But you are absolutely correct, Mr Prime Minister

CHIRAC: Allow me to say that tonight, I am not Prime Minister and you are not the President. We are two candidates who are equal and who are submitting ourselves to the judgement of the French people. You will permit me to call you Mr Mitterrand.

MITTERRAND: But you are absolutely correct, Mr Prime Minister

French presidential debate, 1988, cited in P. Short, Mitterrand: a study in ambiguity (2013), 461 

Have you never been struck by the fact that communists are more numerous in Catholic than in Protestant countries?

You have to understand what communism represents in a Catholic country. Have you never been struck by the fact that communists are more numerous in Catholic than in Protestant countries? It is because the Roman Church instilled discipline among Catholics with the result that when they joined a a different 'church' they did not question its orders. Protestants have to find their own salvation. There is no hierachy to tell them what to think.

Mitterrand to George Bush , cited in P. Short, Mitterrand: a study in ambiguity (2013), 324

He always hung on to a position far longer than was reasonable and then made a sudden, bold, reckless leap into the unknown

It [opposing the return of De Gaulle] was typical of him. He always hung on to a position far longer than was reasonable and then made a sudden, bold, reckless leap into the unknown. ... At Vichy, he hesitated, equivocated and agonised for more than a year before committing himself to the Resistance with an excessive, defiant act of bravado at Salle Wagram in Paris.

 P. Short, Mitterrand: a study in ambiguity (2013), 197

I did not marry you under the regime of the Inquisition

Mitterrand was more than difficult as a husband: he was often impossible. He demanded absolute freedom and found the slightest constraint impossible. Not long after the wedding, [Danielle] asked him brightly, when he came home one evening, 'How did your day go, darling?' The reply drew blood: 'I did not marry you under the regime of the Inquisition.'

P. Short, Mitterrand: a study in ambiguity (2013), 115

Our imbecile grandchildren will think they are beautiful because they are old

Vichy is a dreadful place (not disagreeable, not boring, but ugly). There is nothing to attract the eye  - bloated, jowly hotels, built in ridiculous straight lines, pretentious villas planted here and there to accord with the doubtful taste of fat women. These watering places should be razed, [otherwise] our imbecile grandchildren will think they are beautiful because they are old.

Letter from Mitterrand to his cousin, cited in P. Short, Mitterrand: a study in ambiguity (2013), 64

Stubbornly held his finger a millimetre away from an object he had been forbidden to touch, insisting he was not disobedient and was doing nothing wrong

His brothers recalled a different Francois [Mitterrand], who slid down banisters; fidgeted so much in church that he caused a scandal by falling off his chair; and stubbornly held his finger a millimetre away from an object he had been forbidden to touch, insisting he was not disobedient and was doing nothing wrong.

P. Short, Mitterrand: a study in ambiguity (2013), 18

De Gaulle represented 'mastery over oneself, which meant mastery over history'

 To Mitterrand, de Gaulle represented 'mastery over oneself, which meant mastery over history'. After the General's death, he compared him to Henri IV, the great sixteenth-century King who ended the Wars of Religion, and Cardinal Richelieu, Chief Minister to his son Louis XIII, who laid the foundations of modern Western statecraft.

...

The French stateman Mitterrand most admired was the seventeenth-century Cardinal Mazarin, preceptor and First Minister of Louis XIV, after whom he named his daughter, Mazarine.

P. Short, Mitterrand: a study in ambiguity (2013), 10 and 12

I wonder if it matters that what they have aimed at is illusion

'Supposing there is no life everlasting? Think what it means if death is really the end of all things? They've [the nuns] given it all up for nothing. They've been cheated. They're dupes.'

Waddington reflected fir a little while.

'I wonder. I wonder if it matters that what they have aimed at is illusion. Their lives are in themselves beautiful. I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, an the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.'

W.S. Maugham, The painted veil (1925), 169-70 

Missionaries always have large dining-tables

The dining-room was small and the greater part of it was filled by an enormous table. On the walls were engravings of scenes from the Bible and illuminated texts.

'Missionaries always have large dining-tables,' Waddington explained. 'They get so much a year more for every child they have and they buy their tables when they marry so that there shall be plenty of room for little strangers.'

W.S. Maugham, The painted veil (1925), 77-78