French Literature Quotes

In French literature, you can choose a la carte; in Spanish literature, there is only the set meal. ~ Jose Bergamin

Conscience, my dear, is a kind of stick that everyone picks up to thrash his neighbor with, but one he never uses against himself. ~ Honore De Balzac

Many of them were familiar from childhood with the fables of La Fontaine. Or they had read Voltaire or Racine or Molière in English translations. But that was about the sum of any familiarity they had with French literature. And none, of course, could have known in advance that the 1830s and '40s in Paris were to mark the beginning of the great era of Victor Hugo, Balzac, George Sand, and Baudelaire, not to say anything of Delacroix in painting or Chopin and Liszt in music. ~ David McCullough

The great works of art and literature have a lot to say on how to tackle the concrete challenges of living, like how to escape the chains of public opinion, how to cope with grief or how to build loving friendships. Instead of organizing classes around academic concepts - 19th-century French literature - more could be organized around the concrete challenges students will face in the first decade after graduation. ~ David Brooks

I should point out, creating one's own style, as much as is required to illustrate one of the aspects, the golden seam of language, involves beginning again at once, in a different manner, adopting the guise of a pupil when one risked becoming pedantic - thus by a shrugging of one's shoulders, disconcerting some with their genuflecting stance, and immortalizing oneself in multiple, impersonal, or even anonymous forms in response to the gesture of arms raised in stupefaction. ~ Stephane Mallarme

When I got to college I simply decided that I could speak French, because I just could not spend any more time in French classes. I went ahead and took courses on French literature, some of them even taught in French. ~ Lev Grossman

Ma vie est une énigme dont ton nom est le mot. (My life is an enigma, of which your name is the word.) ~ Victor Hugo

He asked himself ... whether it was not outrageous for society to treat thus precisely those of its members who were the least well endowed in the division of goods made by chance, and consequently the most deserving of consideration. ~ Victor Hugo

How far the existence of the Academy has influenced French literature, either for good or for evil, is an extremely dubious question. ~ Lytton Strachey

... it isn't the future but past that kills you, that comes back to torment and undermine you, and effectively ends up killing you. ~ Michel Houellebecq

Poetry is a machine that manufactures love. Its other virtues escape me. ~ Jean Cocteau

A rich man's soup - and all from a few stones. It seemed like magic! ~ Marcia Brown

And once again I had recognized the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-flowers which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory made me so happy), immediately the old gray house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theater. ~ Marcel Proust

Many Europeans think that all Moroccans speak French, but no. I had to make an effort to learn it when I studied French literature at the university in Rabat. ~ Abdellah Taia

When Prince Napoleon, the cousin of Napoleon Bonaparte III, visited Washington in early August, Mary organized an elaborate dinner party. She found the task of entertaining much simpler than it had been in Springfield days. "We only have to give our orders for the dinner, and dress in proper season," she wrote her friend Hannah Shearer. Having learned French when she was young, she conversed easily with the prince. It was a "beautiful dinner," Lizzie Grimsley recalled, "beautifully served, gay conversation in which the French tongue predominated." Two days later, her interest in French literature apparently renewed, Mary requested Volume 9 of the Oeuvres de Victor Hugo from the Library of Congress. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

We get bored with everything, my angel, it's a law of nature: it's not my fault. ~ Laclos, Pierre Choderlos De

The heart of a father is the masterpiece of nature. ~ Antoine Francois Prevost D'Exiles

Nobody knew me at Buckton. Clem had chosen the town because of that; and besides, even if I had wimp out, there was not enough gas to help me going further north. - I spit on your graves , ~ Boris Vian

The amateur is very rare in French literature - as rare as he is common in our own. ~ Lytton Strachey

The day, a compunctious Sunday after a week of blizzards, had been part jewel, part mud. In the midst of my usual afternoon stroll through the small hilly town attached to the girls' college where I taught French literature, I had stopped to watch a family of brilliant icicles drip-dripping from the eaves of a frame house. So clear-cut were their pointed shadows on the white boards behind them that I was sure the shadows of the falling drops should be visible too. But they were not. ("The Vane Sisters") ~ Vladimir Nabokov

