French Navy Quotes

I phoned the Admiral back.
'It's no use, Admiral, the French speak nothing but French.'
There was a short pause on the end of the line then his voice rattled into life like a sabre.
'They're lying, Tim!'
'What?'
'The French Navy must by law speak English, as English is the international maritime language of the sea.'
'Has anyone told the French that?'
The line went dead for a moment before he thundered, 'Yes Nelson. At the battle of Trafalgar.'
I tried to stifle an irresistibly British giggle not knowing if the Admiral was making a joke or not. I got it right. He was serious. ~ Tim FitzHigham

Business cards, of course, are not proof of anything. Anyone can go to a print shop and have cards made that say anything they like. The king of Denmark can order business cards that say he sells golf balls. Your dentist can order business cards that say she is your grandmother. In order to escape from the castle of an enemy of mine, I once had cards printed that said I was an admiral in the French navy. Just because something is typed - whether it is typed on a business card or typed in a newspaper or book - this does not mean it is true. ~ Lemony Snicket

In a French accent developed through a lifetime of using English I said, 'Hello sir, I would like to row the English Channel in a bath please.'
What actually arrived in the ear of the French Navy man was, 'Hello sire, I would like to fight a condom across a bath if you please. ~ Tim FitzHigham

According to legend, when a monkey survived a shipwreck off the north-east coast near Hartlepool during the Napoleonic wars, it was hanged as a suspected French spy. The monkey did not help its defense by being dressed in a French navy uniform when it was found, or by refusing to answer its interrogators (some local fishermen) in English. The sounds that came from the monkey were assumed to be French, and so the monkey was strung up at the beach. ~ Chris Roberts

Religion has always been the picklock of imperialism. Let them try to convert the heathens, and when they fail, we shall send in the French Navy to protect them and our political and commercial interests. ~ Jules Ferry

Of course Americans celebrate Independence Day as opposed to Yorktown Day. Who wants to barbecue a hot dog and ponder how we owe our independence to the French navy? Who wants to twirl sparklers and dwell on how the French government's expenditures in America contributed to the bankruptcy that sparked the French Revolution that would send Rochambeau to prison, Lafayette into exile (then prison), and our benefactor His Most Christian Majesty Louis XVI to the guillotine. ~ Sarah Vowell

There are only two things: love, all sorts of love, with pretty girls, and the music of New Orleans or Duke Ellington. Everything else ought to go, because everything else is ugly. ~ Boris Vian

And then there's its hair," Justin said, pushing the vegetables across to me. "Don't forget the hair. It's horrible."
"It's wearing a dead person's hair," Rafe informed me. "If you stick a pin in the doll, you can hear screaming coming from the graveyard. Try it."
"See what I mean?" Abby said, to me. "Wusses. It's got real hair. Why he thinks it's from a dead person - "
"Because your poppet was made in about 1890 and I can do subtraction. ~ Tana French

A French proverb says 'Wait until it is night before saying that it has been a fine day.' To tell it more precise, wait till the clock strikes the midnight! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

The French just said he was a damned nuisance. Or they would have had they the good fortune to speak English. Instead being French they were forced to say it in their own language. ~ Lauren Willig

She wanted to walk until her body and mind were exhausted. Her snug house felt like a distant goal, a place she had to achieve through enormous physical effort. ~ Nicci French

But Haven had become a threat. After almost two T-centuries of deficit spending to shore up an increasingly insolvent welfare state, Haven had decided it had no choice but to turn conquistador to acquire the resources it needed to support its citizens in the style to which they had become accustomed, and the People's Navy had proven its capacity to do just that over the course of the last five decades. ~ David Weber

Why would anyone want to be called a size zero or even aspire to being a zero? I don't even understand the thinking behind it, let alone the practicalities. What is all that about? ~ Dawn French

Reticence was clearly a national characteristic, even if the other person spoke French. ~ Sara Sheridan

Historically, the language we call Scots was a development of the Anglian speech of the Northumbrians who established their kingdom of Bernicia as far north as the Firth of Forth in the seventh century. This northern Anglo-Saxon language flourished in Lowland Scotland and emerged into a distinct language on its own, capable of rich expansion by borrowing from Latin, French and other sources with its own grammatical forms and methods of borrowing. By the time of the Makars of the fifteenth century it was a highly sophisticated poetic language, based on the spoken speech of the people, but enriched by many kinds of expansion, invention and 'aureation'. Distinct from literary English, but having much in common with it, literary Scots took its place in the late Middle Ages as one of the great literary languages of Europe. ~ David Daiches

