Lyon France Quotes

It is possible that the city of London was initially named for ravens or a raven-deity. According to the Oxford Companion to the English Language, the designation comes from “Londinium,” a Romanized version of an earlier Celtic name. But the word closely resembles “Lugdunum,” the Roman name for both the city of Lyon in France and Leiden in the Netherlands. That Roman name, in turn, was derived from the Celtic “Lugdon,” which meant, literally, “hill, or town, of the god Lugh” or, alternatively, “…of ravens.” The site of Lyon was initially chosen for a town when a flock of ravens, avatars of the god, settled there. Whether or not “Lugdunum” was the origin of “London,” ravens were important for inhabitants of Britain for both practical and religious reasons.

My mind veers back to roasted pigeon. And from pigeon, I travel effortlessly, unrestrainedly back to France...the pots of rillettes fragrant with garlic, the boned forelegs of ham yellowed with bread crumbs, the blood puddings curled up like snakes, the terrines and pâtés, the sausages from Lyon and Arles, the jowls of salmon cooked à la génoise, the hundreds of cheeses resplendent beneath their glass bells, the perfumed melons and honeyed apricots

My favorite of all was still the place on Vermont, the French cafe, La Lyonnaise, that had given me the best onion soup on that night with George and my father. The two owners hailed from France, from Lyon, before the city had boomed into a culinary sibling of Paris. Inside, it had only a few tables, and the waiters served everything out of order, and it had a B rating in the window, and they usually sat me right by the swinging kitchen door, but I didn't care about any of it. There, I ordered chicken Dijon, or beef Bourguignon, or a simple green salad, or a pate sandwich, and when it came to the table, I melted into whatever arrived. I lavished in a forkful of spinach gratin on the side, at how delighted the chef had clearly been over the balance of spinach and cheese, like she was conducting a meeting of spinach and cheese, like a matchmaker who knew they would shortly fall in love. Sure, there were small distractions and preoccupations in it all, but I could find the food in there, the food was the center, and the person making the food was so connected with the food that I could really, for once, enjoy it.

The Colbertian use of tariffs furthermore skewed trade so that high customs barriers in Italy meant that raw silk from Piedmont which used to go to Lombardy was instead sent to Lyons; Dutch producers had to pay duties on goods sold in France, but not vice versa, and so on.44 It was economic imperialism in action, which could hardly fail to stoke resentment in France’s satellite states. Napoleon had managed greatly to increase confidence in France’s finances and in her ability to honour her government’s bonds, but even so they never managed to match Britain’s in this period. At his best, he was forced to borrow at higher rates than Britain at its worst.

There were also plenty of times when I saw a player out of the corner of my eye who came as a complete, but pleasant, surprise. In 2003 I had gone to watch a young Petr Čech play in France. Didier Drogba, whom I had not heard of, was playing in the same game. He was a dynamo – a strong, explosive striker with a true instinct for goal – though he ultimately slipped through our fingers. That didn’t happen with Ji-sung Park. I had gone to get the measure of Lyon’s Michael Essien in the Champions League in 2005 during their quarter-final ties with PSV Eindhoven, and saw this ceaseless bundle of energy buzz about the field like a cocker spaniel. It was Ji-sung Park. The following week I sent my brother, Martin, who was a scout for United, to watch him, to see what his eyes told him. They told him the same thing and we signed him. Ji-sung was one of those rare players who could always create space for himself.

