French Colonial Quotes

In the absence of centralized decision-making, Hebrard's town plans for Indochina had no equivalent in France itself. This is because territorial development can only be thought out and implemented when political power is strong and decisions are in few hands, as was the case during the French colonial period. ~ Helen Grant Ross

While Haiti has recently celebrated more than 200 years of independence from French colonial rule, the citizens of the island remain vulnerable to poverty, poor health, and political chaos. ~ Eliot Engel

Not one of our political spokespeople - the same is true of the Arabs since Abdel Nasser's time - ever speaks with self-respect and dignity of what we are, what we want, what we have done, and where we want to go. In the 1956 Suez War, the French colonial war against Algeria, the Israeli wars of occupation and dispossession, and the campaign against Iraq, a war whose stated purpose was to topple a specific regime but whose real goal was the devastation of the most powerful Arab country. And just as the French, British, Israeli, and American campaign against Gamal Abdel Nasser was designed to bring down a force that openly stated as its ambition the unification of the Arabs into a very powerful independent political force. ~ Edward W. Said

The earthquake in Haiti was a class-based catastrophe. It didn't much harm the wealthy elite up in the hills, they were shaken but not destroyed. On the other hand the people who were living in the miserable urban slums, huge numbers of them, they were devastated. Maybe a couple hundred thousand were killed. How come they were living there? They were living there because of-it goes back to the French colonial system-but in the past century, they were living there because of US policies, consistent policies. ~ Noam Chomsky

That still did not invalidate their purity in his eyes, so long as they continued to live the way they lived: sitting on the floor, eating with their fingers, cooking and sleeping first in one room, then in another, or in the vast patio with its fountains, or on the roof, leading the existence of nomads inside the beautiful shell which was the house. If he had felt that they were capable of discarding their utter preoccupation with the present, in order to consider the time not yet arrived, he would straightway have lost interest in them and condemned them as corrupt. ~ Paul Bowles

Happier than a bird with a french fry. ~ Leslea Tash

Do i look like a beautiful blond with big tits and an ass that tastes like French vanilla ice-cream?
No. no, you don't.
Then why are you telling me all this bullshit just so you can fuck me. ~ Quentin Tarantino

I'm a Russian and all I know of Russia is what I've read. I yearn for the broad fields of golden corn and the forests of silver beech that I've read of in books and though I try and try, I can't see them with my mind's eye. I know Moscow from what I've seen of it at the cinema. I sometimes rack my brain to picture to myself a Russian village, the straggling village of log houses with their thatched roofs that you read about in Chekov, and it's no good, I know that what I see isn't that at all. I'm a Russian and I speak my native language worse than I speak English and French. When I read Tolstoi and Dostoievsky it is easier for me to read them in a translation. I'm just as much a foreigner to my own people as I am to the English and French. You who've got a home and a country, people who love you, people whose ways are your ways, whom you understand without knowing them - how can you tell what it is to belong nowhere? ~ W. Somerset Maugham

The man's tongue is fit to frighten the French. Another fever."
Ah, there," said Morgan, "that comed of sp'iling Bibles."
That comed
as you call it
of being arrant asses. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

We need to actually teach kids that books aren't like broccoli. You don't have to eat every bit on your plate. It's like secret adult's business. It's the secret we never, ever tell our children. No adult ever read a book because it's good for us. We read because it is fun. ~ Jackie French

Don't leave me again, Lil," he whispered as he buried his face into my neck. "I can't do this without you. ~ Nicole French

Breakfast was the full whammy: eggs, rashers, sausages, black pudding, fried bread, fried tomatoes. This was clearly some kind of statement, but I couldn't work out whether it was See, we're doing just grand without you, or I'm still slaving my fingers to the bone for you even though you don't deserve it, or possibly We'll be even when this lot gives you a heart attack. ~ Tana French

Oh, this smells fantastic." She slid up onto one of the stools. "Italian. And you said you could only make one thing."
"Yeah, I really slaved over this."
He turned toward the oven with a flourish and removed a flat pan with… Ehlena burst out laughing.
"French-bread pizza."
"Only the best for you."
"DiGiorno?"
"Of course. And I splurged on the supreme kind. I figured you could pick off what you don't like."
He used a pair of sterling-silver tongs to transfer the pizzas onto the plates and then put the baking sheet back on the top of the stove.
"I have red wine, too."
As he came over with the bottle, all she could do was stare up at him and smile.
"You know," he said as he poured some into her glass, "I like the way you're looking at me."
She put her hands over her face. "I can't help it."
"Don't try. It makes me feel taller."
"And you're not small to begin with."

-Ehlena & Rehv ~ J.R. Ward

It's Fendi. French, Fendi, both start with an F ... I fell in love with it. Smells like grown-man cologne. ~ French Montana

One of the first books of travel, giving European readers some insight into the unfamiliar world of the Orient, was published in 1356-67 in Anglo-Norman French. Called simply Travels, it was said to be by Sir John Mandeville, but a French historian, Jean d'Outremeuse, may well have written the book. It is a highly entertaining guide for pilgrims to the Holy Land, but goes beyond, taking the reader as far as Tartary, Persia, India and Egypt, recounting more fantasy than fact, but containing geographical details to give the work credence.

