Listen To French Quotes & Sayings

In our post-everything culture, obey has become a four-letter word. Obeying is for wimps. Obeying is for people who didn't do well enough on their SATs to write their own rules. Only the weak and the feeble and the young - -well, not even the young anymore - -need to obey. Funny, because the root of the word obey is from the French verb meaning "to listen, or to give ear to." It was never intended as a militant word, but one of hearing, of understanding. Of getting it. For a world obsessed with staying in constant communication, we aren't really very good listeners. — Heather Choate Davis

In Paris, I found myself surrounded by Germans; they were all over the place. They played music, and people would go and listen to them! All along rue de Rivoli, as far as you could see from place de la Concorde, there were enormous swastika banners five or six floors high. I just thought, This is impossible.
Imagine that someone comes into your home - someone you don't like - he settles down, gives orders: "Here we are, we're at home now; you must obey." To me that was unbearable. — Pearl Witherington Cornioley

You cannot be the person they know and the great, glorious person you want to become. Not at the same time. — Chuck Palahniuk

Ash swirls in the air and the landscape is gray rubble that falls away into the sea. They kept saying global warming wan't going to be the end of us, that it was just threats from the fanatics, that we didn't have to make changes. But every year there were more earthquakes and flood and hurricanes and fires- every element expressing its imbalance. Every year the temperatures soared and the ice melted and no one did anything. My pink house - no longer mine - stands on the edge of nowhere like a rose in a Salvador Dali surrealist desert landscape ... — Francesca Lia Block

If you are an Arabic-speaking, Greek-Orthodox going to a French school it makes you deeply sceptical if you have to listen to three different accounts of the Crusades - one from the Muslim side, one from the Greek side and one from the Catholic side. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

So what are you thinking?" I asked.
I meant about the case, obviously, but Cassie was in a giddy mood
she generates more energy than most people, and she'd been sitting indoors most of the day.
"Will you listen to him? A woman asking a guy what he's thinking is the ultimate crime, she's clingy and needy and he runs a mile, but when it's the other
"
"Behave yourself," I said, pulling her hood over her face.
"Help! I'm being oppressed!" she yelled through it. "Call the Equality Commission." The stroller girl gave us a sour look.
"You're overexcited," I told Cassie. "Calm down or I'll take you home with no ice cream. — Tana French

The sign of a true woman isn't the ability to recite French poetry or play the pianoforte or cook Chateaubriand. The sign of a true woman is learning to listen to her own voice even when society does its best to drown it out. — Eve Marie Mont

I listen to the things people want out of love these days and they blow my mind. I go to the pub with the boys from the squad and listen while they explain, with minute precision, exactly what shape a woman should be, what bits she should shave how, what acts she should perform on which date and what she should always or never do or say or want; I eavesdrop on women in cafes while they reel off lists of which jobs a man is allowed, which cars, which labels, which flowers and restaurants and gemstones get the stamp of approval, and I want to shout, Are you people out of your tiny minds? — Tana French

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've noticed that a lot of people do much better when all their resolutions are framed as 'Yes.' Not something like, "I'm going to give up French Fries," but something like "I'm going to eat three vegetables every day." "I'm going to hug more, kiss more, touch more." "I'm going to listen to more music." They do better when they frame things in the positive. And I think this is just part of human nature. — Gretchen Rubin

Public schools go on year after year. They don't die because they are not alive. — Natalie Goldberg

I'm only talking to one person here. If that's you, then you need to shut up and listen. If it's not, then you need to shut up because no one's talking to you. — Tana French

I think my body knew before my mind did. Or maybe I just refused to listen to what I knew. — Jackie French

Sometimes you must do things out of love
that devastate the senses.

This wasn't easy, Elymas. I know
blindness. I know how suddenly

the specks in the stones you can't see
become something you would die for.

From the way you grope this cloud of mist
I know you're trying to imagine

the color of the stars right now,
the blue-white shine that once

ignited your hands with power,
but can conjur only

the upturned bellies of poisoned frogs,
your mother's dying lips.

Don't you know how small
this life is? Even the stars

are just the sweat Christ shakes
from his brow. When you make crooked

the path to eternity, you send your brother
to oblivion, to the buried speck

in the midnight desert stone. This time,
no magic will save you. You

will have to find your life in the dark.
Today you will have to be led by the hand. — Tania Runyan

I like to listen to French radio; I'm trying to learn French. — Chris Pine

Already the lecture is beginning to interest several dedicated people I know. One person who has promised to come (and bring several sharp friends, too) is a brilliant new contact I made during rush hour on the Jerome Avenue line. His name is Ongah, and he is an exchange student from Kenya who is writing a dissertation at N.Y.U. on the French symbolists of the 19th cent. Of course, you would not understand or like a brilliant and dedicated guy like Ongah. I could listen to him talk for hours. He is serious and does not come on with all of that pseudo stuff like you always did. What Ongah says is meaningful. Ongah is real and vital. He is virile and aggressive. He rips at reality and tears aside concealing veils.