Wood is an endlessly adaptive material. You can plane, chisel, saw, carve, sand, and bend it, and when the pieces are the shape you want you can use dovetail joints, tenpenny nails, pegs or glue; you can use lamination or inlay or marquetry; and then you can beautify it with French polish or plain linseed oil or subtle stains. And when you go to dinner at a friend's house, the candlelight will pick out the contours of grain and line, and when you take your seat you will be reminded that what you are sitting on grew from the dirt, stretched towards the sun, weathered rain and wind, and sheltered animals; it was not extruded by faceless machines lined on a cold cement floor and fed from metal vats. Wood reminds us where we come from. ~ Nicola Griffith

Then it hits me ...
And it hits me with the force of a blow. I am maybe fifteen years old. I am a girl. I am also acting lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and, by the Naval Rules and Regulations as regards the chain of command, I am in command of His Majesty's Ship Wolverine. ~ L.A. Meyer

In general men keep their internal lives–and their more complex emotions–closely guarded, because either they don't understand them or they are afraid of being betrayed by them. ~ Michael R. French

Thwarted by the British and French on the world stage, Berlin decided in 1913 to concentrate Germany's military objectives in Europe. That year Germany grew into a singularly dangerous continental presence: besieged, paranoid and armed to the teeth. ~ Paul Ham

There were still newspapers, then. We used to read them in bed. It's French, he said. From m'aidez. Help Me. ~ Margaret Atwood

She decided to donate blood to the Red Cross; she wanted to donate a quart a week and her blood would be in the veins of Australians and Fighting French and Chinese, all over the whole world, and it would be as though she were close kin to all of these people. She could hear the army doctors saying that the blood of Frankie Addams was the reddest and the strongest blood that they had ever known. ~ Carson McCullers

This is a universal, unique movie, it has potential to cross barriers. But we never thought about that on set, when we were doing the film. We knew that in making a silent movie, we were doing something a little bit under the wire, a bit interdit. It's a pastiche, but for the French taste, you would have thought. ~ Jean Dujardin

Abruptly the drumbeat softens into heartbeat. The camera becomes his eye. This was what had summoned him - a human heart beating from within a ripped-off, rolled-up tiny piece of cloth. A discarded newborn. Black. A useless, half-dead, famished, thrown-away boy. The madwoman's? No, she's beyond childbearing years. He approaches, his steps making no sound at all. When he reaches down to turn it over, the thing quivers. Suddenly Milo's brain fills with a soft cascade of men and women's voices from the past in French and English, German and Dutch, Cree and Gaelic. They gurgle and babble and blend as he stares at the unwanted infant. Is it breathing? Yes, ~ Nancy Huston

In another dimension, the three most popular social ideas of Indust-reality--democracy, socialism, and anarchism--have a family resemblance, despite their differences. All represent what Arlen Riley Wilson has called "Stone Age Backlash." That is, as Imperialism spread, more Stone Age "Partnership Societies" were discovered and they set the intelligentsia to thinking ferociously, as the French say. Democracy, socialism and anarchy all represent various persons' ideas of how to re-create Partnership Society within the context of an expanding technological world. This explains the various attempts to blend them: Democratic Socialism; Mutualist Anarchism; Libertarian (anti-State) Marxist heresies, etc. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

Books aren't like broccoli. You don't have to eat it because it's good for you. Books drag you in because they are fascinating. ~ Jackie French

She blinked at him, mouth open. "Do you really think it's wise to insult a woman who's holdin' a needle this far away? - she held her fingers an inch apart - "From your Grand Master of Ceremonies? ~ Julie Ann Walker

It appears that some part of Slothrop ran into the AWOL Džabajev one night in the heart of downtown Niederschaumdorf. (Some believe that fragments of Slothrop have grown into consistent personae of their own. If so, there's no telling which of the Zone's present-day population are offshoots of his original scattering. There's supposed to be a last photograph of him on the only record album ever put out by The Fool, an English rock group - seven musicians posed, in the arrogant style of the early Stones, near an old rocket-bomb site, out in the East End, or South of the River. It is spring, and French thyme blossoms in amazing white lacework across the cape of green that now hides and softens the true shape of the old rubble. There is no way to tell which of the faces is Slothrop's: the only printed credit that might apply to him is "Harmonica, kazoo - a friend." But knowing his Tarot, we would expect to look among the Humility, among the gray and preterite souls, to look for him adrift in the hostile light of the sky, the darkness of the sea. . . .) ~ Thomas Pynchon

