Quotes About France

During all those years, you know, in the maquis, I was always asking myself whether it was for liberty, for France, that I was risking my life, or whether it was simply to keep up my self-image. Give me a whiskey, will you? I sat down. — Anyhow, I am not going to change that image.

I thought of the fifteen years I lived 'sans papiers' in France and how Paris had belonged to me. I was like a king in France. And now that suddenly I was French, Paris was gone for me. I had abdicated the throne the French people had given to me. All those people were gone. The whole city had changed. I left for five years: three spent wandering in Europe, while two years I spent living in Muslim Morocco; and now Paris had changed and there was no going back.

But you can forget him when you see the paintings with me. Enjoy them. They are part of our country's heritage. After all, the kings of France are only the custodians.

I wonder if it is possible to have two boyfriends. I mean, times are changing. Relationships are more complicated. In France men always have mistresses and wives and so on. Henri probably has two girlfriends. He would laugh if you told him you just had one. He would say, 'C'est tres, tres tragique.'

It (Arsenal) is an English club but not an English success. It's probably a greater reflection of youngsters from France and elsewhere in Europe.

The inner hatreds of men are now projected outside. There are fights in the streets. Revolutions in France, they say. Men did not seek to resolve their own personal revolutions, so now they act them out collectively.

There is a side to Henry that is criminal, identifies itself to the criminal. In Cancer there was a total absence of feeling. Today his absence of feeling for France is appalling, inhuman, after ten years of life there. Why? I have sometimes a feeling for even a particular tree in Paris, a sudden tender remembrance of a certain street. Henry nothing.

FranÈ›a nu mai era pentru mine o simpl? colecÈ›ie de curiozit??i, ci o f?ptur? sensibil? È™i consistent?, din care, într-o zi, o f?râm? fusese grefat? în mine.

France's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen led to bestial savagery, followed by Napoleon's dictatorship, followed by another monarchy, and then finally something resembling an actual republic eighty years later. In

Suddenly I think that if I must retire from city life I might just as well live in France, where I would be happy, and I put the thought away as a private dream. - Elizabeth Pepys

France, they have no life at home, home is disgusting, and they need to see themselves in a French light only. This applies to somebody like Cioran or even our friend—your friend—Grielescu. They hope to turn into Frenchmen. But your wife is even more peculiar . .

There is, besides, a considerable tradition of left-wing anti-Semitism in France and Germany. The history of Socialist anti-Semitism is, alas, long and dirty, but I doubt that much of this older, leftist anti-Semitism has survived among European intellectuals.

Before about 1800, only two important attempts were made to establish income taxes—one in Florence during the fifteenth century, and the other in France during the eighteenth. Generally speaking, both represented efforts by grasping rulers to mulct their subjects.

A luncheon guest at the Bank of France is generally told apologetically, "In the tradition of the bank, we serve only simple fare," but what follows is a repast during which the constant discussion of vintages makes any discussion of banking awkward, if not impossible, and at which the tradition of simplicity is honored, apparently, by the serving of only one wine before the cognac.

In France, I found there is a lot of attention to the little details and to the quality of life.

If Bush wins, I'm going to leave the country and spend the rest of my life in France.

All my life I have had a certain idea of France.

I had very, very little training in taking an exam to determine a scientist's life in France.

This ploughman dead in battle slept out of doors Many a frozen night, and merrily Answered staid drinkers, good bedmen, and all bores: "At Mrs Greenland's Hawthorn Bush," said he, "I slept." None knew which bush. Above the town, Beyond `The Drover', a hundred spot the down In Wiltshire. And where now at last he sleeps More sound in France -that, too, he secret keeps.

The French are obsessed with history, partly out of a genuine affinity for the past, partly from a desire to cling to lost glory.

Consuming alcohol in public is allowed in France, which means drinkers overflow onto the sidewalk, especially on the Montmartre stretch. But it rarely gets out of control.

In the 1590s, physicians examining the corpse of King Henri IV's twenty-six-year-old mistress agreed that she had, in fact, been killed by a "corrupt lemon."320

I ended up taking a literature class, too, about the nineteenth-century novel and the city in Russia, England, and France. The professor often talked about the inadequacy of published translations, reading us passages from novels in French and Russian, to show how bad the translations were. I didn't understand anything he said in French or Russian, so I preferred the translations.

I ended up taking a literature class, too, about the nineteenth-century novel and the city in Russia, England, and France. The professor often talked about the inadequacy of published translations, reading us passages from novels in French and Russian, to show how bad the translations were. I didn't understand anything he said in French or Russian, so I preferred the translations.