Mandeville's book whetted the Western European reader's appetite for the travel book as a journal of marvels: dry scientific detail was not what these readers wanted. Rather it was imagination plus information. Thus, myths of 'the fountain of youth' and of gold-dust lying around 'like ant-hills' caught the Western imagination, and, when the voyagers of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries found 'new worlds' in the Americas, these myths were enlarged and expanded, as Eldorado joined the Golden Road to Samarkand in the imagination of readers concerning distant lands. ~ Ronald Carter

Having confronted the world with little except a battered typewriter and a certain resilience, he can now take posthumous credit for having got the three great questions of the 20th century essentially 'right.' Orwell was an early and consistent foe of European imperialism, and foresaw the end of colonial rule. He was one of the first to volunteer to bear arms against fascism and Nazism in Spain. And, while he was soldiering in Catalonia, he saw through the biggest and most seductive lie of them all - the false promise of a radiant future offered by the intellectual underlings of Stalinism. ~ Christopher Hitchens

[...] I hate Mondays, don't you?"
"Not really ~ Nicci French

So,twice a week I have my own tutor," he said shortly. "Who,trust me, makes my father look like a marshmellow. And on that note..." He picked up the sheaf of French lessons again. "We'll start with the imperfect, used to express actions that are-"
"Incomplete,unfulfilled, or repeated over and over." I slumped back in the weird chair. "That I know."
At the end of the very imperfect sessions, Alex gave me a full ten minutes in the downstairs bathroom before showing up.All I'd figured out what that Edward's faceless girl had had wide feet, and the Bainbridge's decorator had a preference for green that might merit an intervention.
"I could probably give you the stupid thing"-Alex gestured to the picture when he came in- "and my folks would never notice."
I winced inwardly. "I can't advocate theft," I told him, "no matter how noble the intent. ~ Melissa Jensen

The French revolution was a .eune invented and constructed for the purpose of manufacturing liberty; but it had neither lever cogs, nor adjusting powers, and the consequences were that it worked so rapidly that it destroyed its own inventors, and set itself on fire. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

St. Clair gets a crush on Anna. He's torn between her and Ellie, and he spends so much time running between them that he hardly has time left for Josh. And the more time that Josh spends alone, the more he realizes how alone he actually is. All of his friends will be gone the next year. Josh grows increasingly antagonistic toward school, which makes Rashmi increasingly antagonistic toward him, which makes him increasingly antagonistic toward her. And she's upset because Elie dropped her as a friend, and Meredith is upset because now St. Clair likes two girls who aren't her, and Anna is upset because St. Clair is leading her on, and then St. Clair's mom gets cancer.
It's a freaking soap opera. ~ Stephanie Perkins

Orsini and one of his fellow conspirators were guillotined, and an accomplice called Carlo di Rudio was transported to Devil's Island, the notorious French prison camp in French Guiana. He escaped and later fought alongside General Custer at Little Big Horn. True to form, he survived. ~ Stephen Clarke

The world is a big place, and there are many paths that lead to success. This applies to both political and economic concepts. For this reason, we see no need to stoically pursue the Chinese, American or French way. But we have socialism in common with China. ~ Nguyen Minh Triet

Since we have to speak well of the dead, let's knock them while they're alive. ~ John French Sloan

You know, the French remind me a little bit of an aging actress of the 1940s who was still trying to dine out on her looks but doesn't have the face for it ~ John McCain

There had been over four thousand Jewish children penned in the Vel' d'Hiv', aged between two and twelve. Most of the children were French, born in France. None of them came back from Auschwitz. ~ Tatiana De Rosnay

You can't make a person, a human being with a first kiss and a sense of humor and a favorite sandwich, and then expect her to dissolve back into scribbled notes and whiskeyed coffee when she no longer suits your purposes. I think I always knew she would come back to find me, someday. ~ Tana French

My mom had Julia Child and 'The Fannie Farmer Cookbook' on top of the refrigerator, and she had a small repertoire of French dishes. ~ Anthony Bourdain

I never had to learn English, French and German because I was brought up as all three languages. I had a private French teacher before I even went to school. That helped a lot. ~ Karl Lagerfeld

Besides my son, music is the most important thing to me. I always have music on in my car and playing at house, and I'm in the studio or performing every night. I like Beats by Dre for headphones, and Bang & Olufsen soundsystems. ~ French Montana

When Lionel Giles began his translation of Sun Tzu's ART OF WAR, the work was virtually unknown in Europe. Its introduction to Europe began in 1782 when a French Jesuit Father living in China, Joseph Amiot, acquired a copy of it, and translated ~ Sun Tzu

That looks feasible. What do you want for lunch? Cake, sandwiches, fruit, and coffee will be all that is necessary, I suppose?"
"Oh, dear, no! We must have cold tongue and chicken, French chocolate and ice cream, besides. The girls are used to such things, and I want my lunch to be proper and elegant, though I do work for my living. ~ Louisa May Alcott

The phenomenon of laborers staying on at the end of their contracts with big public works companies is likely the biggest single source of Chinese migration to Africa. Workers would arrive from a given locality in China and discover there was good money to be made in some corner of an Africa they had never before imagined viable. Soon, they were sending word back home about the fortunes to be made there, or the hospitality of the locals, or the wonders of the environment, or the joys of a free and relatively pressureless life. In short order, others would follow. Li ~ Howard W. French

Jack, who apparently always had to be moving in some way, had made up for the missing knife by grabbing a half loaf of French bread and methodically ripping it into tiny pieces.
"What," I said, narrowing my eyes. "Why don't faeries like bread?"
"Hmm?" Jack looked up, then shrugged. "I dunno."
Lend picked up a piece, crumbling it. "My dad said he thought it was because it was the staff of life for people."
"Nasty stuff tastes like mold," Jack said. "I tried a piece once a while ago when I was still trying to force myself to eat normal food so I could stay here. It was like a shock to my whole system." He shuddered at the memory. ~ Kiersten White

There was a French singer, Francoise Hardy - I used to look at her pictures and try to dress like her. ~ Carly Simon

We City Folk can pretend that we prefer the rotgut from Starcorps with skim milk and Splenda, but who are we kidding? Maxwell House with French vanilla corn syrup cannot be beat. ~ Tina Fey

Painting is drawing, with the additional means of color. ~ John French Sloan