42 Quotes About French

The only French word I know is oui, which means “yes, ” and only recently did I learn it’s spelled o-â€â€¹u-â€â€¹i and not w-â€â€¹e-â€â€¹e. Stephanie Perkins

Nothing is more difficult than competing with myth Unknown

Un soir qu'ils étaient couchés l'un près de l'autre, comme elle lui demandait d'inventer un poème qui commencerait par je connais un beau pays, il s'exécuta sur-le-champ. Je connais un beau pays Il est de l'or et d'églantine Tout le monde s'y sourit Ah quelle aventure fine Les tigres y sont poltrons Les agneaux ont fière mine À tous les vieux vagabonds Ariane donne des tartines. Alors, elle lui baisa le la main, et il eut honte de cette admiration. Albert Cohen

Haleine contre haleine, échauffe-moi la vie, Mille et mille baisers donne-moi je te prie, Amour veut tout sans nombre, amour n’a point de loi Translated: Breath against breath warms my life. A thousand kisses give me I pray thee. Love says it all without number, love knows no law. Pierre De Ronsard

But genius, and even great talent, springs less from seeds of intellect and social refinement superior to those of other people than from the faculty of transforming and transposing them. To heat a liquid with an electric lamp requires not the strongest lamp possible, but one of which the current can cease to illuminate, can be diverted so as to give heat instead of light. To mount the skies it is not necessary to have the most powerful of motors, one must have a motor which, instead of continuing to run along the earth's surface, intersecting with a vertical line the horizontal line which it began by following, is capable of converting its speed into lifting power. Similarly, the men who produce works of genius are not those who live in the most delicate atmosphere, whose conversation is the most brilliant or their culture the most extensive, but those who have had the power, ceasing suddenly to live only for themselves, to transform their personality into a sort of mirror, in such a way that their life, however mediocre it may be socially and even, in a sense, intellectually, is reflected by it, genius consisting in reflecting power and not int he intrinsic quality of the scene reflected. . Marcel Proust

So it was perfectly possible that there were men who liked shopping, men who understood exactly what it was all about, but Mma Ramotwe had yet to meet such a man. Maybe they existed elsewhere - in France, perhaps - but they did not seem to be much in evidence in Botswana. Alexander McCall Smith

You will do well to take advantage of Madame's short residence to get up your French a little... You will be glad of this, my dear, when you have reached France, where you will find they speak nothing else. Unknown

The past has given us much too many bad answers for us not to see that the mistakes were in the questions themselves. There is no need to choose between the fetishism of spontaneity and the organization control; between the "come one, come all" of activist networks and the discipline of hierarchy; between acting desperately now and waiting desperately for later; between bracketing that which is to be lived and experimented in the name of paradise that seems more and more like a hell the longer it is put off and flogging the dead horse of how planting carrots is enough to leave this nightmare. The Invisible Committee

Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling. Gustave Flaubert

Bonjour madame! ” , he was coming out of the bathroom when he saw her in the corridor. He was in his blue towel, wrapped around his well built waistline. Rrlene blushed as she saw him semi naked but couldn’t help looking at his bare chest, which ran down to his flat stomach, further covered down by his long towel. His hair all wet, and there were still droplets on his shoulders. She was moving her eyes carefully from one part to another, appreciating everything she saw with her soft gaze, which was kind of stuck on his muscled up chest and she wondered he must have done a lot of tour de france and twisted her lips with a naughty smile. Ruche La

I wonder why I ever bothered with sex, he thought; there’s nothing in this breathing world so gratifying as an artfully placed semicolon. Camille Desmoulins

I should point out, creating one's own style, as much as is required to illustrate one of the aspects, the golden seam of language, involves beginning again at once, in a different manner, adopting the guise of a pupil when one risked becoming pedantic - thus by a shrugging of one's shoulders, disconcerting some with their genuflecting stance, and immortalizing oneself in multiple, impersonal, or even anonymous forms in response to the gesture of arms raised in stupefaction. Unknown

I transform "Work" in its analytic meaning (the Work of Mourning, the Dream-Work) into the real "Work" - of writing. Roland Barthes