No. No, you're not like him," she spat. "You're your very own brand of fucked up, Lucien. ~ Kitty French

He took a step forward and laid one big hand on her shoulder. She felt the heat of him against her bare skin. That was one way to get her mind off her security.
"I'm sorry I freaked you out. This is a safe neighborhood. I really wouldn't worry."
Ally nodded, having trouble coming up with a coherent response while he touched her.
"You wanta stay for a little while?" It wasn't a hard question, but he hesitated long enough that she wondered what was going on inside his head. Finally, he let out a sigh.
"Yeah, I do want to stay which is why I'm going to go."
"I don't understand." She did, however take note that his hand had remained on her shoulder. For a man intent on going, he hadn't made a move to leave yet.
"I'm afraid if I stay, I won't want to leave."
Ally swallowed hard and leaned a bit closer to him. "Then, don't leave." She saw his chest rise and fall, watched his focus drop to her lips, before he brought it back up to her eyes.
"You don't do one-night stands."
"I said I hadn't in the past; not that I was opposed to having one... with you."
"This can't be anything more than tonight."
Pulse racing, Ally nodded. "I know. ~ Cat Johnson

Immediately when you arrive in Sahara, for the first or the tenth time, you notice the stillness. An incredible, absolute silence prevails outside the towns; and within, even in busy places like the markets, there is a hushed quality in the air, as if the quiet were a conscious force which, resenting the intrusion of sound, minimizes and disperses sound straightaway. Then there is the sky, compared to which all other skies seem fainthearted efforts. Solid and luminous, it is always the focal point of the landscape. At sunset, the precise, curved shadow of the earth rises into it swiftly from the horizon, cutting into light section and dark section. When all daylight is gone, and the space is thick with stars, it is still of an intense and burning blue, darkest directly overhead and paling toward the earth, so that the night never really goes dark.
You leave the gate of the fort or town behind, pass the camels lying outside, go up into the dunes, or out onto the hard, stony plain and stand awhile alone. Presently, you will either shiver and hurry back inside the walls, or you will go on standing there and let something very peculiar happen to you, something that everyone who lives there has undergone and which the French call 'le bapteme de solitude.' It is a unique sensation, and it has nothing to do with loneliness, for loneliness presupposes memory. Here in this wholly mineral landscape lighted by stars like flares, even memory disappears...A strange, and by no means p ~ Paul Bowles

In the villages of the Iroquois, land was owned in common and worked in common. Hunting was done together, and the catch was divided among the members of the village. Houses were considered common property and were shared by several families. The concept of private ownership of land and homes was foreign to the Iroquois. A French Jesuit priest who encountered them in the 1650s wrote: 'No poorhouses are needed among them, because they are neither merchants nor paupers.... Their kindness, humanity and courtesy not only makes them liberal with what they have, but causes them to possess hardly anything except in common. ~ Howard Zinn

His system is a combination of ferocious blows, holds and throws, adapted from Japanese bayonet tactics, ju-jitsu, Chinese boxing, Sikh wrestling, French wrestling and Cornish collar-and-elbow wrestling, plus expert knowledge of hip-shooting, knife fighting and use of the Tommy gun and hand grenade. ~ Giles Milton

Sauces comprise the honor and glory of French cookery. They have contributed to its superiority, or pre-eminence, which is disputed by none. Sauces are the orchestration and accompaniment of a fine meal, and enable a good chef or cook to demonstrate his talent. ~ Curnonsky

My company has had a safety program for 150 years. The program was instituted as a result of a French law requiring an explosives manufacturer to live on the premises with his family. ~ Crawford Greenwalt

You never see a French person eating alone. ~ Pierre Dukan

I think the French Open, in many ways, brought out a certain characteristic in me and in my game that was already there. Just the circumstances allowed for it to be able to show. ~ Michael Chang

I basically have the diet of a 19th-century Irish navy, apart from the litre of stout a day. It's meat and potatoes and bread and cheese: those are my four food groups. ~ Daniel Radcliffe

I sometimes think I should go back to school to learn French and music, but who would have me? ~ Bette Midler

