France Quotes

I wanted to have a title that wasn't in English so that someone in France, for instance, could ask for 'dix-huit' or the someone in Japan could ask for 'juhachi.'

If you have to have 25 French paratroopers to guard a single synagogue, it means that life is not healthy in France for Jews

With words alone, Gail Godwin has created an important piece of music about a love which death can only increase and deepen. Yes, and Frances Halsband's illustrations are a haunting countermelody.

I’m stuck somewhere a small island in the middle of the Atlantic where I’m alone. Because in France, they’re like, no, you’re not like us, you’re not a French guy. And in America, they’re like, you’re not like us. I’m really alone in my little thing.

Those who claim France as a nation-state is obsolete are wrong.

France may one day exist no more, but the Dordogne will live on just as dreams live on and nourish the souls of men.

When Louis XIV assumed the reins of government France suddenly and wonderfully came to her maturity; it was as if the whole nation had burst into splendid flower.

You know, they say in France that translation is like a woman: she is either beautiful or faithful.

The way financing for independent movies goes is great. You get the money from the guy who's actually doing the distribution in France. You say, "Do you want a piece of this movie?" And he's got to sell this movie to get his money back. That's the brains of it; that's the genius of this financing. "You want Germany? Give us a million dollars and you've got Germany."

He had one illusion - France; and one disillusion - mankind, including Frenchmen.

Gardens do offer a temporal tableau and certainly mean differently in different eras and indeed geographies (think of the formal gardens in France).

Franco-American relations have been, and always will be, both conflictual and excellent. The U.S. finds France unbearable with its pretensions; we find the U.S. unbearable with its hegenomism. But deep down, we remember that the 'boys' - came to help us two times, just as the Americans remember that the French helped them with their independence. So there will be sparks but no fire, because a real bond exists.

Polemical debates happen all the time in France.

Thanks to the Tour de France, riding the Champs-Elysees has a great cycling history.

The phenomenon of university creative writing programs doesn't exist in France. The whole idea is regarded as a novelty, or an oddity.

France is hypocritical and cowardly. I sometimes think that, having been invaded by the Germans, we'd be run better today.

It's not my job. The Weinstein company, it's their job to convince people. My job was to make the movie. That's what I did. I know what we did in France was to have the maximum screenings just to let people talk about the movie and say they enjoyed the movie.

Basically [United States and France] said "We will use nuclear weapons whenever it suits our purposes to do so." So this expansion of doctrines regarding possible use of nuclear weapons makes them more, you know, sort of, salient and important and so it's increasing the perceived political value of nuclear weapons and therefore causing or contributing to possible proliferation.

In The Care and Management of Lies the wonderfully talented Winspear writes irresistibly about the First World War, both in the trenches of France and the fields of England. Her richly complex characters walk right off the page and into our imaginations, as we fight with them, farm with them, cook with them. I devoured this dazzling novel.

I’ve always had this idea that if you’re going to try something, if you’re going to expend that first big block of effort and energy to participate - whether it’s riding the Tour de France or applying for a new job or coaching your daughter’s soccer team - you might as well go ahead and give whatever else it takes to win, I mean, I’m going to be there no matter what, right? Why not go ahead and get the victory?

We have Trumpist (ph) tendencies in Europe. Look up Marine Le Pen in France. Look at the Five Star Movement headed by a clown by profession, Beppe Grillo, in Italy.

Hello Frances, I have just been to health class, and I was wondering how your feminine parts were developing.

There arent many great passages written about food, but I love one by George Millar, who worked for the SOE in the second world war and wrote a book called Horned Pigeon. He had been on the run and hadnt eaten for a week, and his description of the cheese fondue he smells in the peasant kitchen of a house in eastern France is unbelievable.

In France there are, I think, less than one per cent of people who are too skinny.

We have a saying in France. A dog doesn't make a cat.

My son loves the Hotel du Cap, in the south of France.

If President Bush is serious about genocide, an immediate priority is to stop the cancer of Darfur from spreading further, which means working with France to shore up Chad and the Central African Republic.

It gave me a chance to re-evaluate my life and my career. Cancer certainly gives things a new perspective. I would not have won the Tour de France if I had not had cancer. It gave me new strength and focus.

I was raised in California during the Second World War and into the '50s and everything was fine, everything was great. The sun always shone, everybody looked healthy and wore ties and smoked in restaurants, and there were cars for everybody - except us, because I came from a lower class neighbourhood. But [in France] I realised there was a different point of view, so when I came back to America a year and a half later I was much more focused on my own country culturally and politically.

Do we really want to travel in hermetically sealed popemobiles through the rural provinces of France, Mexico and the Far East, eating only in Hard Rock Cafes and McDonalds? Or do we want to eat without fear, tearing into the local stew, the humble taqueria's mystery meat, the sincerely offered gift of a lightly grilled fish head? I know what I want. I want it all. I want to try everything once.

