French quotes
The Frenchwant to attack, the Americans want to bomb, and the British want to have another meeting.
The French Revolution is merely the herald of a far greaterand much more solemn revolution, whichwill be the last The hour has come for founding the Republic of equalsthat great refuge open to every man.
The French are wiser than they seem, and the Spaniards seem wiser than theyare.
Mayonnaise, n.One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.
Our special task, as French Canadians, is to insert into America the spirit of Christian France.
It is not that the French are not profound, but they all express themselves so well that we are led to take their geese for swans.
My scrofulous French novel On grey paper with blunt type!
Speak in French when you can't think of the English for a thingturn out your toes as you walkand remember who you are!
'Do you know Languages? What's the French for fiddle- de-dee?' 'Fiddle-de-dee's not English,'Alice replied gravely. 'Who ever said it was?'said the Red Queen. Alice thought she saw a way out of the difficulty this time.'If you'll tell me what language'fiddle-de-dee' is, I'll tell you the French for it!'she exclaimed triumphantly. Butthe Red Queendrewherself up rather stiffly, and said 'Queens never make bargains.' 197
Oh, the Germans classify, but the French arrange.
To God I speak Spanish, to women Italian, to men French, and to my horseGerman.
Ful weel she soong the service dyvyne, Entuned in hir nose ful semely, And Frenssh she spak ful faire and fetisly, After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe, For Frenssh of Parys was to hire unknowe.
Imagine the Lord talking French! Aside from a few odd wordsin Hebrew,Itook it forgrantedthat God had never spoken anything but the most dignified English.
The French will only be united under the threat of danger. How else can one govern a country that produces 246 different types of cheese?
Bouillabaisse is only good because cooked by the French, who, if they cared to try, could produce an excellent and nutritious substitute out of cigar stumps and empty matchboxes.
Je suis autant Chinois que Fran c° ais. I am as much Chinese as French.
Avery unique cata French Canadian Hinayana Buddhist Beat Catholic savant.
During my seven years in office,I was in love with seventeen million French women I know this declaration will inspire irony and that English language readers will find it very French.
You get all the French-fries the President can't get to.
Weep not for little Le onie Abducted by a French Marquis! Though loss of honour was a wrench Just think how it's improved her French.
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.
The Frenchhad a moremartial air thanthe English.There seemed to be a species of military instinct in all classes. No young man appeared to have finished his education till after a bloody campaign They were at this singular period, without the least exaggeration, a century behind us in notions of legal and moral responsibility.
La langue fran c° aise n'est point fixe e et ne se fixera point. French is not a static language and will never become static.
Greater lovethanthis,hesaid, nomanhaththat a manlay down his wife for his friend.Go thou and do likewise. Thus, or words to that effect, saith Zarathustra, sometime regius professor of French letters to the university of Oxtail.
You are ordered abroad as a soldier of the King to help our French comrades against the invasion of a common enemy In this new experience you may find temptations both in wine and women.You must entirely resist both temptations, and while treating all women with perfect courtesy, you should avoid any intimacy.Do your duty bravely. Fear God. Honour the King.
New York is one of the capitals of the world and Los Angeles is a constellation of plastic. San Francisco is a lady, Boston has become Urban Renewal, Philadelphia and Baltimore and Washington blink like dull diamonds in the smog of Eastern Megalopolis, and New Orleans is unremarkable past the French Quarter. Detroit is a one- trade town, Pittsburgh has lost its golden triangle. St Louis has become the golden arch of the corporation, and nights in Kansas City close early. The oil depletion allowance makes Houston and Dallas naught but checkerboards for this sort of game. But Chicago is a great American city. Perhaps it is the last of the great American cities.
A spectre is haunting Europethe spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holyalliance to exorcise this spectre; Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police spies.
Oh some are fond of Spanish wine, and some are fond of French, And some'll swallow tay and stuff fit only for a wench. 559
The French are nice people. I allow them to sing and to write, and they allow me to do whatever I like.
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.
I started off in films as a kinga French king, admittedly, but nevertheless a king in MarieAntoinetteand stayed in that sort of income bracket.
What are we learning Frenchor thepianofor,Iwould like to know, if it is not to be sold to a man some day We have to cringe, and manoeuvre, and grimace for a husbanda husband who may be deaf orhavea hump if he is richa husband that may attack you in delirium tremens to-day if he makes a devout act of contrition for it to-morrow.
Our fathers have, in process of centuries, provided this realm, its colonies and wide dependencies, with a speech as malleable and pliant as Attic, dignified as Latin, masculine, yet free of Teutonic guttural, capable of being precise as French, dulcet as Italian, sonorous as Spanish, and captaining all these excellences to its service.
The things people had once held against her unconventional beautyun-American elegance, the taste for French clothes and French foodwere suddenly no longer liabilities but assets.
As the French say, there are three sexesmen, women, and clergymen.
Now hang it! quoth I, as I look'd towards the French coasta man should know something of his own country too, before he goes abroad.
The French are polite, but it is often mere ceremonious politeness. A Russian imbues his polite things with a heartiness that compels belief in their sincerity.
We are all American at puberty; we die French.
An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English speaking audiences.
Into the face of the young manhad crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French.
Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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