English French Quotes

#1. I never had to learn English, French and German because I was brought up as all three languages. I had a private French teacher before I even went to school. That helped a lot.

Karl Lagerfeld

#2. I love the musicality of English. French sounds flat. In English, you can play with pitch.

Eva Green

#3. I grew up speaking Spanish and English. My mother can speak Spanish, English, French and Italian, and she's pretty good at faking Portuguese. I wish that I spoke more languages than I do.

Sebastian Arcelus

#4. I'm a little distracted by this English French American Boy Masterpiece.

Stephanie Perkins

#5. Energy doesn't communicate in English, French, Chinese or Swahili, but it does speak clearly

Elaine Seiler

#6. I had art as a major, along with English, French and History. I had dance, modern dance. In English I was allowed to write my own poetry, which I eventually got published.

Sally Kirkland

#7. The best way to tell whether the Norwegian is a Norwegian is to say:
"Are you Swedish?"
Regardless whether you say this in English, French, Italian, Japanese, Urdu or Swahili, he will answer:
"Swedish? Me? I'm a Norwegian!"
Then you will be able to tell.

Odd Borretzen

#8. The city and province were given up to anarchy; the coloured people, elated with victory, proclaimed the slaughter of all whites, except the English, French, and American residents.

Henry Walter Bates

#9. The American high school graduate is two years behind his English, French or German counterpart; in Alabama, God knows how far behind.

Gore Vidal

#10. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, my wife speaks five languages: Russian, English, French, Italian and, out of self-defense, Spanish. I watched her learn Spanish in three months.

Cheech Marin

#11. He was always intending to go to Mexico, but some way never got there. Meanwhile he held on to his modest position in a mercantile house in New Orleans, where an equal familiarity with English, French and Spanish gave him no small value as a clerk and correspondent.

Kate Chopin

#12. There are no English, French, German or American Jews, but only Jews > > >living in England, France, Germany or America.

Chaim Weizmann

#13. It is impossible," I concluded, "to find any satisfaction in the thought of 25,000 slaughtered Germans, left to mutilation and decay; the destruction of men as though beasts, whether they be English, French, German or anything else, seems a crime to the whole march of civilization.

Vera Brittain

#14. My first restoration was on 'Napoleon,' trying to put the French version in with the English version, and it was most unsatisfactory.

Kevin Brownlow

#15. Canada could have enjoyed: English government, French culture, and American know-how. Instead it ended up with: English know-how, French government, and American culture.

John Robert Colombo

#16. I was raised speaking English and Spanish. And I also speak Danish. And I can get by in French and Italian. I've acted in Spanish and English, but when something has to do with emotions, sometimes I feel I can get to the heart of the matter better in Spanish.

Viggo Mortensen

#17. I was raised to be kind. My parents were underdogs. Immigrant Jews. I spoke with an accent. I didn't speak English even - I spoke French and Yiddish mostly. I was picked on.

Saul Rubinek

#18. 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 Hitchens

#19. Speak in French when you can't think of the English for a thing
turn your toes out when you walk
And remember who you are!

Lewis Carroll

#20. English is only a weak second language, so that the third language
which at the moment is getting the most play, since French is what I speak, read, and hear almost 24/7
is trying to take over the no. 2 spot.

Apol Lejano-Massebieau

#21. My tastes went all over the place, from Strauss to Mahler. I was never a big Wagner or Tchaikovsky fan. Benjamin Britten, Tallis, all the early English Medieval music, Prokofiev, some Russian composers, mostly the people that were the colorists, the French.

James Horner

#22. Latin, Greek, and English, plus a smattering of Italian and fucking French." "Fucking French, you say? Well . . ." "Oui," said I, in perfect fucking French.

Christopher Moore

#23. French: why does this language even exist? Everyone there speaks english anyway.

Meg Cabot

#24. If the French army was defeated, it was impossible to imagine that the English would survive.

Charles Kaiser

#25. He'd tried to talk to you about anarchy yesterday but his English and your French conspired against the dialog.

Ian Rankin

#26. The smell of perfume left behind. There's not a word for that in English, but Colin knew the French word: sillage.

