Frenchmen Quotes - Page 2

• In France everything is a matter for jest. People make quips about the scaffold, about Napoleon's defeat on the banks of The Beresina, and about the barricades of our revolutions. So, at the assizes of the Last Judgment, there will always be a Frenchmen to crack a joke.

  Honore de Balzac

  People, Cracks, Matter

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• Thousands of Americans, Englishmen and Frenchmen have visited Germany during the months after the national revolution and were able to testify as eye-witnesses that there is no country in the world where law and order are better maintained than in present-day Germany.  That there is no country in the world where person and property are held in better respect than in our own, but that there is perhaps also no country in the word where a more rigorous fight is put up against those who believe that they are free to let loose their lower instincts to the detriment of their fellow-beings.

  Adolf Hitler

  Country, Believe, Eye

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• Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country - bigger than all the Presidents together.

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Country, President, Together

  K. M. Kostyal, Doris Kearns Goodwin (2009). “Abraham Lincoln's extraordinary era: the man and his times”, Natl Geographic Society

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• Frenchmen are like gunpowder, each by itself smutty and contemptible, but mass them together and they are terrible indeed!

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Together, Gunpowder, France

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Greenough Thayer Shedd (1854). “The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an Introductory Essay Upon His Philosophical and Theological Opinions”, p.364

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• The Frenchman is first and foremost a man. He is likeable often just because of his weaknesses, which are always thoroughly human, even if despicable.

  Henry Miller

  Men, Weakness, Firsts

  Henry Miller (1941). “The Wisdom of the Heart”, p.50, New Directions Publishing

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• Citizens of liberal welfare states become increasingly narcissistic. The great preoccupations of vast numbers of Brits, Frenchmen, Germans and other Western Europeans are how much vacation time they will have an how early they can retire and be supported by the state.

  Dennis Prager

  Vacation, Numbers, Citizens

  Dennis Prager (2012). “Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph”, p.41, Harper Collins

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• Women, as some witty Frenchman once put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always prevent us from carrying them out.

  Oscar Wilde

  Witty, Inspire, Desire

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, p.96, First Avenue Editions

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• Is a fixed income not a good thing? Does not everyone love to count on a sure thing? Especially every petty-bourgeois, narrow-minded Frenchman? the 'ever needy' man?

  Karl Marx

  Men, Doe, Income

  "Grundrisse". Book by Karl Marx (pp. 809 - 810), 1857-1858.

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• The Frenchman works until he can play. The American works until he can’t play; and then thanks the devil, his master, that he is donkey enough to die in harness. But the Englishman, as he has since become, works until he can pretend that he never worked at all.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Play, Devil, Thanks

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• Just knows, and knows no more, her Bible true,- A truth the brilliant Frenchman never knew.

  William Cowper

  Truth, Brilliant, Knows

  William Cowper (1874). “The poetical works of William Cowper, ed: with notes and biographical introd. by William Benham”, p.82

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• It's true that the French have a certain obsession with sex, but it's a particularly adult obsession. France is the thriftiest of all nations; to a Frenchman sex provides the most economical way to have fun. The French are a logical race.

  Anita Loos

  Sex, Fun, Race

  Anita Loos, Ray Pierre Corsini (1985). “Fate keeps on happening: adventures of Lorelei Lee and other writings”

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• Some cynical Frenchman has said that there are two parties to a love-transaction: the one who loves and the other who condescends to be so treated.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Party, Two, Cynical

  William Makepeace Thackeray (2016). “Vanity Fair (Diversion Classics)”, p.160, Diversion Books

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• The most interesting acquaintanceship I have struck up here is that of Colonel Lapinski. He is without doubt the cleverest Pole - besides being an homme d'action [man of action] - that I have ever met. His sympathies are all on the German side, though in manners and speech he is also a Frenchman. He cares nothing for the struggle of nationalities and only knows the racial struggle. He hates all Orientals, among whom he numbers Russians Turks, Greeks, Armenians, etc., with equal impartiality.... His aim now is to raise a German legion in London.

