The week's quotations

Every week, I will write down 1-5 new quotations. They will usually be in connection with some of our classroom discussions. Feel free to comment upon them, either in your expression notebooks, or at the end of this article.

= Chaque semaine, j'écrirai 1-5 nouvelles citations. Elles seront en général en rapport avec certains sujets de nos cours. N'hésitez pas à les commenter, soit dans votre cahier d'expression libre, soit à la suite de cet article.

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Week 37

Back to school (all classes!):

- "Only the educated are free." - Epictetus

- "Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one." - Malcolm Forbes

- "Theories and goals of education don't  matter a whit if you don't consider your students to be human beings." - Lou Ann Walker

Advice (Première L):

- "Advice is seldom welcome, and those who want* it the most always like it the least."  - Lord Chesterfield

*Here, "want" means to need.

Week 38

Self-confidence and success (all classes, especially the Terminales):

- "Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of virtue." - Albert Einstein

- "I've missed over 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot... and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." - Michael Jordan

- "Give your work 100%, but save the rest for yourself, family and friends." - Robert H. Connelly

- "You were not born a winner and you were not born a loser. You are what you make yourself be." - Lou Holtz

Week 39

Art (Secondes):
- "To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong." - Joseph Chilton Pearce

- "Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in." - Amy Lowell
 
- "A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world." - Edmond de Goncourt

Week 40

I have chosen the following theme after personal reflexions about the stress you/we sometimes experience, and your/our difficulties in coping with it...
(= j'ai choisi le thème suivant après avoir réfléchi à propos du stress que vous/nous éprouvez/-ons parfois et que vous/nous avez/-ons du mal à gérer...)

Life (all classes):
- "Tragedy, sadness, loneliness and despair taught me that life is really a beautiful thing: if it wasn't, I wouldn't be able to recognize that anything was wrong." - Greg Evans

- "May we never let the things we can't have, or don't have, or shouldn't have, spoil our enjoyment of the things we do have and can have. As we value our happiness, let us not forget it, for one of the greatest lessons in life is learning to be happy without the things we cannot or should not have." - Richard L. Evans

- "I like the dynamics of life, I like it when it rains, and suddenly the sun comes out, and I like it when it's really silent and then a loud booming noise comes through. Or vice-versa." - Serj Tankian

This week, you get EXTRAS: three videos that remind you that YES: this is a wonderful world (in spite of everything!)

This video features the one-and-only (= le seul et unique): Louis Armstrong








This one is the same song, performed by Joey Ramone, a.k.a. (= also known as) the "King of Punk". The pictures help you understand the lyrics!








Here, the song is performed by another artist: Rod Stewart. This time, it's the subtitles (= les sous-titres) which help you understand the lyrics!

ENJOY!!

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Week 41

I am out of ideas for this week!!
So, if you have any ideas*, just write them in a commentary!

* a quotation from a famous person or even from a friend, about something that happened or about something we talked about in class...

Week 42

Family:
- "Call it a clan, call it a network (= un réseau), call it a family. Whatever you call it (= Quel que soit le nom que vous lui donniez), whoever you are (= qui que vous soyez), you need one." - Jane Howard

- "Govern a family as you would cook a fish: very gently (= avec bcp. de douceur)." - a Chinese proverb

- "Man is the head (= la tête) of the family, woman is the neck (= le cou) that turns the head." - another Chinese proverb

- "When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure (= supporter) them. But when they are away (= quand ils ne sont pas là), we console ourselve- for their absence by dwelling on their vices (= en nous attardant sur leurs vices)." - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British Dramatist)

+ one silly quotation which made me laugh out loud (I don't know why...): "My family is really boring. They have a coffee-table book called "Pictures We Took Just to Use Up the Rest of the Film"." - Penelope Lombard

 Week 43

War - Conflict:
- "A conflict begins and ends in the minds and hearts of people, not in the hilltops." - Amos Oz

Thanks to L.V. from Term ES1, here are a few more quotations:
- "We don't learn to die by killing others." - Chateaubriand
- "When the rich wage war, it's the poor men who die." - Sartres
- "We wage war when we want to, we end it when we can." - Machiavel
- "I can only offer you blood, sweat and tears." - Churchill 

Weeks 45 & 46

Barack OBAMA quotes:
- "What Washington needs is adult supervision."
- "If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress."
- "I opposed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. It should be repealed (= abrogée, annulée) and I will vote for its repeal on the Senate floor. I will also oppose any proposal to amend (= amender, modifier) the U.S. Constitution to ban (= interdire, mais aussi exclure) gays and lesbians from marrying."
- "Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."
- "Issues are never simple. One thing I'm very proud of is that very rarely will you hear me simplify the issues."

                                   Week 2

the weather and winter:
- "Money is the opposite of weather: nobody talks about it, but everybody does something about it." - Rebecca Johnson in Vogue 
- "Perhaps I am a bear, or some hibernating animal underneath, for the instinct to be half asleep all winter is so strong in me." - Anne Morrow Lindbergh
- "One kind word can warm three winter months" - a Chinese proverb
- "Blow, blow, thou winter wind / Thou art not so unkind / As man's ingratitude" - William Shakespeare

                                    Week 3

Relationships:
- "We are never more discontented with others than when we are discontented with ourselves." - H. F. Amiel
- "The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but to hold hands." - Alexandria Penney
- "Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose further developments, a future - and also because we live as if our only task was precisely to have relationships with other people." - Albert Camus

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                                    Week 4

"Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me" (Emma Lazarus):
Come hell or high water (= Contre vents et marées / Qu'il pleuve ou qu'il vente), I will update this article. Indeed, in order to be trendy (= être dans le vent), you must log in regularly (= vous connecter régulièrement) and get new information.
It's true that there has been a wind of revolt/protest (= il y a eu un vent de contestation) in class this week, and the violent, howling gusts of wind (= rafales de vent rugissantes) are but a reminder of it (= n'en sont qu'un rappel).  Yet I'm sure the winds have changed (= les temps / les choses ont changé), and now you are on a roll (= vous avez le vent en poupe) !
Now, off with you (= bon vent... Good riddance = bon débarras!) and have a nice, windy weekend!

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                                    Week 6
Anatomy:
- "Anatomy is destiny." - Sigmund Freud.  
- "So if anatomy is destiny, testosterone is doom*." - Al Goldstein.

*doom = ruine, perte

Saint Valentine's day:
- "When you are in love, you can't fall asleep because reality is better than your dreams." - Dr. Seuss
- "Men always want to be a woman's first love. Women have a more subtle instinct: What they like is to be a man's last romance." - Oscar Wilde
- "You don't love a woman because she is beautiful, but she is beautiful because you love her." - Anonymous 
- "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." - Proverb
- "If you judge people, you have no time to love them." - Mother Teresa
- "Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, Pain of love lasts a lifetime." - Bette Davis
- "The hottest love has the coldest end." - Socrates
- "If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk in my garden forever." - Alfred Lord Tennyson

- - - STOP!! There are so many quotes on LOVE that I could go on forever!!! So here it ends. May you enjoy a lifetime of love and write your own sentences drawn from (= tirées de) your own experiences!

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                                    Week 11
Adversity:
- "Every cloud has a silver lining." - Proverb
- "The harder you fall, the higher you bounce." - Doug Horton
- "Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors." - African proverb
- "The reward of suffering is experience." - Aeschylus (Greek dramatist, 5th century BC)
- "Stumbling (= trébucher) is not falling." - Portuguese proverb

You can also go to this website (there are MANY other sites...) to browse among thousands of more-or-less famous peoples' quotes:

Enjoy!