Quotes About French

A French poet famously referred to the aroma of certain cheeses as the 'pieds de Dieu'—the feet of god. Just to be clear: foot odor of a particularly exalted quality, but still—foot odor.

We show our surprise at this by speaking of something called the "French paradox," for how could a people who eat such demonstrably toxic substances as foie gras and triple crème cheese actually be slimmer and healthier than we are? Yet I wonder if it doesn't make more sense to speak in terms of an American paradox—that is, a notably unhealthy people obsessed by the idea of eating healthily.

It's quite a famous story that takes place on Christmas Eve, and the Germans, French, and Scottish are trying to make peace one night and they bury their dead and they play football. I play a German opera singer, in German, which I never have so I am really excited about that.

They were singing in French, but the melody was freedom and any American could understand that.

The men who died at D-Day did not die shoulder-to-shoulder with their French comrades. They died to liberate the French from a sinister and brutal occupation.

Americans and French are notoriously monolingual, especially earlier generations. Language is a sense of pride in both cultures. I think that the French and Americans are like brothers or sisters who are so similar that they irritate one another.

I kind of just want to look like a cool French girl in the Sixties most of the time. Or TLC.

I like French films, Chabrol in particular. With him, you often get a skewed morality in which you sympathise with the person you shouldn't.

I have no skills! I can't speak French, I can't ski, I can't play the guitar... I can barely log on to the Internet! All I know how to do is write novels (thank goodness) and run, and anyone who has seen me run knows I'm not very good at that, either.

There is a belief that love has its own justification, that it should be experienced as passionately as possible. The French have a wonderful expression, amour passion, which is the ultimate.

I especially love French, Italian and Japanese cuisines.

I'd love to do some comedy. Particularly French comedy, which I know sounds like a contradiction in terms.

I love shooting French films because I don't have to stick with being sophisticated or stuck-up.

We need French chaplains and imams, French-speaking, who learn French, who love France. And who adhere to its values. And also French financing.

I love the French for their sarcasm, their irony. I love them for their bad moods.

I got my first Charvet knit tie when I was 15. I actually stole it from my father. I love them because you can wear them day to night. They're French and preppy and have been around since the 1800s.

18th century scientists, the French in particular, seldom did things simply if an absurdly demanding alternative was available.

Lagniappe, usually attributed to the French of New Orleans, in fact originated among the Kechuan Indians of Peru as yapa. The Spanish adopted it as ñapa. The French then took it from the Spanish and we from the French.

camouflage (rather oddly from camouflet, meaning "to blow smoke up someone's nose," a pastime that appears on the linguistic evidence to be specific to the French)

When a prominent Puritan named (all too appropriately, it would seem) John Stubbs criticized the queen's mooted marriage to a French Catholic, the Duke of Alençon, his right hand was cut off.*

Curiously, the one service room not named for the products it contains is dairy. The name derives from an Old French word, dey, meaning maiden. A dairy, in other words, was the room where the milkmaids were to be found, from which we might reasonably deduce that an Old Frenchman was more interested in finding the maid than the milk.

Dorothy Hamilton's Techniques of Classic Cuisine.

The French have become professional, scientific, and urban. The Italians are improvising amateurs, following rustic preparations handed down for generations. The Italians, it could be said, were still playing with their food.

Lascelles threw himself into the carriage, snorting with laughter and saying that he had never in his life heard of anything so ridiculous and comparing their snug drive through the London streets in Mr. Norrell's carriage to ancient French and Italian fables where fools set sail in milk-pails to fetch the moon's reflection from the bottom of a duckpond...