  Karl Marx

  Hate, Struggle, Men

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• There are so many different kinds of people in America, with so many different boiling points, that we don't know how to fight with each other. The set piece that shapes and contains quarrels in homogeneous countries does not exist here. The Frenchman is an expert on the precise gradations of espèce de and the Italian knows exactly when to introduce the subject of his other's grave, but no American can be sure how or when another will react, so we zap each other with friendliness to neutralize potentially dangerous situations.

  Florence King

  Country, Fighting, Italian

  Florence King (1990). “Reflections In A Jaundiced Eye”, p.83, Macmillan

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• The failure of the Reformation to capture France had left for Frenchmen no half-way house between infallibility and infidelity; and while the intellect of Germany and England moved leisurely in the lines of religious evolution, the mind of France leaped from the hot faith which had massacred the Huguenots to the cold hostility with which La Mettrie, Helvetius, Holbach, and Diderot turned upon the religion of the fathers.

  Will Durant

  Religious, Father, House

  "Story of Philosophy".

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• Firstly, you must always implicitly obey orders, without attempting to form any opinion of your own respecting their propriety. Secondly, you must consider every man your enemy who speaks ill of your king; and thirdly, you must hate a Frenchman, as you do the devil.

  Horatio Nelson

  Kings, Hate, Men

  Horatio Nelson's advice to his Midshipmen (1793) as quoted in "Memoirs of the Life of Vice-Admiral, Lord Viscount Nelson, K.B., Duke of Bronte, Etc., Etc., Etc, Volume 2" edited by Thomas Joseph Pettigrew (p. 580), 1849.

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• This (Paris,France) wouldn't be a bad place, but it's full of Frenchmen.

  Bobby Heenan

  Paris, France

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• Or a White Englishman would rather smash a White Frenchman than a Jew! Crazy!

  Tom Metzger

  Crazy, White, Madness

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• The Almighty in His infinite wisdom did not see fit to create Frenchmen in the image of Englishmen.

  Winston Churchill

  Fit, Infinite, Almighty

  Winston Churchill (1952). “War Speeches: From June 25, 1941 to September 6, 1943”

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• No wonder we keep testing positive in their bicycle races. Everyone looks like they're full of testosterone when they're surrounded by Frenchmen.

  Argus Hamilton

  Race, Looks, Wonder

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• It was an American who said that while a Frenchman's truth was akin to a straight line, a Welshman's truth was more in the nature of a curve, and it is a fact that Welsh affairs are entangled always in parabola, double-meaning and implication. This makes for a web-like interest.

  Jan Morris

  Curves, Lines, Facts

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• American gentlemen are a cross between English and French men, and yet really altogether like neither. They are more refined and modest than Frenchmen, and less manly, shy, and rough, than Englishmen. Their brains are finer and flimsier, their bodies less robust and vigorous than ours. We are the finer animals, and they the subtler spirits. Their intellectual tendency is to excitement and insanity, and ours to stagnation and stupidity.

  Fanny Kemble

  Animal, Men, Stupidity

  Fanny Kemble (1890). “Further Records, 1848-1883: A Series of Letters”

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• There is only one cure for gray hair. It was invented by a Frenchman. It is called the guillotine.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Humorous, Hair, Getting Older

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• Close with a Frenchman, but out-maneuver a Russian.

  Horatio Nelson

  Naval, Maritime

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• We were also fortunate enough to engage in our service a Canadian Frenchmen, who had been with the Chayenne Indians on the Black mountains, and last summer descended thence by the Little Missouri.

  Meriwether Lewis

  Summer, Black, Mountain

  Meriwether Lewis, William Clark (1842). “History of the Expedition Under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clarke, to the Sources of the Missouri: Thence Across the Rockey Mountains, and Down the River Columbia to the Pacific Ocean ; Performed During the Years 1804, 1805, 1806, by Order of the Government of the United States”, p.126

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