Quotes About French
Steve Martin
“Boy, those French! They have a different word for everything.”
― Steve Martin
Stephanie Perkins
“The only French word I know is oui, which means “yes,” and only recently did I learn it’s spelled o-​u-​i and not w-​e-​e.”
― Stephanie Perkins, Anna and the French Kiss
Lewis Carroll
“Speak in French when you can’t think of the English for a thing–
turn your toes out when you walk—
And remember who you are!”
― Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
tags: alice, alice-in-wonderland, french, humor, lewis-carroll, remember 363 likes Like
Michael Pollan
“He showed the words “chocolate cake” to a group of Americans and recorded their word associations. “Guilt” was the top response. If that strikes you as unexceptional, consider the response of French eaters to the same prompt: “celebration.”
― Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto
tags: americans, chocolate, chocolate-cake, connotations, food, french, guilt, politics, semantics, word-association 348 likes Like
Samuel Beckett
“Je suis comme ça. Ou j’oublie tout de suite ou je n’oublie jamais.”

Samuel BECKETT, En attendant Godot

I’m like that. Either I forget right away or I never forget. ”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
tags: french 320 likes Like
Stephen Fry
“The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane. Each sentence we produce, whether we know it or not, is a mongrel mouthful of Chaucerian, Shakespearean, Miltonic, Johnsonian, Dickensian and American. Military, naval, legal, corporate, criminal, jazz, rap and ghetto discourses are mingled at every turn. The French language, like Paris, has attempted, through its Academy, to retain its purity, to fight the advancing tides of Franglais and international prefabrication. English, by comparison, is a shameless whore.”
― Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within
P.G. Wodehouse
“There is only one cure for grey hair. It was invented by a Frenchman. It is called the guillotine.”
― P.G. Wodehouse
Karl Marx
“…[G]reat progress was evident in the last Congress of the American ‘Labour Union’ in that among other things, it treated working women with complete equality. While in this respect the English, and still more the gallant French, are burdened with a spirit of narrow-mindedness. Anybody who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without the feminine ferment. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex (the ugly ones included).”
― Karl Marx, Selected Letters: The Personal Correspondence 1844-1877
Mark Twain
“In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.”
― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad
Marguerite de Navarre
“People pretend not to like grapes when the vines are too high for them to reach.”
― Marguerite de Navarre
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“Language is the source of misunderstandings.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
tags: french, language, writer 104 likes Like
Eric Hoffer
“The Jews are a peculiar people: Things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.

Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people, and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it. Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchmen. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese–and no one says a word about refugees.

But in the case of Israel, the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace.

Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.”
― Eric Hoffer
Gustave Flaubert
“He had carefully avoided her out of the natural cowardice that characterizes the stronger sex.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Marcel Proust
“I wished to see storms only on those coasts where they raged with most violence…”
― Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove
Gustave Flaubert
“Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
P.G. Wodehouse
“Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to speak French.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Luck of the Bodkins
Anatole France
“J’ai toujours préféré la folie des passions à la sagesse de l’indifférence.”
― Anatole France
“I have seafoam in my veins, I understand the language of waves.”
― Le Testament d’Orphée
David Sedaris
“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, Me Talk Pretty One Day
Friedrich Engels
“If there were no Frenchwomen, life wouldn’t be worth living.”
― Friedrich Engels, Collected Works
Shannon Delany
“Max,’ I said, looking up at him, ‘I love the Russian heritage you guys are so willing to share, but I’m not so thrilled with the French.’
‘What?’ His brows lowered. ‘We’re not French.’
‘Great. So the next time you feel the need to kiss me, keep your tongue out of my mouth!”
― Shannon Delany, Secrets and Shadows
Karl Lagerfeld
“The French say you get hungry when you’re eating, and I get inspired when I’m working. It’s my engine”
― Karl Lagerfeld
Susane Colasanti
“Rien ne va arrêter ma quête pour te trouver” No one will stop my quest to find you.”
― Susane Colasanti, Something Like Fate
Cesare Pavese
“On ne se souvient pas des jours, on se souvient des instants.”
― Cesare Pavese
Carolyn Turgeon
“Tous mes anciens amours vont me revenir.’
– All my old loves will be returned to me”
― Carolyn Turgeon, Godmother: The Secret Cinderella Story
Jean Racine
“Présente je vous fuis; absente, je vous trouve;
Dans le fond des forêts votre image me suit”
― Jean Racine, Phèdre
“We have been expropriated from our own language by television, from our songs by reality TV contests, from our flesh by mass pornography, from our city by the police and from our friends by wage-labor.”
― The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection