F Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with F. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Fran,” dad says lifting his eyes from the map as he nonchalantly drops the A-bomb on me. “It’s extra-terrestrial.”
“Wait… what?” I can’t believe what I just heard. “You mean aliens, right?” My breath seizes. “From another world?”
FUNNY, ADDICTIVE DRAMA "Dancing on My Own.”
“Fran had from an unsuitably early age been attracted by the heroic death, the famous last words, the tragic farewell. Her parents had on their shelves a copy of Brewer's 'Dictionary of Phase and fable', a book which, as a teenager, she would morbidly browse for hours. One of her favourite sections was 'Dying Sayings', with its fine mix of the pious, the complacent, the apocryphal, the bathetic and the defiant. Artists had fared well: Beethoven was alleged to have said 'I shall hear in heaven'; the erotic painter Etty had declared 'Wonderful! Wonderful this death!'; and Keats had died bravely, generously comforting his poor friend Severn.
Those about to be executed had clearly had time to prepare a fine last thought, and of these she favoured the romantic Walter Raleigh's, 'It matters little how the head lies, so the heart be right'. Harriet Martineau, who had suffered so much as a child from religion, as Fran had later discovered, had stoically remarked, 'I see no reason why the existence of Harriet Martineau should be perpetuated', an admirably composed sentiment which had caught the child Fran's attention long before she knew who Harriet Martineau was. But most of all she had liked the parting of Siward the Dane who had commended his men: 'Lift me up that I may die standing, not lying down like a cow'.”
Source: The Dark Flood Rises
“Fran McDormand was great because she said, 'What I used to do when I worked with him was I would just walk on the set and I would give him a big hug. Somehow his guard would just drop.' So I took that advice.”
“Franca breathed the tranquility of the house, yet it was not tranquil, she breathed its goodness, but it was not good.”
Source: The Message To The Planet
“Franca, darling, let's be simple."
"And move quietly in the dark.”
Source: The Message To The Planet
“Francamente hablando: hay en este mundo desigualdades que asustan”
Source: Cartas desde mi celda
“France always has plenty men of talent, but it is always deficient in men of action and high character.”
“France and Germany, long jealous of the king's lucrative rubber profits, had their eye on pieces of Congo territory. President Roosevelt hinted that he was willing to join Britain in convening an international conference to discuss the Congo’s fate. Three times the British and American ministers in Brussels went, together, to see the Belgian minister of foreign affairs and press for Belgian annexation. But sharply limited as Leopold II’s powers were in Belgium itself, the worried Belgian government had no legal authority over him in his role as ruler of the Congo. In the end, the king held the key cards, and he knew it.”
Source: King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa
“France and Germany were opposed to a maritime blockade of the Adriatic Sea without a mandate from the United Nations (UN). So, what we witnessed in Kosovo was an extraordinary war, a war waged solely with bombs from the air.”
“France and Italy have not yet signed this treaty or agreed to naval limitation as between those nations, but I have confidence that in time they will do so.”
“France and the whole of Europe have a great culture and an amazing history. Most important thing, though, is that people there know how to live! In America they've forgotten all about it. I'm afraid that the American culture is a disaster.”
“France at the dinner table in faraway places; but here, among ourselves, in the family, let us face the facts: France is not poetic; to tell the truth, she even feels a congenital horror of poetry. Among the writers who use verse, those whom she will always prefer are the most prosaic.”
“France believes in armed intervention by America only when the intervention is in France to rescue France from occupation by other powers.”
“France bleeds, but liberty smiles, and before the smile of liberty, France forgets her wound.”
Source: Les Misérables
“France built its best colony on a principle of exclusion, and failed; England reversed the system, and succeeded.”
Source: Montcalm and Wolfe
“France can compete with the Hollywood studios in terms of animation savoir-faire, but not in terms of box-office figures. France is a small country, and the Americans are the masters of the world - for cinema, it's true.”
“France can never accept that it is no longer a dominating power in the world of culture. This is true both of the French right and the French left. They keep thinking that Americans are primitive cowboys or farmers who do not understand anything.”
