French Quotes - page 57
![Sometimes I almost pity them [other women]. I think I have a freedom they cannot understand. No insult, no blame, can touch me. Because I have set myself beyond the pale. I am nothing. I am hardly human any more. I am the French Lieutenant's Whore. (John Fowles)](https://cdn.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images_webp/15/john-fowles-almost-beyond-1006215.webp)
We give our confidence to the people of England because they have always been loyal to the Queen, have always loved the law, and have always been passionately attached to the Empire. (Cheers.) Has that characterised the Irish dominant faction? ... Why they have always sought support from time to time from whatever nation happened to be in hostility to England-first the Spaniards, then the French, and now the Americans.
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
The French fear of German resurgence which caused France to press for a policy of dismemberment of Germany seemed to be altogether exaggerated. After 1945 Germany lay prostrate - militarily, economically and politically - and in my opinion this condition was a sufficient guarantee that Germany could not again threaten France. In the future United States of Europe I saw great hope for Europe and thus for Germany. We had to try to remind France, Holland, Belgium, and the other European countries that they were - as we were - situated in Western Europe, that they are and will forever remain our neighbours, that any violence they do to us must in the end lead to trouble, and that no lasting peace can be established in Europe if it is founded on force alone.
Konrad Adenauer
The toothed vagina is no sexist hallucination: every penis is made less by every vagina, just as mankind, male and female, is devoured by mother nature. The vagina dentata is part of the Romantic revival of pagan myth. It is subliminally present in Poe's voracious maelstrom and dank, scythe-swept pit. It overtly appears in the bible of French Decadence, Huysmans's A Rebours (1884), where a dreamer is magnetically drawn towards mother nature's open thighs, the "bloody depths” of a carnivorous flower rimmed by "swordblades.”.
Camille Paglia
The essential result of the French revolution was to establish the doctrine of popular sovereignty as the foundation of modern Europe, though with no more precise definition of that elusive category "the people" than that popular sovereignty was the antithesis of the personal authority of the monarch.
E. H. Carr
We heard- a shithouse rumor?- that we dominated the heights surrounding Lerida and Balaguer (this was different); the newspapers reported that the offensive was gaining ground everywhere; the Non-Intervention Committee met again and issued another of its 'decisions.' This time it was decided once more to withdraw all foreign 'volunteers' from Spain, but England's perfidious hand could be seen as plain as day, for wasn't Mr. Chamberlain interested in concluding an agreement with Banjo-Eyes? And wasn't the 'withdrawal' contingent upon British and French concession of belligerent rights to Franco, which would tip the scales even farther in his favor by legalizing what already existed- the shipment of arms, munitions, planes and tanks and men into his territory?
Francisco Franco
The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not on its growth and development. The error of Louis XIV was that he thought human nature would always be the same. The result of his error was the French Revolution. It was an admirable result. All the results of the mistakes of governments are quite admirable.
Oscar Wilde
I visit Paris often, and have considerably studied the French character. In individuals it is often excellent; but taken in general it disgusts by its petulance and vanity. The French have always been dissolute in their amours; and are thus led to assail the chastity of foreign women, the most unpardonable of all affronts to fathers, brothers, husbands, and lovers. This, and their petulant overbearing conduct, prevent their conquests from being lasting. Yes, I swear to you by the Sicilian vespers, they can never be of much duration.
Horace Walpole
The cultural competition of the early Cold War years was asymmetrical. Among European cultural elites there was still a widespread sentiment that they shared, across ideological divides and even bridging the Iron Curtain, a common culture to which America posed a threat. The French in particular took this line, echoing the early post-war efforts of their diplomats to trace an international policy independent of American control.
Tony Judt
No French government except Léon Blum's short-lived Popular Front of 1936 paid serious attention to the grievous mis-rule practiced by colonial administrators in French North Africa. Moderate Algerian nationalists like Ferhat Abbas were well known to French politicians and intellectuals before and after World War Two, but no-one really expected Paris to concede their modest goals of self-government or ‘home rule' any time soon.
Tony Judt
I have no sympathy at all with the new Radicalism of which Sir William Harcourt is now a conspicuous supporter, although a recent convert. I have no sympathy with the policy of men whose representatives abet and aid the projects of the enemies of this country (hear, hear)-the men who whine over the fate of Lobengula, but denounce as murderers the British officers and the brave Englishmen, who, at the risk of their lives and fortunes in all parts of the world, are doing their part to maintain the great Empire of the Queen. (Cheers.) I have no sympathy with men who apparently approve of French aggression, and who at the same time deprecate any increase of the British Navy; or with those who preach consistently in all parts of the world, in Africa, in Asia, and in Ireland their favourite doctrine of "Scuttle."
Joseph Chamberlain
Most of the writers with whom I was most impressed were the French and Russian writers of another period. The one American writer who stood out to me was Richard Wright-and Dreiser. I took to their naturalism. I was able to understand so much of the country through them. Certainly I understood Black America because of Richard Wright.
Richard Wright
Callaghan resigned as Chancellor after devaluation. His place was taken by Roy Jenkins who was, in my judgment, the ablest of the four Chancellors I served. He listened to advice, but made up his own mind, explaining to his advisers the grounds for his decision. He was at times able to foresee contingencies of which his staff had not warned him, such as the possible devaluation of the French franc, and was judicious in assessing such contingencies and deciding what measures were appropriate to the circumstances. He was not afraid to take extreme measures to overcome major dangers, adding more to taxation and cutting more from public expenditure than his advisers suggested and showing a sound judgment of what was at stake. This resoluteness in the circumstances in which he took office enabled him to carry the Cabinet with him after three years in which they had shrunk from much milder action.
Roy Jenkins
Leithen's story had bored and puzzled me at the start, but now it had somehow gripped my fancy. Space a domain of endless corridors and Presences moving in them! The world was not quite the same as an hour ago. It was the hour, as the French say, "between dog and wolf," when the mind is disposed to marvels.
John Buchan
During the war of 1914-18 the English working class were in contact with foreigners to an extent that is rarely possible. The sole result was that they brought back a hatred of all Europeans, except the Germans, whose courage they admired. In four years on French soil they did not even acquire a liking for wine.
George Orwell
He would be prepared to say himself that no individual state should have Crown Colonies at all, and that French, Italian, and British colonies should be handed over to the League to administer under mandates controlled by the League itself. It did not follow that British Crown Colonies would no longer be under British administration. He hoped he was not a Jingo, but he still felt that the British were the best Colonial administrators of any government in the world. It would make a vital difference, however, if instead of being governed as Crown Colonies the possibility should be removed of their exploitation by British capitalism.
Herbert Morrison
We must not be rigid. We must not become conservative as is the unhappy state of some of our Liberal leaders to-day, as did the French Revolution of 1789, as has, in many respects, the Russian Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. We need the fresh air and free challenging thought of my favourite poet, Robert Burns, who was, I think, a Socialist agitator before an organised Socialist movement was born.
Herbert Morrison
We cannot forget that Colonel Nasser has repeatedly boasted of his intention to create an Arab empire from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf. The French Prime Minister, M. Mollet, the other day quoted a speech of Colonel Nasser's and rightly said that it could remind us only of one thing-of the speeches of Hitler before the war.
Hugh Gaitskell
What is true of creed is no less true of nationality. There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts 'native' before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as anyone else.
Theodore Roosevelt
