French Quotations

Life leaps like a geyser for those who drill through the rock of inertia.

Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great.

It is pure illusion to think that an opinion that passes down from century to century, from generation to generation, may not be entirely false.

In the Middle Ages, I think the French kings murdered slightly fewer of their family members than the English kings, though I haven't actually counted the heads.

I always try to slip healthy things by my kids. I give them sweet potato French fries and fake chicken nuggets.

Here in Russia,, in many cities, people are irritated by Caucasian intrusion. Caucasians come from foreign countries; they are ubiquitous: in markets, shops, hotels, restaurants. They misbehave, and in this sense we have feelings similar to those that the Germans have toward the Turks and the French toward Algerians.

Success is a process, a quality of mind and way of being, an outgoing affirmation of life.

He who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.

Much talking is the cause of danger. Silence is the means of avoiding misfortune. The talkative parrot is shut up in a cage. Other birds, without speech, fly freely about.

Marriage, in life, is like a duel in the midst of a battle.

The more things change, the more they are the same.

What would you do in order to marry Sophia Loren? I think anyone would become French to marry Sophia Loren. Love was more important than nationality. The cultural heritage of that country and my parents is so interlaced that it really doesn't matter that a piece of paper tells them they're French.

A month before the season I stop putting ketchup on my french fries.

Any quality player can adjust well to the different demands. It is like a good tennis player who is expected to adjust to the clay at the French Open, the grass at Wimbledon, the hard courts of the U.S. and the heat of the Australian Open. A professional is expected to do all that.

When I was 14 years old, I was with my parents at a restaurant. Some people came in and said, 'Would you like to be a model?' I went to see them, and they said, 'You have to lose seven kilos.' I said, 'No, I want to eat French fries.'

The universe is not fair and it is never going to be fair.

I learned French in Tunis, along with Arabic. I also learned French history. I knew the entire history of the kings of France. And I was fascinated by Versailles.

We need a reason to speak but none to keep silent.

Pleasure only starts once the worm has got into the fruit, to become delightful happiness must be tainted with poison.

There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice.

The greatest danger of bombs is in the explosion of stupidity that they provoke.

From the days of biplanes and silk scarves, the aviator has been the archetype of masculine glamour. Aviators have personified national ideals, from French elan to Soviet party discipline. They've inspired lust and admiration. They've turned sunglasses and short, utilitarian leather jackets into fashion statements.

The people of Texas are rightly proud of their own, just like the French and the Italians, but visiting artists have often been given a shot in the history of art.

A sensible woman should be guided by her head when taking a husband, and by her heart when taking a lover.

It's true, I'm the youngest, highest-grossing French director. I have a few records, but no one knows or simply doesn't care. That's good, because I like that. Ultimately, I want to keep working, making a lot of movies, and get better at it. It's about finding great scripts and bringing them to life.

If I have been of service, if I have glimpsed more of the nature and essence of ultimate good, if I am inspired to reach wider horizons of thought and action, if I am at peace with myself, it has been a successful day.

Both Iraq and Syria are a fissile mixture of ethnicities and religions thrown together after Versailles by departing French and British imperialists and only kept together by Baathist tyranny and violence.

Her godmother simply touched her with her wand, and, at the same moment, her clothes were turned into cloth of gold and silver, all decked with jewels.

If a wise man behaves prudently, how can he be overcome by his enemies? Even a single man, by right action, can overcome a host of foes.

As the winter set in with its customary Canadian severity the real trouble of the French began. They did not suffer from the cold, but they were dying of scurvy.

It was in the Papal States that I studied the Roman Question. I traveled over every part of the country; I conversed with men of all opinions, examined things very closely, and collected my information on the spot.

The French Revolution actualised the Enlightenment's greatest intellectual breakthrough: detaching the political from the theocratic.

When we hide our failings from others, we seek to hide them from ourselves, and it is in the latter attempt that we are most successful.

We don't love qualities; we love a person; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as their qualities.

A French Republican is a Republican who beats up on conservatives and is constantly praising the Democrats and contributing to the massive spending in this country while they go home and pretend otherwise.

Your child is happy. What else could you want?

Weak minds exaggerate too much the wrong done to the Africans.

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

It is strange that modesty is the rule for women when what they most value in men is boldness.

Also, for a team as strong as like ours, the Tour will always remain the biggest goal of the whole year, and personally I will certainly concentrate most of my energy on this race.

Success is not a place at which one arrives but rather the spirit with which one undertakes and continues the journey.

Before the scene, before the paragraph, even before the sentence, comes the word. Individual words and phrases are the building blocks of fiction, the genes that generate everything else. Use the right words, and your fiction can blossom. The French have a phrase for it - le mot juste - the exact right word in the exact right position.

I feel French is very close to Urdu. Both languages are beautiful. Sadly, their beauty is lost in translation.

When many work together for a goal, Great things may be accomplished. It is said a lion cub was killed By a single colony of ants.

A lot of our animation projects are co-productions with French production companies.

I have been further enlightened by the conversation and correspondence of some illustrious Italians, whom I would gladly name, were I not afraid of exposing them to danger.

It's like when people talk about driving F1 cars in the rain. I have absolutely no problem with it.

It wasn't all frustration. I've had a lot of good times with Ferrari as well.

Sushi is something very exclusive. It is not like a McDonald's, not like a hot dog, not like a French fry. It's very high-class cooking in Japan.

I've only got one wrinkle, and I'm sitting on it.

I didn't so much choose the film as director Claire Denis chose me.

I'm 50% Asian actually, so yes I was born in Paris but I feel more international than French so I can't talk about French women.

