To be an American is an ideal, whileto be a Frenchman is a fact.
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 ZidaneThere are three things, young gentlemen, which you are constantly to bear in mind. Firstly, you must always implicitly obey orders, without attempting to form any opinion of your own respecting their propriety. Secondly, you must consider every man your enemy who speaks ill of your king; and thirdly, you must hate a Frenchman, as you do the devil.
horatio nelsonA 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 BuchwaldThe 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-beuveI praise the Frenchman; his remark was shrewd, "How sweet, how passing sweet is solitude." But grant me still a friend in my retreat, Whom I may whisper Solitude is sweet.
william cowperThe fame of the brave outlives him; his portion is immortality. What more flattering homage could we pay to the manes of Paul Jones, than to swear on his tomb to live or to die free? It is the vow, it is the watch-word of every Frenchman.
An Englishman, a Frenchman, and a Russian were arguing about the nationality of Adam and Eve. “They must have been English”, declares the Englishman. "Only a gentleman would share his last apple with a woman.” ”They were undoubtedly French", says, the Frenchman. “Who else could seduce a woman so easily?” "I think they were Russians", says the Russian. "After all, who else could walk stark-naked, feed on one apple between the two of them and think they are in Paradise?"
Judson K. CorneliusIt is a misfortune for Anglo-American friendship that the two countries are supposed to have a common language. A Frenchman in America is not expected to talk like an American, but an Englishman speaking his mother tongue is thought to be affected and giving himself airs. Or else he is taken for a German or a Dutchman, and is complemented on his grammatical mastery of the language of another nation.
In old times, you see, a man who wanted to educate himself a Frenchman, for instance would have set to work to study all the classics and theologians and tragedians and historians and philosophers, and, you know, all the intellectual work that came in his way. But in our day he goes straight for the literature of negation, very quickly assimilates all the extracts of the science of negation, and he's ready.