"Oh, my God!" Ignatius slobbered. "The minx has been raped by a Mau-Mau. — John Kennedy Toole

I listen to money singing, it's like looking down from long French windows at a provincial town. The slums, the canal, the churches ornate and mad in the evening sun. It is intensely sad ... — Philip Larkin

One advantage to being a despised species is that you have freedom, freedom to be any crazy thing you want. If you listen to a group of housewives talk, you'll hear a lot of nonsense, some of it really crazy. This comes, I think, from being alone so much, and pursuing your own odd train of thought without impediment, which some call discipline. The result is craziness, but also brilliance. Ordinary women come out with the damnedest truth. You ignore them at your own risk. And they are permitted to go on making wild statements without being put in one kind of jail or another (some of them, anyway) because everyone knows they're crazy and powerless too. If a woman is religious or earthy, passive or wildly assertive, loving or hating, she doesn't get much more flak than if she isn't: her choices lie between being castigated as a ball and chain or as a whore. — Marilyn French

He then expounded a remarkable theory, which had occurred to him while he was playing the clarinet during one of the power cuts that the French electricity board arranges at regular intervals. Electricity, he said, is a matter of science and logic. Classical music is a matter of art and logic. Vous voyez? Already one sees a common factor. And when you listen to the disciplined and logical progression of some of Mozart's work, the conclusion is inescapable: Mozart would have made a formidable electrician. — Peter Mayle

I would prefer to listen to a French classical composer like Olivier Messiaen than to the pop hits of the day. — Matt Groening

She was bad at love. There were people in the world who were good at love and people who were bad at it. She was bad. She used to think she was good at love, that it was intimacy she was bad at. But you had to have both. Love without intimacy, she knew, was an unsung tune. It was all in your head. You said, "Listen to this!" but what you found yourself singing was a tangle, a nothing, a heap. It reminded her of a dinner party she had gone to once, where dessert was served on plates printed with French songs. After dinner everyone had had to sing their plate, but hers had still had whipped cream on it, and when it came her turn, she had garbled the notes and words, frantically pushing the whipped cream around with a fork so she could see the next measure. Oh, she was bad, bad like that, at love. — Lorrie Moore

the pale light coming in through the French door leading to the deck I could see who it was. "Milton. What the - " "Shut up, asshole. You surprised to see me? Did you think I was going to let them wash me down the toilet without doing something about it?" "I don't know what you're talking about. Listen, there are — Michael Connelly

We're pupils of the religions - Catholic, Protestant, Jewish ... Well, the Christian religions. Those who directed French education down through the centuries were the Jesuits. They taught us how to make sentences translated from the Latin, well balanced, with a verb, a subject, a complement, a rhythm. In short - here a speech, there a preach, everywhere a sermon! They say of an author, "He knits a nice sentence!" Me, I say, "It's unreadable." They say, "What magnificent theatrical language!" I look, I listen. It's flat, it's nothing, it's nil. Me, I've slipped the spoken word into print. In one sole shot. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

It is wonderful to have someone praise you, to be desired. — Marilyn Monroe

American diplomats had been slow to understand the scope of the change being driven by Chinese migration to Africa. The phenomenon had been flagged in State Department cables as early as 2005, with diplomats identifying the budding, large-scale movement of people from China to Africa as part of a campaign to expand Beijing's political influence and simultaneously advance China's business interests and overall clout. These early, classified warnings also spoke of the spread, via emigration, of Chinese organized crime, particularly in smuggling and human trafficking. For the most part, however, it seemed that American diplomats were still in search of the right voice, the right message. All too often, Washington struck a paternalistic tone that came across as: Listen up children, you must be careful about these tricky Chinese. — Howard W. French

In France, they call the people who come to the theatre 'les spectateurs'; in Britain and Ireland, they are the audience, the people who listen. This does not mean the French are not interested in language. On the contrary. It actually says more about the undeveloped visual sense over here. — Simon McBurney

It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense. We should all be dead. I thought I should like to see us all dead, one on top of the other. A pyramid of flesh with the whitefolks on the bottom, as the broad base, then the Indians with their silly tomahawks and teepees and wigwams and treaties, the Negroes with their mops and recipes and cotton sacks and spirituals sticking out of their mouths. The Dutch children should all stumble in their wooden shoes and break their necks. The French should choke to death on the Louisiana Purchase (1803) while silkworms ate all the Chinese with their stupid pigtails. As a species, we were an abomination. All of us. — Maya Angelou

God's mercy and grace give me hope - for myself, and for our world. — Billy Graham

I stand and listen to people speaking french in the stores and in the street. It's such a pert, crisp language, elegant as ruffling taffeta. — Belva Plain

Listen, boy, just ask the chef to make me a proper Full English Breakfast. You know, bacon, fried eggs, sausages, liver, grilled mushrooms and tomatoes, black pudding, kidneys, baked beans, fried bread, toast and served with strong English mustard, mind - none of this effete French muck - and a large mug of hot, strong Indian tea. — Bryan Talbot

She hadn't said a word about his comment concerning marrying her. If she was of the French nobility, she might not wish to marry him. But still, he was of the mind he would change her thoughts concerning the matter - despite that he had no title or lands to call his own. What Highlander could say that he had a wife who would fight a Highland warrior, wielding only a pitchfork, or that she would raise a Highlander's sword to fight a Viking warrior to protect him?
Her stories fascinated him, and he was thinking that if he had a bairn with her, how she would tell the child her delightful tales. And he would settle down with them to listen, too. Most of all, he loved the way she worried about his health, snuggled with him as if it was for more than warmth, and even kissed him back when he weakly attempted to kiss her earlier. — Terry Spear