French Language Quotes

Annoyance has made me bilingual. ~ Gayle Forman

I am a guest of the French language. My poems in French are born of my interaction with the French language, which is not the same as that of a French poet. ~ Tahar Ben Jelloun

It was the French of the Normans that, grafting itself onto the barbaric Saxon tongue, gave it its most magnificent blossoming. And, in these new countries, where both English and French are intertwined again, it is as if English were bathing itself in the fountain of its own youth, and as if French were remembering the buried treasures it had thought forgotten. ~ Jean-Christophe Valtat

But it is infamous that they have not told you!' declared Eustacie. 'Je n'en reviendrai jamais!'
'If it's all the same to you, miss, I'd just as soon you'd talk in a Christian language,' said Mr. Stubbs. ~ Georgette Heyer

I love the French language. I have sampled every language, French is my favourite - fantastic language, especially to curse with. Nom de Dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperies de connards d'enculé de ta mère... It's like wiping your arse with silk, I love it. ~ Lana Wachowski

In the past the French came to Germany less with the desire to understand it than with a zealous desire to interpret, to analyze it dispassionately something for which their training at the Ecole Normale Superieure or the Ecole des Hautes Etudes and the French language superbly equipped them to do. ~ Walter Abish

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

When I took part in European leaders summits, it was sometimes unpleasant for me to hear Romanian, Polish, Portuguese, and Italian friends speak English, although I admit that on an informal basis, first contacts can be made in this language. Nevertheless, I will defend everywhere the use of the French language. ~ Francois Hollande

Back in New York I took full advantage of my status as a native speaker. I ran my mouth to shop clerks and listened in on private conversations, realising I'd gone an entire month without hearing anyone complaint that they were "stressed out". ~ David Sedaris

Socialist ideology is making France go to pot, and the French language with it. ~ Maurice Druon

Writers in what we now call the Middle English period (late twelfth century to 1485) did not necessarily always write in English. The language was in a state of flux: attempts were made to assert the French language, to keep down the local language, English, and to make the language of the church (Latin) the language of writing. ~ Ronald Carter

In the French language, there is a great gulf between prose and poetry; in English, there is hardly any difference. It is a splendid privilege of the great literary languages Greek, Latin, and French that they possess a prose. English has not this privilege. There is no prose in English. ~ Victor Hugo

French is the language that turns dirt into romance. ~ Stephen King

Columbia University, where I went to study in 1993, insisted its undergraduates learn a foreign language, so I discovered French. ~ Aravind Adiga

I like how writing can take you off for a jaunt in your head and then set you back down in the chair where you've been all along. ~ Georgann Low

Adam was charming and spoke perfect French. Like many anglophones in Montréal, he actually spoke French better than we did. They knew exactly which verbs to use in the same way that people knew which utensils to use while eating at a fancy dinner. It was very proper because they learned it from books. They didn't know slang or how to curse. They didn't know how to do anything other than be proper and reserved. It was state-sponsored, dry-clean-only French. ~ Heather O'Neill

Even if I think in English, it's more a language of acting than French. ~ Sophie Marceau

In order to translate a sentence from English into French two things are necessary. First, we must understand thoroughly the English sentence. Second, we must be familiar with the forms of expression peculiar to the French language. The situation is very similar when we attempt to express in mathematical symbols a condition proposed in words. First, we must understand thoroughly the condition. Second, we must be familiar with the forms of mathematical expression. ~ George Polya

I love the quietness of the library, the gateway to knowledge, to the French language and medieval history and hydraulic engineering and fairy tales, learning in a very primitive form: books, something that's quickly giving way to modern technology. ~ Mary Kubica

The french language is emotive. The verbs are strong and definite. The nouns are masculine or french. I could never understand why the farm would be feminine yet the farmhouse masculine; the pear and apple trees masculine yet the fruit feminine. ~ Vicki Archer

The Canadian community must invest, for the defence and better
appreciation of the French language, as much time, energy, and money as
are required to prevent the country from breaking up ~ Pierre Trudeau

At one point I turned to the French language, which gave me the gender of all things. But to no satisfaction. I would readily agree that trucks and murders were masculine while bicycles and life were feminine. But how odd that a breast was masculine. And it made little sense that garbage was feminine while perfume was masculine - and no sense at all that television, which I would have deemed repellently masculine, was in fact feminine. When ~ Yann Martel

