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FRENCH

In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.
- Innocents Abroad

The objects of which Paris folks are fond--literature, art, medicine and adultery.
- The Corpse speech, 1879

France has neither winter nor summer nor morals--apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.
- Mark Twain's Notebook

There is nothing lower than the human race except the French.
- quoted by Carl Dolmetsch, Our Famous Guest

It has always been a marvel to me--that French language; it has always been a puzzle to me. How beautiful that language is! How expressive it seems to be! How full of grace it is! And when it comes from lips like those [of Sarah Bernhardt], how eloquent and how limpid it is! And, oh, I am always deceived--I always think I am going to understand it.
- Mark Twain, a Biography

M. de Lamester's new French dictionary just issued in Paris defines virtue as: "A woman who has only one lover and don't steal."
- quoted in A Bibliography of Mark Twain, Merle Johnson

I like to look at a Russian or a German or an Italian--I even like to look at a Frenchman if I ever have the luck to catch him engaged in anything that ain't delicate.
- Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven

It is human to like to be praised; one can even notice it in the French.
- "What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us"

In certain public indecencies the difference between a dog & a Frenchman is not perceptible.
- Notebook #17, October 1878 - February 1879

It appears that at last census that every man in France over 16 years of age & under 116, has at least 1 wife to whom he has never been married. French novels, talk, drama & newspaper bring daily & overwhelming proofs that the most of the married ladies have paramours. This makes a good deal of what we call crime, and the French call sociability.
- Notebook #18, Feb.- Sept. 1879

France has usually been governed by prostitutes.
- Notebook #18, Feb.- Sept. 1879

French are the connecting link between man & the monkey.
- Notebook #18, Feb.- Sept. 1879

Trivial Americans go to Paris when they die.
- Notebook #18, Feb.- Sept. 1879

It is the language for lying compliment, for illicit love & for the conveying of exquisitely nice shades of meaning in bright graceful & trivial conversations--the conveying, especially of double-meanings, a decent & indecent one so blended as--nudity thinly veiled, but gauzily & lovelily.
- Notebook #18, Feb.- Sept. 1879

A Frenchman's home is where another man's wife is.
- Notebook #18, Feb.- Sept. 1879

An isolated & helpless young girl is perfectly safe from insult by a Frenchman, if he is dead.
- Notebook #20, Jan. 1882 - Feb. 1883

A dead Frenchman has many good qualities, many things to recommend him; many attractions--even innocencies. Why cannot we have more of these?
- Notebook #20, Jan. 1882 - Feb. 1883