"French people" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... perfectly satisfied. But not at all! They were indignant that they were not personally mentioned, in the plbiscite, by which their posterity was appointed to succeed to the French crown. This plbiscite ran thus: "The French people desire the Inheritance of the Imperial dignity in the direct, natural, or adoptive line of descent from Napoleon Bonaparte, and in the direct, natural, legitimate line of descent from Joseph Bonaparte and from Louis Bonaparte, ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... also, of husbands under twenty is "excessively high" (22. These quotations are taken from our highest authority on such questions, namely, Dr. Farr, in his paper 'On the Influence of Marriage on the Mortality of the French People,' read before the Nat. Assoc. for the Promotion of Social Science, 1858.), but what the cause of this may be, seems doubtful. Lastly, if the men who prudently delay marrying until they can bring up their families in comfort, were to select, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... Continent, was reflected back upon the Old World. France beheld its beams, and hailed them as a beacon-light, which should lead the nations out from the bondage of ages. Inspirited by the success attending the struggle in the British colonies, the French people, long crushed beneath a grinding despotism, resolved to burst their shackles and strike for Freedom. It was a noble resolution, but consummated, alas amid devastation and the wildest anarchy. The French Revolution filled the world with horror. ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... That was very modern, and very un-British. Alston had a sort of innocent love for the strange and the complex in music. He shrank from anything banal, and disliked the obvious, though his contact with French people had saved him from love of the cloudy. As he intended to make his career upon the stage, and as he was too young, and far too enthusiastic, not to be a bit of an egoist, he was naturally disposed to think that all real musical development was likely to take place in ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... listened—but waited. He could not doubt that the French King or the French people would come forward presently and pay a higher price than the English. He kept Joan a close prisoner in a strong fortress, and continued to wait, week after week. He was a French prince, and was at heart ashamed to sell her to the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of the clubs and an eager sportsman, Santos-Dumont at once won the liking of the French people, and attracted attention wherever people gave thought to aviation. Liberal in expenditure of money, and utterly fearless in exposing his life, he pushed his experiments for the development of a true dirigible tirelessly. Perhaps his major fault was that he learned but slowly from the ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... more enshrined in the heart of the French people than the poet BERANGER. A few weeks since he went one evening with one of his nephews to the Clos des Lilas, a garden in the students' quarter devoted to dancing in the open air, intending to look for a few minutes upon a scene he had not visited since his youth, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... least imply that resignation is the prevailing note in the tone of France. The attitude of the French people, after fourteen months of trial, is not one of submission to unparalleled calamity. It is one of exaltation, energy, the hot resolve to dominate the disaster. In all classes the feeling is the same: every word and every ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... and directness of his character, his disregard for their voluptuous frivolity, and his appreciation of the things only that make for greatness in a State. He did not hesitate to prophesy, from what he saw and learned, the approaching decadence and ruin of the French monarchy and the French people. ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... indeed. The art of conversing these French people carry to great perfection. It is not frivolous, though it is light and sparkling; it is still less argumentative, but it has the knack of bringing out different opinions and different views of them. We pity the ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... part I have not only more hope in the situation but more faith in the French people than is ordinary among the English, who really try to exceed one another in discoloration and distortion of the circumstances. The government was in a deadlock—what was to be done? Yes, all parties cried out, 'What was to be done?' and felt that we were waist deep a fortnight ago in a state ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... course of which Thiers and the Assembly served the nation admirably through the promotion of its recovery from the ravages of war. More and more Thiers, who had begun as a constitutional monarchist, came to believe in republicanism as the style of government which would divide the French people least, and late in 1872 he put himself unqualifiedly among the adherents of the republican programme. Thereupon the monarchists, united for the moment in the conviction that for the good of their several causes Thiers must be deposed from his ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... these ill-wishers to modify their most cherished theory of democracy in the United States. They thought that the marvellous energy for military combination, developed by a democracy suddenly emancipated from oppression, such as was presented by the French people in the Revolution of 1789, was not the characteristic of a democracy which had grown up under democratic institutions. The first was anarchy plus the dictator; the second was merely "anarchy plus the constable." They ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... pure, never-failing streams. To one who had been long in prison pent, the journey inland was a procession of delights. Monsieur Pitot, who was intimate with the country gentlemen, made the stages easy, and