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French History Quotes

Browse 11 quotes about French History.

French History Quotes

“When Hitler marched across the Rhine To take the land of France, La dame de fer decided, ‘Let’s make the tyrant dance.’ Let him take the land and city, The hills and every flower, One thing he will never have, The elegant Eiffel Tower. The French cut the cables, The elevators stood still, ‘If he wants to reach the top, Let him walk it, if he will.’ The invaders hung a swastika The largest ever seen. But a fresh breeze blew And away it flew, Never more to be seen. They hung up a second mark, Smaller than the first, But a patriot climbed With a thought in mind: ‘Never your duty shirk.’ Up the iron lady He stealthily made his way, Hanging the bright tricolour, He heroically saved the day. Then, for some strange reason, A mystery to this day, Hitler never climbed the tower, On the ground he had to stay. At last he ordered she be razed Down to a twisted pile. A futile attack, for still she stands Beaming her metallic smile.”

PoetryVictoryPoemResistanceFranceParisPoetry QuotesHeroismTowersWorld War 2FrenchHitlerWorld War TwoEiffel TowerEiffelResistance MovementFrench HistoryEiffel Tower PoemEiffel Tower PoemsI Love FranceI Love ParisLa Dame De Fer
Book:Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
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“Alix looked at Nikola. With a slight movement of his head, he indicated the open doorway, and she got up and followed him outside. They faced each other, hunched against the wind, and he began quietly, ‘If anything should happen to me…’ She met his eyes and saw something different there. This was not his usual self-pitying ploy to engage her sympathy. He really meant this. Her first instinct was to reply, ‘Nothing will happen. You’ve been in dozens of battles and come out safely.’ ‘This could be different,’ he said. ‘I just want you to know, if anything did happen, I have made Dragomir promise to look after you.’ She almost laughed. Dragomir had taken care of her ever since they were forced out of Uzice a year ago. Then she realised what it had cost Nikola to exact that promise. He had been jealous of Drago since they had met in the ruins of Belgrade and he refused to accept that there could be anything between them beyond the relationship of mistress and servant. This was a tacit acceptance that it was much more than that.”

WarHistoryDramaComplexPage TurnerSuspensefulNapoleonFrench HistoryNapoleonic History
Book:A Call to Home
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“Motherhood had been metamorphosing Marie Antoinette into a more grounded and responsible woman. Her pregnancies had necessitated several months' absence from her usual round of gay amusements and she discovered that it was more fun to spend time with her children than it had been to play faro deep into the wee hours of the morning. But her reputation as a frivolous, extravagant ninny and the marital issues in the royal bed had already demonized her in the eyes of the people at all levels of society.”

FranceMarie AntoinetteFrench History
Book:Notorious Royal Marriages
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“Catherine de Medici brought her cooks to France when she married, and those cooks brought sherbet and custard and cream puffs, artichokes and onion soup, and the idea of roasting birds with oranges. As well as cooks, she brought embroidery and handkerchiefs, perfumes and lingerie, silverware and glassware and the idea that gathering around a table was something to be done thoughtfully. In essence, she brought being French to France.”

FranceFrench CookingFrench Food20151935French CultureFrench HistoryMedici
Book:The Arrangement
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“After a time I saw what I believed, at the time, to be a radio relay station located out on a desolate sand spit near Villa Bens. It was only later that I found out that it was Castelo de Tarfaya, a small fortification on the North African coast. Tarfaya was occupied by the British in 1882, when they established a trading post, called Casa del Mar. It is now considered the Southern part of Morocco. In the early ‘20s, the French pioneering aviation company, Aéropostale, built a landing strip in this desert, for its mail delivery service. By 1925 their route was extended to Dakar, where the mail was transferred onto steam ships bound for Brazil. A monument now stands in Tarfaya, to honor the air carrier and its pilots as well as the French aviator and author Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint-Exupéry better known as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. As a newly acclaimed author in the literary world. “Night Flight,” or “Vol de nuit,” was the first of Saint-Exupéry’s literary works and won him the prix Femina, a French literary prize created in 1904. The novel was based on his experiences as an early mail pilot and the director of the “Aeroposta Argentina airline,” in South America. Antoine is also known for his narrative “The Little Prince” and his aviation writings, including the lyrical 1939 “Wind, Sand and Stars” which is Saint-Exupéry’s 1939, memoir of his experiences as a postal pilot. It tells how on the week following Christmas in 1935, he and his mechanic amazingly survived a crash in the Sahara desert. The two men suffered dehydration in the extreme desert heat before a local Bedouin, riding his camel, discovered them “just in the nick of time,” to save their lives. His biographies divulge numerous affairs, most notably with the Frenchwoman Hélène de Vogüé, known as “Nelly” and referred to as “Madame de B.”

RomanceAviation HistoryFrench History
Author:Captain Hank Bracker, "Seawater Two...."
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