Horatio Nelson
The best way to execute French cooking is to get good and loaded and whack the hell out of a chicken. — Julia Child
French people are Italian people in a bad mood. — Jean Cocteau
I just saw Memento. It's very, very good. I watch a lot of French films. — Colleen Haskell
One thing I can say about the French language is that no one in the world loves their language as much as they do. — Mads Mikkelsen
In France, I learned about wine and cheese. — Walter Wager
I don't know what it is about the french language, it seems to be scared of coming out of the mouth so it comes out the nose instead. — P.D.Q. Bach
Let us be French, let us be English, but most importantly let us be Canadian! — John A. Macdonald
I have tried to lift France out of the mud. But she will return to her errors and vomitings. I cannot prevent the French from being French. — Charles De Gaulle
Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion. — Ambrose Bierce
In # France we have a saying, 'Joie de Vivre,' which actually doesn't exist in the English language. It means looking at your life as something that is to be taken with great pleasure and enjoy it. — Mireille Guiliano
Short Great French Quotes
We decided that the French could never write user-friendly software because they're so rude. — Douglas Coupland
A great chef is an artist that I truly respect. — Robert Stack
The only way the French are going in is if we tell them we found truffles in Iraq. — Dennis Miller
They were singing in French, but the melody was freedom and any American could understand that. — Audie Murphy
Almost anything is edible with a dab of French mustard on it. — Nigel Slater
It is sometimes tougher to fight my superiors than the French. — Heinz Guderian
Remember gentleman, it's not just France we're fighting for, it's Champagne! — Winston Churchill
I had to defecate and that’s actually French for sh*t. — Theo Von
In fine, the truffle is the very diamond of gastronomy. — Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
The players are writing a beautiful page of the club’s history and also of French football history. — Didier Deschamps
Great French Image Quotes
Silence is a source of great strength.
French Quotes
The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be. French translation — Marcel Pagnol
Original, in French: La bonne cuisine est la base du véritable bonheur.
English: Good food is the foundation of genuine happiness. — Auguste Escoffier
The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread. — Mother Teresa
Make today so awesome, yesterday gets jealous.
My principles are only those that, before the French Revolution, every well-born person considered sane and normal. — Julius Evola
The greatest difficulty we have faced is the neocolonial way of thinking that exists in this country. We were colonized by a country, France, that left us with certain habits. For us, being successful in life, being happy, meant trying to live as they do in France, like the richest of the French. — Thomas Sankara
Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression. There are no 'Nigerians' in the same sense as there are 'English,' 'Welsh,' or 'French.' The word 'Nigerian' is merely a distinctive appellation to distinguish those who live within the boundaries of Nigeria and those who do not. — Obafemi Awolowo
Great minds discuss ideas.Average minds discuss events.Small minds discuss people.
It is the height of stupidity to claim that men who for a thousand years have had the power to berate us, to fleece us and to oppress us with impunity, will now agree, with good grace, to be our equals. — Jean-Paul Marat
In language gender is particularly confusing. Why, please, should a table be male in German, female in French, and castrated in English? — Marlene Dietrich
I do a real analysis of who actually owns things - it’s the British…the Dutch…then it’s the Arabs…then it’s the French…then it’s the Jews…and then, on down the line. — Alex Jones
Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough. — Mark Twain
Good French Quotes
I 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 Asher
If God forbade drinking, would He have made wine so good? — Cardinal Richelieu
What counts as rational argumentation is as historically determined and as context-dependent, as what counts as good French. — Richard Rorty
Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.
I am certainly not regenerating French art, but am struggling hard to accomplish something on an unlucky piece of paper which has done me no harm at all, and on which, believe me, I am doing nothing that is good... I hope things will improve eventually; as it is, I am pretty wretched. — Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Humor does not include sarcasm, invalid irony, sardonicism, innuendo, or any other form of cruelty. When these things are raised to a high point they can become wit, but unlike the French and the English, we have not been much good at wit since the days of Benjamin Franklin. — James Thurber
English people don't have very good diction. In France you have to pronounce very particularly and clearly, and learning French at an early age helped me enormously. — Vivien Leigh
Acknowledge all of your small victories. They will eventually add up to something great.
