Best 465 quotes in «france quotes» category

Dans une vie de bohème on peut faire de poème. Comment serait la vie sans la douce poésie?

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.

Did you know they call the tower the "Iron Lady"? Hmm. Isn't that Margaret Thatched called that, too? Frankly, they don't look anything alike to me. For one thing, Maggie has two legs, and the Parisian Iron Lady has four on the floor, like me.

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.

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.

Eiffel Tower" To Robert Delaunay Eiffel Tower Guitar of the sky Your wireless telegraphy Attracts words As a rosebush the bees During the night The Seine no longer flows Telescope or bugle EIFFEL TOWER And it's a hive of words Or an inkwell of honey At the bottom of dawn A spider with barbed-wire legs Was making its web of clouds My little boy To climb the Eiffel Tower You climb on a song Do re mi fa sol la ti do We are up on top A bird sings in the telegraph antennae It's the wind Of Europe The electric wind Over there The hats fly away They have wings but they don't sing Jacqueline Daughter of France What do you see up there The Seine is asleep Under the shadow of its bridges I see the Earth turning And I blow my bugle Toward all the seas On the path Of your perfume All the bees and the words go their way On the four horizons Who has not heard this song I AM THE QUEEN OF THE DAWN OF THE POLES I AM THE COMPASS THE ROSE OF THE WINDS THAT FADES EVERY FALL AND ALL FULL OF SNOW I DIE FROM THE DEATH OF THAT ROSE IN MY HEAD A BIRD SINGS ALL YEAR LONG That's the way the Tower spoke to me one day Eiffel Tower Aviary of the world Sing Sing Chimes of Paris The giant hanging in the midst of the void Is the poster of France The day of Victory You will tell it to the stars

Don't wanna ever take your shoes off in coconut land. Never know when you're gonna have to run.

Eh oui, Léon comprenait, Léon approuvait ce que disait Louise tout simplement parce que c'était elle qui le disait. Il trouvait son rire beau parce que c'était son rire à elle, il aimait son regard qui le scrutait et l'encourageait parce que c'était ses yeux verts à elle qui le regardaient ainsi comme s'ils ne cessaient de lui demander : Dis-moi, c'est bien toi ? Hein, c'est vraiment toi ? Il était transporté par la mèche qui s'égarait sur le front de Louise parce que c'était sa mèche de cheveux à elle, et il ne pouvait s'empêcher de rire de sa pantomime,quand elle imitait le maire allumant sa cigarette, et il riait parce que c'était sa pantomime à elle.

Fallujah was a Guernica with no Picasso. A city of 300,000 was deprived of water, electricity, and food, emptied of most of its inhabitants who ended up parked in camps. Then came the methodical bombing and recapture of the city block by block. When soldiers occupied the hospital, The New York Times managed to justify this act on grounds that the hospital served as an enemy propaganda center by exaggerating the number of casualties. And by the way, just how many casualties were there? Nobody knows, there is no body count for Iraqis. When estimates are published, even by reputable scientific reviews, they are denounced as exaggerated. Finally, the inhabitants were allowed to return to their devastated city, by way of military checkpoints, and start to sift through the rubble, under the watchful eye of soldiers and biometric controls.

Ears back, tail up! I got to show off the white tip on the end of my tail. It's the flag that all Shelties are proud of.

Faced with this endless British troublemaking, Napoleon was, in Bonapartist French eyes, like a kung fu master, meditating peacefully on his prayer mat about progress and democracy while a gang of irritating English boys threw acorns at him, finally forcing him to get up and give them a slap.

France is beautiful. I stood at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower today and looked up at it. There are very few times in my life I've felt so small. The day I left you was one of them. I miss you. Ethan.

For with all that is grand, grander is the expansion of the mind.

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

[French] Parents see it as their job to bring the child around to appreciating this [food]. They believe that just as they must teach a child how to sleep, how to wait, and how to say bonjour, they must teach her how to eat.

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.

[France] may be the only country in the world where the rich are sometimes brilliant.

