She had probably referred to herself as Mrs. Scott Landon less than half a dozen times in all the years of her married life, and never once during the twenty-six months of her widowhood. It...

Que les poètes morts laissent la place aux autres. Et nous pourrions tout de même voir que c’est notre vénération devant ce qui a été déjà fait, si beau et si valable que ce soit,...

L’ascenseur qui parcourt les mes n’a que deux boutons : “Plus bas” et “Encore plus bas

The French doctor – the French, they are a very logical race and make good doctors – says: “M’sieu, they have all been on the wrong track – (“Jane Brown’s Body”)

You will do well to take advantage of Madame’s short residence to get up your French a little… You will be glad of this, my dear, when you have reached France, where you will find...

The variations of the Duchess’s judgment spared no one, except herhusband. He alone had never been in love with her, in him she hadalways felt an iron character, indifferent to the caprices that shedisplayed, contemptuous...

las petites morts”: because the things that bring us passion tend to slip past our defenses, to creep insidiously into every facet of our consciousnesses and kill us as ruthlessly, and efficiently, as any drug.

The past has given us much too many bad answers for us not to see that the mistakes were in the questions themselves. There is no need to choose between the fetishism of spontaneity and...

A ses yeux, celui qui donnait des signes extérieurs de bonté était bon, celui qui donnait des signes extérieurs de loyauté était loyal. Celui qui donnait des signes extérieurs d’intelligence, intelligent. C’est ainsi qu’il n’avait...

Si le grain de blé qui est tombé en terre ne meurt, il reste seul ; mais, s’il meurt, il porte beaucoup de fruit. Celui qui aime sa vie la perdra, et celui qui hait...

Birds are sensitive to mispronunciation, even more sensitive than the French.

I love you”? I could say it in another language, like French. I could say it through action, like a kiss. Or I could say it indirectly, like telling your best friend, April. Yes, I...

Je ne regrette rein.

La vie est atroce ; nous savons cela. Mais précisément parce que j’attends peu de choses de la condition humaine, les périodes de bonheur, les progrès partiels, les efforts de recommencement, et de continuité me...

C’est pas assez que tous tu dis c’est de la merde, François? Tu veux coucher dans la merde, aussi?

Maybe up to the part that goes ‘Aux armes, citoyens’—

que ferais-je sans ce monde que ferais-je sans ce monde sans visage sans questionsoù être ne dure qu’un instant où chaque instantverse dans le vide dans l’oubli d’avoir étésans cette onde où à la fincorps...

Rien ne va arrêter ma quête pour te trouver” No one will stop my quest to find you.

Tous mes anciens amours vont me revenir.’- All my old loves will be returned to me

I have not been able to discover whether there exists a precise French equivalent for the common Anglo-American expression ‘killing time.’ It’s a very crass and breezy expression, when you ponder it for a moment,...

Don’t just stand there with your Eiffel Tower smile. Tell me you love me, and tell me in French.

Adieu, mon cher vieux. Relis et rebûche ton conte. Laisse-le reposer et reprends-le, les livres ne se font pas comme les enfants, mais comme les pyramides, avec un dessin prémédité, et en apportant des grands...

I don’t think it’s by accident that I was first attracted to translating two French women poets.

One of the many advantages of having a boyfriend who is half French is that his culinary repertoire extends beyond mac and cheese. Plus, there’s the kissing.

D’une complexion farouche et bavarde, ayant le désir de ne voir personne et le besoin de parler à quelqu’un, il se tirait d’affaire en se parlant à lui-même. Quiconque a vécu solitaire sait à quel...

Boy, those French! They have a different word for everything.

Je pensais de meme que notre jeunesse etait finie et le bonheur manqué. I thought too that our youth was over and we had failed to find happiness.

I can read a lot of French newspapers with Google Translate and have them read quite comfortably.

Le Parti pouvait mettre à nu les plus petits détails de tout ce que l’on avait dit ou pensé, mais les profondeurs de votre cœur, dont les mouvements étaient mystérieux, même pour vous, demeuraient inviolables.

Who buys French cars? Not me.

Nous disons bien que l’heure de la mort est incertaine, mais quand nous disons cela, nous nous représentons cette heure comme située dans un espace vague et lointain, nous ne pensons pas qu’elle ait un...

Ça va. Nap time is over.

The situation is like this: they hired our parents to destroy this world, and now they’d like to put us to work rebuilding it, and — to add insult to injury — at a profit.

On ne retombe pas en enfance, on n’en sort jamais. Vieux, moi? Qu’est-ce qu’un vieillard sinon un enfant qui a pris de l’ ge ou du vendre ?…

He (Lafcadio) was sitting all alone in a compartment of the train which was carrying him away from Rome, & contemplating–not without satisfaction–his hands in their grey doeskin gloves, as they lay on the rich...

So it was perfectly possible that there were men who liked shopping, men who understood exactly what it was all about, but Mma Ramotwe had yet to meet such a man. Maybe they existed elsewhere...

His tightly fitting jeans were unmistakably French.

Je suis à toi.

There is no good word for stomach; just as there is no good word for girlfriend. Stomach is to girlfriend as belly is to lover, and as abdomen is to consort, and as middle is...

Celui qui se conforme aux règles évite de réfléchir. Si tu raisonnes en restant dans le cadre, tu ne trouveras jamais de solution autre que celles auxquelles tout le monde a déjà pensé. Il faut...

French laicite is probably aggressive and antagonistic to the religion, but there are other models of secularism in the world where there could be reconciliation between religion and secularism.

A cheval sur une tombe et une naissance difficile. Du fond du trou, rêveusement, le fossoyeur applique ses fers. On a le temps de vieillir. L’air est plein de nos cris.

His brown eyes would roam around the various sentimental and artistic bric-a-brac present, and his own banal toiles (the conventionally primitive eyes, sliced guitars, blue nipples and geometrical designs of the day), and with a...

What isn’t clear, isn’t French.

The true structure of the Welsh grammar will be revealed only when we look at sentences slightly more complicated than its basic VSO pattern. Welsh is no different from the rest of the world: it...

The French aren’t birthed; they’re hatched out of eggs. That’s why they make the best omelets.

Présente je vous fuis; absente, je vous trouve;Dans le fond des forêts votre image me suit

Mon être ne subsiste que sous un point de vue suprême qui est justement incompatible avec mon point de vue. La perspective dans laquelle je m’évanouis à mes yeux, me restaure, image complète, pour l’œil...

On devient jeune à soixante ans. Malheureusement, c’est trop tard

Je parle français.” Indira gave me a weird look. Or a look that said I was weird. Whichever. The point is, I don’t really speak French, but it’s a useful phrase for confusing people you...