I would pretend to be the French lieutenant's woman. I was always a romantic. I still am, actually.

The easiest way to be cheated is to believe yourself to be more cunning than others.

Tom Ford once told me that he found French women sexier than American ones. He said: Americans are too clean . . . I took no offense.

Albert Camus's 'La Peste' - 'The Plague' - had an enormous impact on me when I read it in high school French class, and I chose my senior yearbook quote from it. In college, I wrote a philosophy class paper on Camus and Sartre, and again chose my yearbook quote from 'La Peste.'

My wife and I have spent most of our lives in France, and we are both pretty well bilingual, my wife more purely than I, since as a little girl she went to school in French Switzerland.

There is not less wit nor less invention in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that thought.

Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.

I have two much-beloved stovetop espresso pots at home, plus a couple French presses I couldn't resist buying because they were so pretty. If I had to imbibe at Starbucks, I'd want a mocha with an extra shot.

The flower is a jumble of thighs, the sun's harem - the most oriental thing imaginable.

Of course, if this season turns out to be terrible for me - if I get injured again and this prevents me from reaching a satisfying level, then I could change my decision again. But at this moment, it absolutely feels like the right thing for me to continue through 2003.

Testimony should be a philosophical problem and not limited to legal or historical contexts where it refers to the account of a witness who reports what he has seen.

Risk is essential. There is not growth of inspiration in staying within what is safe and comfortable. Once you find out what you do best, why not try something else?

Great affection is often the cause of violent animosity. The quarrels of men often arise from too great a familiarity.

I must use Ferrari to the maximum. My priority is to get results. Then we will see what happens.

The more English is heard in the world, the more gratifying it seems to speak French, and above all to know the culture of our country. They find a kind of French social grace in the language and culture.

As a rule, I try to avoid the French Quarter because of the crowds, especially Bourbon Street. But hey, some people love it. A great, wild, adult thing to see is the costume competition in front of the bar Oz on Bourbon early morning on Fat Tuesday.

The French are very bizarre. There is this collective depiction: 'We're in decline, we're being assailed, we must protect ourselves.'

But the privileges that one has enjoyed and exploited can sometimes turn against you: nobody thinks of you as a director, you are always an actress.

The French were generous in giving us assistance in corps and army artillery, with its personnel, and we were confident from the start of our superiority over the enemy in guns of all calibers.

And all around is the desert; a corner of the mournful kingdom of sand.

Not unless I do all these ancient and Italian or French or Baroque in the beginnning, I do German.

Cracked was a very short warrior, whereas Marley was a pacifist warrior.

Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer.

Short of genius a rich man cannot even imagine poverty.

Gradually I became aware of details: a company of French soldiers was marching through the streets of the town. They broke formation, and went in single file along the communication trench leading to the front line. Another group followed them.

Rushing the ball is all about ball control. If you run the ball, you control the clock. If you control the clock, you usually control the game.

We had common interests in the beauty of the French language. We both had a tremendous love of jazz. We shared dreams of getting married and having a family, living in the country, leading an idyllic life.

The joy of the mind is the measure of its strength.

I'm very aware that to reach the same level and have the same amount of success will be extremely difficult.

Oh, the miraculous energy that flows between two people who care enough to get beyond surfaces and games, who are willing to take the risks of being totally open, of listening, of responding with the whole heart. How much we can do for each other.

'I realize they say we are 'wacko' and 'out there, but we are the most rational of all.

It may be doubtful, at first, whether a person is an enemy or friend. Meat, if not properly digested, becomes poison; But poison, if used rightly, may turn medicinal.

Readers want to have the confidence that you understand the era in which the book is set, so for 'The Perfumer's Secret,' I needed to know everything about the First World War from a French perspective. I had to understand those people and that town in 1914.

But as the Pope has a long arm, which might reach me in France, I have gone a little out of the way to tell him the plain truths contained in these pages.

I'm not very into pastas or heavy foods like meat, but pastries, especially if they come from a really nice French bakery, I go crazy over! I try to allow myself those little treats in the morning for breakfast, then I have a lighter lunch.

I have often said that just as the French revolution, for instance, understood itself through antiquity, I think our time can be understood through the French revolution. It is quite a natural process to use other times to understand your own time.

I like junk food, French fries, hamburgers - I love it.

Just as the individual is not alone in the group, nor any one in society alone among the others, so man is not alone in the universe.

I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse.

What I like about the American woman is she usually has a lot of dynamism. In the U.S., women have a tendency to go forward, to be more exaggerated than in Europe. Many times the rough ideas come from the States, then they are refined in Europe. The American women and the French women are still the best-dressed.

The three great moments of my life had to be the concerts of Ellington in 1938, Dizzy in '48, and Ella in '52.

The British Empire passed quickly and with less humiliation than its French and Dutch counterparts, but decades later, the vicious politics of partition still seems to define India and Pakistan.

The true science and study of man is man.

I'm a breakfast type of guy. Don't get me wrong. I can cook, I'm kinda nice on the burner, but I enjoy making breakfast. I do it all... Scrambled eggs... French toast... Pancakes... Breakfast is my thing.

I like French fries; I like mashed. I love potatoes.

I would like to spend more time with Spanish poetry. I know French better than Spanish, but Spanish was my first language, and my father spoke it to us.

I wish I were shyly, quietly intriguing, like Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, like someone French and fashionable who knows how to twirl her ladylike locks just so and walk adroitly on kitten heels, who is all gesture and whisper - but I am unfortunately forward and forthright: When I am interested in a man, he absolutely knows it.

When I started writing, the first thing that came out was in English. I liked a few French things, but they were very overwhelming.