Alice Kaplan is a teacher of French language and literature, and she has done this kind of remembering in a book called French Lessons. "Why do people want to adopt another culture?" she asks as she summarizes her journey into teaching and into life. "Because there's something in their own they don't like, that doesn't name them."5 ~ Parker J. Palmer

Well, with the French language, which I understood and spoke, however imperfectly, and read in great quantities, at certain times, the matter I suppose was slightly different from either Latin or Greek. ~ Robert Fitzgerald

I just love France, I love French people, I love the French language, I love French food. I love their mentality. I just feel like it's me. I'm very French. ~ Olga Kurylenko

Whether we like it or not, if we are to pursue a career in science, eventually we have to learn the "language of nature": mathematics. Without mathematics, we can only be passive observers to the dance of nature rather than active participants. As Einstein once said, "Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas." Let me offer an analogy. One may love French civilization and literature, but to truly understand the French mind, one must learn the French language and how to conjugate French verbs. The same is true of science and mathematics. Galileo once wrote, "[The universe] cannot be read until we have learnt the language and become familiar with the characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to understand a single word. ~ Michio Kaku

The genius of the French language, descended from its single Latin stock, has triumphed most in the contrary direction - in simplicity, in unity, in clarity, and in restraint. ~ Lytton Strachey

To pronounce French properly you must have within you a deep antipathy, not to say scorn, for some of the most sacred of the Anglo-Saxon prejudices. ~ Rex Stout

Apparently "London" gave out my address! that's what they're saying ... not just London, though! Brazzaville, too! ... and said that I'm a dirty pornographer ... a letch besides being the most despicable traitor of the century! ... I'd make a urinal blush! that what we need is to cleanse France and the French language of this smut-writing, demoralizing, grammaclast who's sullying our sacred homeland and its literary heritage! ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

Maybe that was why the French called orgasms "las petites morts": because the things that bring us passion tend to slip past our defenses, to creep insidiously into every facet of our consciousnesses and kill us as ruthlessly, and efficiently, as any drug. ~ Nenia Campbell

Proximity to this death makes me nostalgic for the French language. ~ Henri Cole

To achieve the very pinnacle of good taste, the neoclassicists wrote their plays entirely in alexandrine verse, a rarefied meter that is uniquely tailored to the French language and fits no other. ~ Florence King

The Divinity could be invoked as well in the English language as in the French. ~ Wilfrid Laurier

I love the French language ... it's a delightful language, especially to curse with. It's like whopping your ass with silk. ~ Oscar Wilde

Yet in reality, the likelihood of reaching the pinnacle of capitalist society today is only marginally better than were the chances of being accepted into the French nobility four centuries ago, though at least an aristocratic age was franker, and therefore kinder, about the odds. It did not relentlessly play up the possibilities open to all those with a take on the future of the potato crisp, and so, in turn, did not cruelly equate an ordinary life with a failed one.
Our era is perverse in passing off an exception as a rule. ~ Alain De Botton

Just as composers go to concerts and artists visit galleries, writers read. You will learn, in the most enjoyable way, more about style and language from reading good literature than you will ever acquire from workshops and how-to books. ~ Judith Barrington

The French have a saying that whatever excellence a man may exhibit in a public station he is very apt to be ridiculous in a private one. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

What makes a poem a poem, finally, is that it is unparaphrasable. There is no other way to say exactly this; it exists only in its own body of language, only in these words. I may try to explain it or represent it in other terms, but then some element of its life will always be missing.
It's the same with painting. All I can say of still life must finally fall short; I may inventory, weigh, suggest, but I cannot circumscribe; some element of mystery will always be left out. What is missing is, precisely, its poetry. ~ Mark Doty

It has all the right ingredients: rich contents, friendly, personal language, subtle humor, the right references, and a plethora of pointers to resources. ~ Steven S. Skiena

Nowadays people write English as if a rat were caught in the typewriter and they were trying to hit the keys which wouldn't disturb it. ~ Lillian Hellman

Radu had practiced the poem so often he could recite it in his sleep. He had stolen shiny bits from famous Arabic poems, gathering them like a raven to line his own nest. The language was dense and flowery, hyperbolic in the extreme. Murad listened, enraptured, as his reign was likened to the ocean and his posterity a mighty river. ~ Kiersten White

