Classic French Quotes & Sayings

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

The classic theology of my tradition comes from the French Renaissance. [William] Shakespeare was born in 1564, the year [John] Calvin died, and that theology was very influential in England in his lifetime. I think Shakespeare was attentive to questions raised by it, about human nature, history, reality itself. I find the two literatures to be mutually illuminating. — Marilynne Robinson

A Frenchman, as any Frenchman will tell you, is a difficult condition to abide, as much a privilege as a responsibility. To maintain the appropriate standards of excellence, this superlative of grace, was a burden not so light even in the homeland, and immeasurably more difficult in the colonies. Being both French and a stoat had resulted in a more or less constant crisis of self-identity - one which Bonsoir often worked to resolve, in classic Gallic fashion, via monologue. — Daniel Polansky

The French don't know how to cook breakfast. — Prince Philip

Notwithstanding the prevalent notion that the French poets are the sympathetic heirs of classic culture, it appears to me that they are not so imbued with the true classic spirit, art, and mythology as some of our English poets, notably Keats and Shelley. — William Shakespeare

Similarly, Alexis de Tocqueville, the famous French political philosopher and sociologist, in his classic Democracy in America, written after a lengthy visit in the 1830s, saw equality, not majority rule, as the outstanding characteristic of America. "In America," he wrote, the aristocratic element has always been feeble from its birth; and if at the present day it is not actually destroyed, it is at any rate so completely disabled, that we can scarcely assign to it any degree of influence on the course of affairs. The — Milton Friedman

I'm tiny. I'm small. — Claire Denis

It seemed that in Paris you could discuss classic literature or architecture or great music with everyone from the garbage collector to the mayor. — Julia Child

The school was nothing but reminiscence - of an Italian hill town, a French abbey, an English academy, the different sources improbably but convincingly melded into a fantasy about the classic sites of Europe as imagined by exiles from cold peripheral lands, nostalgia about somebody else's past. — Edmund White

Here's the irony in what I do: When I go out to eat, I like classic French food. I like amazing Japanese food that has such a history that it goes back hundreds of years. And I also like really innovative food as well. — Grant Achatz

Every man needs a good, solid watch. My favorite watch is the Presidential Rolex. I own many watches, but this one is usually the one on my wrist. I buy mine in the Diamond District in New York City. Classic. — French Montana

I always thought that I was lazy because I could never tell if I was working or not. I was making things, which doesn't seem like work. — Ari Marcopoulos

I love fashion because it can change to suit your mood. I'm very drawn to classic silhouettes, menswear-inspired pieces, and anything that feels a little French. I'm also inspired by Brit girl style. — Sophia Bush

Cooperation called fraternity in the classic French formula is as much a part of the democratic ideal as is personal initiative. That cultural conditions were allowed to develop (markedly so in the economic phase) which subordinated cooperativeness to liberty and equality serves to explain the decline in the two latter. — John Dewey

It didn't even occur to me that I'm the last person in the world who should play salsa or Brazilian music. — David Byrne

The one being abhorrent to the powers above the earth and under them is the hyphenated American — Theodore Roosevelt

I sound the same regardless if I'm 20 pounds heavier or 20 pounds light, and I think that's the key thing with my fans and why they continue to be loyal because I'm that type of person. — Kelly Clarkson

The most classic French dessert around the holidays is the Christmas log, with butter cream. Two flavors. Chocolate and coconut. My first job in the kitchen when I was a boy was to make these Christmas logs. — Alain Ducasse

When you kill with your bayonet, you — Gregory B. Talley

In the passage of their lives together every object in the garden, every item in the house, every word they spoke, attested to their mutual love, the combining of their humuours ... When the time came that Nora was alone most of the night and part of the day, she suffered from the personality of the house, the punishment of those who collect their lives together. Unconsciously at first, she went about disturbing nothing; then she became aware that her soft and careful movements were the outcome of an unreasoning fear - if she disarranged anything Robin might become confused - might lose the scent of home. — Djuna Barnes

In each restaurant, I develop a different culinary sensibility. In Paris, I'm more classic, because that's what customers like. In Monaco, it's classic Mediterranean haute cuisine. In London, it's a contemporary French restaurant that I've developed with a U.K. influence and my French know-how. — Alain Ducasse

This compulsion to an activity without respite, without variety, without result was so cruel that one day, noticing a swelling over his stomach, he felt an actual joy in the idea that he had, perhaps, a tumor that would prove fatal, that he need not concern himself with anything further, since it was this malady that was going to govern his life, to make a plaything of him, until the not-distant end. If indeed, at his period, it often happened that, though without admitting it even to himself, he longed for death, it was in order to escape not so much from the keenness of his sufferings as from the monotony of his struggle. — Marcel Proust

You think that is true, but I assure you it is not. Death is better than the sort of captivity they plan for you. I have been a captive, a toy for heartless men. I made them fear me. It is why they sought to sell me. It was why your father could buy my freedom.'

'I do not know that tale.'

'It is a dark and sad one. — Robin Hobb

The French, it seems to me, strike a happy balance between intimacy and reserve. Some of this must be helped by the language, which lends itself to graceful expression even when dealing with fairly basic subjects ... And there's that famously elegant subtitle from a classic Western.
COWBOY: "Gimme a shot of red-eye."
SUBTITLE: "Un Dubonnet, s'il vous plait."
No wonder French was the language of diplomacy for all those years. — Peter Mayle

French women don't have too many clothes - a few good pieces that last for a while and are classic and timeless. — Mireille Guiliano

It's ironic, isn't it? A hundred psychology students, and not one of us recognized a classic psychopath. You know the strange thing? I wished I had done everything he claimed I had. If I had, then it would all have made sense: I would have been getting what I deserved. But I hadn't done any of it, and yet that made absolutely no difference to what happened. There was no such thing as cause and — Tana French

I think we've found a better solution on North Haven and Vinalhaven: Instead of paying increasing expensive electric bills every month, with the money going out of our community, out of state, and even out of the country, the wind turbines bring the promise of decades of steady rates with the money staying right here. — Chellie Pingree