diplomats-of-france

"... many Europeans today go to Pelasgians, who are no less distant or savage, and for equally slight gains, to discover African Arkadias. The taste for voyages and adventures is not the monopoly of any one period or any one race, and the extraordinary dispersion of Semites in the contemporary world ... It is true that modern travellers have two motives that the Sidonians do not appear to have possessed, at least to the same degree: scientific curiosity and religious zeal. Furthermore, this comparison between the Pelasgians and the modern Congolese may be surprising. However, one should be on guard against two preconceived ideas, or rather two little-reasoned and almost unconscious feelings: ... our European chauvinism and also what one could call, without too much irreverence, our Greek fanaticism.From Strabo to Ritter, all the geographers have taught us to consider our Europe as a land favoured above all others, unique and superior to all the others in beauty ... in elegance of forms and power of civilization ... This way of looking at the world perhaps can influence a large number of our most habitual thoughts, despite ourselves or almost without our knowledge. We put Europe on one side and Asia or Africa on the other—and between the two, an abyss. When we talk about Asiatic influences on a European country we cannot imagine ... that barbarians could have dared to come to us. Harsh reality forces us to admit that they have sometimes flooded in. Certain people even maintain that the cradle of our first ancestors was far from our Europe, in the centre of Asia. But for our Aryan fathers we have the indulgence of good sons in that even if they came from Asia, they were not Asiatics, they were for all eternity Indo-Europeans. By contrast, an invasion from Semitic Asia to our Aryan Europe is repugnant to all our prejudices. It seems really as if the Phoenician coast was further away from us than the Iranian plateau. It also appears that the Arab invasion throughout the Mediterranean was only a unique fluke, an unfortunate chance ... which one should not for an instant suppose could be repeated. That the Phoenicians occupied Carthage and possessed half Tunisia only concerns Africa. That the Carthaginians in their turn conquered Spain and three-quarters of Sicily is [all right because they are] only, as we say, Africa. But when we find Phoenician traces at Marseilles, Praeneste, Kythera, Salamis Thasos and Samothrace, in Boiotia and in Lakonia at Rhodes and in Crete we do not want, as in Africa, real occupations; we only talk about temporary landings or simple trading posts ... If we go as far as pronouncing the words fortresses or Phoenician possessions we hasten to add that they were only coastal establishments ... This European chauvinism becomes a veritable fanaticism when it is not in Gaul, Etruria, Lucania or Thrace but in Greece that we meet the stranger. At the beginning of this century, all Europe rose up ... the generous Philhellenism of 1820 is no longer fashionable. But one can say that the sentiment has not greatly changed ... We can only conceive of Greece as the country of heroes and gods. Under porticos of white marble ... In vain does Herodotos tell us that everything comes from Phoenicia and Egypt. We know what we should think of dear old Herodotos. After twenty years of Archaeology have provided us, every day and in all the Greek states, with indisputable proofs of Oriental influence, we are still not allowed to treat Greece as an Oriental province like Caria, Lycia or Cyprus because of this. If in our geography we separate Europe from Asia, in our history we separate Greek history from what we call ancient history. We see, nevertheless, from their material and tangible monuments that the Greeks ... were the pupils of Phoenicia and Egypt, and we see that they borrowed from the Semitic Orient right up to their alphabet; yet we recoil with some shock at the sacrilegious hypothesis that their institutions, their customs, their religions, their rituals, their ideas, their literature and all their primitive civilization could also be inherited from the Orient."

"No human power can now stop the march of a nation destined to exert its influence all over the world and perhaps to dominate it."

"Immediately the large reaction was that nobody can accept what happened, so we can say freedom of speech is safe, in a way. Victory's already there because that was the forefront."

"That's a necessity for fighting terrorism, not only for us, but for the free world itself."

"Que tes ennemis expirants Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire!"

"Défiez-vous des premiers mouvements, ils sont presque toujours bons."

"All contemporary forms of art have secret bonds in common."

"Vogüé was a stoic, but beneath his moral austerity there glowed humanity none the less attractive because it was veiled by reserve."

"Let us not expect Russia to do what she is incapable of, to restrict herself within certain limits, to concentrate her attention upon one point, or bring her conception of life down to one doctrine. Her literary productions must reflect the moral chaos which she is passing through."

"Classic art was like a king who has the right to govern, punish, reward, and choose his favorites from an aristocracy, obliging them to adopt conventional rules as to manners, morals, and modes of speech. The new art tries to imitate nature in its unconsciousness, its moral indifference."

"Malheureux qui craint de rentrer Dans la retraite de son âme! Le coeur qui cherche a s'ignorer Redoute un censeur qui le blâme."

"Monseigneur, j'attendrai"

"Quel triste élève de la Grè Pourrait, en voyant sa beauté, Préférer les lis de Lucrèce, Et les paleurs de la sagesse, Aux roses de la volupté?"

