Translated French Quotes & Sayings

The search for knowledge requires effort. — Sunday Adelaja

Wherever God has planted you, you must know how to flower - translated from a French saying — Alan Furst

I've grown a lot as a singer and a songwriter, but also as a person. I communicate better with my band, and our relationships are stronger and closer. — Joel Madden

I was sick and tired of reading other people's epigraphs. They all seemed to be in ancient Greek, middle French or, when they were translated, they never seemed to relate to the book at hand. Basically, they seemed to be there just to baffle you and to impress you with how smart the writer is. — Jim Crace

Many of the books I read, I had to read them in French, English, or Italian, because they hadn't been translated into Spanish. — Antonio Munoz Molina

I lived in New York my whole life. Like every New Yorker, I have stories about spending summers on the Jersey shore, riding the roller coaster in Seaside that is now famous for that sickening photo of it being washed out to sea. — Marissa Jaret Winokur

LINCKLAEN, JOHN. (Agent of the Holland Land Company.) Journals of Travels into Pennsylvania, New York and Vermont (1791-1792). Translated from French by Helen Lincklaen Fairchild. With biographical sketch and notes. New York, Putnams: 1897. — Anonymous

....one of those long, romantic novels, six hundred and fifty pages of small print, translated from French or German or Hungarian or something -- because few of the English ones have the exact feeling I mean. And you read one page of it or even one phrase of it, and then you gobble up all the rest and go about in a dream for weeks afterwards, for months afterwards -- perhaps all your life, who knows? -- surrounded by those six hundred and fifty pages, the houses, the streets, the snow, the river, the roses, the girls, the sun, the ladies' dresses and the gentlemen's voices, the old, wicked, hard-hearted women and the old, sad women, the waltz music -- everything. What is not there you put in afterwards, for it is alive, this book, and it grows in your head. 'The house I was living in when I read that book,' you think, or 'This colour reminds me of that book. — Jean Rhys

An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences. — Edith Wharton

How hollow to have no secrets left; you shake yourself and nothing rattles. You're boneless as an anemone. — Andrew Sean Greer

Lover, n.
Oh, how I hated this word. So pretentious, like it was always being translated from the French. The tint and taint of illicit, illegitimate affections. Dictionary meaning: a person having a love affair. Impermanent. Unfamilial. Inextricably linked to sex.
I have never wanted a lover. In order to have a lover, I must go back to the root of the word. For I have never wanted a lover, but I have always wanted lover, and to be loved.
There is no word for the recipient of the love. There is only a word for the giver. There is the assumption that lovers come in pairs.
When I say, Be my lover, I don't mean, Let's have an affair. I don't mean Sleep with me. I don't mean, Be my secret.
I want us to go back to that root.
I want you to be the one who loves me.
I want to be the one who loves you. — David Levithan

When World War II erupted, colonialism was at its apogee. The courde of the war, however, its symbolic undertones, would sow the seeds of the system's defeat and demise. [ ... ] The central subject, the essence, the core relations between Europeans and Africans during the colonial era, was the difference of race, of skin color. Everything-each eaxchange, connection, conflict-was translated into the language of black and white. [ ... ] Into the African was inculcated the notion that the white man was untouchable, unconquerable, that whites constitute a homogenous, cohesive force. [ ... ] Then, suddenly, Africans recruited into the British and French armies in Europe observed that the white men were fighting one another, shooting one another, destroying one another's cities. It was revelation, a surprise, a shock. — Ryszard Kapuscinski

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

There are certain sorts of jokes which have only to do with the substitution of the unexpected word in a familiar context. If you translated something into French and then had it translated back into English by somebody who didn't know the original, you'd lose what was funny. — Tom Stoppard

One runs the risk of weeping a little, if one lets himself be tamed. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

In French: La Fugitive, Albertine disparue Also translated as: The Sweet Cheat Gone, Albertine Gone — Stephen Fall

As my editor had no desire to frighten readers with the Romanian pages, he had them translated and published the whole thing in French in 1984. It was only years later, in Romania, that I was able to publish the book as I wrote it. — Dumitru Tepeneag

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

I'm really private, and also, when I'm home, I'm home. I don't like people in on my business. I believe that you can be overexposed. — Gary Allan

The Machiavelli of the 20th century will be an advertising man, his Prince, a textbook of the art and science of fooling all the people all the time. — Aldous Huxley

If everything you say gets laughed at ...
then you become afraid of everyone ...
and are no longer able to speak ...
even knowing all that does is bother everyone ...
Your heart ...
... shuts down ...
And your words die ... — Natsuki Takaya

903AL RAGHIF is now available in French (LE PAIN) beautifully translated by Fifi Abou Dib. Check it out!
Publisher: Acte Sud/ L'Orient des livres — Toufic Youssef Aouad

I think everyone is aware how disgusting snails are, and that's why they are served in a bowl of wine and butter and called "escargots," which is a French word loosely translated as "denial. — Jim Gaffigan

I would love to have a career that's governed by the material; I always want to be part of stories that I feel are worthwhile. — Lupita Nyong'o

Now the wintertime is coming
The windows are filled with frost
I went to tell everybody
But I could not get across
Well, I wanna be your lover, baby
I don't wanna be your boss
Don't say I never warned you
When your train gets lost. — Bob Dylan

When Lionel Giles began his translation of Sun Tzu's ART OF WAR, the work was virtually unknown in Europe. Its introduction to Europe began in 1782 when a French Jesuit Father living in China, Joseph Amiot, acquired a copy of it, and translated — Sun Tzu

But then it came time for me to make my journey - into America. [ ... N]o coincidence that my first novel is called Americana. That became my subject, the subject that shaped my work. When I get a French translation of one of my books that says 'translated from the American', I think, 'Yes, that's exactly right. — Don DeLillo

Coup d'Oeil Concept A French expression which loosely translated means the "strike of the eye" or the "vision behind the eye." The closest English concept would be that of intuition. Intuition is defined as "perceptive insight" or "the power to discern the true nature of a situation. — Charles "Sid" Heal

Swaraj is a hardy tree of patient growth. — Mahatma Gandhi

It has since been agreed that speeches given in English will be translated into French and vice versa, and even into German and Italian when necessary. No doubt translations into Esperanto will also soon be in demand. — Fredrik Bajer

Disagreement produces debate but dissent produces dissension. — Daniel J. Boorstin

Original sin is that thing about man which makes him capable of conceiving of his own perfection and incapable of achieving it. — Reinhold Niebuhr

Our lab had always refrained from keeping our studies secret. — Peter Agre

As it happened that Elizabeth had much rather not, she endeavoured in her answer to put an end to every entreaty and expectation of the kind. Such relief, however, as it was in her power to afford, — Jane Austen