several visits were paid by the way. The cultivated French people of the island were all very glad to entertain Flinders, of whom they had heard much, and who won their sympathy by reason of his wrongs, and their affection by his own personality. Charming gardens shaded by mango and other fruit trees, cool fish-ponds, splashing ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... said suddenly, "I will fetch Madame Michaud in. It will be nice for you to come here in the evening sometimes, and it would be better for her to ask you to do so than for me. These French people have ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... of a painful and glorious struggle against all Europe, in order to insure the triumph of the liberty of man and that of nations, the moment is at length arrived when Peace is on the point of crowning the efforts of the French people, and securing the Republic on a foundation never to be shaken. For this peace, which will unite by the bonds of friendship two great nations, already connected by esteem, we are indebted to the valour and wisdom of the heroic ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... flowers are usually set out on the mantel-piece, on the arrangement and decoration of which Madame evidently prides herself. Good taste is so cheap and so pleasant a thing, that I wish it were possible for these French people to inoculate their neighbours with a little of it. But rough plenty seems to be sufficient ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... the Duke had left France, the French people were somewhat ashamed to learn that this man, whom they had twice hounded out of the country, had returned good for evil, and made a present to the nation, or rather to the Institute of France, of his beautiful chateau ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 29, May 27, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... "This is shameful." He then sent for his will, and interlined the following words:—"I caused the Duc d'Enghien to be arrested and tried, because that step was essential to the interest, honour, and safety of the French people, when the Count d'Artois was maintaining, by his own confession, sixteen assassins in Paris. Under similar circumstances I should act in the same way." Having written these few lines he gave back the will. From this period he was engaged in writing codicils and appointing executors. He ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... "Oh! these French people," he growled, laughing softly, while he was undressing quietly, so as not to waken his mother, who was ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... elation, or beheld its approach, unimpressed with those doubts or prejudices which religious, as well as secular competitions, very frequently excite; in that auspicious hour, when the policy, if not the piety of a powerful government, restored it to the French people. The subject is highly interesting; but I must resign it to abler pens ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... spring in this Ann. Dom., I had misgivings at the heart, a fluttering in my thoughts, and altogether a strange uneasiness as to the stability of the peace and harmony that was supposed to be founded upon a steadfast foundation between us and the French people. What my fears principally took their rise from, was a sort of compliancy, on the part of those in power and authority, to cultivate the old relations and parts between them and the commonalty. It did not appear to me that this proceeded ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... one of Moliere's husbands, if you are displeased with your wife's conduct you can call her to account when you have nothing better to do. Begin by raising up the state. After that you may find a thousand reasons for your resentment when now you would not find one. You know the French people well enough to see how important it is that you should not commence with ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... and the "Confessions" awakened men's minds with a great rebound to the charms of Nature, simplicity, and a social order untrammeled by rules or conventions. The eloquence with which these theories were propounded carried the French people by storm, and Rousseau was a demigod at whose shrine worshiped alike duchess and peasant. The Encyclopedists stimulated the ferment by their literary enthusiasm, and the heartiness with which they cooperated with the whole ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... the French people had thought of that mobilization during the last twenty years, in proportion as Germany grew more aggressive, more brutal and more insulting! Personally I had often looked at the little red ticket fastened to my military card, on which were written ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... all was hurry and confusion. The captain endeavored to assure his passengers that there were boats enough to carry every soul on board, and that there was time enough for them to embark quietly and in order. But as the French people did not understand him when he spoke in English, and as the Americans did not readily comprehend what he said in French, his exhortations were of little avail. With such of their possessions as they could carry, the people crowded into the boats as soon as they were ready, and sometimes before ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... scene of action was changed from the battle field to the council chamber, and words and ballots took the place of swords and bullets. The French Canadians showed at the very commencement of constitutional government that they considered the French language, the French people, the French laws, and the French religion, the language, people, laws, and religion of Canada, and that the English were only interlopers who had no business there, and with whom they were to affiliate as little as possible." (Tuttle's History of the Dominion of Canada, ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... fashion has encountered during the Revolution another throne, and it has been shattered in consequence. The French people, amidst their