“France cannot be destroyed. She is an old country who, despite her misfortunes, has, and always will have, thanks to her past, a tremendous prestige in the world, whatever the fate inflicted upon her.”
“France cannot be France without greatness.”
“France could have all the socialism its capitalistic economy could support.”
“France does not practice revenge.”
“France eats more conciously, more intelligently, than any other nation.”
“France generates a significant part of its energy requirements from fission reactors and these have achieved a perfect safety record. We build ours all differently.”
“France had recently switched to the metric system of measurement. This gave scientists a much-needed standardized system to measure and compare results, but it also required a whole new set of calculating tables.
The sheer number of calculations was beyond what could be accomplished by all the mathematicians in France, so Riche established calculating 'factories' to manufacture logarithms the same way workers manufactured mercantile goods.
Each factory employed between 60 and 80 human 'computers.' But they weren’t trained mathematicians; they were mostly out-of-work hairdressers who had found their skill at constructing elaborate pompadours for aristocrats much less in demand after so many former clients lost their heads at the height of the French Revolution. Riche had hit upon a rote system of compiling results based on a set of given values and formulas, and the workers just cranked out the answers in what must have been the world’s first mathematical assembly line.
Babbage figured that if an army of untrained hairdressers could make the calculations, so could a computing 'engine.”
“France had shown a light to all men, preached a Gospel, all men's good; Celtic Demos rose a Demon, shriek'd and slaked the light with blood.”
“France has a special position: We are Continental Europe's nuclear power and a permanent member of the UN Security Council. This special role, though, only makes sense if France fills it as a member state of the European Union. France cannot play this role alone, it must be seen as a part of Europe. I have always insisted on that.”
“France has a very important relationship with Germany. But that does not mean that we agree about everything or that two of our universities or companies are not going to compete.”
“France has been very good for me. It has given me a very worldly-cool attitude.”
“France has given us the best filmmakers and food.”
“France has lived a long time - eight or nine centuries - and yet art in France, too, was derivative up until the 19th Century.”
“France has lost the battle but she has not lost the war.”
“France has more need of me than I have need of France.”
“France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.”
Source: Is He Dead?: A Comedy in Three Acts
“France has neither winter, nor summer, nor morals. France is miserable because it is filled with Frenchmen, and Frenchmen are miserable because they live in France.”
“France has never gotten over the fact that it was once a great power and is now just a great nuisance.”
Source: Ever Wonder Why? and Other Controversial Essays
“France has no friends, only interests.”
“France has not been able to come to terms with the fact that it's not a major power anymore. I mean even before the Second World War Paris was one of the main centers of intellectual and cultural life. But now Paris is a kind of subsidiary of Germany, their traditional enemy and they can't come to terms with it.”
“France has usually been governed by prostitutes”
Source: Mark Twain's Notebooks & Journals, Volume II: (1877-1883)
“France in August when you can travel through the entire country without encountering a single pesky Frenchman or being bothered with anything that's open for business.”
Source: Holidays in Hell
“France is a country that loves to change their government if it is always the same.”
“France is a country where life is more than just your job. I feel like, in America, you're defined by your work. But in France, you can actually have a whole dinner conversation with someone without once discussing what you do.”
“France is a country where thinking is supposed to be furtive, invisible, almost clandestine. France is a country of cliques and sects.”
“France is a country you have to drive through to get to Italy. That's all it's there for.”
“France is a dog-hole, and it no more merits the tread of a man's foot.”
Source: Plays ...
“France is a meddow that cuts thrice a yeere.”
Source: The Complete Works of George Herbert: Prose
“France is a nation devoted to the false hypothesis on which it then builds marvelously logical structures.”
“France is a place where the money falls apart in your hands but you can't tear the toilet paper.”
Source: Billy Wilder: Interviews
“France is a republic, and the rules in theory have been made by everyone rather than imposed by a dictatorship or king or whatever. So it's like, we've got to stick to these rules because we made them.”
“France is a very paternalistic society where people have to be introduced.”
“France is an old country that needs to wake up.”