"L'amour sacré de la patrie."

"On ne rit plus, on sourit aujourd'hui, Et nos plaisirs sont voisins a l'eunui."

"Le naturel est le sceau du génie."

"La mort sans phrase."

"J'ai vécu."

"Messieurs, nous avons un maître, ce jeune homme fait tout, peut tout, et veut tout."

"Une nation de singes à larynx de parroquets."

"Through the consolidation of basic production and the institution of a new High Authority, whose decisions will bind France, Germany and the other countries that join, this proposal represents the first concrete step towards a European federation, imperative for the preservation of peace."

"France is the nation of the rights of man. … I am sure that none of you commits the insult of thinking that the government, the army, or the administration could wish for and organize torture."

"There will be no peace in Europe if the States rebuild themselves on the basis of national sovereignty, with its implications of prestige politics and economic protection…. The countries of Europe are not strong enough individually to be able to guarantee prosperity and social development for their peoples. The States of Europe must therefore form a federation or a European entity that would make them into a common economic unit."

"[A]fter eighty-nine years of his life, Monnet remains, as he has been throughout, impregnably optimistic but not Utopian. He does not believe in miracles, and although he believes that crucial moments of opportunity must never be lost, he gives more importance to patience and direction than to speed and the construction of false timetables. His modesty and manner is underpinned by an unshakeable intellectual self-confidence. ... He is undoubtedly a great man, who has lived a remarkable life."

"Make men work together show them that beyond their differences and geographical boundaries there lies a common interest."

"Continue, continue, there is no future for the people of Europe other than in union."

"Male ulciscitur dedecus sibi illatum, qui amputat nasum suum."

"Officium officialium, quorum te numero aggregasti, hodie est, jura confundere, suscitare lites, transactiones rescindere, innectere dilationes, suprimere veritatem, fovere mendacium, quaestum sequi, aeqitatem vendere, inhiare exactionibus, versutias concinnare."

"Aqua turbida piscosior est."

"Les roys et princes en sont trop plus forts, quand ils l'entreprennent du consentement de leurs subjets, et en sont plus craints de leurs ennemis."

"Deux grands princes qui se voudroient bien entr'aymer, ne se devroient jamais voir, mais envoyer bonnes gens et sages les uns vers les autres, et ceux là les entretiendroient ou amenderoient les fautes."

"Ces deux ducs dessusdits estoient sages après le coup (comme l'on dit des Bretons)."

"Car on ne doit point tenir pour conseil ce qui se fait après disner."

"Qui a le profit de la guerre, il en a l'honneur."

"Or, selon mon advis, entre toutes les seigneuries du monde, dont j'ay connoissance, où la chose publique est mieux traictée, et où règne moins de violence sur le peuple, et où il n'y a nuls édifices abatus, ni démolis pour guerre, c'est Angleterre; et tombe le sort et le malheur sur ceux qui font la guerre."

"Vous y trouverez le langage doux et aggreable, d'une naïfve simplicité, la narration pure, et en laquelle la bonne foy de l'autheur reluit evidemment, exempte de vanité parlant de soy, et d'affection et d'envie parlant d'autruy : ses discours et enhortemens, accompaignez, plus de bon zele et de verité, que d'aucune exquise suffisance, et tout par tout de l'authorité et gravité, representant son homme de bon lieu, et élevé aux grans affaires."

"L'arbre de la liberté ne croit qu'arrosé par le sang des tyrans."

"II n'ya que les morts qui ne reviennent pas."

"As soon as war is declared it will be impossible to hold the poets back. Rhyme is still the most effective drum."

"Everyone always dies for his country. If you have lived in it, well and wisely and actively, you die for it too."

"In wartime a man is called a hero. It doesn't make him any braver, and he runs for his life. But at least it's a hero who is running away."

"Vous êtes avocat! Vous avez le devoir au contraire de recourir à toutes les ruses pour défendre vos clients. Au mensonge. A la calomnie."

"A golf course is the epitome of all that is purely transitory in the universe; a space not to dwell in, but to get over as quickly as possible."

"When you see a woman who can go nowhere without a staff of admirers, it is not so much because they think she is beautiful, it is because she has told them they are handsome."

"The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life."

"To win a woman in the first place one must please her, then undress her, and then somehow get her clothes back on her. Finally, so she will allow you to leave her, you've got to annoy her."

"The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made."

"Only the mediocre are always at their best."

"There is no better way of exercising the imagination than the study of law. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets the truth."

"Born enemies don't fight. Nations you would say were designed to go to war against each other — by their skins, their language, their smell: always jealous of each other, always hating each other — they're not the ones who fight. You will find the real antagonists in nations fate has groomed and made ready for the same war."