I have tried to lift France out of the mud. But she will return to her errors and vomiting. I cannot prevent the French from being French.
I am typically French.
The French are ... the most brilliant and the most dangerous nation of Europe, and the one that is surest to inspire admiration, hatred, terror, or pity, but never indifference.
Really, creation and innovation are part of the French DNA.
The priest has just baptized you a Christian with water; and I baptize you a Frenchman, daring child, with a dewdrop of champagne on your lips.
I like to provoke. I'm very French.
Such is the nature and make-up of the French that they are only good at the start. Then they are worse than devils, but, given time, they're less than women.
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.
There is a certain dignity to being French.
[The] taste [of the French] is too timid to be true taste--or is but half taste.
The French are people who think otherwise.
The relentless pursuit of being different is very French.
France is a beacon for the human race. The nation and its people may be loved or hated, but they can never be ignored.
The French constitute the most brilliant and the most dangerous nation in Europe and the best qualified in turn to become an object of admiration, hatred, pity or terror but never indifference.