dreams of equality, have lost their own hands. The large and soft arm-chairs, the full and ample draperies, the cushions of eider down, all the other delicacies which we alone understood of all the European family, led only to the imprisonment ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... gossips. But at fortunate moments I may induce one of them to tell of the other, and then you find out. My Village Wife was no imagination of mine. She lives and suffers not so many miles from where I write. Indeed, you may say of our peasantry very much what French people will tell you of their marriage custom, that love at its best follows that ceremony. It is not bred by romance, but by intimacy. The romantic attachment flames up, and satiety quenches it. The other kind glows red-hot but rarely breaks into a flame. You ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... horrible Revolution had not banished all religion from Calais. I understood that the church was well attended, and that high mass was as much honoured as hitherto. Every one spoke of the Revolution with execration, and of the Emperor with satisfaction. Bonaparte has certainly gained the hearts of the French people by administering ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... the Huguenots, and persuaded her son to issue the order which resulted in the massacre of St. Bartholomew; on his death, which occurred soon after, she acted as regent during the minority of her third son, Henry III., and lived to see both herself and him detested by the whole French people, and this although she was during her ascendency the patroness of the arts ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... ruin, and hence greater and more diversified interests were affected by the catastrophe of 1856 than by any former like calamity. The great flood of 1840 had excited the attention and roused the sympathies of the French people, and the subject was invested with new interest by the still more formidable character of the inundations of 1856. It was felt that these scourges had ceased to be a matter of merely local concern, for, although they bore most heavily on those whose homes and fields were situated within the immediate ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... the second was the potato-rot, which brought Great Britain to the verge of famine, and broke up the Tory party. The ill feeling, too, that was created between the English and French governments by the Montpensier marriage, and the discontent of the French people, which led to the Revolution of 1848, were not without their effect on affairs. Had our government resolved to seize all Mexico, it could have done so without encountering European resistance in 1848, when there was not a stable Continental government of the first class west of the Niemen, and when ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... should be compiled in the same way that the French people of the ancien regime compiled their lists of grievances to be presented to the king. In the early States-generals the deputies of all the orders received from the electors mandates of instructions containing an enumeration of the public grievances of which they were to demand redress. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... Lafayette and Jefferson would have been touched by the project. If we are not touched by it, it proves that we have forgotten much which it would become us to recall. Before our nation was, the democratic idea had been for many years existing and expanding among the French people; crushed again and again by tyrants, it ever rose, renewed and fresh for the irrepressible conflict. Through all their vicissitudes the people of France have upheld, unfaltering, their ideal—liberty, equality and fraternity. Our own republic exists to-day because France helped us when England ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various
... one of his favorite studies at school, and now after a few months among French people he was able to speak fluently. Indeed, in after life he was ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... I think the French people are the politest folks I ever knew. If a Frenchman had to kick a person out of doors, he would wear a felt slipper, and after he had kicked you he would place his hand on his heart, and bow, and look so sorry, and hurt, that you would want to give ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... theater of St. Martinville, and in a moment more were the observed of all observers. The play was a vaudeville, of which I remember only the name, but rarely have I seen amateurs act so well: all the prominent parts were rendered by young men. But if the French people are polite, amiable, and hospitable, we know that they are also very inquisitive. Suzanne was more annoyed than I can tell; yet we knew that our toilets were in excellent taste, even in that place full of ladies covered with costly jewels. When I asked Celeste how the ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... to be known in the streets through which we wandered from morning till night. Sometimes French people would turn round astonished at meeting their fellow-countrymen in the company of this girl with her striking costume, and who looked singularly out of place, not to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... umbrellas. They are carrying every kind of little package you can think of which they do not care to put with the luggage on the steamer. I have a good mind to go and help them. Is it not a happy chance—and a rare one—to meet with French people away from France? ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... statements made in them, did much to convince Americans that the German position was not capable of honest, logical, dispassionate, manly defence. There has never at any time been any such outbreak of fury and bitterness among the English or French people. While there are individual exceptions, taken as a whole the press, pamphlets, and private letters of the English and French, dealing with the war, have from the first been characterised by a self-control and calm determination, which ...