John Green

#27. I tend to curse in French more often than I do in English.

Alaina Huffman

#28. There are many nations that have perfected a particular room. You know, you have the French drawing-room, the Austrian ball room, the German dining room, and I think the library is a room the English get right.

Julian Fellowes

#29. In school in Lebanon, we were not allowed to speak Arabic during breaks - it had to be French or English.

Rabih Alameddine

#30. My mind speaks English, my heart speaks Russian, and my ear prefers French.

Vladimir Nabokov

#31. It's just incredible. When you're French, coming from a non-English language country, you don't even dream about Oscar recognition or nominations. It's just beyond the dream. It's something very, very special and unique. It's the highest recognition any filmmaker could dream of.

Michel Hazanavicius

#32. An English speaker who has never studied French already knows around 15,000 French words!

Laura K. Lawless

#33. With this contradictory parentage of mine: solid English earth and French water goddess, one could expect anything from me. An enchantress or an ordinary girl. There are some who will say I am both.

Philippa Gregory

#34. The English, a spirited nation, claim the empire of the sea; the French, a calmer nation, claim that of the air.

Louis XVIII Of France

#35. In the history of humanity, there have been many languages, including French, that have served as universal languages: Latin, Chinese, Arabic, and more. Yet none of them ever ruled the world the way English does today.

Minae Mizumura

#36. Many of the books I read, I had to read them in French, English, or Italian, because they hadn't been translated into Spanish.

Antonio Munoz Molina

#37. In fact, it is amazing how much European films - Italian, French, German and English - have recovered a certain territory of the audience in their countries over the last few years.

Wim Wenders

#38. The central symbol for Canada-and this based on numerous instances of its occurrence in both English and French Canadian literature-is undoubtedly Survival, la Survivance.

Margaret Atwood

#39. 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.

Bernard Pivot

#40. In language gender is particularly confusing. Why, please, should a table be male in German, female in French, and castrated in English?

Marlene Dietrich

#41. Talk English to me, Tommy.
Parlez francais avec moi, Nicole.
But the meanings are different
in French you can be heroic and gallant with dignity, and you know it. But in English you can't be heroic and gallant without being a little absurd, and you know that too.

F Scott Fitzgerald

#42. Humor does not include sarcasm, invalid irony, sardonicism, innuendo, or any other form of cruelty. When these things are raised to a high point they can become wit, but unlike the French and the English, we have not been much good at wit since the days of Benjamin Franklin.

James Thurber

#43. An Englishman was reflecting on the different words that people use for fish. 'Isn't it strange,' he said, 'that the French say le poisson, the Spanish say el pescado, and the English call it fish - which is what it is.'

Alexander McCall Smith

#44. When I was living in Paris in the '80s, I used to go out with an American model who couldn't speak French. But suddenly everyone could speak English because he was so cute.

Edmund White

#45. I never dream in French, but certain French words seem better or more fun than English words - like 'pois chiches' for chick peas!

Lydia Davis

#46. I have an English identity and a French identity. When I'm in France, I'm more outgoing. And the French part of me cooks, whereas the English part of me writes.

Joanne Harris

#47. I think we are wise, we English speakers, to savor accents. They teach us things about our own tongue.

Anne Rice

#48. I've always felt very much from a mixed culture - mainly English and French, but also Nigerian, Thai, Mexican. Everything's had its influence on me.

J.M.G. Le Clezio

#49. Plus there was the standard French insult of ignoring your French and answering in English.

Glen Duncan

#50. The people of the two nations [French and English] must be brought into mutual dependence by the supply of each other's wants. There is no other way of counteracting the antagonism of language and race. It is God's own method of producing an entente cordiale, and no other plan is worth a farthing.

Richard Cobden

#51. douleur, one of the many French words that do not translate into English well, which means "the pain of wanting someone you cannot have.

Martha Hall Kelly

#52. When the contemplative mind is a French mind, it is content, for the most part, to contemplate France. When the contemplative mind is an English mind, it is liable to be seized at any moment by an importunate desire to contemplate Morocco or Labrador.

