Replies

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

While in the U.S. Navy a shipmate and myself went on a tour with other Navy folk to Torremolinos. It so happened that we met and lunched there with a group of Frenchmen staying at the same hotel as part of another tour group.

My shipmate and I shared a room. As I keep farmer's hours I went to bed at 7pm. She went downstairs for the dancing at the Hotel's club.

At around 11:30pm a couple of drunken Frenchmen start banging on the door to our room, screaming that I must be rude since I wouldn't let them in ( I think they added something about sex in that request but thank God my French isn't THAT good.) I ignored them and went back to sleep.

My friend later told me the two had come downstairs and complained I was arrogant and rude. She brought them upstairs to prove I was actually asleep.