An old walrus-faced waiter attended to me; he had the knack of pouring the coffee and the hot milk from two jugs, held high in the air, and I found this entrancing, as if he were a child's magician. One day he said to me - he had some English - "Why are you sad?"" I'm not sad, " I said, and began to cry. Sympathy from strangers can be ruinous." You should not be sad, " he said, gazing at me with his melancholy, leathery walrus eyes. "It must be the love. But you are young and pretty, you will have time to be sad later." The French are connoisseurs of sadness, they know all the kinds. This is why they have bidets. "It is criminal, the love, " he said, patting my shoulder. "But none is worse. Margaret Atwood

The very fact that a Frenchman was prepared, after tow minutes of conversation, to be so friendly towards anyone, especially one who had come from England, made me restless. Tahir Shah

What is the French word for rain? Le rain? La rain? Is the rain masculine or feminine? It’s such a bother that it must be masculine. Libba Bray

Sunday lay so heavily in the air as to become almost nauseating. Maigret used to claim openly, half seriously, half in fun, that he had always had the knack of sensing a Sunday from his bed, without even having to open his eyes. Georges Simenon

Language is the source of misunderstandings. Unknown

What's the trick to remembering that a sandwich is masculine? What qualities does it share with anyone in possession of a penis? I'll tell myself that a sandwich is masculine because if left alone for a week or two, it will eventually grow a beard. David Sedaris

Adam was charming and spoke perfect French. Like many anglophones in Montréal, he actually spoke French better than we did. They knew exactly which verbs to use in the same way that people knew which utensils to use while eating at a fancy dinner. It was very proper because they learned it from books. They didn’t know slang or how to curse. They didn’t know how to do anything other than be proper and reserved. It was state-sponsored, dry-clean-only French. . Heather ONeill

The true structure of the Welsh grammar will be revealed only when we look at sentences slightly more complicated than its basic VSO pattern. Welsh is no different from the rest of the world: it does involve an extra step, but even that isn't all that unusual. Welsh is like Shakespearean English on acid: the verb always - not just in questions - moves to the beginning. Alternatively, it can be viewed as taking the French grammar a step further. While the verb stops at tense in French, it moves further in Welsh to a position that traditional grammarians call the complementizer (don't ask). Charles Yang

To pronounce French properly you must have within you a deep antipathy, not to say scorn, for some of the most sacred of the Anglo-Saxon prejudices. Rex Stout

Back in New York I took full advantage of my status as a native speaker. I ran my mouth to shop clerks and listened in on private conversations, realising I’d gone an entire month without hearing anyone complaint that they were “stressed out”. David Sedaris

A lie travels round the world while truth is putting her boots on. French Proverb

From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Date: Jan 7 at 7:23 AMSubject: Re: Really?On the Tumblr-you mean creeksecrets? ...But I really don't think I'm wrong. Jacques a dit. Right?-BlueSo, Yeah, I've been careless. I guess I left a trail of clues. and I shouldn't be surprised that Blue put them together. Maybe I kind of wanted him to. Jacques a dit is "Simon Says" in French, by the way, And it's obviously not as clever as I thought it was. . Becky Albertalli

Hauriou, became a crown witness for us when he confirmed this connection in 1916, in the midst of WWI: “The revolution of 1789 had no other goal than absolute access to the writing of legal statutes and the systematic destruction of customary institutions. It resulted in a state of permanent revolution because the mobility of the writing of laws did not provide for the stability of certain customary institutions, because the forces of change were stronger than the forces of stability. Social and political life in France was completely emptied of institutions and was only able to provisionally maintain itself by sudden jolts spurred by the heightened morality. Carl Schmitt

The essence and value of the law lies in its stability and durability (...), in its “relative eternity.” Only then does the legislator’s self-limitation and the independence of the law-bound judge find an anchor. The experiences of the French Revolution showed how an unleashed pouvoir législatif could generate a legislative orgy. Carl Schmitt

Mais, vrai, J'ai trop pleure! Les aubes sont navrantes. What a sad and beautiful line that is. I'd always hoped that someday I'd be able to use it. Donna Tartt

You owe it to your loved ones as well as yourself to know and pursue your pleasures. Mireille Guiliano

I have seafoam in my veins, I understand the language of waves. Unknown

(Regarding the Roosevelt Tram along Queensboro Bridge):"They had it renovated by the French. French cars. French cables. Cables that surrender! Would you ride in a tram that surrenders? I sure as hell wouldn't! Camilla Monk

It’s not an ordinary cash wash, Jake, ” Jean smiled. “C’est très spécial... et il a un secret! ”“ I understood special and secret, ” Jake said. “That’s about it. Zechariah Barrett