No one's serious at seventeen,
When lindens line the promenades ~ Arthur Rimbaud

Beautiful features, always immaculately dressed, the kind of woman that makes a great impression. Their hair is always nicely curled. They major in French literature at expensive private women's colleges, and after graduation find jobs as receptionists or secretaries. They work for a few years, visit Paris for shopping once a year with their girlfriends. They finally catch the eye of a promising young man in the company, or else are formally introduced to one, and quit work to get married. They then devote themselves to getting their children into famous private schools. As he sat there, Tsukuru pondered the kind of lives they led. ~ Haruki Murakami

The supposedly eyewitness authority of the Pseudo-Turpin finds a parallel in another genre in which vernacular prose was pioneered: that of the historical memoir. There were twelfth-century verse histories narrated by authors who had personally participated in the events they describe, such as the Third Crusade. But the Fourth Crusade of 1202-4 saw a switch to prose. This shameful fiasco, in which the crusaders were induced to turn aside from the Holy Land and attack instead the Christian city of Constantinople, inspired two contrasting accounts. Robert de Clari--ignorant of higher-level strategy, but all agog at the splendours of Constantinople--gives a worm's eye view. Geoffroi de Villehardouin, by contrast, has a top diplomat's suave authority and a leader's eye for the aesthetics of war--the splendid sight of a fleet, or the noble heroism of a ruler. For both authors the medium of prose seems to convey the purported authenticity and transparency of lived experience. ~ Sarah Cay Terence Cave Malcolm Bowie

To Americans Boris Vian has long been one of the hidden glories of French literature. In I Spit on Your Graves, he wrote an utterly untypical work, a blast from his Id that may well have killed him. Even now, with misogyny disguised as racial justice, its venom remains potent and disturbing, in equal parts appalling and riveting. It is a singular book, not for the squeamish, and not to be passed by. ~ Jim Krusoe

Whoever wishes to rise above the common level must be prepared for a great struggle and recoil before no obstacle. A great writer is just simply a martyr whom the stake cannot kill. ~ Honore De Balzac

...After you have done everything to please a man and he's taken his pleasure with you, all you are for him is a whore, and a whore's daughter. ~ Pierre Louis

I'm French," Kingsley said. "I'm asking about your religion." "That is my religion. ~ Tiffany Reisz

Can you say the following phrase in French: "Gentlemen, I haven't eaten in six days"?'

Ippolit Matveevich began haltingly, 'Messieurs... messieurs, je ne, I think, je ne mange pas... six, what is that again... un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six... six... jour. Right: je ne mange pas six jours!'

'That's quite a pronunciation you've got there, Kisa! Still, what do you expect from a beggar. Of course a beggar in European Russia speaks French worse than Millerand. ~ Ilya Ilf

I suppose what one wants really is ideal company and books are ideal company. ~ Anita Brookner

Whoever controls the media, the
images, controls the culture. ~ Allen Ginsberg

If God and His Word are not known and received, the devil and his works will gain the ascendency; if the evangelical volume does not reach every hamlet, the pages of a corrupt and licentious literature will; ~ Daniel Webster

I did it at night because I loved it. I never did it to make money, as a job. I just did it because I had to. ~ Danielle Steel

It'd be cool to chipmunk-ize 'The Virgin Suicides' soundtrack. All this ethereal French music, I think that would be unique to listen to. ~ Matthew Gray Gubler

I didn't set out to do a gay comic, but given the current political and religious climate in this country, I feel it is important as a gay person, and a Christian, to create stories with humor and honesty. ~ Paige Braddock

The clerks are French, and, like most French people, are in a bad temper till they have eaten their lunch. ~ George Orwell

As society diversifies, the number of people who read literature is decreasing. It will be difficult for readers to digest my ideas through literature. ~ Cao Yu

Nine-tenths of English poetic literature is the result either of vulgar careerism or of a poet trying to keep his hand in. Most poets are dead by their late twenties. ~ Robert Graves

Being a literature major, you know, I'm very familiar with the ways symbolism is used in our sort of mythic tales of society, so anyone who is consciously trying to pull that off I think is really interesting and clearly very smart. ~ Carrie Coon

Acrostics in French or acrostics in Hebrew were still Greek to him. ~ Dorothy Dunnett

There is a wealth of readership for regional language literature in India that is not given importance. We must give respect to our own languages. ~ Amish Tripathi

