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41 " We had a crisp, oily salad and slices of pink country sausages, an aioli of snails and cod and hard-boiled eggs with garlic mayonnaise, creamy cheese from Fontvielle, and a homemade tart. It was the kind of meal that the French take for granted and tourists remember for years. "
― Peter Mayle , A Year in Provence
42 " It is at a time like this, when crisis threatens the stomach, that the French display the most sympathetic side of their nature. Tell them stories of physical injury or financial ruin and they will either laugh or commiserate politely. But tell them you are facing gastronomic hardship, and they will move heaven and earth and even restaurant tables to help you. "
43 " What was after the universe? Nothing. But was there anything round the universe to show where it stopped before the nothing place began? It could not be a wall; but there could be a thin thin line there all round everything. It was very big to think about everything and everywhere. Only God could do that. He tried to think what a big thought that must be; but he could only think of God. God was God's name just as his name was Stephen. Dieu was the French for God and that was God's name too; and when anyone prayed to God and said Dieu then God knew at once that it was a French person that was praying. But, though there were different names for God in all the different languages in the world and God understood what all the people who prayed said in their different languages, still God remained always the same God and God's real name was God. "
― James Joyce , A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
44 " In 1803, President Jefferson oversaw the purchase of this land from the French for $15 million. It doesn't sound like much for an area three times the size of France itself but given that they'd stolen it from the Native Americans in the first place, I suppose they couldn't grumble. Once some debts had been wiped and estate agents had taken their commission, Napoleon's France ended up pocketing a little more than $8 million. Which is about how much it cost Pepsi Cola to secure the services of Britney Spears. Times have changed. "
― Dave Gorman
45 " To evoke another great phrase of the American revolutionary heritage — widely though inconclusively attributed to Thomas Jefferson — the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Such a phrase is merely trite, however, unless we consider its deeper implications. For the French revolutionaries, as for so many regimes that have succeeded them across the world up to the present day, the call for vigilance against enemies, both external and internal, was the first step on the road to the loss of liberty, and lives.Of far more significance, and the true and tragic lesson of the epic descent into The Terror, is the summons to vigilance against ourselves — that we should not assume that we are righteous, and our enemies evil; that we can see clearly, and to others are blinded by malice or folly; that we can abrogate the fragile rights of others in the name of our own certainty and all will be well regardless.If we do not honor the message of human rights born in the revolutions of 1776 and 1786, as the French in their case most certainly failed to do, we too are on the road to The Terror. "
― David Andress , The Terror: The Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary France
46 " It became evident, that in Paris, only one man could fulfil Heloise’s educational needs, Peter (or as the French called him, Pierre) Abelard, a thirty-seven year old philosopher and teacher "
― Emily Williams , Letters to Eloise
47 " There's a little war in progress here. There won't be anything left of the place if it goes on at this rate." (But it's hard to feign innocence if you've eaten the apple, he reflected.) " And it looks to me as if it is going to go on, because the French aren't going to give in, and certainly the Arabs aren't, because they can't. They're fighting with their backs the the wall." " I thought maybe you meant you expected a new world war," he lied." That's the least of my worries. When that comes, we've had it. You can't sit around mooning about Judgement Day. That's just silly. Everybody who ever lived has always had his own private Judgment Day to face anyway, and he still has. As far as that goes, nothing's changed at all. "
48 " ...And of course they'll get their milk from us, because Gooch's milk in the village really can't be trusted. I do hope, Henry, the vicarage drains are all right if Martin is to go there, because the French are rather vague about drains.''Yes, but darling, they aren't bringing their drains with them'... "
― Angela Thirkell , Wild Strawberries (Barsetshire, #2)
49 " The whole world is festering with unhappy souls: The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles' Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch; and I don't like anybody very much! "
50 " You are not wrong," Laurence said. He had assumed as much himself, after all, in his Navy days: had thought the Corps full of wild, devil-may-care libertines, disregarding law and authority as far as they dared, barely kept in check-- to be used for their control over the beasts, and not respected." But if we have more liberty than we ought," Laurence said, after a moment, struggling through, " it is because they have not enough: the dragons. They have no stake in victory but our happiness; their daily bread and nation would give them just to have peace and quiet. We are given licence so long as we do what we ought not; so long as we use their affections to keep them obedient and quiet, to ends which serve them not at all-- or which harm." " How else do you make them care?" Granby said. " If we left off, the French would only run right over us, and take our eggs themselves." " They care in China," Laurence said, " and in Africa, and they care all the more, that their rational sense is not imposed on, and their hearts put into opposition with their minds. If they cannot be woken to a natural affection for their country, such as we feel, it is our fault, and not theirs. "
51 " The beauty of being a woman, as the French say, " of a certain age" , is that I can be invisible. Young people, both men and women, look right through me, unless I make the effort to be noticed. "
52 " some smart alecs of those days after World War I used to say: " The French fought for liberty, the British fought to control the seas, but the Americans fought for souvenirs. "
53 " Let me tell you something you probably already know. It's that second cord that should remain in the neck of the bottle. You can liberate 1, but two bottles of wine for 2 people is 1 bottle too many. There was a reason the French bottled wine the way they did. 2 and a half glasses was plenty of wine for 2 people to consume with dinner. But that's not how it went with us. "
― Dorothea Benton Frank , The Hurricane Sisters (Lowcountry Tales, #9)
54 " Let me tell you something you probably already know. It's that second cork that should remain in the neck of the bottle. You can liberate 1, but two bottles of wine for 2 people is 1 bottle too many. There was a reason the French bottled wine the way they did. 2 and a half glasses was plenty of wine for 2 people to consume with dinner. But that's not how it went with us. "
55 " What's foreign one can't always keep quite clear of,For good things, oft, are not so near;A German can't endure the French to see or hear of,Yet drinks their wines with hearty cheer. "
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Faust
56 " In matters of commerce the fault of the Dutch Is offering too little and asking too much. The French are with equal advantage content So we clap on Dutch bottoms just 20%. "
57 " All of life is more or less what the French would call s'imposer - to be able to create one's own terms for what one does. "
58 " The king of France with twenty thousand men Went up the hill and then came down again: The king of Spain with twenty thousand more Climbed the same hill the French had climbed before. "
59 " I was thrown together with Florence, or 'Florawns' as she was called, a pert girl of nineteen who worked in our kitchen and was sent out to help me. First, I followed her to a butcher where fat sausages hung from the ceiling like aldermen's chains, and I could choose the best of plump ducks, sides of beef, and chops standing guard like sentries on parade. Once the deal was done Florence paid him, gave me a wink and cast a trickle of coins into her apron pocket. So it seemed that serving girls will pay themselves the whole world over.The size of the Paris market made Covent Garden look like a tinker's tray. And I never before saw such neatness; the cakes arranged in pinks and yellows and greens like an embroidery, and the cheeses even prettier, some as tiny as thimbles and others great solid cartwheels. As for the King Cakes the French made for Twelfth Night, the scents of almond and caramelled sugar were to me far sweeter than any perfumed waters. "
― Martine Bailey , An Appetite for Violets
60 " Despite the rigid classicism of the famous Paris Opera school and company, the French have done more than their share to unmoor la Danse from its traditions and standards. "