France quotes

La flur de France as perdut. The flower of France is lost.

-Anonymous
c.1110  Chanson de Roland, l.2445.

Cam ye ower frae France? Cam ye doun by Lunnon? Saw ye Geordie Whelps And his bonnie woman? Were ye at the place Ca'd the Kittle Housie? Saw ye Geordie's grace Ridin'on a goosie?

-Anonymous
c.1715  'CamYe Ower Frae France?', stanza1. This  Jacobite song alludes to George I and his reputed fondness for visiting brothels.

France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme.

- Matthew Arnold
  The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems,'To a Republican FriendContinued'.

   We shall never sheath the sword which we have not lightly drawn until Belgium recovers in full measure all and more than all that she has sacrificed, until France is adequatelyassured against the menace of aggression, until the rights of the smaller nationalities of Europe are placed upon an unassailable foundation and until the military domination of Prussia is wholly and finally destroyed.

-Asquith
  Speech at the Guildhall, London, 9 Nov.

France, me'  re des arts, des armes et des lois. France, mother of arts, of weapons and of laws.

-Joachim du Bellay
  Les Regrets, no.9.

My map of Africa liesin Europe.Here lies Russia and here lies France, and we are in the middle. That is my map of Africa.

-of)
Remarking on his preoccupation with European, as opposed to colonial, territorial concerns. Quoted in  A  J P  Taylor The Struggle for Mastery in Europe1848^1918 (1954), p.294. Canadian scholar anduniversity administrator, President of the University ofToronto (1958^71).

Our special task, as French Canadians, is to insert into America the spirit of Christian France.

- Henri Bourassa
  La Langue, Gardienne de la Foi.

France was long a despotism tempered by epigrams.

-Thomas Carlyle
  History of the French Revolution, vol.3, bk.7, ch.7.

We shall not flag or fail.We shall go on to the end.We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island whatever the cost may be.We shall fight on the beaches, weshall fight onthelanding grounds, weshall fight inthe fields and in thestreets, we shall fight inthehills.We shall never surrender.

- Lord Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill
  Speech in the House of Commons,4  Jun, after the Dunkirk evacuation.

La France a perdu une bataille! Mais la France n'a pas perdu la guerre! France has lost a battle! But France has not lost the war!

- Charles de Gaulle
  Proclamation,18  Jun. Collected in Discours, messages et de  clarations du Ge  ne  ral de Gaulle (1941).

Puisque ceux qui avaient le devoir de manier l'e  pe  e de la France l'ont laisse  e tomber brise  e, moi, j'ai ramasse   le tron c° on du glaive. Since those whose duty it was to wield the sword of Francehave let it fall shattered totheground,Ihavetaken up the broken blade.

- Charles de Gaulle
  Speech,13  Jul.

Vive le Que  bec! Vive le Que  bec libre! Vive le Canada fran c° ais! Vive la France!

- Charles de Gaulle
  Address to the crowd before Montreal's City Hall, 24  Jul. The slogan'Que  bec libre' was identified with the separatist cause.

When I want to know what France thinks, I ask myself.

- Charles de Gaulle
Sons of France.

   Fair stood the wind for France When we our sails advance, Nor now to prove our chance Longer will tarry.

- Michael Drayton
  Poems Lyrick and Pastorall,'To the Cambro-Britons and Their Harp, His Ballad of  Agincourt', describing Henry V's expedition to France,1415.

Intellectuals can tell themselves anything, sell themselves any bill of goods, which is why they were so often patsies for the ruling classes in nineteenth-century France and England, or twentieth-century Russia and America.

- Lillian Florence Hellman
   Journal entry, 30  Apr. Collected in  An Unfinished Woman (1969), ch.13.

It is better to sniff France's dung for a while than eat China's all our lives. 405

-Ho Chi Minh originally NguyenThatThanh
   Attributed. Quoted in  J Facouture Ho Chi-Minh.

L'Angleterre toujours sera s½ur de la France. England will always be the sister of France.

-Victor Marie Hugo
  Cromwell, act 2, sc.2.

The best thing I know between France and England isthe sea.

- Douglas William Jerrold
The Wit and Opinions of Douglas Jerrold (published1859),'The Anglo-French  Alliance'.

And as for you, archers, soldiers, gentlemen, and all otherswhoare besieging Orleans,depart in God'sname to your own country† I assure you that wherever I find your people in France I shall fight them, and pursue them, and expel them from here, whether they will or not.

-StJoan of Arc
  Letter to the English at Poitiers, 22 Mar. Quoted in Les Proce'  s de Jeanne d'Arc (translated by C Larrington), p.33.

