Top 1200 French Language Quotes & Sayings

I studied French in high school and German in college and I once took a 24-hour Italian crash course. English has by far the most words in it of any other language. Our money might not be worth anything anymore, but the language is.

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.

French is the language of diplomacy. Spanish is the language of bureaucracy.

The more English is heard in the world, the more gratifying it seems to speak French, and above all to know the culture of our country. They find a kind of French social grace in the language and culture.

Her voice was slightly accented but her French was perfect. Someone who'd not just learned the language but loved it. And it showed with every syllable. Gamache knew it was impossible to split language from culture. That without one the other withered. To love the language was to respect the culture.

If I would want to have a huge audience, I would make American movies, not French movies, because there is a limit of course with French language. If I prefer to shoot in my own language, it is to play with my language, to play in my Paris, and I have complete freedom in France. It's so amazing. If American directors could imagine how free I am, they would have asked for political asylum immediately.

Growing up in Switzerland, you learn German pretty much from day one in school. You learn French and Italian as well. I took English as an extra language because I figured that was the language of the world.

I love the French language... it's a delightful language, especially to curse with. It's like whopping your ass with silk.

A romantic or classical view of the French approach would have been to say, 'It's a French company; let no one attack it. Let's block any merger. But the reality is Alcatel-Lucent is not a French company; it's a global company. Its main markets are China and the U.S. Its ownership is foreign; most of its managers aren't French.

The French aren't known for being hilarious. When I told Parisians I was interested in French humor, they'd say 'French what?'

My own view is that one cannot be religious in general any more than one can speak language in general; at any given moment one speaks French or English or Swahili or Japanese, but not 'language.

The French just said he was a damned nuisance. Or they would have had they the good fortune to speak English. Instead being French they were forced to say it in their own language.

French was my first language.

We believe we can also show that words do not have exactly the same psychic "weight" depending on whether they belong to the language of reverie or to the language of daylight life-to rested language or language under surveillance-to the language of natural poetry or to the language hammered out by authoritarian prosodies.

My wife's French. I mean I speak a bit of French but I've lived amongst French, you know, most of my adult life.

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.

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.

French is the language that turns dirt into romance.

Even if I think in English, it's more a language of acting than French.

My first language is French. I just love words so much, and in French it feels like I can say whatever I want however I want.

I went to Brown to be a French professor, and I didn't know what I was doing except that I loved French. When I got to Paris and I could speak French, I know how much it helped me to establish relationships with Karl Lagerfeld, with the late Yves St. Laurent. French, it just helps you if you're in fashion. The French people started style.

[Albert] Camus' was born in Algeria of French nationality, and was assimilated into the French colony, although the French colonists rejected him absolutely because of his poverty.

One thing I can say about the French language is that no one in the world loves their language as much as they do.

My film is in French. It's not something folkloric. It's who we are. There's this tension about immigrants coming in. Will they learn French? Will they adapt? In this film, I'm on the reverse side because Monsieur Lazhar comes from a society where French is also the second language.

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.

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!

In the past the French came to Germany less with the desire to understand it than with a zealous desire to interpret, to analyze it dispassionately something for which their training at the Ecole Normale Superieure or the Ecole des Hautes Etudes and the French language superbly equipped them to do.

One thing I can say about the French language is that no one in the world loves their language as much as they do. It doesn't matter if you're close - it still sounds terrible to their ears.

I have been in countries where I don't know a word of the language. I tried to practice my French as much as possible. I would talk with the crew. I always order in French, but then waiters respond in English. I hate that.

French is a language that makes those who speak it both calm and dynamic.

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.

English, once accepted as an international language, is no more secure than French has proved to be as the one and only accepted language of diplomacy or as Latin has proved to be as the international language of science.

When I took part in European leaders summits, it was sometimes unpleasant for me to hear Romanian, Polish, Portuguese, and Italian friends speak English, although I admit that on an informal basis, first contacts can be made in this language. Nevertheless, I will defend everywhere the use of the French language.

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

all the French speak French - even the children. Many Americans and Britishers who visit the country never quite adjust to this, and the idea persists that the natives speak the language just to show off or be difficult.

Socialist ideology is making France go to pot, and the French language with it.

OSS 117 and maybe Un Balcon Sur La Mer directed by Nicole Garcia. It's a typical French movie with typical French themes with French actors, a French director.

It's very important to say that French doesn't belong to France and to French people. Now you have very wonderful poets and writers in French who are not French or Algerian - who are from Senegal, from Haiti, from Canada, a lot of parts of the world.

I'd like to learn French well enough to write in that language.

If French is no longer the language of a power, it can be the language of a counter power.

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.

The earliest language was body language and, since this language is the language of questions, if we limit the questions, and if we only pay attention to or place values on spoken or written language, then we are ruling out a large area of human language.

Let's not forget, there are three languages in Canada - English, French, and there's the language of jobs.

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.

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

I grew up in France, my first language was French, and I tend to gravitate towards French cooking.

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.

The way the educational system in Russia works is studying a foreign language is part of the program, so by the time you get to the age of 10, you pick up another language. I speak a bit of Russian, a bit of English, a bit of Spanish a bit of French.

The Divinity could be invoked as well in the English language as in the French.

If we have to prove our Europeanism by accepting that French is the dominant language in the Community, then my answer is quite clear, and I will say it in French in order to prevent any misunderstanding: Non, merci beaucoup .

My French is still good. That's a beautiful language and I'm happy to speak it.

I lived in Paris for two years with my family. I would roam the streets of Paris during the day for a few hours in the subway, on the streets, and I listened to the French language, and I got a sense of the rhythm and the melody of the language.

I am not patriotic or nationalistic, but the French language is like a country where I take refuge when I have nowhere else to go. It consoles me for everything. For me, the language no longer belongs to the colonialists.

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

I started to write because of my dream to become a filmmaker. I got to know about a film school in Paris and it was my goal to get there. To do that I knew I had to learn French. In order to practice I started to write journals in French. The effort I made to master what I regarded a bad thing - a language owned by the rich Moroccans - brought me the ability to write.

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.

I didn't have Marathi as a language in school. My second language was French.

Belgium is half French-speaking and half Flemish, and I was born on the French side. So we spoke it a lot - like, in kindergarten, it was almost all French. But then I moved to New Zealand when I was 10, where we obviously spoke English all the time, so I lost the French a little bit.

Americans and French are notoriously monolingual, especially earlier generations. Language is a sense of pride in both cultures. I think that the French and Americans are like brothers or sisters who are so similar that they irritate one another.

I write. I have read a great deal. I enjoy books. I like the wit of languages. Even French I like. I like to be able to think in different modes. I like to be able to use the language a great deal and carry on rehearsals in French.