French Language Quotes

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

  Oscar Wilde

  Language, Ass, Curse

  7 Copy quote

• A different language is a different vision of life.

  Federico Fellini

  Life, Work, Communication

  Federico Fellini, Bert Cardullo (2006). “Federico Fellini: Interviews”, p.180, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  101 Copy quote

  Show source

• The genius of the French language, descended from its single Latin stock, has triumphed most in the contrary direction - in simplicity, in unity, in clarity, and in restraint.

  Lytton Strachey

  Latin, Simplicity, Unity

  Lytton Strachey (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Lytton Strachey (Illustrated)”, p.22, Delphi Classics

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Guests, Language, Poet

  13 Copy quote

• Well, with the French language, which I understood and spoke, however imperfectly, and read in great quantities, at certain times, the matter I suppose was slightly different from either Latin or Greek.

  Robert Fitzgerald

  Latin, Greek, Different

  7 Copy quote

• In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

  Mark Twain

  Funny, Humorous, Eye

  Mark Twain (2008). “The Innocents Abroad”, p.645, Velvet Element Books

  34 Copy quote

  Show source

• You get the feeling that many of my guests feel that the French language gives them entry into a more cultivated, more intelligent world, more highly civilised too, with rules.

  Bernard Pivot

  Intelligent, Giving, Feelings

  7 Copy quote

• 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. Bach

  Noses, Mouths, Scared

  46 Copy quote

• 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

  Thinking, Order, Language

  Ludwig Wittgenstein (2010). “Philosophical Investigations”, p.253, John Wiley & Sons

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Mads Mikkelsen

  World Love, Language, One Thing

  Source: collider.com

  33 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Francois Hollande

  Use, Language

  8 Copy quote

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

  Maurice Druon

  France, Language, Pot

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Walter Abish

  Past, Training, Desire

  Walter Abish (1980). “How German Is It”, p.7, New Directions Publishing

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• In order to translate a sentence from English into French two things are necessary. First, we must understand thoroughly the English sentence. Second, we must be familiar with the forms of expression peculiar to the French language. The situation is very similar when we attempt to express in mathematical symbols a condition proposed in words. First, we must understand thoroughly the condition. Second, we must be familiar with the forms of mathematical expression.

  George Polya

  Expression, Order, Two

  George Pólya (1957). “How to solve it: a new aspect of mathematical method”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Canadian community must invest, for the defence and better
  appreciation of the French language, as much time, energy, and money as
  are required to prevent the country from breaking up

  Pierre Trudeau

  Country, Appreciation, Community

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jean-Pierre Jeunet

  Play, Paris, Political

  Source: collider.com

  10 Copy quote

  Show source