French Aristocracy Quotes

Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie - father of the future Alex Dumas - was born on February 26, 1714, in the Norman province of Caux, a region of rolling dairy farms that hung above great chalk cliffs on the northwest coast of France.

Sometimes my biography is interpreted as the upbringing of a French aristocrat. It was very, very different. We were a family of mercantile, immigrant Jews.

I will be Chateaubriand or nothing.

Louise de Keroualle, being a Frenchwoman from the French court, was feared by most Englishmen for how she might influence their king, and that fear quickly turned to hatred.

It is impossible that had Buonaparte descended from a race of vegetable feeders that he could have had either the inclination or the power to ascend the throne of the Bourbons.

Boni de Castellane drawing his chins onto his chest; shiny boots, embroidered morning coat, white gloves with black piping, big tie, light vest, the overwashed, bleached impression - 'blanched' as cooks say of boiled vegetables. That was the opposite of a dandy whose stylishness would remain imperceptible to Americans. Boni's style was highly visible.

High heels weren't always a girl thing. In the fifteen-hundreds, the riding shoes of French noblemen were fitted with raised heels so that their feet stayed put in the stirrups. Over the next few decades, heels inched higher on dress shoes, particularly among men of privilege.

The year was 1882. The palace was the Luxembourg Palace: the ball, the Senat Bal, held at the beginning of autumn. It was still warm, and so the garden was used as well. I was the soprano. I was Lilliet Berne.