French Quotes

As the French say, there are three sexes - men, women, and clergymen. (Sydney Smith)
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. View quote
Edith Wharton
I speak in Latin to God, Italian to Women, French to Men, and German to my Horse. View quote
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
The word impossible is not French. View quote
Napoleon Bonaparte
What has influenced my life more than any other single thing has been my stammer. Had I not stammered I would probably... have gone to Cambridge as my brothers did, perhaps have become a don and every now and then published a dreary book about French literature. View quote
W. Somerset Maugham
If the French noblesse had been capable of playing cricket with their peasants, their chateaux would never have been burnt. View quote
G. M. Trevelyan
The French want no-one to be their superior. The English want inferiors. The Frenchman constantly raises his eyes above him with anxiety. The Englishman lowers his beneath him with satisfaction. View quote
Alexis de Tocqueville
If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman... because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French. View quote
Montesquieu
Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
I don't know why you use a fancy French word like detente when there's a good English phrase for it - cold war. View quote
Golda Meir
The Russians imitate French ways, but always at a distance of fifty years. (Stendhal)
I pity the French Cinema because it has no money. I pity the American Cinema because it has no ideas. View quote
Jean-Luc Godard
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. View quote
Fredrik Bajer
I am not a great French woman. George Sand, Marguerite Duras and Simone de Beauvoir are great French women. View quote
Juliette Binoche
English people don't have very good diction. In France you have to pronounce very particularly and clearly, and learning French at an early age helped me enormously. View quote
Vivien Leigh
The French system of conscription brings together a fair sample of all classes; ours is composed of the scum of the earth - the mere scum of the earth. It is only wonderful that we should be able to make so much out of them afterwards. View quote
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
Except by name, Jean Paul Friedrich Richter is little known out of Germany. The only thing connected with him, we think, that has reached this country is his saying,imported by Madame de Stal, and thankfully pocketed by most newspaper critics,'Providence has given to the French the empire of the land to the English that of the sea to the Germans that ofthe air' Richter German humorist prose writer. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
Boy, those French: they have a different word for everything! View quote
Steve Martin
I was at this restaurant. The sign said Breakfast Anytime. So I ordered French Toast in the Renaissance. View quote
Steven Wright
French is the language that turns dirt into romance. View quote
Stephen King
Of course the French are making very credible movies and it is still one of the greatest nations in terms of world cinema but the real problem is the decay in film criticism. (Wim Wenders)
The average Hollywood film star's ambition is to be admired by an American, courted by an Italian, married to an Englishman and have a French boyfriend. View quote
Katharine Hepburn
In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language. View quote
Mark Twain
When I warned the French that Britain would fight on alone whatever they did, their generals told their prime minister and his divided cabinet, 'In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.' Some chicken some neck. View quote
Winston Churchill
In a country like France, so ancient, their history is full of outstanding people, so they carry a heavy weight on their back. Who could write in French after Proust or Flaubert? View quote
Manuel Puig