A dictionary can embrace only a small part of the vast tapestry of a language. ~ Giacomo Leopardi

A good crowd had formed along the sidewalk and the concrete ledge that bordered Louis Armstrong Park. The anticipation was dizzying...New Orleans had the big-boy parades and [Jackson & Billy] couldn't wait to attend a second line... ~ Hunter Murphy

I like French fries; I like mashed. I love potatoes. ~ Mary J. Blige

José Arcadio's companion asked them to leave them alone, and the couple lay down on the ground, close to the bed. The passion of the others woke up José Arcadio's fervor. On the first contact the bones of the girl seemed to become disjointed with a disorderly crunch like the sound of a box of dominoes, and her skin broke out into a pale sweat and her eyes filled with tears as her whole body exhaled a lugubrious lament and a vague smell of mud. But she bore the impact with a firmness of character and a bravery that were admirable. José Arcadio felt himself lifted up into the air toward a state of seraphic inspiration, where his heart burst forth with an outpouring of tender obscenities that entered the girl through her ears and came out of her mouth translated into her language. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Perhaps it is how we are made; perhaps words of truth reach us best through the heart, and stories and songs are the language of the heart ~ Stephen R. Lawhead

If I were alive in Rubens's time, I'd be celebrated as a model. Kate Moss would be used as a paint brush. ~ Dawn French

But she grasped points quickly and put them in simple terms. There is a type of mind, like Willi's, that can only accept ideas if they are put in the language he would use himself. ~ Doris Lessing

One of the striking aspects of the lines is the way they make us see a tree, with its pattern of twigs, leaves and branches, as a visual image of the invisible roots of language. ~ Terry Eagleton

Doing some late-night home improvements, my man? ( ... ) For what it's worth, I never had any use for that froufrou French shit, either. - Tegan ~ Lara Adrian

There's a difference between unspoken and unsaid," Jaycee says. "Just because chimpanzees cannot speak doesn't mean they have nothing to say; the ability to vocalize thoughts is not the same as the ability to acquire and use language ... Language is really just a systematic means of communication through symbols or sounds. Almost all animals use language. The problem is that when it comes to the issue of language, humans are incredibly narcissistic. Since we literally hold the key to their cages, our language is the only one that counts. ~ Neil Abramson

There are two types of codes, ciphers, and true codes. In the first, letters, or symbols that stand for letters, are shuffled and juggled according to a pattern. In the second, letters, words, or groups of words are replaced by other letters, symbols, or words. A code can be one type or the other, or a combination. But both have this in common: once you find the key, you just plug it in and out come logical sentences. A language, however, has its own internal logic, its own grammar, its own way of putting thoughts together with words that span various spectra of meaning. There is no key you can plug in to unlock the exact meaning. At best you can get a close approximation. ~ Samuel R. Delany

There was a great jagged hole where they had ripped out the fireplace; the wall around it was crowded with faded graffiti explain who loved who, who was gay and who should fuck off. ~ Tana French

At eight, I made a commitment to poetry. Until then, I thought I'd be a policeman. But I went a whole night without sleeping, and the next day the world had changed. It needed a different language. ~ Alice Oswald

...in certain regions the party is organized like a gang whose toughest member takes over the leadership. The leader's ancestry and powers are readily mentioned, and in a knowing and slightly admiring tone it is quickly pointed out that he inspires awe in his close collaborators. In order to avoid these many pitfalls a persistent battle has to be waged to prevent the party from becoming a compliant instrument in the hands of a leader. Leader comes from the English verb "to lead," meaning "to drive" in French.15 The driver of people no longer exists today. People are no longer a herd and do not need to be driven. If the leader drives me I want him to know that at the same time I am driving him. The nation should not be an affair run by a big boss. Hence the panic that grips government circles every time one of their leaders falls ill, because they are obsessed with the question of succession: What will happen to the country if the leader dies? The influential circles, who in their blind irresponsibility are more concerned with safeguarding their lifestyle, their cocktail parties, their paid travel and their profitable racketeering, have abdicated in favor of a leader and occasionally discover the spiritual void at the heart of the nation. ~ Frantz Fanon

When I went to Moscow, I felt I was relearning Swan Lake - which was written for the Bolshoi - and being immersed in a tradition and history I had never experienced. It took a while to adjust to living there and learning the language, but now I have lots of friends. I get the best of two completely different worlds. ~ David Hallberg