Far more damaging to Calvin’s reputation was the case of Michael Servetus. An accomplished physician, skilled cartographer, and eclectic theologian from Spain, Servetus held maverick (and sometimes unbalanced) views on many points of Christian doctrine. In 1531, he published Seven Books on the Errors of the Trinity, enraging both Catholics and Protestants, Calvin among them. At one point, Servetus took up residence in Vienne, a suburb of Lyon about ninety miles from Geneva, where, under an assumed name, he began turning out heterodox books while also practicing medicine. His magnum opus, The Restitution of Christianity—a rebuttal of Calvin’s Institutes—rejected predestination, denied original sin, called infant baptism diabolical, and further deprecated the Trinity. Servetus imprudently sent Calvin a copy. Calvin sent back a copy of his Institutes. Servetus filled its margins with insulting comments, then returned it. A bitter exchange of letters followed, in which Servetus announced that the Archangel Michael was girding himself for Armageddon and that he, Servetus, would serve as his armor-bearer. Calvin sent Servetus’s letters to a contact in Vienne, who passed them on to Catholic inquisitors in Lyon. Servetus was promptly arrested and sent to prison, but after a few days he escaped by jumping over a prison wall. After spending three months wandering around France, he decided to seek refuge in Naples. En route, he inexplicably stopped in Geneva. Arriving on a Saturday, he attended Calvin’s lecture the next day. Though disguised, Servetus was recognized by some refugees from Lyon and immediately arrested. Calvin instructed one of his disciples to file capital charges against him with the magistrates for his various blasphemies. After a lengthy trial and multiple examinations, Servetus was condemned for writing against the Trinity and infant baptism and sentenced to death. He asked to be beheaded rather than burned, but the council refused, and on October 27, 1553, Servetus, with a copy of the Restitution tied to his arm, was sent to the stake. Shrieking in agony, he took half an hour to die. Calvin approved. “God makes clear that the false prophet is to be stoned without mercy,” he explained in Defense of the Orthodox Trinity Against the Errors of Michael Servetus. “We are to crush beneath our heel all affections of nature when his honor is involved. The father should not spare the child, nor the brother his brother, nor the husband his own wife or the friend who is dearer to him than life.

Vaulx-en-Velin, a dreary Muslim-majority suburb of Lyon, is France’s third-poorest city and representative of the problems. Many youths simply call it “a ghetto.” It might also be called the Other France. Here, and in numerous other poor suburbs that ring French cities, joblessness runs around 20 percent, about double the national average. For young people, it can be as high as 40 percent. About half of residents do not have a high school diploma. Police harassment and profiling are taken for granted as the rule.

In the Alpine valleys of Piedmont there had been for centuries congregations of believers calling themselves brethren, who came later to be widely known as Waldenses, or Vaudois. . . . In the South of France. . . the congregations of believers who met apart from the Catholic Church were numerous and increasing. They are often called Albigenses [and] had intimate connections with the brethren—whether called Waldenses, Poor Men of Lyons, Bogomils, or otherwise—in the surrounding countries, where churches spread among the various peoples.       In 1209 [Pope Innocent III] proclaimed a crusade against [them]. Indulgences, such as had been given to the [Holy Land] Crusaders. . . were now offered to all who would take part in the easier work of destroying the most fruitful provinces of France. This, and the prospect of booty and license of every kind, attracted hundreds of thousands of men. Under the presidence of high clerical dignitaries and led by Simon de Montfort, a military leader of great ability. . . the most beautiful and cultivated part of Europe at that time was ravaged. . . .33

Three Roman governments were established, for the provinces of Gallia Celtica (with the headquarters of the Governor General in Lyon), Gallia Belgica, corresponding roughly to what is now Belgium, and Aquitania in the south-west corner;

At the time of the United States’ birth, the practice of slavery was a common practice of the world. The great monarchies and empires of France and Spain, the empires of Russia and China, the pyramidal societies of the Ottomans in southeastern Europe and throughout Arabia were societies of slavery; their vestiges remain today. England, at the time of its own revolution, had held Ireland in its tyrannical grip for more than 500 years: her peasants were powerless. Any who complained or fomented a rebellious uprising were loaded aboard convict ships and sold into forced servitude at the nether ends of the earth. The Irish were “other”; they were lesser, not quite human.

the reactionary regime in Vichy France expected women to stay at home, get married, and have a minimum of four children as their patriotic duty. Abortion was illegal and punishable by guillotine. (No wonder the birthrate in the Rhône département around Lyon had risen by 35 percent in little more than a year.)

In 1998 McNeil demonstrated that the adjuvant Rabies vaccines induced mutations on cell cultures at the 18th ACVIM. In 2001 McNeil demonstrated that adjuvant vaccines induced mutations of cell cultures but that non adjuvant vaccines did not. In 1999 the WHO (World Heath Organization) in Lyons, France declared that the veterinary vaccine adjuvant was a grade three out of four for being carcinogenic (cancer causing).

