Quotes, Quotations and Sayings

When I want to know what France thinks, I ask myself.

I have tried to lift France out of the mud. But she will return to her errors and vomitings. I cannot prevent the French from being French.

As an adolescent ... I was convinced that France would have to go through gigantic trials, that the interest of life consisted in one day rendering her some signal service and that I would have the occasion to do so.

Does this boat go to Europe, France?

The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.

France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.

Wickedness is its own punishment.

San Francisco, n.: Marcel Proust editing an issue of Penthouse.

Put off thy cares with thy clothes; so shall thy rest strengthen thy labor, and so thy labor sweeten thy rest.

Wisdom not only gets, but once got, retains.

Temper your enjoyments with prudence, lest there be written on your heart that fearful word ''satiety.''

If thou desire the love of God and man, be humble, for the proud heart, as it loves none but itself, is beloved of none but itself. Humility enforces where neither virtue, nor strength, nor reason can prevail.

Meditation is the life of the soul: Action, the soul of meditation. and honor the reward of action.

If my theory of relativity proves to be correct, Germany will claim me a German, and France will claim me a citizen of the world. However, if it proves wrong, France will say I

That friendship will not continue to the end which is begun for an end.

In America only the successful writer is important, in France all writers are important, in England no writer is important, and in Australia you have to explain what a writer is.

Like dear St. Francis of Assisi I am wedded to Poverty: but in my case the marriage is not a success.

The great majority of men, especially in France, both desire and possess a fashionable woman, much in the way one might own a fine horse -- as a luxury befitting a young man.

I have a switch in my apartment that doesn't do anything. Every once in a while I turn it on and off. On and off. On and off. One day I got a call from a woman in France who said "Cut it out!

Has fortune dealt you some bad cards. Then let wisdom make you a good gamester.

Le Corbusier was the sort of relentlessly rational intellectual that only France loves wholeheartedly, the logician who flies higher and higher in ever-decreasing circles until, with one last, utterly inevitable induction, he disappears up his own fundamental aperture and emerges in the fourth dimension as a needle-thin umber bird.

France was a land, England was a people, but America, having about it still that quality of the idea, was harder to utter -- it was the graves at Shiloh and the tired, drawn, nervous faces of its great men, and the country boys dying in the Argonne for a phrase that was empty before their bodies withered. It was a willingness of the heart.

I was astonished at the effect my successful landing in France had on the nations of the world. To me, it was like a match lighting a bonfire.

If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world.

Let France have good mothers, and she will have good sons.

We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

Convey thy love to thy friend, as an arrow to mark, to stick there, not as a ball against the wall, to rebound back to thee.

Read not books alone, but men, and amongst them chiefly thyself. If thou find anything questionable there, use the commentary of a severe friend rather than the gloss of a sweet lipped flatterer; there is more profit in a distasteful truth than in deceitful sweetness.

If it were not for the government, we should have nothing to laugh at in France.

Being blunt with your feelings is very American. In this big country, I can be as brash as New York, as hedonistic as Los Angeles, as sensuous as San Francisco, as brainy as Boston, as proper as Philadelphia, as brawny as Chicago, as warm as Palm Springs, as friendly as my adopted home town of Dallas, Fort Worth, and as peaceful as the inland waterway that rubs up against my former home in Virginia Beach.

The act is unjustifiable that either begs for a blessing, or, having succeeded gives no thanksgiving.

Other countries drink to get drunk, and this is accepted by everyone; in France, drunkenness is a consequence, never an intention. A drink is felt as the spinning out of a pleasure, not as the necessary cause of an effect which is sought: wine is not only a philter, it is also the leisurely act of drinking.

Beware of him that is slow to anger; for when it is long coming, it is the stronger when it comes, and the longer kept. Abused patience turns to fury.

France has lost a battle. But France has not lost the war.

How deep a wound to morals and social purity has that accursed article of the celibacy of the clergy been! Even the best and most enlightened men in Romanist countries attach a notion of impurity to the marriage of a clergyman. And can such a feeling be without its effect on the estimation of the wedded life in general? Impossible! and the morals of both sexes in Spain, Italy, France, and. prove it abundantly.

Be always displeased at what thou art, if thou desire to attain to what thou art not; for where thou hast pleased thyself, there thou abidest.

Let the fear of a danger be a spur to prevent it; he that fears not, gives advantage to the danger.

Once while St. Francis of Assisi was hoeing his garden, he was asked, ''What would you do it you were suddenly to learn that you were to die at sunset today?'' He replied, ''I would finish hoeing my garden.''

France may claim the happiest marriages in the world, but the happiest divorces in the world are ''made in America.''

The road to perseverance lies by doubt.

The best thing I know between France and England is the sea.

France is the country where the money falls apart and you can't tear the toilet paper.

France is a place where the money falls apart in your hands but you cannot tear the toilet paper.

Flatter not thyself in thy faith in God if thou hast not charity for thy neighbor.

The coming of the printing press must have seemed as if it would turn the world upside down in the way it spread and, above all, democratized knowledge. Provide you could pay and read, what was on the shelves in the new bookshops was yours for the taking. The speed with which printing presses and their operators fanned out across Europe is extraordinary. From the single Mainz press of 1457, it took only twenty-three years to establish presses in 110 towns: 50 in Italy, 30 in Germany, 9 in France, 8 in Spain, 8 in Holland, 4 in England, and so on.

Anger may repast with thee for an hour, but not repose for a night; the continuance of anger is hatred, the continuance of hatred turns malice.

Heaven finds an ear when sinners find a tongue.

Intellectuals can tell themselves anything, sell themselves any bill of goods, which is why they were so often patsies for the ruling classes in nineteenth-century France and England, or twentieth-century Russia and America.

Although I may not be a lioness, I am a lion's cub, and inherit many of his qualities; and as long as the King of France treats me gently he will find me as gentle and tractable as he can desire; but if he be rough, I shall take the trouble to be just as troublesome and offensive to him as I can.

There is always inequity in life. Some men are killed in a war, and some men are wounded, and some men are stationed in the Antarctic and some are stationed in San Francisco. It's very hard in military or personal life to assure complete equality. Life