Like Brighton Pierall right as far as it goes, but inadequate for getting to France.

- Neil Gordon Kinnock
  On Conservative European policy, House of Commons, 2 Feb.

France is revolutionary or she is nothing at all. The revolution of1789 is her political religion.

- Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine
  Histoire des Girondins.

How glorious it would be in the eyes of God and men, if we managed to hunt the Catholics from England, follow them to France, and, like the bold King of Sweden, rouse the Protestants in France, plant our religion in Paris by agreement or force, and go from there to Rome to chase the Antichrist and burn the town whence superstition comes.

- David Leslie
  Said to Lord Hume, Council of Scottish Nobles,  Aug.

   What perished in France in1830 was not respect for a dynasty, but respect for anything.

-Louis Philippe known as  the Citizen King
Of the Revolution which brought him to power. Quoted in A J P  Taylor From Napoleon to the Second International (1993).

I have chased the English out of France more easily than my fathereverdid, for my fatherdrovethemout by force of arms, whereas I have driven them out with venison pies and good wine.

-Louis XI
  Said after the signing of the Treaty of Picquigny, Sep.

'My father is deceased.Come,Gaveston, And share the kingdom with thy dearest friend.' Ah, words that make me surfeit with delight! What greater bliss can hap to Gaveston Than live and be the favourite of a king? Sweet prince, I come; these, these thyamorous lines Might have enforced me to have swum from France, And, like Leander, gasped upon the sand, So thou would'st smile, and take me in thy arms.

- Christopher Marlowe
c.1591  Gaveston is reading a letter from King Edward. Edward II (published1594), act1, sc.1.

The French are a logical people, which is one reason the English dislike them so intensely. The other is that they own France, a country which we have always judged to be much too good for them.

- Robert Morley
  A Musing Morley,'France and the French'.

France has more need of me than I have of France.

-Napoleon I
  Speech to Corps Le  gislatif, Paris, 31 Dec.

Put your brilliant mind to work for†dresses for public appearances†that I would wear if Jack were President of France.

-Jacqueline Lee Kennedy ne  e Bouvier Onassis
  Letter to Oleg Cassini,13 Dec. Quoted in Oleg Cassini In My Fashion (1987).

Some doubt the courage of the Negro.Go to Haiti and stand on those fifty thousand graves of the best soldiers France ever had, and ask them what they thinkof the Negro's sword.

-Wendell Phillips
Address onToussaint l'Ouverture, referring to theWar of Haitian Independence,1804.

La famille des Bourbons est un poignard que l'e  tranger en1814 a laisse   dans le c½ur de la France: changez le manche comme il vous plaira, dorez la lame si vous voulez, le poignard reste poignard. The Bourbon family is a dagger whichthe foreigner left in the heart of France in1814: changethe haft if you please, gild the blade if you will, the dagger remains a dagger.

- Edgar Quinet
  ¼uvres, vol.3, p.267.

En France particulie'  rement, les mots ont plus d'empire que les ide  es. In France particularly, words reign over ideas.

- Sir Sydney Samuelson
  Indiana, pt.1, ch.2.

  That sweet enemy, France.

- Nevil originally Nevil Shute Norway Shute
Astrophel and Stella, sonnet 41.

En France, on e  tudie les hommes; en Allemagne, les livres. In France, they study men; in Germany, books.

- Germaine Necker, Baronne de Stae«  l
  De l'Allemagne.

They order, said I, this matter better in France.

- Laurence Sterne
  A SentimentalJourney, opening words.

There lived a singer in France of old By the tideless dolorous midland sea. In a land of sand and ruin and gold There shone one woman, and none but she.

- Algernon Charles Swinburne
  Poems and Ballads,'TheTriumph ofTime'.

France had shown a light to all men, preached a Gospel, all men's good; Celtic Demos rose a Demon, shriek'd and slaked the light with blood.

-Tennyson
  'Locksley Hall SixtyYears After', l.89^90.

InTurkey it was always1952, in Malaysia1937; Afghanistan was1910 and Bolivia1949. It is twenty years ago inthe Soviet Union, ten in Norway, five in France.It is always last year in Australia and next week in Japan.

- Paul Edward Theroux
  The Kingdom ByThe Sea, ch.1.

Now all the roads lead to France And heavy is the tread Of the living: but the dead Returning lightly dance.

- (Philip) Edward Thomas
  'Roads'.

The world is in flames today for a cause that interests Russia first and foremost; a cause that is essentially the cause of the Slavs, and which is of no concern to France or to England.

- Sergei Yulevich Witte
  Said to the French Ambassador,10 Sep.