Writers do not write about places, they write about people who happen to live in those places. This is something that the labellers and their labels don't understand either. ~ Aminatta Forna

I probably have a 20,000-word vocabulary. I'll match my wits with anyone on literature, science and the arts. ~ Mike Tyson

Langdon, I did not ask if you believe what man says about God. I asked if you believed in God. There is a difference. Holy scripture is stories . . . legends and history of man's quest to understand his own need for meaning. I am not asking you to pass judgment on literature. I am asking if you believe in God. ~ Dan Brown

In Russia, the person who put Sevastopol on the literary map was Leo Tolstoy, a veteran of the siege. His fictionalized memoir The Sebastopol Sketches made him a national celebrity. Already with the first installment of the work published, Tsar Alexander II saw the propaganda value of the piece and ordered it translated into French for dissemination abroad. That made the young author very happy. Compared with Tolstoy's later novels, The Sebastopol Sketches hasn't aged well, possibly because this is not a heartfelt book. As the twenty-six-year-old Tolstoy's Sevastopol diaries reveal, not heartache but ambition drove him at the time. Making a name as an author was just an alternative to two other grand plans - founding a new religion and creating a mathematical model for winning in cards (his losses during the siege were massive even for a rich person). ~ Constantine Pleshakov

Everything is still everything.

The Poem Remains. ~ R.M. Engelhardt

Anna: You really think he likes me?
Rashmi: Anna. He teases you all the time. It's classic boy-pulling-girl's-pigtail syndrome. And whenever anyone else even remotely does it, he always takes your side and tells them to shove it. ~ Stephanie Perkins

There were never strawberries
like the ones we had
that sultry afternoon
sitting on the step
of the open french window
facing each other
your knees held in mine
the blue plates in our laps
the strawberries glistening
in the hot sunlight
we dipped them in sugar
looking at each other
not hurrying the feast
for one to come
the empty plates laid on the stone together
with the two forks crossed
and I bent towards you

sweet in that air
in my arms
abandoned like a child
from your eager mouth
the taste of strawberries
in my memory
lean back again
let me love you

let the sun beat
on our forgetfulness
one hour of all
the heat intense
and summer lightning
on the Kilpatrick hills

let the storm wash the plates. ~ Edwin Morgan

In all highly civilised communities Pretence is prominent, and sooner or later invades the regions of Literature. ~ James Payn

The British and French governments have taken a strong stance against 'extremist content' online when addressing their approach to tackling extremism. ~ Maajid Nawaz

What makes international cinema so interesting is that each territory has its own sensibility. When you look at an Indian or French film, there's a certain flavor. And even though the language is different, if the film is successful, it has something very common and understandable. ~ Wong Kar-Wai

No accurate thinker will judge another person by that which the other person's enemies say about him. ~ Napoleon Hill

For the next nine months, Sylvia would report on campus trends, politics, tastes, style. It was an honor, but it was grueling. Sylvia was overworked. She had boyfriend problems. She longed for Europe. She broke her leg in a skiing accident. Her best friend, Marcia Brown, had gotten engaged and moved off campus - other girls were away on their junior year abroad. The whole campus seemed mired in some bleak haze- there were suicide attempts, abortions, disappearances, and hasty marriages. Sylvia coped with shopping binges in downtown Northhampton- sheer blouses, French pumps, red cashmere sweaters, white skirts, and tight black pullovers - clothes more suited to voguish amusements than studying. Everyone wanted to be one of Mademoiselle's guest editors, but Sylvia needed it - some shot of glamour to pull her out of the mud. ~ Elizabeth Winder

My family was blue collar, a middle-class kind of thing. My father was born in Detroit, Italian-American. My mother is English. She acted on the stage with Diana Dors. Her parents were French. ~ Lorraine Bracco

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

In the order of literature, as in others, there is no act that is not the coronation of an infinite series of causes and the source of an infinite series of effects. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

The only reason I would write a sequel is if I were struck by an idea that I felt to be equal to the original. Too many sequels diminish the original. ~ Dean Koontz

I don't know why a computer game can't be an art form just as a puppet show or an opera is. I'm still interested in computer games as something I would like to work on someday. ~ Fred Saberhagen

The mediation by the serpent was necessary. Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man. ~ Franz Kafka