Paris has captured the hearts and imaginations of people around the world for centuries. From famous writers to artists, musicians, and travelers, the city has inspired countless quotes that capture its unique charm and beauty. Whether you are planning a trip to Paris or simply dreaming of the City of Light, these inspiring Paris quotes offer a glimpse into what makes this city so special. From the iconic landmarks and architecture to the delicious food, rich history, and vibrant culture, there is truly something for everyone in Paris.
Disclosure: anitabeyondthesea.com is reader-supported. When you make a reservation through links on my site, I may earn an affiliate commission, at no extra cost for you. That will help me keep the blog up and running. Thank you!
Table of Content
Short inspiring Paris quotes
The most iconic quotes about Paris? I have listed them down below. Make a statement in just a few words.
“Paris is always a good idea.” – Audrey Hepburn
“We’ll always have Paris.” – Howard Koch
“Paris isn’t a city, it’s a country. – King Francois I
“No one said finding Paris would be easy. I only said it would be worth it.” – Con Template
“Paris needs no reason. Paris is its own reason.” – Maureen Johnson, 13 Little Blue Envelopes
“For all we know, Paris is the hottest spot in the universe.” – Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris
“Paris is a city where time is best to spend by doing nothing” – Erich Maria Remarque, Arch of Triumph
“Though you may leave Paris, Paris never really leaves you.” – Janice Macleod, A Paris Year
“There was something about Paris that made you feel you could forget who you were.” – Sonali Dev, Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors
“No one gets Paris after one visit. No one.” – Maureen Johnson, The Last Little Blue Envelope
“Paris is a place in which we can forget ourselves, reinvent, expunge the dead weight of our past.” – Michael Simkins, Detour de France
“You can’t ever get too much of Paris.” – Vicki Lesage, Confessions of a Paris Party Girl
“I love to watch cities wake up, and Paris wakes up more abruptly, more startlingly, than any place I know.” – Bill Bryson
“Paris has always seemed… the only city where you can live and express yourself as you please.” – Natalie Clifford Barney
“To breath the air of Paris preserves the soul.” – Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“Every girl needs Paris.” – Eve Chase, The Wildling Sisters
“Paris at night is a street show of a hundred moments you might have lived.” – Courtney Maum, I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You
Long inspiring quotes about Paris
Are you looking for a longer quote instead? Here there are longer quotes about la Ville Lumière that will enlighten your days.
“Paris is a book to savor, in whole or in part, at any time and in any season. At age ninety or at thirty-four, you can open any chapter and read from there.” – Michelle Gable, I’ll See You in Paris
“He who contemplates the depths of Paris is seized with vertigo. There is nothing more fantastic. Nothing more tragic. Nothing more sublime.” – Victor Hugo
“Paris. There is something silken and elegant about that word, something carefree, something made for a dance, something brilliant and festive, like champagne. Everything there is beautiful, gay, and a little drunk, and festooned with lace.” – Nina Berberova, The Tattered Cloak and Other Stories
“Paris. City of love. City of dreams. City of splendour. City of saints and scholars. City of gaiety. Sink of iniquity. In two thousand years, Paris had seen it all.” – Edward Rutherfurd, Paris
“I never rebel so much against France as not to regard Paris with a friendly eye; she has had my heart since my childhood… I love her tenderly, even to her warts and her spots. I am French only by this great city: the glory of France, and one of the noblest ornaments of the world.” – Michel de Montaigne
“The streets of Paris had a way of making me stop in my tracks, my heart suspended. They seemed saturated with presence, even if there was no one there but me. These were places where something could happen, or had happened, or both.” – Lauren Elkin, Flâneuse
Paris quotes about Art and History
Over the years the Parisian streets have been crossed by some of the most famous artists of all times. So what do they say about Paris and art? Find out here.
“Paris was where the twentieth century was.” – Gertrude Stein
“As an artist, a man has no home in Europe save in Paris.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“Paris was like a poem in stone.” – Simon Van Booy, The Illusion of Separateness
“Every second in the air in Paris is art.” – Robert Black
“A walk about Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty, and in the point of life…” – Thomas Jefferson
“The old Paris is no more, the form of a city changes faster, alas! than a mortal’s heart.” – Charles Baudelaire, Flowers of Evil
“Paris that eternal monstrous marvel … the city of a hundred-thousand novels … a living creature, the great courtesan whose face and heart and mind-boggling morals they know: “They” are the lovers of Paris.” – Honoré de Balzac
“The whole of Paris is a vast university of Art, Literature and Music. It is worth anyone’s while to dally here for years. Paris is a seminar, a post-graduate course in Everything.” – James Thurber
“Paris has history, it has art, it has wonderful architecture, it has literature, but much more important than all these, it has freedom! If a city cannot offer freedom to its dwellers, all its other beauties will be meaningless!” – Mehmet Murat ildan
Book quotes about Paris
Many books take place in France’s capital. The ones with the most memorable quotes are down below.
“He who sees Paris, seems to see all history through with the sky and constellations in the intervals.” – Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“I’d never heard anyone talk about Paris without sighing. The city was a Promised Land that held appeal for most everyone: artists, lovers, even people who just liked cheese.” – Jennifer Coburn, We’ll Always Have Paris
“That was my favorite thing about Paris: it was well lived. The architecture spoke of the life it had seen through its curves and textures.” – Brooke Gilbert, The Paris Soulmate
“But it’s the life of Paris, that’s the thing. Ah, there’s no city like Paris for gaiety, movement, excitement…” – James Joyce, Dubliners
“Like a book on a shelf I’d waited years to open, Paris had always been waiting for me…” – Louisa Deasey, A Letter From Paris
“I want to see all the romantic places in Europe and make love in every city and take pictures kissing in front of the Eiffel Tower. I want to eat croissants and hold hands on trains.” – Colleen Hoover, It Starts with Us
Romantic quotes
It wouldn’t be a good list without the most romantic quotes about Paris. And there are so many! Let your imagination run wild with the best romantic quotes.
“Flowers never look so lovely as they do in Paris in the market there.” – Agatha Christie, Hallowe’en Party
“Paris is an extremely beautiful young woman bathing in public.” – Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu
“If you have ever walked in Paris, you will see that Paris will ever walk in your memories!” – Mehmet Murat ildan
“Paris is a woman’s town, with flowers in her hair.” – Henry Van Dyke
“Even the pigeons are dancing, kissing, going in circles, mounting each other. Paris is the city of love, even for the birds.” – Samantha Schutz, I Don’t Want to Be Crazy
“… you’ll have to fall in love at least once in your life, or Paris has failed to rub off on you.” – E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly,
“Paris is a heaven for all woman’s obssesions: hot men, great chocolates, scrumptuous pastries, sexy lingerie, cool clothes but, as any shoe-o-phile knows, this city is a hotbed of fabulous shoes.” – Kirsten Lobe, Paris Hangover
“Though you may leave Paris, Paris never really leaves you.” – Janice Macleod, A Paris Year
French quotes with translation
We are daydreaming about Paris, so what’s best then doing this by reading some quotes in their original language? Ah le français, la langue de l’amour (ah French is the lover’s language).
“Paris est la drogue du solitaire, un labyrinthe inépuisable où l’angoisse du possible s’apaise.”
Translation: Paris is the drug of loneliness, an inexhaustible labyrinth where the anguish of the possible subsides. – Federico Castigliano
“Maintenant tu ne peux plus m’offrir ni joies, ni douleurs. Adieu, Paris! Adieu!”
Translation: Now you can no longer offer me joy or pain. Farewell, Paris! Farewell! – Alexandre Dumas, Le Comte de Monte-Cristo
“Paris est Paris, c’est-à-dire une espèce de tourbillon où l’on perd la mémoire de toutes choses, au milieu du bruit que fait le monde en courant et la terre en tournant.”
Translation: Paris is Paris, that means some kind of whirlwind where you lost memory of everything, in the middle of the noise that people make while running and the Earth while turning. – Alexandre Dumas, La Femme Au Collier de Velours
“Paris c’est comme une histoire d’amour, on se souvient seulement des beaux jours.”
Translation: Paris is like a love story, we remember only the good days. – Lisa Gachet, Make My Party
“Quand on connaît Paris, on ne croit à rien de ce qui s’y dit, et on ne dit rien de ce qui s’y fait.”
Translation: When you know Paris, you don’t believe in anything said there, and you don’t say anything about what’s done there. – Honoré de Balzac, Le Père Goriot
Paris vs the world
We like making comparisons, and just like any other city in the world Paris can be easily compared to other capitals or locations. Here are the most interesting parallels between Paris and the rest of the world.
“In Rome the statues, in Paris the paintings, and in Prague the buildings suggest that pleasure can be an education.” – Caleb Crain, Necessary Errors
“London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation.” – G.K. Chesterton
“I thought of Paris as a beauty spot on the face of the earth, and of London as a big freckle.” – James Weldon Johnson
“Paris is a woman but London is an independent man puffing his pipe in a pub.” – Jack Kerouac, Lonesome Traveler
“’I am told that New York is very beautiful. Is it more beautiful than Paris?’ ‘Oh, no,’ I said, ‘no city is more beautiful than Paris’.” – James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room
“After living in Paris, does not the rest of the world seem but a hovel?” – Pietros Maneos
“In Rome the statues, in Paris the paintings, and in Prague the buildings suggest that pleasure can be an education.” – Caleb Crain, Necessary Errors
“America is my country and Paris is my hometown.” – Gertrude Stein
Living in Paris
Living in Paris can be an amazing experience, even though, boy, are those rents high?!?! Let’s forget about that and just enjoy those quotes about Parisian life.
“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” – Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
“I’ve been living ten years in Paris and the answer seems simple to me: because it’s the best place to pick ideas.” – Roman Payne, Crepuscule
“There is but one Paris and however hard living may be here, and if it became worse and harder even – the French air clears up the brain and does good – a world of good.” – Vincent Van Gogh
“Paris is the city in which one loves to live.” – Margaret Anderson
“To study in Paris is to be born in Paris!” – Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“I know so much is going to happen here, but I just don’t know how. It feels like Paris is full of so many adventures just waiting to be had.” – Rachel Kapelke Dale
“When spring comes to Paris the humblest mortal alive must feel that he dwells in paradise.” – Henry Miller
“What you don’t know about Paris, is that when you live there, over time, an invisible thread forms around your heart, and so when you leave, it always tugs you back.” – Robert Black
Fun Paris Quotes
Amuse your readers with this fun Paris quotes about lifestyle, Parisians and the city itself.
“To know Paris, you need to relax, have a glass of wine, and enjoy life.” – Jennifer Coburn, We’ll Always Have Paris
“Being poor in Paris is being poor twice.” – Émile Zola, La Curée
“It is impossible for a Parisian to resist the desire to flick through the old volumes laid out by a bookseller.” – Gérard de Nerval, Les Filles du feu
“That Paris exists and anyone could choose to live anywhere else in the world will always be a mystery to me.” – Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris
“In Paris we find a way to murder a man by saying “he has a good heart”. This sentence means “the poor boy is as dumb as a rhinoceros”. – Honoré de Balzac, Eugénie Grandet
“Paris is a hard place to leave, even when it rains incessantly and one coughs continually from the dampness.” – Willa Cather
“I love Paris in the summer, when it sizzles.” – Cole Porter
“To err his human, to stroll is Parisian.” – Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“There are only two places in the world where we can live happy: at home and in Paris.” – Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
Cute Eiffel Tower quotes
The symbol of France and Paris. One of the most famous landmarks in the world. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Eiffel Tower, and with its best quotes.
“I ought to be jealous of the tower. She is more famous than I am.” – Gustave Eiffel
“I like The Eiffel Tower because it looks like steel and lace.” – Natalie Lloyd
“My little boy to climb the Eiffel Tower you climb on a song” – Vicente Huidobro
“The Eiffel Tower was once thought impossible to build.” – Hector Jesus Arencibia
“Every time I look at the Eiffel Tower, it completely blows my mind.” Brian Fallon
“What was the good of having the statue without the liberty, the freedom to go where one chose if one was held back by one’s color? No, I preferred the Eiffel Tower, which made no promises.” – Josephine Baker
In conclusion about the best Paris quotes
Let the magic of Paris take hold of your heart and mind. And as Audrey Hepburn once said, “Paris is always a good idea.” If you liked our Paris quotes collection, you will love these Instagram captions and puns for you pics!
Would you like to read more quotes that will inspire you travel? Check out the Travel Inspiration page. Au revoir!
Have you liked this post? Pin it for later!