— Plain Words From America • Douglas W. Johnson
... us; but yet who cannot, for the life of him, imitate our mode of writing. I knew a Scotch youth, who was educated entirely in France, and resided eighteen years in that country, mixing exclusively with French people, but who, although he had a French writing-master, and, perhaps, never saw anything but French writing in his life, or rarely, yet wrote ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... hope of success, if merely our humiliation, or even our destruction, had been her object, and without any immediate danger threatening herself as the consequence of her hostile action. The French Government, not France, or any considerable portion of the French people, has been ready to interfere in behalf of the Rebels for more than two years, and would have entered upon the process of intervention long since, if it had not been held back by the obstinate refusal of England to unite with her in that pro-slavery crusade which, it is with regret we say it, the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... lady and the priest clasped hands and wept for joy, as French people do, and knelt down and touched the money, and talked very fast and both together, and the lady embraced all the children three times each, and called them 'little garden angels,' and then she and the priest shook each other by both hands again, and talked, and talked, and talked, ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... for the present, and hope you will like them, and feel grateful to the Brothers Grimm, who took them down from the telling of old women, and to M. Sebillot and M. Charles Marelles, who have lent us some tales from their own French people, and to Mr. Ford, who drew the pictures, and to the ladies, Miss Blackley, Miss Alma Alleyne, Miss Eleanor Sellar, Miss May Sellar, Miss Wright, and Mrs. Lang, who translated many of the tales out of French, German, and ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... destroying other people's property. One of Mr. Punch's correspondents writes to say that while the flattened villages and severed fruit trees are a gruesome spectacle, for him "all else was forgotten in speechless admiration of the French people. ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... France, and from thence he went to Petersburg, and was then sent out again. He was quite clear as to his dates, and put them on paper; but as he was perfectly ignorant of any French, "not even the names of the commonest articles," though he had been such a long time amongst French people, Cook was again inclined to be sceptical. He stayed all night, dining with Clerke, and returned again on the 19th, with charts, which he permitted to be copied, and some manuscripts. One chart showed the Asiatic coast as far as 41 degrees North, with the Kurile Islands and ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... said Kirsty, amazed. "Indeed, I would be often hearing that those French people are just full of poison and such, and indeed, it is no wonder, for the food they ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... courtesy-phrase, such as "Mais, ne pensez-vous pas" or "Je vous demande pardon"—the urbane substitutes for "No, you are wrong," "No, it isn't." Our own Benjamin Franklin, whose appreciation of the conversational art in France won completely the hearts of the French people, tells us in his autobiography that in later life he found it necessary to throw off habits acquired in youth: "I continued this positive method for some years, but gradually left it, retaining only the habit of expressing myself in terms of modest diffidence: never using when ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... I witnessed the frenzy to which hatred of Napoleon raised this normally placid people. The officers whom I knew no longer dared to speak to me or even to greet me. Several French people were insulted by the populace, and finally soldiers of the Royal Guard came boastfully to sharpen their sabres on the stone steps of the French embassy. I left hurriedly for Paris, taking with me much information on what was going ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... twenty-five, and if refused, what are called three respectful summonses are to be made. If consent be still withheld, the party can marry legally." There was a case recently in the English papers of a marriage between two French people being annulled because the ceremony had been performed in England without the proper formalities having been ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... Rhine,—and which Russia favored, because she knew, that, unless the Bourbons could do something to satisfy their people, they must remain powerless, and it did not answer her purpose that they should be otherwise than powerful. The conquest of Algiers was made for the purpose of gratifying the French people, and with the intention of spreading French dominion over Northern Africa. It was a step towards the acquisition of Egypt, for which land France has exhibited a strange longing. In this way the loss of French India ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Some few French people are there already, preparing to be ill—(I never shall forget a dreadful sight I once had in the little dark, dirty, six-foot cabin of a Dover steamer. Four gaunt Frenchmen, but for their pantaloons, in the costume of Adam in Paradise, solemnly anointing ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... plate-glass windows present a tempting array of jewelry, laces, silver-ware and rich fancy goods, in a style and of a quality that would do no discredit to the Rue de la Paix or the Boulevard des Italiens. Indeed, it is mostly French people who keep these shops, and there is a manifest tendency of the upper classes to adopt French manners, customs, and language. Paris serves as a model to Madrid in all matters relating to fashionable life. There is a large fountain and mammoth basin of water in the centre of the square, a stream ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... it is believed, by these considerations, the Government of France decreed on the 9th of May, 1793, the first year of the war, that "the French people are no longer permitted to fulfill toward the neutral powers in general the vows they have so often manifested, and which they constantly make