France Quotes - page 39
My father's mother, a pure-blooded Indian from Oaxaca, had been a gifted fifteen-year-old when Benito Juárez won Mexico's independence from France. They'd taken her to the Academy of blah-blah-blah in Mexico City, and she'd astonished her European professors by learning French in six weeks.
Victor Villaseñor
Well, I first, uh, started doing this after World War II when I was kind of tramping around France, Germany, and the lowlands, and I came upon these frightened, waif-type children, and, uh, they actually looked like rats running around and they acted like it. And, uh, I started painting this type of thing of these chi-these children, they didn't even seem to know why-these children didn't even seem to know how to talk; they couldn't even pray. And it started like, uh, an artist work-it-it does-you don't know how to talk about it, but the painting can talk for you, and I think this is the difference between an artist and a poet and a writer: in other words, an artist, uh, paints what he has to say, where other people do it in, uh, in more verbal type of...
Walter Keane
It cannot be denied that a state of great national prosperity is quite consistent and compatible with legislation in favour of the protection of native industry. That proposition, years ago, was denied; but with the experience we have had of France and the United States of America-the two most flourishing communities probably in existence-it is now incontestable. Well, my lords, many years ago-nearly 40-this country, which no one can say for a moment did not flourish with the old system of protection, deemed it necessary to revise the principles upon which its commerce was conducted...The scheme that was adopted was this-that we were to fight hostile tariffs with free imports. I was among those who looked upon that policy with fear. I believed it to be one very perilous.
Benjamin Disraeli
How deep a wound to morals and social purity has that accursed article of the celibacy of the clergy been Even the best and most enlightened men in Romanist countries attach a notion of impurity to the marriage of a clergyman. And can such a feeling be without its effect on the estimation of the wedded life in general Impossible and the morals of both sexes in Spain, Italy, France, and. prove it abundantly.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
In my opinion there are two seats of war danger. The first is in the Far East, in the zone of Japan. I have in mind the numerous statements made by Japanese military men containing threats against other powers. The second seat is in the zone of Germany. It is hard to say which is the most menacing, but both exist and are active. Compared with these two principal seats of war danger, the Italian-Abyssinian war is an episode. At present, the Far Eastern seat of danger reveals the greatest activity. However, the centre of this danger may shift to Europe. This is indicated, for example, by the interview which Herr Hitler recently gave to a French newspaper. In this interview Hitler seems to have tried to say peaceful things, but he sprinkled his "peacefulness" so plentifully with threats against both France and the Soviet Union that nothing remained of his "peacefulness."
Joseph Stalin
I don't know what my image is. I went to France to publicize Marvin's Room, and one really smart young woman journalist said to me, "You know, when I told people I was going to interview Meryl Streep they were so excited... all ze women in my office, they love you so much. But ze men - they are afraid of you."
Meryl Streep
In the afternoon of to-day it was apparent that the essential unity could be secured under another Prime Minister, though not myself. In these circumstances my duty was plain ... For the hour has now come when we are to be put to the test, as the innocent people of Holland, Belgium, and France are being tested already. And you, and I, must rally behind our new leader, and with our united strength, and with unshakable courage, fight and work until this wild beast, that has sprung out of his lair upon us, has been finally disarmed and overthrown.
Neville Chamberlain
Like a dropsical man calling out for water, water, our deluded citizens are clamoring for more banks, more banks. The American mind is now in that state of fever which the world has so often seen in the history of other nations. We are under the bank bubble, as England was under the South Sea bubble, France under the Mississippi bubble, and as every nation is liable to be, under whatever bubble, design, or delusion may puff up in moments when off their guard. We are now taught to believe that legerdemain tricks upon paper can produce as solid wealth as hard labor in the earth. It is vain for common sense to urge that nothing can produce nothing; that it is an idle dream to believe in a philosopher's stone which is to turn everything into gold, and to redeem man from the original sentence of his Maker, "in the sweat of his brow shall he eat his bread.”.