Grand Tourists and their retinues typically crossed the choppy English Channel at the Port of Dover, stepping onto French soil in Calais. From there, the parties would set off on a three-day trek to Paris. Once fitted for new clothes, many proceeded to decamp for a season or longer for their first taste of Continental culture. (...) Not everyone took the same route. The more adventurous traveled from Paris to Lyon then farther south to Marseille, journeying by sea from Marseille to Livorno, in the Tuscany region, or Genoa, although the Italians’ lack of necessary sailing skills at that time made passage risky. Meanwhile, the wary typically trekked from Paris to Lyon then over the Alps. For the latter, Geneva was a subsequent stop, by default rather than preference. Despite the breathtaking beauty of the Alps, coaches—the mode of transport used at the time—simply could not traverse the treacherous Mont Cenis pass, ascending 6,827 feet. Invariably, the harrowing peaks and rocky precipices forced willing travelers to navigate by mule or sled. Regardless of the hassles, those who pressed on reaped extravagant rewards. (...) All roads, however, ultimately led to Rome, befitting its vaunted history as the intellectual, scientific and artistic center of the Renaissance and Baroque culture.

The law of 11 June 1842 establishing the French railroad system was passed in the same year as a train accident killed forty persons on the short line to Versailles. The controversial new legislation provided government guarantees to private investors, as well as state aid for the construction of a rail network radiating out from Paris. The law of 11 June also sparked a railway boom that attracted investors and was popular with the public. A second railway bill was passed in 1846, promising additional expansion. The father of the teenage artist Gustave Dore, for example, was a state- trained and -paid civil engineer assigned to survey the route of a future line between Lyon and Geneva. (...) ...during the 1840s writers such as George Sand began to predict that the commercial impact of the railroad would quickly destroy the local customs and traditions that still regulated the culture of most of rural France.

Hall became one of the SOE’s most tenacious spymasters, building a network of agents in Lyon, France. Pursued by the Gestapo, she hiked over the Pyrenees despite the impediment of a wooden leg she’d named Cuthbert. When she radioed back to SOE headquarters in London that Cuthbert was giving her trouble, the recipient, unaware she had blown one foot off in a prewar hunting accident and used a prosthesis, thought Cuthbert was a male companion. “Have him eliminated,” came the radio reply. —

The period of John Adams’s presidency declined into a time of political savagery with few parallels in American history, a season of paranoia in which the two parties surrendered all trust in each other. Like other Federalists infected with war fever, Hamilton increasingly mistook dissent for treason and engaged in hyperbole. In one newspaper piece, he blasted the Jeffersonians as “more Frenchmen than Americans” and declared that to slake their ambition and thirst for revenge they stood ready “to immolate the independence and welfare of their country at the shrine of France.” 1 Republicans behaved no better, interpreting policies they disliked as the treacherous deeds of men in league with England and bent on bringing back George III. The indiscriminate use of pejorative labels—“Jacobins” for Republicans, “Anglomen” for Federalists—reflected the rancorously unfair emotions. During this melancholy time, the founding fathers appeared as all-too-fallible mortals. An episode at Congress Hall in January 1798 symbolized the acrimonious mood. Representative Matthew Lyon of Vermont, a die-hard Republican, began to mock the aristocratic sympathies of Roger Griswold, a Federalist from Connecticut. When Griswold then taunted Lyon for alleged cowardice during the Revolution, Lyon spat right in his face. Griswold got a hickory cane and proceeded to thrash Lyon, who retaliated by taking up fire tongs and attacking Griswold. The two members of Congress ended up fighting on the floor like common ruffians. “Party animosities have raised a wall of separation between those who differ in political sentiments,” Jefferson wrote sadly to Angelica Church.

Among these adventurers, the most stylish chose the latest in luxurious transportation, the Orient Express. Paris by now boasted six large train stations. These stood, and still stand, as the termini for tracks that radiate outward from the city like ever-extending spokes of a wheel. The first, the Gare Saint-Lazare (8th), was inaugurated in 1837 and originally served Paris’s western suburbs before reaching north into Normandy. The Gare d’Austerlitz (13th) connects Paris with southwest France and Spain. Its neighbor on the Left Bank, the Gare Montparnasse (15th), is the terminus for trains to Brittany and western France. The Gare du Nord and the Gare de l’Est, near neighbors in north-central Paris (10th), were built to serve northern and eastern France as well as international destinations beyond. And the Gare de Lyon (12th), whose first station on this site opened in 1849, stands across the Seine from the Gare d’Austerlitz, where it connects Paris to southern France, Switzerland, and Italy. Eventually, the Orient Express would depart from the Gare de Lyon under the name of the Simplon Orient Express. But when the first Orient Express left Paris for Vienna in June 1883, it was from the Gare de l’Est. Soon after, the route was extended all the way to Istanbul.