for the full and entire liberty of commerce and navigation," and, as a counter measure to the course of Great Britain, authorized the seizure of neutral ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... Louis, who like all French people was addicted to cookery,—indeed it was an accomplishment he prided himself on,—was enchanted with the improvement made in their diet by the acquisition of the said earthen jar, or pipkin, and gave Indiana some praise for initiating his cousin ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... ... he would never outlive the century ... the English people would not stand him—he was responsible for the failure of the Exhibition, the English having gone away when they saw him there so well-dressed and happy ... all the French people knew this, too, and would not stand him any more.... On October the 29th, Oscar got up for the first time at mid-day, and after dinner in the evening insisted on going out—he assured me that the doctor had said he might do so and ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... can also bear witness to the splendid conduct of the French troops and the French nation. Our conception of the French people derived from books, chiefly novels of a questionable nature, are entirely wrong. The French soldier is cool and intrepid and they "carry on" their work without the slightest "fuss." The pose of the nation is an inspiration and speaks of ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... to me,' he said, with a quiet and manly force that became him. 'The friendship between my cousin and me has been unusual, I know. It has been of a kind that French people, rather than English, understand; because for French people literature and conversation are serious matters, not trifles that don't count, as they are with us. She has been all sweetness and kindness ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... liberty in France were much excited in view of the success of the American Revolution, and fancied that the words "popular liberty," "sovereignty of the people," the "rights of man," "liberty and equality," meant the same in America as they did when pronounced by a Parisian mob. The French people were unduly flattered, and made to believe, by the demagogues, that they were philosophers, and that they were as fit for liberty as the American nation itself. Moreover, it must be confessed that the people had really made considerable advances, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... usurpation, more odious and more undisguised than all that preceded it, will be more durable? Is it that we rely on the particular provisions contained in the code of the pretended constitution, which was proclaimed as accepted by the French people, as soon as the garrison of Paris declared their determination to exterminate all its enemies, and before any of its articles could even be known to half the country, whose consent was required for ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... himself. It was the fate of this writer to be flattered beyond measure in his lifetime, and now come the first judgments of posterity, which deals with him no less harshly than it has already begun to deal with another idol of the French people, Beranger. Sainte-Beuve has constituted himself judge, reversing even his own adulatory articles, as they may be read in the earlier volumes of the "Causeries." It is at best an ungrateful task to dissect a reputation in the way in which we find it done in the present work. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... the kindness of the French and Belgians are given by the men. A private in the Yorkshire Light Infantry—the first British regiment to go into action in this war—tells of the joy of the French people. "You ought to have seen them," he writes. "They were overcome with delight, and didn't half cheer us! The worst of it was we could not understand their talking. When we crossed the Franco-Belgian frontier, there was a vast crowd of Belgians waiting for us. Our first ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... After all the French people in need of dental treatment have been treated, however, the Red Cross person went on to say that it might be tried out on the Americans—yanks for the Yanks, as you might say, if you were inclined to be funny about it, as you ought not to be; but ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... to George Selwyn, in 1767, says:—'If you are now at Paris with poor C. (evidently Carlisle), who I dare say is now swearing at the French people, give my compliments to him. I call him poor C. because I hope he is only miserable at having been such a PIGEON to Colonel Scott. I never can pity him for losing at play, and I think of it as little as I can, because I cannot bear to be obliged to abate the least of the good opinion ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... all sorts of out of the way places, was most brilliantly illuminated. It looked in the dark like Venice and Genoa rolled into one, and split up through the middle by the Corso at Rome in the carnival time. The French people certainly do know how to honour their own countrymen, in a most marvellous way." It was the festival time of the New Year, and Dickens was fairly lost in a mystery of amazement at where the money could come from that everybody was ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... the significance of the data proved unexpectedly difficult to unravel, and most writers on the subject have been largely occupied in correcting the mistakes of their predecessors. Villerme in 1829 remarked that the long series of French wars up to 1815 must probably reduce the height of the French people, though he was unable to prove that this was so. Dufau in 1840 was in a better position to judge, and he pointed out in his Traite de Statistique that, comparing 1816 and 1835, the number of young men exempted from the army had doubled in the interval, even though the ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... went on, "the king whom you renounced when the English conquered you, the great King of France, has judged for you and the French people. Knowing that the American cause is just, he is sending his fleets and regiments to fight for it against the British King, who until now has been ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... attacks