French quotes

Page 1

◆ Boy, those French! They have a different word for everything.

- Steve Martin100

◆ On ne se souvient pas des jours, on se souvient des instants.

- Cesare Pavese99

◆ I have not been able to discover whether there exists a precise French equivalent for the common Anglo-American expression 'killing time.' It's a very crass and breezy expression, when you ponder it for a moment, considering that time, after all, is killing us.

- Christopher Hitchens99

◆ La vie c'est comme la bicyclette : quand on arrête de pédaler on tombe.

- Albert Einstein99

◆ When I opened my eyes I saw nothing but the pool of nocturnal sky, for I was lying on my back with out-stretched arms, face to face with that hatchery of stars. Only half awake, still unaware that those depths were sky, having no roof between those depths and me, no branches to screen them, no root to cling to, I was seized with vertigo and felt myself as if flung forth and plunging downward like a diver.

- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry99

◆ But genius, and even great talent, springs less from seeds of intellect and social refinement superior to those of other people than from the faculty of transforming and transposing them. To heat a liquid with an electric lamp requires not the strongest lamp possible, but one of which the current can cease to illuminate, can be diverted so as to give heat instead of light. To mount the skies it is not necessary to have the most powerful of motors, one must have a motor which, instead of continuing to run along the earth's surface, intersecting with a vertical line the horizontal line which it began by following, is capable of converting its speed into lifting power. Similarly, the men who produce works of genius are not those who live in the most delicate atmosphere, whose conversation is the most brilliant or their culture the most extensive, but those who have had the power, ceasing suddenly to live only for themselves, to transform their personality into a sort of mirror, in such a way that their life, however mediocre it may be socially and even, in a sense, intellectually, is reflected by it, genius consisting in reflecting power and not int he intrinsic quality of the scene reflected.

- Marcel Proust99

◆ Deux choses sont infinies : l'Univers et la bêtise humaine. Mais, en ce qui concerne l'Univers, je n'en ai pas encore acquis la certitude absolue.

- Albert Einstein99

◆ We have been expropriated from our own language by television, from our songs by reality TV contests, from our flesh by mass pornography, from our city by the police and from our friends by wage-labor.

- The Invisible Committee99

◆ On devient jeune à soixante ans. Malheureusement, c'est trop tard

- Pablo Picasso99

◆ One of the many advantages of having a boyfriend who is half French is that his culinary repertoire extends beyond mac and cheese. Plus, there's the kissing.

- Meg Cabot99

◆ Un soir qu'ils étaient couchés l'un près de l'autre, comme elle lui demandait d'inventer un poème qui commencerait par je connais un beau pays, il s'exécuta sur-le-champ. Je connais un beau pays Il est de l'or et d'églantine Tout le monde s'y sourit Ah quelle aventure fine Les tigres y sont poltrons Les agneaux ont fière mine à tous les vieux vagabonds Ariane donne des tartines. Alors, elle lui baisa le la main, et il eut honte de cette admiration.

- Albert Cohen99

◆ Etre dans le vent, c'est avoir le destin des feuilles mortes.

- Jean Guitton99

◆ I don't know what it is about the french language, it seems to be scared of coming out of the mouth so it comes out the nose instead.

- P.D.Q. Bach99

◆ Donc, il faudra que je meure et flotte comme écume sur la mer et n'entende jamais plus la musique des vagues, ne voit plus les fleurs ravissantes et le rouge soleil. Ne puis-je rien faire pour gagner une vie éternelle?

- Hans Christian Andersen99

◆ Almost anything is edible with a dab of French mustard on it.

- Nigel Slater99