Agnes Repplier

#53. It is a quaint comment on the notion that the English are practical and the French merely visionary, that we were rebels in arts while they were rebels in arms.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

#54. He was keen to use English as well as French in daily conversation, writing letters in English and commissioning translations of French and Latin books.

Ian Mortimer

#55. English was jazz music, German was classical music, French was ecclesiastical music, and Spanish was the music from the streets.

Yann Martel

#56. Now, I know I'm going to break your hearts, but I am forced to leave you. You must call up all your fortitude, and try to bear it ... "Bob swore!" - as the Englishman said for "Good night", when he first learnt French, and thought it so like English. "Bob swore," my ducks!" (Chapter XXII)

Charles Dickens

#57. At the English Revolution, when William of Orange came to the throne, the introduction of French wines into the country was prohibited, and this gave a great impetus to the manufacture of cyder and care in the production of cyder of the best description.

Sabine Baring-Gould

#58. Let us work toward greater cooperation with all Caribbean Countries, whether we speak English, Dutch, French or Spanish, whether we are independent or not, and whether we be island or continental territories.

Said Musa

#59. It occurs to Blanche that English doesn't have French's useful distinction between libre, meaning that something's unconstrained, and gratuit, meaning that it costs nothing. Free thought, free speech, free love: the English word that Arthur was so fond of obscures the price of things.

Emma Donoghue

#60. All my life, I have loved balloons - all balloons - the heavy English sort, immense and round, that have to be pushed about, and the gay, light, gas-filled French ones that soar into the air the moment you let go of them.

Elizabeth Bibesco

#61. I'm a multi-lingual Kundalini-dancing shapeshifter to the 69th degree.
I know French, Italian, Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, Greek, Latin, Gaelic, Scottish, English, and American English.
I'm cunninglingual.

Sienna McQuillen

#62. All theorems have three names: a French name, a German name, and a Russian name, each nationality having claimed to discover it first. Once in a while there's an English name, too, but it's always Newton.

Arthur Mattuck

#63. I cried in English, I cried in french, I cried in all the languages, because tears are the same all around the world.

Miranda July

#64. The English Patient' is about the coming together of a French-Canadian nurse, an English patient, a Sikh in a turban and me, Caravaggio, and each of us is seeking a resolution to our own problems.

Willem Dafoe

#65. Who can doubt that between the English and the French, between the Scotch and the Irish, there are differences of character which have profoundly affected and still affect the course of history?

Goldwin Smith

#66. Theatre has no national identity. It is something for the world, whether it is Irish, English, or French.

Cyril Cusack

#67. Coup d'Oeil Concept A French expression which loosely translated means the "strike of the eye" or the "vision behind the eye." The closest English concept would be that of intuition. Intuition is defined as "perceptive insight" or "the power to discern the true nature of a situation.

Charles "Sid" Heal

#68. We English have no very strong attachment to the soil, we can make ourselves at home in any part of the world, but the French, I think, have an attachment to their country which is almost a physical bond. They're never really at ease when they're out of it.

W. Somerset Maugham

#69. For you, it's a silent movie. For us, it's a talking movie because we had lines on set. There's a lot of noise on set and music. We spoke in English, in French, in gibberish, but it was very alive. The challenge was tap dancing.

Jean Dujardin

#70. I speak French, and I grew up with French, so my English is Franglais.

Corneille Ewango

#71. Obviously, I would have been happier if Canada had not been conquered in the past by the English, if this part of North America had remained French, but you can't rewrite history.

Jean Chretien

#72. These examples of the lack of simplicity in English and French, all appearances to the contrary, could be multiplied almost without limit and apply to all national languages.

Edward Sapir

#73. I've wanted to be an author as long as I can remember. English was always my favorite subject at school, so why I went on to do a degree in French is anyone's guess.

J.K. Rowling

#74. I get work because I'm primarily a novelist but I've become script doctor. I can work back and forth between French and English.

Norman Spinrad

#75. Notwithstanding the prevalent notion that the French poets are the sympathetic heirs of classic culture, it appears to me that they are not so imbued with the true classic spirit, art, and mythology as some of our English poets, notably Keats and Shelley.