He is already giving me more advice. Never, never, never put your saucisson or your cheese in the fridge. I feel guilty. I have treated my produce cruelly. I blame my mother. Why didn’t she teach me this – and tell me important things like not to hold an orange pumpkin against a cream jumper when I was peeling it. She could have told me how to preserve kiwifruit rather than my virginity – far more useful.

Grand Tourists and their retinues typically crossed the choppy English Channel at the Port of Dover, stepping onto French soil in Calais. From there, the parties would set off on a three-day trek to Paris. Once fitted for new clothes, many proceeded to decamp for a season or longer for their first taste of Continental culture. (...) Not everyone took the same route. The more adventurous traveled from Paris to Lyon then farther south to Marseille, journeying by sea from Marseille to Livorno, in the Tuscany region, or Genoa, although the Italians’ lack of necessary sailing skills at that time made passage risky. Meanwhile, the wary typically trekked from Paris to Lyon then over the Alps. For the latter, Geneva was a subsequent stop, by default rather than preference. Despite the breathtaking beauty of the Alps, coaches—the mode of transport used at the time—simply could not traverse the treacherous Mont Cenis pass, ascending 6,827 feet. Invariably, the harrowing peaks and rocky precipices forced willing travelers to navigate by mule or sled. Regardless of the hassles, those who pressed on reaped extravagant rewards. (...) All roads, however, ultimately led to Rome, befitting its vaunted history as the intellectual, scientific and artistic center of the Renaissance and Baroque culture.

Ha!" cried Dr John contemptuously. "Magic! That is chiefly used for killing Frenchmen, is it not?

Grace leaned forward, studying him up close, able to make out some of his facial features in the clay mask: strong brow, broad cheekbones, prominent jawline and chin. As a flavorist, she was familiar with kaolin clay, a virtually tasteless edible mineral often used as an anti-caking agent in processed foods, various toothpastes, and originally kaopectate. But she'd never encountered the raw product out of the lab, and certainly not like this. She leaned closer to him. He smelled of sediment and mostly sweat, a decidedly masculine note, the precise replication of which one could base an entire career, and then some. Even the most skilled perfumers in the world, experts in the animal secrets of civet and ambergris, couldn't get it just right. It was a human thing. And she'd studied it, androstadienone and most of the known male pheromones, and she knew the effects certain concentrates could have on certain women. She'd written the reports and seen the CT scans of activity in women's brains. Still, knowing about it intellectually and rationally did not in any way lessen what it was doing to her right now, the effect it was having on her senses and her body. 'Can he tell?' she wondered. Lean and broad-shouldered, he had the build of a man who spent his days using his body in labor. She could see it in the way the mud set into the ridged musculature of his forearms, like the russeting across a firm apple. Still, the inner details of him escaped her. His hair was caked with dry clay, and she thought of the figures she'd seen artists craft in their hillside studios in Montmartre, with the Sacre-Coeur church on the summit above and the bawdy Moulin Rouge crowds teeming below. He looked like that, an unglazed unfinished sculpture of a man, but for his eyes, vast and deep, and very much alive, as if he were trapped inside his statued body.

He looked at the menu dreamily. 'God, it’s good to be eating in France again.' 'It’s good to be eating again,' said Brenda. 'But it’s nice to resume the habit in France.' 'That’s true of so many habits.

He mused on this village of his, which had sprung up in this place, amid the stones, like the gnarled undergrowth of the valley. All Artaud's inhabitants were inter-related, all bearing the same surname to such an extent that they used double-barrelled names from the cradle up, to distinguish one from another. At some antecedent date an ancestral Artaud had come like an outcast, to establish himself in this waste land. His family had grown with the savage vitality of the vegetation, drawing nourishment from this stone till it had become a tribe, then the tribe turned to a community, till they could not sort out their cousinage, going back for generations. They inter-married with unblushing promiscuity.

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

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.

...human thought is by no means as private as it seems, and all that you need to read somebody else's mind is the willingness to read your own.

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

Humans are curious creatures. What we cannot see, our logical minds will try to deny.