Central heating, French rubber goods and cookbooks are three amazing proofs of man's ingenuity in transforming necessity into art, and, of these, cookbooks are perhaps most lastingly delightful. — M. F. K. Fisher
Drunkenness was in good repute in England till "Bloody Mary" frowned upon it; it remained popular in Germany. The French drank more stably, not being quite so cold. — Will Durant
I don't know why you use a fancy French word like detente when there's a good English phrase for it - cold war. — Golda Meir
There is but one Paris and however hard living may be here, and if it became worse and harder even—the French air clears up the brain and does good—a world of good. — Vincent Van Gogh
French Culture Quotes
I see myself as an ambassador of French heritage and French culture. — Bernard Arnault
The real reason French women don't get fat is not genetic, but cultural, and if the French subjected themselves to the American extremes of eating and dieting, the obesity problem in France would be much worse than what has struck America. — Mireille Guiliano
Culture and tradition have to change little by little. So 'new' means a little twist, a marriage of Japanese technique with French ingredients. My technique. Indian food, Korean food; I put Italian mozzarella cheese with sashimi. I don't think 'new new new.' I'm not a genius. A little twist. — Masaharu Morimoto
You need a little bit of insanity to do great things.
French girls still have the Jane Birkin culture. You can go just like that, without makeup, without managing your hair. — Emmanuelle Alt
It is perfectly possible to be enamoured of Paris while remaining totally indifferent or even hostile to the French. — James A. Baldwin
France can never accept that it is no longer a dominating power in the world of culture. This is true both of the French right and the French left. They keep thinking that Americans are primitive cowboys or farmers who do not understand anything. — Adam Michnik
Failure is a great teacher, and, if you are open to it, every mistake has a lesson to offer.
Race wasn't an issue. My family was French, but Yorkville was a melting pot of races and cultures. — Bob Cousy
Canada could have enjoyed: English government, French culture, and American know-how. Instead it ended up with: English know-how, French government, and American culture. — John Robert Colombo
French culture takes ageing very seriously. There's much less ageism than in Anglo-Saxon countries. — Kristin Scott Thomas
All culture corrupts, but French culture corrupts absolutely. — Lawrence Durrell
I thought English is a strange language. Now I think French is even more strange. In France, their fish is poisson, their bread is pain, and their pancake is crepe. Pain and poison and crap. That's what they have every day. — Xiaolu Guo
The only true language in the world is a kiss. — Alfred De Musset
To a great mind, nothing is little.
English has been this vacuum cleaner of a language, because of its history meeting up with the Romans and then the Danes, the Vikings and then the French and then the Renaissance with all the Latin and Greek and Hebrew in the background. — David Crystal
What makes international cinema so interesting is that each territory has its own sensibility. When you look at an Indian or French film, there's a certain flavor. And even though the language is different, if the film is successful, it has something very common and understandable. — Wong Kar-wai
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. — Mark Twain
Average people have great ideas. Legends have great execution.
German poetry is going in a very different direction from French poetry.... Its language has become more sober, more factual. It distrusts "beauty." It tries to be truthful. — Paul Celan
French is the language that turns dirt into romance. — Stephen King
Columbia University, where I went to study in 1993, insisted its undergraduates learn a foreign language, so I discovered French. — Aravind Adiga
Zis and zat' when uttered by the French is considered charming, but 'dis and dat' as an Africanism is ridiculed as gross and ugly. — Alice Childress
French Movies Quotes
My 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 Lebowitz
When I make an American movie it's going to come out all over the world-it doesn't happen the same way for an Italian film or a French film. — Monica Bellucci
When Americans shoot movies they aim at the entire planet. When the French make movies, they aim at Paris. — Jean-Jacques Annaud
Don't fear the failure... in great attempts it is glorious even to fail.
I like to watch French movies with the volume up so my neighbors could think I'm terrorist. — Felipe Esparza
I've wanted to make a film about French youth since I went to Cannes with my first film 'Kids' in 1995 ... Scribe's screenplay is about French kids today, and the world today. Just like my films 'Kids' and 'Ken Park', this will be a movie like you have never seen before. — Larry Clark
Of course the French are making very credible movies and it is still one of the greatest nations in terms of world cinema but the real problem is the decay in film criticism. — Wim Wenders
No one has ever made himself great by showing how small someone else is.