Always think of drawing, getting the forms realized, emphasizing the design. ~ John French Sloan

Further, I'm obsessed with how language contorts and creates bodies. ~ Peter Sotos

I'm a multi-lingual Kundalini-dancing shapeshifter to the 69th degree.
I know French, Italian, Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, Greek, Latin, Gaelic, Scottish, English, and American English.
I'm cunninglingual. ~ Sienna McQuillen

The only thing strong about the French Army is their damn body odor. ~ Dwayne Johnson

The God of the Hebrews is a God that human language, we're not even supposed to speak the holy name. We were told in the Second Commandment we could make no images of this God, and I don't think that means just building idols, I think that means also trying to believe you've captured God in your words, in the Creeds, in the Scriptures. ~ John Shelby Spong

In the province of Quebec where I come from, we speak French, and the only cosmopolitan city is Montreal. Every time we tackle the subject of immigration and racial tension, it's an issue that concerns Montreal. ~ Philippe Falardeau

It is sometimes tougher to fight my superiors than the French. ~ Heinz Guderian

Love is the universal language of heart.
Feeling are the universal language of love.
Smile is the universal language of charm.
Attraction is the universal language of life. ~ Debasish Mridha

Love wasn't about reasons. It wasn't about admiring fine qualities. Love was a language all on its own, composed of gestures that seemed incomprehensible, perhaps even pointless, to the outside observer. Speaking ~ Mary Balogh

An artist in this nuthouse century is like a man running an obstacle race fitted out with all the gadgets of our riotous technology. He gets blown a mile into the air on a jet of liquid helium, shuttles about on little rocket tubes, plunges into the deeps of the ocean, shoots out again a hundred miles into the space while lurid sights and sounds shred his senses. Every year, every month, and 'panoptic' work appears and warps his consciousness into a new shape. Knowledge itself is in a molten, a plasmatic state and what titanic electromagnetic grip of intellect would be required to lock it solid long enough to reach artistic fusion point? The damned language becomes obsolete as it clatters from the typewriter. ~ Paul Ableman

Transference of fear and self-loathing to an authoritarian vessel. It's catharsis. He absorbs their dread with his narrative. Because of this, he's effective in proportion to the amount of certainty he can project.
Certain linguistic anthropologists think that religion is a language virus that rewrites pathways in the brain. Dulls critical thinking. ~ Rust Cohle, True Detective

Not only are animals unable to avail themselves of language to assert their own rights, but many fewer humans have a clear sense of kinship with animals than have a clear sense of kinship with other humans. Among beings with subjective states of awareness, animals are the untouchable caste, those whom human others would rather not acknowledge, let alone render assistance. ~ Gary Steiner

In the year 1915 a series of trivial incidents led some Chinese students in Cornell University to take up the question of reforming the Chinese language. ~ Hu Shih

I LOVE WAL-MART. I CONSIDER MY JOKES TO BE VERY JEUVINILLE. STUFF A 14 YEAR OLD WOULD LAUGH AT BECAUSE THATS THE SENCE OF HUMOR I HAVE. ALL THE STUFF I TALK ABOUT MAY NOT BE APPROPRIATE FOR CHURCH GROUPS HOWEVER WAL-MART AINT SUNDAY SCHOOL. AS LONG AS I DIDNT USE OFFENSIVE FOUL LANGUAGE I KNEW ID BE FINE. WAL-MART GETS IT, THATS WHY THEY BLOW AWAY THE COMPETITION. BESIDES ITS THERE STORE THEY CAN DO WHAT THEY WANT. THATS AMERICA BABY! ~ Larry The Cable Guy

Because of the Turing completeness theory, everything one Turing-complete language can do can theoretically be done by another Turing-complete language, but at a different cost. You can do everything in assembler, but no one wants to program in assembler anymore. ~ Yukihiro Matsumoto

I had trouble listening to adults who didn't really mean anything that they said; it was as if their language poured into my ears only to drain right out a little spigot in the back of my head. ~ Reif Larsen

Something rippled round the table: a loosening, a settling, a long sigh too low to hear. Un ange passe, my French grandfather would have said: an angel is passing. Somewhere upstairs I heard the faint, dreamy note of a clock striking. ~ Tana French

Learn the Arabic language; it will sharpen your wisdom. ~ Umar