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

I am a priest, but in this war I have been a soldier, and a soldier who has not surrendered. For I was fighting for more than a military decision between two powers, rivals for control over the same parcel of land. I was fighting for justice, and in this war, I could see only one kind of justice, a justice partaking at the same time of the human and the divine. I do not expect to find that justice or any justice, in this court. But I know that in the end, divine justice will prevail; and the verdict of God will be pronounced, not against us, but against you, who presume to judge us. - Father Christian

[And conversely, Woodrow Wilson finishes dead last.] Yes [...] I think World War I was avoidable for the United States, certainly; we kind of look back on Germany as being 'evil' (because of World War II), but back in World War I it was much more ambiguous who was at fault - and the allies, including our French and British allies and the Russians also were at fault - and after World War I there was a revulsion because the Bolsheviks released their correspondences with Britain and France: Britain and France were trying to grab colonies, and so the American people said, 'We were fighting...we lost all these people in this massive war just to help these people grab territory?' So there was a revulsion at that time; we don't hear that now because we're distant from it. Woodrow Wilson has been elevated as one of the better presidents but I think if you go back and look at it, the war was avoidable...and of course Woodrow Wilson helped bring Hitler to power by insisting on the abdication of the Kaiser after World War I - which was totally unnecessary. Germany was a constitutional monarchy before the war, and was vilified. It was actually the most aggressive state in Europe [...] and there were many things wrong with the Kaiser's personality, but I think Germany is unnecessarily vilified for that war.

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

I congratulate you on your success stealing the painting.

If I walked down by different streets to the Jardin du Luxembourg in the afternoon I could walk through the gardens and then go to the Musée du Luxembourg where the great paintings were that have now mostly been transferred to the Louvre and the Jeu de Paume. I went there nearly every day for the Cézannes and to see the Manets and the Monets and the other Impressionists that I had first come to know about in the Art Institute at Chicago. I was learning something from the painting of Cézanne that made writing simple true sentences far from enough to make the stories have the dimensions that I was trying to put in them. I was learning very much from him but I was not articulate enough to explain it to anyone. Besides it was a secret. But if the light was gone in the Luxembourg I would walk up through the gardens and stop in at the studio apartment where Gertrude Stein lived at 27 rue de Fleurus.

I’d love to be a tabletop in Paris, where food is art and life combined in one, where people gather and talk for hours. I want lovers to meet over me. I’d want to be covered in drops of candle wax and breadcrumbs and rings from the bottom of wineglasses. I would never be lonely, and I would always serve a good purpose.

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

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.

If we stop breathing, we'll die. If we stop fighting our enemies, the world will die.

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

I had come to the conclusion that I must really be French, only no one had ever informed me of this fact. I loved the people, the food, the lay of the land, the civilized atmosphere, and the generous pace of life.

I know of no other place that is so fascinating yet so frustrating, so aware of the world and its own place within it but at the same time utterly insular. A country touched by nostalgia, with a past so great - so marked by brilliance and achievement - that French people today seem both enriched and burdened by it. France is like a maddening, moody lover who inspires emotional highs and lows. One minute it fills you with a rush of passion, the next you're full of fury, itching to smack the mouth of some sneering shopkeeper or smug civil servant. Yes, it's a love-hate relationship.

I know the meaning of humility. It is not self-disparagement. It is the motive power of action. If, intending to absolve myself, I plead fate as the excuse for my misfortunes, I subject myself to fate. If I plead treason as their excuse, I subject myself to treason. But if I accept responsibility, I affirm my strength as a man. I am able to influence that of which I form part. I declare myself a constituent part of the community of mankind.

I'll pretty much try any cheese, but I have found that I prefer young goats and old cows. I don't like gray areas.

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.

Majestatis naturæ by ingenium (Genius equal to the majesty of nature.) [Inscribed ordered by King Louis XV for the base of a statue of Buffon placed at Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle de Paris.]

I'm never afraid, I'm just preparing for pain.

In France, Paul explained, good cooking was regarded as a combination of national sport and high art, and wine was always served with lunch and dinner. "The trick is moderation," he said.

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

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.

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.