began at Verdun all the world was asking why the British, who were holding only sixty-odd miles of line at the time and must have large reserves, did not rush to the relief of the French. The French people themselves were a little restive under what was supposed to be British inaction. Army leaders could not reveal their plans by giving reasons—the reasons which are now obvious—for their action or inaction. To some unmilitary minds the situation seemed as simple ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... flexibility of intelligence were very signal characteristics of the Athenian people in ancient times; everybody will feel that. Openness of mind and flexibility of intelligence are remarkable characteristics of the French people in modern times,—at any rate, they strikingly characterize them as compared with us; I think everybody, or almost everybody, will feel that. I will not now ask what more the Athenian or the French spirit has than this, nor what shortcomings either of them may have as a set-off ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... carry away with her a pleasant memory of France and the French people? We do not think so; and, to be frank, was what had just happened likely to give her a favorable idea of the country she was leaving? Could she have much love for the people who were fastening ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... to the French people to say, that no name in their history is heard with more veneration, or with more profound demonstrations of love and gratitude, than that of the Abbe de l'Epee. In 1843, the citizens of Versailles, his birth-place, erected a bronze statue in his honor; and the highest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... in one of our southern towns, a train full of Belgian refugees ran into the station, and the poor martyrs, exhausted and bewildered, got out slowly, one by one, on the unfamiliar platform, where French people were waiting to receive them. Carrying a few possessions caught up at random, they had got into the carriages without even asking whither they were bound, urged by their anxiety to flee, to flee desperately from horror and death, from unspeakable mutilation and Sadic outrage—from things ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... at that time, all told, of both white and black, a population of about one million and a half of souls (1,425,000.)[A] The French people of Canada numbered ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... who, like myself, admires the high-toned, martial gallantry of the French, and pays a cheerful tribute of respect to their many intellectual triumphs, it is painful to witness the childish state of feeling which the French people manifest on every possible question that connects itself at any point with martial pretensions. A battle is valued by them on the same principles, not better and not worse, as govern our own schoolboys. Every battle is viewed by the boys as ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Scarcely less severe were the strictures of Louis IX's ambassadors, who laid the grievances of the French bishops and barons before the same Pope. They tell Innocent IV that the devotion which the French people have hitherto felt towards the Roman Church is now not only extinguished, but is turned into vehement hate and rancour, and that the claim for subsidies and tribute for every necessity of Rome—a claim which was enforced by the threat of excommunication—was ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... commander-in-chief, to all the generals and all the officers—would it could also be said to every soldier of France!—that there are no bounds to my gratitude. My prayers for the prosperity of your country will be more fervent than ever. My love for the French people has been increased, if, indeed, anything could make it greater than it was, by the great service which ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... will be found everything that the French people want to know of that singular land, for did I not cross it from New Jersey City, the town where all the New York people have to go to get upon the cars, through to the ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... the "colony" of England gained upon the "Mother country" of Normandy. At the same time the Kings of France were trying desperately to get rid of the powerful Norman-English neighbours who were in truth no more than disobedient servants of the French crown. After a century of war fare the French people, under the leadership of a young girl by the name of Joan of Arc, drove the "foreigners" from their soil. Joan herself, taken a prisoner at the battle of Compiegne in the year 1430 and sold by her Burgundian captors to the English soldiers, was burned ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... French people chattering and gabbling all round one, and be always scolded for not being like them! There was a poor dog at the hotel that had been left behind by some English people, and could not bear the French voices, always snarled at ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... would have done, at last, if the French people had not promised to come over and help us, and to send us money and men and ships. All the people in the army thanked God when they heard it, and fired their guns ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... "Don't these French people eat cheese, anyhow? What's their word for it, Lieutenant? I'm damned if I know, and I've lost my phrase book. Suppose you ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... that my confidence in our appeal to the motives which should govern a just and magnanimous nation is alike warranted by the character of the French people and by the high voucher we possess for the enlarged views and pure integrity of the Monarch who now presides over their councils, and nothing shall be wanting on my part to meet any manifestation of the spirit we anticipate in one ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... drunkenness, no rudeness, no noise; the old folks seats themselves in chairs, and the children run about. Some have been to mass, and some have not, but all are in the spirit of enjoyment. Nothing can be more enlivening than the aspect of the French people. You cannot resist their cheerful looks. The appearance of the ...