In England, philosophers are honoured, respected; they rise to public offices, they are buried with the kings... In France warrants are issued against them, they are persecuted, pelted with pastoral letters: Do we see that England is any the worse for it?

It {France} may be the only country in the world where the rich are sometimes brilliant.

I think that France, Germany, Spain, Holland and England will join Brazil in the semi-finals.

In France, the leader of Jacobinism perished on the guillotine; with us, the change of leadership was achieved by means of arrest and banishment. The technique of the process is gentler, but its essence is the same.

The ESM, the European Stability Mechanism, is not funded by Germany alone. Twenty-seven percent of the bailout package comes from Germany. Italy and France together cover a total of 38 percent. That's reality. It makes no sense to say that everyone wants to get at Germany's money.

I have a cultural background that's shaped in England, France and Germany. Bringing that in is nice, in terms of how an actor plays a role or speaks in an interview.

On June 14, 1998, I pushed off under quiet gray skies from Nags Head, N.C, in the American Pearl, a 23 foot long boat made of plywood and fiberglass. I planned to row 3,637 miles across the North Atlantic to France. I was alone. There were no chase vessels. No one planned to drop food or equipment to me along the way. The physical goal was easy to explain: I was attempting to do something no American and no woman had ever done - to row solo across an ocean.

I started rowing in December 1995. The place was Association Nautique Faontainbleau in France. A friend of mine from middle school told me that I should join him 3 times a week for rowing because my hands were so big that I would'nt require oars to row.

24.9 percent of American children live in poverty, while the proportions in Germany, France and Italy are 8.6, 7.4 and 10.5 percent. And once born on the wrong side of the tracks, Americans are more likely to stay there than their counterparts in Europe. Those born to better-off families are more likely to stay better off. America is developing an aristocracy of the rich and a serfdom of the poor - the inevitable result of a twenty-year erosion of its social contract.

Papa, do you like my new friend?" Frances Catherine asked when they were halfway across the field. "I surely do." "Can I keep her?" "For the love of...No, you can't keep her. She isn't a puppy. You can be her friend, though," he hastily added before his daughter could argue with him. "Forever, papa?" She 'd asked her father that question, but Judith answered her. "Forever," she shyly whispered. Frances Catherine reached across her father's chest to take hold of Judith's hand. "Forever," she pledged.

In April, we cannot see sunflowers in France, so we might say the sunflowers do not exist. But the local farmers have already planted thousands of seeds, and when they look at the bare hills, they may be able to see the sunflowers already. The sunflowers are there. They lack only the conditions of sun, heat, rain and July. Just because we cannot see them does not mean that they do not exist.

For some reason I'm more appreciated in France than I am back home. The subtitles must be incredibly good.

I think I was pretty much hated in France. The French press ignored me. There was a movement when the children of celebrities faced strong animosity.

The United States is the most indebted country in the world. It has almost 17 billion dollars of debt with the rest of the world while living off the world's savings. They are living off the savings of the people of Greece, the savings of the people of Spain, France etc. All of those countries that save their reserves in the banks in dollars are simply financing the American economy, and that is why the average American citizen consumes two and a half times more than their income.

There are too many coming from different countries. When we started, foreign players were in the minority. All the best players from Spain, France, Brazil, Argentina are going to England. And Ireland is bound to suffer.

Christians are beginning to lose the spirit of intolerance which animated them: experience has shown the error of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and of the persecution of those Christians in France whose belief differed a little from that of the king. They have realized that zeal for the advancement of religion is different from a due attachment to it; and that in order to love it and fulfil its behests, it is not necessary to hate and persecute those who are opposed to it.

Although all new ideas are born in France, they are not readily adopted there. It seems that they must first commence to prosper in a foreign country.

What is true, and I think that we can't deny it, is that some of the same concerns about globalization, about technology, rapid social change that were reflected in Brexit, that's been reflected in some of the debates in Germany and France and other places, that those exist in the United States as well. My view is that over the long term, over the next 10, 15, 20 years, if we are able to address the legitimate economic concerns of those who feel left behind by globalization, then many of these tensions will be reduced. And we will see a world that is less divided.

No player can become accustomed to New York's climate in August in a few days. The playing conditions, the courts in New York and France are very different.

A whole population of strangers inhabited and shaped that little body, lived in that mind and controlled its wishes, dictated its thoughts...The name was an abstraction, a title arbitrarily given, like "France" or "England," to a collection, never long the same, of many individuals who were born, lived, and died within him, as the inhabitants of a country appear and disappear, but keep alive in their passage the identity of the nation to which they belong.