"...recognisably French culture and French way of living."
Being a long lived society of arrogant arses is nothing to admire. Perhaps if the French got over themselves a bit they might be able to shake off their culture and way of living.
Almost inevitably, that most Gascon of all animals, the rooster, was chosen long ago as the national symbol of France. (The choice is fortuitous, of course, because of a Latin pun, Gallus, meaning both the courtyard animal and the inhabitant of Gaul. The English pun could probably be considered even more apt). The brilliantly plumed cock is the first to announce the dawn of a new day to everybody, dominates his immediate world, seduces and fecundates all the unresisting hens, destroys his rivals, and crows triumphantly from the top of the dungheap.
-- Luigi Barzini, The Europeans.