— Travellers' Tales • Eliza Lee Follen
... member spoiled the supper, and we dispatched it in angry silence and got away as soon as we could. Here we were in beautiful France—in a vast stone house of quaint architecture—surrounded by all manner of curiously worded French signs —stared at by strangely habited, bearded French people—everything gradually and surely forcing upon us the coveted consciousness that at last, and beyond all question, we were in beautiful France and absorbing its nature to the forgetfulness of everything else, and coming to feel the happy romance ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of Washington. This portrait, by Peale or Trumbull, was doubtless presented to one of the French officers who were with Washington in many of his campaigns, and the strong calm face seemed, in a way, to dominate these gay and gorgeously appareled French people, as in life he dominated every circle ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... the French Government to be a high stroke of policy, converting an enemy into an ally. The French people regarded it as a humiliating surrender of French territory to a rival power. It was the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... Government, now in the ascendant, and was tried by court-martial and shot. It should be remembered, however, that France's unfriendly attitude all through the Rebellion was maintained by her unscrupulous emperor and did not reflect the wish of the French people. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... remaining here awhile, feeling sure that there is nothing to call me homeward for the present. The truth is, my friend, I am getting weaned of the French people. So soon as my obligations to my very good friends in Prussia will permit, you may look for me in New York. Yes, dear PUNCHINELLO, greatest and beet of Philosophers! expect to see me walking into your Sanctum one of these fine mornings,—probably with my son ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 27, October 1, 1870 • Various
... scene of "At the Red Glove" is laid in Berne, it is a typical French story of French people with French ideas and characteristics, and it is French as well in the symmetry of its arrangements and effects and its admirable technique. In point of fact, Berne is a city where a German dialect is spoken, but among the lively groups of bourgeois who carry on ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... sympathetic. There was a lack of restraint which, after the oppressive dignity of London, was a rare treat. No one was critical. Every one accepted my halting and faulty French without ridicule or condescension. The amiability and the friendliness of the French people thawed my heart and began to lift me out of my slough of homesickness. Happiness came back ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown
... she was threatened, made it impossible that the emancipated Nation could abuse its new-born strength to any substantial injury to itself.—Infinitely less favourable to all good ends was the condition of the French people when, a few years past, a Revolution made them, for a season, their own masters,—rid them from the incumbrance of superannuated institutions—the galling pressure of so many unjust laws—and the tyranny of bad customs. The Spaniards became their own masters: and the blessing lay in this, that ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... dirty wrinkled body—horror of horrors!—there lay a toad. Now, even in England, toads are not looked upon with much favour, and a party of English children would have been startled by such a discovery. But with French people, the dread of toads is ludicrous in its intensity. In France toads are believed to have teeth, to bite, and to spit poison; so my hero and his young guests must be excused for taking flight at once with a cry of dismay. On the next terrace, however, they paused, and seeing ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... economical convictions of the French people, and of the impression made upon Europe generally by the success of the British Navigation Act, is to be seen in the fact that in 1794, under the Republic, the National Convention issued a decree identical in spirit, and almost identical in terms, with the English Act of 1651. In the latter ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... long in safety in the southern part of the state. Intercourse had been opened between the French and the Ottawas and Chippewas on the straits of Mackinac and being supplied with firearms and axes by the French people, it occurred to the Ottawas that these impliments would be effective in battle. Anxious to put them to the test, they resolved to try them on their old enemies, the Mush-co- desh, who had not yet seen the white man and were unacquainted with firearms. Accordingly an expedition was ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... until December, Louis Napoleon, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, had been successful in his aim of becoming President of the French Republic. But he had practically led his army through a sea of blood to reach this autocratic position. Later, in 1852, he made the French people designate him "Emperor of the French" under ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... required for St. Domingo would be immediately furnished. These payments would exceed the instalments which had fallen due; and the utmost punctuality would be observed in future. These instructions were accompanied with assurances that the government would omit no opportunity of convincing the French people of its cordial wish to serve them; and with a declaration that all circumstances seemed to destine the two nations for the most intimate connexion with each other. It was also pressed upon Mr. Morris to seize every occasion of conciliating the affections of France to the United States, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... dinner-table. The dishes were brought in by the woman who had admitted Gilbert. The dinner was excellent after a simple fashion, and very nicely served; but for Mr. Fenton the barn-door fowl and home-cured ham might as well have been the grass which the philosopher believed the French people might learn to eat. He was conscious of nothing but the one fact that he was in Marian's society for perhaps the last time in his life. He wondered at himself not a little for the weakness which made it so sweet to him ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... and answered: "Monsieur, we may never possess as much soil in Germany, but there is something that you will never possess, and, until you conquer it, you cannot vanquish France, and that is the spirit of the French people." ...