Thomas Jefferson
I am rejoiced at Mr. Secretary Dundas's information of the taking of the Island of Tobago, which I trust will at a proper time be followed by that of other valuable islands. Now is the hour to humble France, for nothing but her being disabled from disturbing other countries, whatever Government may be established there, will keep her quiet.
George III of the United Kingdom
The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, July 9, 1918, takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross to Brigadier General (Corps of Engineers) Douglas MacArthur (ASN: 0-57), United States Army, for extraordinary heroism in action while serving as Chief of Staff, 42d Division, A.E.F., in the Salient-du-Feys, France, 9 March 1918. When Company D, 168th Infantry, was under severe attack in the salient du Feys, France, General MacArthur voluntarily joined it, upon finding that he could do so without interfering with his normal duties, and by his coolness and conspicuous courage aided materially in its success.
Douglas MacArthur
There is not a Moslem heart in Asia, from Pekin to Constantinople, which will not vibrate, when reflecting upon the fact that the European ladies, and other females attached to the troops at Cabul, were made over to the tender mercies of the Moslem chief, who had with his own hand murdered the representative of the British Government at the Court of the Sovereign of Afghanistan... It is impossible to impress upon you too strongly the notion of the importance of the restoration of our reputation in the East. Our enemies in France, the United States, and wherever found, are now rejoicing in our disasters and degradation. You will teach them that their triumph is premature.
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
My right hon. Friend says she [Germany] is in such a condition that she cannot possibly pay [reparations]. No, she cannot pay us. She is to pay France in full. Everything goes to France, everything goes to Italy, everything goes to Belgium; but, forsooth, she has not the capacity to pay Great Britain. I object. We were equal in the sacrifices we had to make, and I think it is about time that someone should stand up for the rights of Great Britain.
David Lloyd George
The success of England and her allies in the War of the Spanish Succession, which curbed "the exorbitant power of France" for eighty years to come, influenced the whole tone of Eighteenth Century civilization in a thousand ways. The defeat of Louis is one of the most prominent facts in history. We are, therefore, apt to forget how very near he came to attaining world-power, by the retention of the whole Spanish Empire as a field of French influence, and by the virtual annexation of the Netherlands and of Italy as jewels in the French Crown. He was never nearer to success than in the spring of 1704. Nothing but the accident of Marlborough's genius, and some lucky turns of fortune in the field that year, diverted the paths of destiny.
G. M. Trevelyan
If we consider the relative positions of France and of England from 1680 to 1688, and compare them with the situation when Anne died, the contrast is great indeed. England, lately despised abroad and distraught at home, had become the chief instrument in winning the world war, and had then dictated the Peace. With sea-power no longer rivalled either by France or Holland, with financial and commercial pre-eminence hardly less remarkable, and endowed for the moment with the martial greatness lent her by Marlborough, Great Britain was relatively more important in the world in 1713 than in 1815 or 1919. No country save France was then a rival to her greatness.
G. M. Trevelyan
No nation ever had so bad a neighbour as Germany has had in France for the last 400 years; bad in all manner of ways; insolent, rapacious, insatiable, unappeasable, continually aggressive. ... Germany, after 400 years of ill-usage, and generally ill-fortune, from that neighbour, has had at last the great happiness to see its enemy fairly down in this manner; and Germany, I do clearly believe, would be a foolish nation not to think of raising up some secure boundary-fence between herself and such a neighbour now that she has the chance.
Thomas Carlyle
I think I see another motive in the French writers who in 1914 adopted the attitude of M. Romain Rolland – the fear that they would fall into national partiality if they admitted that their nation was in the right. It may be asserted that these writers would have warmly taken up the cause of France, if France had not been their own country. Whereas Barrès said, "I always maintain my country is right even if it is in the wrong," these strange friends of justice are not unwilling to say: "I always maintain my country is in the wrong, even if it is right." There again we see that the frenzy of impartiality, like any other frenzy, leads to injustice.
Julien Benda