My favourite film is 'Le Diner de Cons,' a French movie. — Stan Wawrinka
The word liberal has been employed as the political equivalent of an untreatable but potentially containable social disease -- the kind that could be contracted merely by going to a foreign movie or ordering a decaf latte, or worse, a glass of French wine. — Eric Alterman
The world distribution of French movies is a laughing matter. That is a fact. — Jean-Jacques Annaud
Movies in this country, its very complicated, and we could bang on about it forever, but the French movie industry is very different because its very obviously French. — Mick Jagger
French Love Quotes
The only consistent hobby I've had is studying Spanish and French because of some delusion of grandeur to work around the world. I love sports but usually I'm looking for the next job. — William Sanderson
When he takes me in his arms, and speaks to me softly, I see the world through rose-colored glasses. — Edith Piaf
That is love, to give away everything, to sacrifice everything, without the slightest desire to get anything in return.3 — Albert Camus
I like photographing the people I love, the people I admire, the famous, and especially the infamous. My last infamous subject was the extreme right wing French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen. — Helmut Newton
French fries. I love them. Some people are chocolate and sweets people. I love French fries. That and caviar. — Cameron Diaz
Love makes the greatest pleasures and most sensitive misfortunes of life. — Madeleine de Scudery
French Poetry Quotes
I guess I wanted to leave America for awhile. It wasn't that I wanted to become an expatriate, or just never come back, I needed some breathing room. I'd already been translating French poetry, I'd been to Paris once before and liked it very much, and so I just went. — Paul Auster
I had art as a major, along with English, French and History. I had dance, modern dance. In English I was allowed to write my own poetry, which I eventually got published. — Sally Kirkland
The great watershed of modern poetry is French, more than English. — Robert Morgan
In his youth, Wordsworth sympathized with the French Revolution, went to France, wrote good poetry and had a natural daughter. At this period, he was a bad man. Then he became good, abandoned his daughter, adopted correct principles and wrote bad poetry. — Bertrand Russell
How many really great writers are there who are totally non-political? You can hear the French Revolution in the poetry of [Percy Bysshe] Shelly and [John] Wordsworth; you can sense the vast inequalities of Tsarist Russia in [Anton] Chekhov and [Lev] Tolstoy. — Adam Hochschild
I 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 Auster
In the French language, there is a great gulf between prose and poetry; in English, there is hardly any difference. It is a splendid privilege of the great literary languages Greek, Latin, and French that they possess a prose. English has not this privilege. There is no prose in English. — Victor Hugo
Let's be honest - Bill Murray was onto something when he laughed at Andie MacDowell's degree in 19th century French poetry in 'Groundhog Day'. — Marco Rubio
The language of the age is never the language of poetry, except among the French, whose verse, where the thought or image does not support it, differs in nothing from prose. — Thomas Gray
I hate French poetry. What measured glitter! — Israel Zangwill
Frenchmen Quotes
Every day I think about where I come from and I am still proud to be who I am: first, a Kabyle from La Castellane, then an Algerian from Marseille, and then a Frenchman. — Zinedine Zidane
I know a lot of Americans in Paris who have married Frenchmen. They keep bringing up their experience, the clash of civilizations, the clash of personalities. — Leslie Caron
The reason why Englishmen are the best husbands in the world is because they want to be faithful. A Frenchman or an Italian will wake up in the morning and wonder what girl he will meet. An Englishman wakes up and wonders what the cricket score is. — Barbara Cartland
You must consider every man your enemy who speaks ill of your King, and you must treat every Frenchman as if he were the Devil himself. — Horatio Nelson
GUILLOTINE, n. A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders with good reason. — Ambrose Bierce
The Frenchman invented the ruffle; the Englishman added the shirt. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
The priest has just baptized you a Christian with water; and I baptize you a Frenchman, daring child, with a dewdrop of champagne on your lips. — Paul Claudel
The Frenchman, by nature, is sensuous and sensitive. He has intelligence, which makes him tired of life sooner than other kinds of men. He is not athletic: he sees the futility of the pursuit of fame; the climate at times depresses him. — Anais Nin
I like Frenchmen very much, because even when they insult you they do it so nicely. — Josephine Baker
Frenchman Quotes
There is only one cure for gray hair. It was invented by a Frenchman. It is called the guillotine. — P. G. Wodehouse
The Frenchman, easy, debonair, and brisk, Give him his lass, his fiddle, and his frisk, Is always happy, reign whoever may, And laughs the sense of mis'ry far away. — William Cowper
A bad liver is to a Frenchman what a nervous breakdown is to an American. Everyone has had one and everyone wants to talk about it. — Art Buchwald
The difference between the vanity of a Frenchman and an Englishman seems to be this: the one thinks everything right that is French, the other thinks everything wrong that is not English. — William Hazlitt
If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman... because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French. — Baron de Montesquieu
It is unthinkable for a Frenchman to arrive at middle age without having syphilis and the Cross of the Legion of Honor. — Andre Gide
The Frenchman Jean-PaulSartre ... had a dialectical mind good as a machine for cybernetics, immense in its way, he could peel a nuance like an onion, but he had no sense of evil, the anguish of God, and the possible existence of Satan. — Norman Mailer
The nearest approach to the infallible in literary judgment is represented in the colossal work of the teacher of all these three [Edmund Gosse, Edward Dowden and George Saintsbury], the greatest critic that ever lived - not an Englishman, but a Frenchman, the wonderful Sainte-Beuve. — Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
The French want no-one to be their superior. The English want inferiors. The Frenchman constantly raises his eyes above him with anxiety. The Englishman lowers his beneath him with satisfaction. — Alexis de Tocqueville
If I were going to war I would want to be alongside an Englishman not a Frenchman. The Frenchman would think too much. — Arsene Wenger
French Literature Quotes
It has since been agreed that speeches given in English will be translated into French and vice versa, and even into German and Italian when necessary. No doubt translations into Esperanto will also soon be in demand. — Fredrik Bajer
What has influenced my life more than any other single thing has been my stammer. Had I not stammered I would probably... have gone to Cambridge as my brothers did, perhaps have become a don and every now and then published a dreary book about French literature. — W. Somerset Maugham
I read world literature and I read French romances in the originals. I had quite a profound knowledge - no, that sounds conceited, but I did have a profound interest in everything spiritual. — Baldur von Schirach
In a country like France, so ancient, their history is full of outstanding people, so they carry a heavy weight on their back. Who could write in French after Proust or Flaubert? — Manuel Puig
How far the existence of the Academy has influenced French literature, either for good or for evil, is an extremely dubious question. — Lytton Strachey
The amateur is very rare in French literature - as rare as he is common in our own. — Lytton Strachey
In fact I enjoyed every minute of my life at King's, especially the discovery of French and German literature. — Patrick White
Twitter reminds me of an era in French literature - Emile Zola and Honoré de Balzac - and the beginning of modernity and gossip. They had these fashion magazines of the time on display with all of the Emile Zola references. — Kim Gordon
Many 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 Taia
There is an interview given by [ Jean-Paul] Sartre in the USA where he is asked what the future of French literature is, and he replies that the next great writer of the future is [Albert] Camus. — Catherine Camus
France turned a deaf ear to the demands, but Ho had succeeded in attracting great publicity in progressive French circles to the situation in Indochina. — Wilfred Burchett
Whoever would have guessed that in the land of cheap sausages and mashed potatoes there could be such a change which would actually bring the French from Paris every weekend to invade Britain en masse to eat great food and drink great wine. — Robin Leach
The older I get, the better I used to be. — Lee Trevino
[We need] someone bold, to put himself at the head of the disaffected and rally them against the oppressor. Some great character who could captivate the people... someone wise who could direct the actions of an unbridled and floating multitude. — Jean-Paul Marat
Wine makes every meal an occasion, every table more elegant, every day more civilized. — Andre Simon
Life is too short to drink bad wine. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Drinking wine was not a snobbism nor a sign of sophistication nor a cult; it was as natural as eating and to me as necessary. — Ernest Hemingway
Life's too short to drink bad wine or smoke poor cigars. — Don Johnson
Washington is dead! This great man fought against Tyranny; he established the liberty of his country. His memory will always be dear to the French people, as it will be to all free men of the two worlds; and especially to French soldiers, who, like him and the American soldiers, have combated for liberty and equality. — Napoleon Bonaparte
We need the real, nation-wide terror which reinvigorates the country and through which the Great French Revolution achieved glory. — Vladimir Lenin
The international proletariat first appeared on the scene in the early Thirties of the nineteenth century, and its first great action was the French Revolution of 1848. — C. L. R. James
Logos and branding are so important. In a big part of the world, people cannot read French or English--but are great in remembering signs. — Karl Lagerfeld
When things are tough, French athletes tend to pull out great performances. — Didier Deschamps
Feudal societies don't create great cinema; we have great theatre. The egalitarian societies create great cinema. The Americans, the French. Because equality is sort of what the cinema deals with. It deals with stories which don't fall into 'Everybody in their place and who's who,' and all that. But the theatre's full of that. — Brian Cox
This 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. Wells
Any thing that proves that it is not in the power of Kings and Princes by their great armies to have every thing their own way is of such good example that without any good will to the French one can not help being delighted by it, and you know I have a natural partiality to what some people call rebels. — Charles James Fox
Wine is inspiring and adds greatly to the joy of living. — Napoleon Bonaparte
Wine makes every meal an occasion. — Andre Simon
A meal without wine is like a day without sun — Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
Wine gives courage and makes men more apt for passion. — Ovid
A man will be eloquent if you give him good wine. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
In that case, there is no time to lose. Plant it this afternoon! — John F. Kennedy
The great French Marshall Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardner objected that the tree was slow growing and wouldn't reach maturity for 100 years. The Marshall replied, "In that case, there is no time to lose; plant it this afternoon! — John F. Kennedy
In his lifetime the great French impressionist painter Corot painted 2000 canvases. Of that number, 3000 are in the United States. — Morley Safer
The French Revolution gave birth to no artists but only to a great journalist, Desmoulins, and to an under-the-counter writer, Sade. The only poet of the times was the guillotine. — Albert Camus
The great themes of Canadian history are as follows: Keeping the Americans out, keeping the French in, and trying to get the Natives to somehow disappear. — Will Ferguson
Man is only truly great when he acts from the passions; never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination. — Benjamin Disraeli
Just like becoming an expert in wine–you learn by drinking it, the best you can afford–you learn about great food by finding the best there is, whether simply or luxurious. The you savor it, analyze it, and discuss it with your companions, and you compare it with other experiences. — Julia Child
French novels generally treat of the relations of women to the world and to lovers, after marriage; consequently there is a great deal in French novels about adultery, about improper relations between the sexes, about many things which the English public would not allow. — Lafcadio Hearn
There's great wine from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Chile and, of course, California. But there's nothing like a really great French wine, they're so well balanced. The better the wine, the less you feel the effects I think. — Ridley Scott
Nowadays I actually cook Italian-style food more than French heavy sauces. I make a good salad, some great roasted vegetables, grilled fish. Im crazy about L.A. because at the farmers market you find all kinds of wild mushrooms. — Benjamin Millepied
The Messianic era is the present age, which began to germinate with the teachings of Spinoza, and finally came into historical existence with the great French Revolution. — Moses Hess
I never rebel so much against France as not to regard Paris with a friendly eye; she has had my heart since my childhood... I love her tenderly, even to her warts and her spots. I am French only by this great city: the glory of France, and one of the noblest ornaments of the world. — Michel de Montaigne
Wine is a living liquid containing no preservatives. Its life cycle comprises youth, maturity, old age, and death. When not treated with reasonable respect it will sicken and die. — Julia Child
I go to Saint Barth in the French West Indies for two weeks each year. That place is amazing. Amazing people, beautiful beaches, great wine, wonderful harbors... It's incredibly romantic. — Brooke Burke
Well, with the French language, which I understood and spoke, however imperfectly, and read in great quantities, at certain times, the matter I suppose was slightly different from either Latin or Greek. — Robert Fitzgerald
I 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 Norton
With or without the Royals, we are not Americans. Nor are we British. Or French. Or Void. We are something else. And the sooner we define this, the better. — Will Ferguson
We thought of wine as something as healthy and normal as food and also as a great giver of happiness and well being and delight. — Ernest Hemingway
Peace is the wish of the French of Italy Spain Germany and all the world, and Great Britain alone the cause of preventing its accomplishment, and this not for any point of honour or even interest, but merely lest there should be an example in the modern world of a great powerful Republic. — Charles James Fox
I'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 Puig
Clearly, the pleasures wines afford are transitory - but so are those of the ballet, or of a musical performance. Wine is inspiring and adds greatly to the joy of living. — Napoleon Bonaparte
In Conclusion
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