— The White Road to Verdun • Kathleen Burke
... not worth the paper on which they were written, and the prospect of a new lease of life to Turkish despotism. He certainly had one paltry object of his own; he wished to gratify his subjects by military glory. He began to suspect the hollowness of the testimony of the plebiscite; the French people did not like him, and never would like him. A war would please the populace and the army; it would also make him look much more like a real Napoleon. But when he had decided to go to war, he hoped to do something worth doing. He thought (to use his own words) ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... account of the wonderful dash made by the Royal Scots at Petit Bois and the Gordon Highlanders at Maeselsyeed Spur, under cover of the French and British artillery, early in the month, and I translated it for her. It is a moral duty to let the French people get a glimpse of the wonderful fighting quality of the boys under ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... they went away they kissed me, and said they were sorry, and that my teeth weren't big a bit, and I said France was an elegant country, but you couldn't wear high heels in Ireland, or you'd never be free of the bog. It's a pity French people don't like us, and I don't think they always mean exactly what they say, but they ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the Commune, when brave men were shot down by the insurgent National Guard, and all Paris was at the mercy of the rabble. Indeed, this Reign of Terror must ever remain a blot on the civilisation of the century and the history of the French people. ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... thousand years more. But doubt was in the air, and, about a quarter of a century after the publication of Wier's book there were published in France the essays of a man by no means so noble, but of far greater genius—Michel de Montaigne. The general scepticism which his work promoted among the French people did much to produce an atmosphere in which the belief in witchcraft and demoniacal possession must inevitably wither. But this process, though real, was hidden, and the victory still ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... France, and were at Paris during the time when it was first occupied by the Allied Armies;—and that he has submitted it to the world, merely in the hope of adding somewhat to the general stock of information regarding the situation, character, and prospects of the French people, which it is so desirable that ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... order, and sustained Napoleon, because, though Emperor, he acknowledged the right of the people to select its rulers, and was at the head of a nation refusing to receive back its old kings. He pleaded, with sabre, musket, and cannon, the great cause of the People against Royalty, the right of the French people even to make a Corsican General their Emperor, if it ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... cheer me, while Kaffar furtively watched us both, as if in fear. I was silent and fearful, for I felt sure the Egyptian meditated escape. The laughter of the light-hearted French people, who were preparing for Christmas festivities, grated on my ears; for, although I had succeeded almost beyond my hopes, a great fear rested upon me that I should fail even yet. Especially was this realized when I knew that our train was hours late, and I knew that did we not arrive in Paris at ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... come to have such a funny name? Well, my father give it to me. He was a great man for readin', my father was, and there was one book he couldn't ever let alone, skurcely. 'T was about the French Revolution, and it told how the French people tried to git up a republic like ourn. But they hadn't no sense, seemin'ly, and some of 'em was no better nor wild beasts, with their slaughterin', devourin' ways; so nothin' much came of it in ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... bloodshed, much tumult and loud noise, vociferation extending through all newspapers and countries. The effect of this, carried abroad by newspapers and rumor, was great in all places; greatest perhaps in Paris, which for sixty years past has been the City of Insurrections. The French People had plumed themselves on being, whatever else they were not, at least the chosen "soldiers of liberty," who took the lead of all creatures in that pursuit, at least; and had become, as their orators, editors ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... of invasion poured into France. The French people, disheartened by Napoleon's misfortunes in Germany, and by the long and mighty sacrifices which they had for years been compelled to make, in order to enable Napoleon to carry out his gigantic wars, showed but slight hostility ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... in that city. People of all classes had to live quite frugally. They could not overeat as in the untroubled time of peace and prosperity, and the result was that both the mothers and the babies were healthier. The infant mortality was only a little over one-fifth of what it was previously. If the French people had heeded the lesson the statesmen and philosophers of that nation would not today have to worry about its ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... services in the cause of liberty had not secured him from the usual fate of moderate revolutionists at this period. In the early days of the Revolution, he was the hero of the French people; in 1792, denounced by Robespirre and the jacobins, he was compelled to seek safety in flying from France. He escaped the guillotine, indeed, but fell into the hands of the Austrians, was cast into prison, and did not gain his liberty till ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... French cities visited were Verdun, Amiens, St. Die, Arras, Chalons, Nancy, and Rheims. What he saw served to strengthen his admiration for the French army and, as individuals and as a nation, for the French people, and to increase his confidence in the ultimate success ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... the national fidelity of the French people may not be unacceptable to some of your readers. During my stay at St. Helena, about six months ago, a French transport arrived with an old regiment of French soldiers, who had fought under Napoleon, and who had been ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various
... fleurs-de-lis should be changed into a higher crown surmounted by a cross and ball. On the other hand, the followers of the Bourbons, in whose company I had spent my youth, were equally disappointed at the manner in which the mass of the French people hailed this final step in the return from chaos to order. Contradictory as were their motives, the more violent spirits of both parties were united in their hatred to Napoleon, and in their fierce determination to get rid of him by any means. Hence a series of conspiracies, ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... course you must show yourself. People will say all manner of things else. Clementina has promised to meet Victoire Jaquetanapes there and a party of French people, people of the very highest ton. You'll be delighted, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope |
