Dieu reconnaîtra les siens
Meaning: Act without discriminating and let a higher authority sort out the innocent.
Language: French
Literally: God will recognize his own
Category: Daily Life
Origin: Attributed to the papal legate Arnaud Amaury at the sack of Béziers in 1209, asked how to tell Cathars from Catholics. The attribution comes from a later chronicler and may be invention; twenty thousand people were killed regardless.
More idioms — Daily Life
- Mon petit doigt m'a dit — I know something you did not expect me to know.
- Dorer la pilule — To make an unpleasant fact easier to accept by dressing it up.
- Qui dort dîne — Sleep takes the place of a meal you cannot afford.
- Se la couler douce — To take life very easy indeed.
- Des mesures draconiennes — Punishingly severe rules.
- Péter une durite — To lose one's temper completely.
More French idioms
- À l'eau de rose — Insipidly sentimental, especially of fiction.
- L'échapper belle — To have a narrow escape.
- Faire l'école buissonnière — To play truant.
- Ne pas tarir d'éloges — To praise someone endlessly.
- Qui trop embrasse mal étreint — Attempting too many things at once means doing none of them properly.
- Une éminence grise — The unofficial power behind a public figure.
From our untranslatable words
- L'esprit de l'escalier — Thinking of the perfect comeback only after the moment has passed — on your way down the…
- Terroir — The unique character that a place — its soil, climate and tradition — gives to a wine or…
- Râler — To complain and grumble with a certain national flair — a beloved French pastime.
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