William Shakespeare

#76. Spanish civilization crushed the Indian. English civilization scorned and neglected him. French civilization embraced and cherished him.

Francis Parkman

#77. The Russians were unparalleled in their suffering, the English in their reserve, the Americans in their love of life, the Italians in their love of Christ, and the French in their hope of love.

Paullina Simons

#78. Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression. There are no 'Nigerians' in the same sense as there are 'English,' 'Welsh,' or 'French.' The word 'Nigerian' is merely a distinctive appellation to distinguish those who live within the boundaries of Nigeria and those who do not.

Obafemi Awolowo

#79. I have many, many editions of the books, and they are all rather different. In the end, the one I used was the most recent French translation. French suits the tales well, and it's a beautiful translation. The Italian one is good as well ... English has fallen short.

Marina Warner

#80. I really like acting in French. It's actually quite different for me, from acting in English. It's fun acting in a foreign language. You're liberated or freed from preconceptions.

Kristin Scott Thomas

#81. Word lessons, in particular the wouldst couldst shouldst have loved kind, were kept up, with much warlike thrashing, until I had committed the whole of French, Latin, and English grammars to memory ...

John Muir

#82. 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.

Roy Blount Jr.

#83. I speak English, Portuguese, and French. One day I'd love to learn Italian.

Izabel Goulart

#84. The fashions we call English in Paris are French in London, and vice versa. Franco-British hostility vanishes when it comes to questions of words and clothing. God save the King is a tune composed by Lully for a chorus in a play by Racine.

Honore De Balzac

#85. Logos and branding are so important. In a big part of the world, people cannot read French or English
but are great in remembering signs

Karl Lagerfeld

#86. English physicians kill you, the French let you die.

Charles Lamb

#87. I found myself speaking more slowly (in an attempt to obey the Bible in speech), as if I was speaking French instead of English.

A. J. Jacobs

#88. I've heard it said that if you know English, Spanish, Italian, and I think it's French, you can go just about anywhere in this world ... except for China where they have all those derelicts.

Mike Shannon

#89. It's difficult for me to write in English as it's not my first language, but French is even worse because of my father's influence and because the comparisons that I - not even other people - would make.

Charlotte Gainsbourg

#90. The English soldier was probably the worst-treated soldier in Europe, and judging from the English casualty rates during the Napoleonic wars, English generals were more lavish with their soldiers' lives than were their French and German colleagues.

J. Christopher Herold

#91. The English are crooked as a nation and honest as individuals. The contrary is true of the French, who are honest as a nation and crooked as individuals.

Edmond De Goncourt

#92. We will not be demanding service in both French and English at the gas pumps where we fill our cars for twenty percent less than it costs us in Canada. We don't even want to make Americans aware that beer should not have the taste and alcohol content of bottled water.

Gordon Kirkland

#93. My family was blue collar, a middle-class kind of thing. My father was born in Detroit, Italian-American. My mother is English. She acted on the stage with Diana Dors. Her parents were French.

Lorraine Bracco

#94. What are you? German? American? English? Greek? Japanese? Turkish? French? Indian? Chinese? These are not real, these are virtual! You are human! This is what is real!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

#95. German and English firms operate internationally, while French firms do not. The only place where they all have work is in China. Anybody can sell himself in China!

Helmut Jahn

#96. There is no word in English for chic. Why should there be? Everything chic is by legend French. Perhaps everything chic is in reality French.

Elizabeth Hawes

#97. Let us be French, let us be English, but most importantly let us be Canadian!

John A. Macdonald

#98. French novels generally treat of the relations of women to the world and to lovers, after marriage; consequently there is a great deal in French novels about adultery, about improper relations between the sexes, about many things which the English public would not allow.

Lafcadio Hearn

#99. I'm sure that a U.S. citizen, if I try to sing in English, he can feel that I'm not really sincere, there is something wrong. And I'm sure that even in French, they could feel the sincerity more than in English.

Stromae

#100. From Fall Irmgard:
"My father preached to me from an early age," Addie said, proudly. "Whether in English or in French, it will be a strong vocabulary and not a strong arm that wins the most battles in one's lifetime!

Rand Charles