A Quote by Peter Medawar

French is not a language that lends itself naturally to the opaque and ponderous idiom of nature-philosophy, and Teilhard has according resorted to the use of that tipsy, euphoristic prose-poetry which is one of the more tiresome manifestations of the French spirit.

Peter Medawar

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According French Idiom Itself Language More Naturally Nature Opaque Philosophy Poetry Prose Spirit Tipsy Tiresome Use Which

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Peter Medawar
Brazilian - Scientist
February 28, 1915 - October 2, 1987

In the French language, there is a great gulf between prose and poetry; in English, there is hardly any difference. It is a splendid privilege of the great literary languages Greek, Latin, and French that they possess a prose. English has not this privilege. There is no prose in English.

Victor Hugo

I am a guest of the French language. My poems in French are born of my interaction with the French language, which is not the same as that of a French poet.

Tahar Ben Jelloun

When I arrived at Columbia, I gave up acting and became interested in all things French. French poetry, French history, French literature.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

The language of the age is never the language of poetry, except among the French, whose verse, where the thought or image does not support it, differs in nothing from prose.

Thomas Gray

The transformations of the French empire itself or of French power structures themselves as well as the emergence of a kind of language of equal rights starting with the American Revolution and the French Revolution provided an opportunity and in some ways connected with other kinds of ground level desires or hopes and ideologies for freedom that were coming out of the plantation regime itself.

Laurent Dubois

I am attached to the French language. I will defend the ubiquitous use of French.

Francois Hollande

Italian is the language of song. German is good for philosophy and English for poetry. French is best at precision; it has a rigour to it.

Maurice Druon

German poetry is going in a very different direction from French poetry.... Its language has become more sober, more factual. It distrusts "beauty." It tries to be truthful.

Paul Celan

A French politician once wrote that it was a peculiarity of the French language that in it words occur in the order in which one thinks them.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

When I got to college I simply decided that I could speak French, because I just could not spend any more time in French classes. I went ahead and took courses on French literature, some of them even taught in French.

Lev Grossman

Now I’m really glad that I speak French, because, let’s face it, girls dig it when a guy speaks French. They call it the language of love, and that ain’t no coincidence. Plus, I love my French fans! Très jolie!

Justin Bieber

I just love France, I love French people, I love the French language, I love French food. I love their mentality. I just feel like it's me. I'm very French.

Olga Kurylenko

We need French chaplains and imams, French-speaking, who learn French, who love France. And who adhere to its values. And also French financing.

Manuel Valls

When I was a child, I grew up speaking French, I mean, in a French public school. So my first contact with literature was in French, and that's the reason why I write in French.

J. M. G. Le Clezio

There is poetry even in prose, in all the great prose which is not merely utilitarian or didactic: there exist poets who write in prose or at least in more or less apparent prose; millions of poets write verses which have no connection with poetry.

Eugenio Montale

I feel very close to French culture and to the French humanism, which occasionally one finds, even in the highest places. And therefore, all of my books have been written in French.

Elie Wiesel

A Quote by Peter Medawar

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