#france

We've been back since July, but I spent some time with the family in the south of France over the summer. We rented a house with another couple and took it easy. ↗

— Laura Innes

#back #been #couple #easy #family

After the outbreak of war, in April 1940, we left Geneva with our three children aged 4 years, 2 years and 2 weeks only to become part of the disordered refugee crowds fleeing across France from the German army. ↗

— James Meade

#after #aged #april #army #become

We have a saying in France. A dog doesn't make a cat. ↗

— Yannick Noah

#dog #france #make #saying

In France today, people no longer eat as much heavy food and fat as they did 15 or 20 years ago. These days, French cooking, through the influence of 'grande cuisine,' has become a bit lighter. And we are beginning to discover the original flavors of our produce. ↗

— Joel Robuchon

#become #beginning #bit #cooking #cuisine

For example, in Paris, if one desires to buy something, you enter the store and say "Good morning, sir" or "madam," depending on what is appropriate, you wait until you are greeted, you make polite chitchat about the weather or some such, and when the salesperson asks what they can do for you, then and only then do you bring up the vulgar business of the transaction you require. ↗

— Craig Ferguson

#manners #paris #business

The point of civilization is to be civilized; the purpose of action is to perpetuate society, for only in society can philosophy truly take place. ↗

— Iain Pears

#black-plague #christians #clement-vi #dream-of-scipio #gaul

88. People wonder why so many writers come to live in Paris. I’ve been living ten years in Paris and the answer seems simple to me: because it’s the best place to pick ideas. Just like Italy, Spain.. or Iran are the best places to pick saffron. If you want to pick opium poppies you go to Burma or South-East Asia. And if you want to pick novel ideas, you go to Paris. ↗

— Roman Payne

#burma #creativity #expatriate #expatriot #expats

The guillotine is the ultimate expression of Law, and its name is vengeance; it is not neutral, nor does it allow us to remain neutral. All social questions achieve their finality around that blade. The scaffold is an image. It is not merely a framework, a machine, a lifeless mechanism of wood, iron, and rope. It is as though it were a being having its own dark purpose, as though the framework saw, the machine listened, and the mechanism understood; as though that arrangement of wood and iron and rope expressed a will. In the hideous picture which its presence evokes it seems to be most terribly a part of what it does. It is the executioner's accomplice; it consumes, devouring flesh and drinking blood. It is a kind of monster created by the judge and the craftsman; a spectre seeming to live an awful life born of the death it deals. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#execution #executioner #france #scaffold #death

If your arteries are good, eat more ice cream. If they are bad, drink more red wine. Proceed thusly. ↗

— Sandra Byrd

#health #humor #ice-cream #motivation #wine

There were a Te Deum, clouds of incense, endless volleys of musketry and artillery; the peasants were frantic with joy and piety. Such a day undoes the work of a hundred numbers of the Jacobin papers. ↗

— Stendhal

#political #religion #satirical #social #theredandtheblack