The Americans are very patriotic, and wish to make their new citizens patriotic Americans. But it is the idea of making a new nation literally out of any old nation that comes along. In a word, what is unique is not America but what is called Americanisation. We understand nothing till we understand the amazing ambition to Americanise the Kamskatkan and the Hairy Ainu. We are not trying to Anglicise thousand of French cooks or Italian organ-grinders. France is not trying to Gallicise thousands of English trippers or German prisoners of war. America is the only place in the world where this process, healthy or unhealthy, possible or impossible, is going on. And the process, as I have pointed out, is not internationalization. It would be truer to say it is the nationalization of the internationalized. It is making a home out of vagabonds and a nation out of exiles. ~ G.K. Chesterton

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

The nation-state became powerful in the wake of the French Revolution, whereas the nation-state has become powerless in light of globalization. ~ Grace Lee Boggs

Christianity - and that is its greatest merit - has somewhat mitigated that brutal German love of war, but it could not destroy it. Should that subduing talisman, the Cross, be shattered, the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, that insane Berserk rage of which Nordic bards have spoken and sung so often, will once more burst into flame. This talisman [the cross] is fragile, and the day will come when it will collapse miserably. Then ... a play will be performed in Germany which will make the French Revolution look like an innocent idyll. ~ Heinrich Heine

To my mind the defining characteristic of our era is spin, everything tailored to vanishing point by market research, brands and bands manufactured to precise specifications; we are so used to things transmuting into whatever we would like them to be that it comes as a profound outrage to encounter death, stubbornly unspinnable, only and immutably itself. The ~ Tana French

She might not be able to fix the
past, but she was willing to spend a
lifetime showing him what love could
be: beautiful not ugly, uplifting not
destructive, and more precious than
diamonds. ~ Kitty French

The French write plays and paint as naturally as we play jazz - it's just a national gift. ~ Alice B. Toklas

I cried in English, I cried in french, I cried in all the languages, because tears are the same all around the world. ~ Miranda July

Then humming thrice, he assumed a most ridiculous solemnity of aspect, and entered into a learned investigation of the nature of stink...The French were pleased with the putrid effluvia of animal food; and so were the Hottentots in Africa, and the Savages in Greenland; and that the Negroes on the coast of Senegal would not touch fish till it was rotten; strong presumptions in favour of what is generally called stink, as those nations are in a state of nature, undebauched by luxury, unseduced by whim and caprice: that he had reason to believe the stercoraceous flavour, condemned by prejudice as a stink, was, in fact, most agreeable to the organs of smelling; for, that every person who pretended to nauseate the smell of another's excretions, snuffed up his own with particular complacency... ~ Tobias Smollett

But I don't think of myself as a foreigner or a Frenchman! I just think of myself as a director. Whether I'm French or Australian or whatever, it's really not important. ~ Michel Hazanavicius

In language gender is particularly confusing. Why, please, should a table be male in German, female in French, and castrated in English? ~ Marlene Dietrich

What are the present governments of Europe, but a scene of iniquity and oppression? What is that of England? Do not its own inhabitants say, It is a market where every man has his price, and where corruption is common traffic, at the expense of a deluded people? No wonder, then, that the French Revolution is traduced. ~ Thomas Paine

Citizens of Liberal welfare states become increasingly narcissistic. You know what the big worry of the Western European is? It certainly isn't "how do I protect other countries?", like America worries about protecting countries. 37,000 Americans died saving South Korea from becoming like North Korea. How many Germans died saving South Korea? How many French? How many Italians? How many Spaniards?
We die for others.
You know what the big concern of Western Europeans is? Vacation time. They riot over vacation time. They riot over the retirement age.
RIOTS take place over these issues. This is narcissism. It doesn't matter what is happening in Cambodia. It doesn't matter what is happening in Syria. I want my vacation time. ~ Dennis Prager

Gloria watched the swollen white orb of a hot-air balloon rising over Navy Pier and knew she had to break it off with Oliver, for he was the type who would never enjoy hot-air balloons, Van Morrison songs, or mess, whether from orgasm or otherwise. But who was she to be dreaming about mess today? ~ Andrea Kayne Kaufman

So please, in the name of John, Paul, George, and possibly Ringo, do not be afraid to screw up once in a while. Life can beat every creative impulse out of you and make you scared to embark in new directions. I say, embark away. (Doug French) ~ Heather B. Armstrong

You have witchcraft in your lips, Kate. There is more eloquence in a sweet touch of them than in the tongues of the whole French council. ~ William Shakespeare

Let's go."
"It's not that easy."
He smoothed back her dark hair and looked into her beautiful, blue eyes. "It is when you have someone to catch you. ~ Donna Grant