Paris has always attracted the world’s greatest artists, writers, philosophers and statesmen who have been inspired to put pen to paper to describe the city’s intrigue, beauty and essence. Here are some of their best quotes about Paris:
“An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900, German philosopher, prose poet)
“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 (1853-1890, Dutch artist)
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“When good Americans die, they go to Paris.”
― Oscar Wilde (1854-1900, ‘A Woman of No Importance’, Irish poet and playwright)
“It’s true, you never forget your first love, and, for me, that will always be Paris.”
― Caitriona Balfe (1979- , Irish actress)
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“Though you may leave Paris, Paris never really leaves you.”
― Janice Macleod (author and artist behind Paris Letters)
“There is an atmosphere of spiritual effort here. No other city is quite like it. I wake early, often at 5 o’clock, and start writing at once.”
— James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish writer)
“A bad day in Paris is still a good day anywhere else.”
― Unknown
“If you have ever walked in Paris, you will see that Paris will ever walk in your memories!”
— Mehmet Murat Ildan (1965- , Turkish playwright)
“When Paris sneezes, Europe catches a cold.”
― Klemens von Metternich (1773-1859, Austrian statesman and diplomat)
“Paris is a city where time is best to spend doing nothing.”
― Erich Maria Remarque (1898-1970, German novelist)
“I’m not a complicated girl, she laughed, I just want to run away with you, rob a bank, fall in love and eat ice creams in Paris.”
― Michael Faudet (New Zealand author)
“I fly to Paris and discover how to make love to God.”
— Ann Voskamp (1973- , Canadian author)
What do the French say about Paris?
“Whoever does not visit Paris regularly will never really be elegant.”
– Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850, French novelist and playwright)
“Secrets travel fast in Paris.”
― Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821, French military commander and political leader)
“Breathing Paris preserves the soul”
“To study in Paris is to be born in Paris!”
“To err is human. To loaf is Parisian.”
“He who contemplates the depths of Paris is seized with vertigo. Nothing is more fantastic. Nothing is more tragic. Nothing is more sublime.”
“The Parisian is to the French what the Athenian was to the Greeks: no one sleeps better than he, no one is more openly frivolous and idle, no one appears more heedless.”
– Victor Hugo (1802-1885, French Romantic writer and politician)
“In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator.”
― Jean Cocteau (1889-1963, French writer, filmmaker, artist and critic)
“I ought to be jealous of the tower. She is more famous than I am.”
– Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923, French civil engineer)
“She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.”
― Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880, French novelist)
“To be Parisian is not to be born in Paris, it is to be reborn there”
– Sacha Guitry (1885-1957, French actor, director, and writer)
“Just add three letters to Paris, and you have paradise.”
― Jules Renard (1864-1910, French author)
“In Paris, our lives are one masked ball.”
— Gaston Leroux (1868-1927, French journalist and author)
“The Seine. I have painted it all my life, at all hours of the day, at all times of the year, from Paris to the sea…Argenteuil, Poissy, Vétheuil, Giverny, Rouen, Le Havre.”
– Claude Monet (1840-1926, French painter)
“Keep good company – that is, go to the Louvre.”
“The Louvre is the book in which we learn to read.”
– Paul Cezanne (1839-1906, French artist)
“It took me twenty years to discover painting: twenty years looking at nature, and above all, going to the Louvre.”
– Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919, French artist)
“Paris at dawn is one of those rare cities where you get the impression that something worthwhile could actually happen to you.”
― Pierre Assouline (1953- , French writer)
“Paris is not a city; it’s a world.”
― King Francis I (1494-1547, French King)
Americans in Paris
There’s no doubt Americans love Paris. From Gershwin’s ‘Americans in Paris’ to the TV hit series ‘Emily in Paris’, Americans have romanticised Paris and Parisian culture while their writers gush their praise in a sentence or two:
“Maybe Paris has a way of making people forget.”
– (Leslie Caron as Lise Bouvier)
“Paris? No. Not this city. It’s too real and too beautiful to ever let you forget anything.”
– (Gene Kelly as Jerry Mulligan)
– Americans in Paris, written by Ira Gershwin
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“That Paris exists and anyone could choose to live anywhere else in the world will always be a mystery to me.”
Marion Cotillard (French actress in ‘Midnight in Paris’, written by Woody Allen, 1935- , American filmmaker)
“A walk about Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty, and in the point of life.”
– Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826, American President, lawyer, architect, and philosopher)
“There are only two places in the world where we can live happy — at home and in Paris.”
– Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961, American writer)
“The objects of which Paris folks are fond – literature, art, medicine, and adultery.”
― Mark Twain (1835-1910, American writer)
“The chief danger about Paris is that it is such a strong stimulant.”
“Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall My buried life, and Paris in the spring, I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world to be wonderful and youthful after all.”
– T.S. Eliot (1888-1965, American writer)
“I have to watch myself in Paris. I always get fat there.”
– Steve McQueen (1930-1980, American actor)
“America is my country, and Paris is my home town.”
“Paris was where the twentieth century was.”
― Gertrude Stein (1874-1946, American writer and art collector)
“You can’t escape the past in Paris, and yet what’s so wonderful about it is that the past and present intermingle so intangibly that it doesn’t seem to burden.”
― Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997, American writer)
“Paris is a woman but London is an independent man puffing his pipe in a pub.”
― Jack Kerouac (1922-1969, American writer)
“When spring comes to Paris the humblest mortal alive must feel that he dwells in paradise.”
– Henry Miller (1891-1980, American novelist)
“We’ll always have Paris”
– Rick (Humphrey Bogart) to Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) in ‘Casablanca’
“The best of America drifts to Paris. The American in Paris is the best American. It is more fun for an intelligent person to live in an intelligent country. France has the only two things toward which we drift as we grow older – intelligence and good manners.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940, American author)
“Paris is loath to surrender itself to people who are in a hurry; it belongs to the dreams, to those capable of amusing themselves in its streets without regard to the time when the urged business requires their presence elsewhere.”
― Julien Green (1900-1998, American writer)
“There should be a name for the syndrome that occurs when you’re in Paris and you already miss it.”
— Rosecrans Baldwin (1977- , American writer)
“At the age of thirty-seven, She realised she’d never ride, Through Paris in a sports car, With the warm wind in her hair, So she let the phone keep ringing, And she sat there softly singing”
“At the age of thirty-seven, She knew she’d found forever, As she rode along through Paris, With the warm wind in her hair”
– Ballad of Lucy Jordan, Shel Silverstein (1930-1999, American writer, singer-songwriter)
“A man searching, For lost paradise, Can seem a fool, To those who never, Sought the other world”
– Jim Morrison (1943–1971, Paris Journal, American singer and songwriter)
“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 (1894-1961, American writer)
“I had forgotten how gently time passes in Paris. As lively as the city is, there’s a stillness to it, a peace that lures you in. In Paris, with a glass of wine in your hand, you can just be.”
– Kristin Hannah (1960- , ‘The Nightingale’, American writer)
“Paris – There you can be whatever you want to be. Totally yourself.”
— Langston Hughes (1901-1967, American writer and social activist)
“I guess it goes to show that you just never know where life will take you. You search for answers. You wonder what it all means. You stumble, and you soar. And, if you’re lucky, you make it to Paris for a while.”
― Amy Thomas (American writer)
“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 (American author)
“It’s Paris. You don’t come here for the weather.”
― Adrian Leeds (American real estate sales)
“To know Paris is to know a great deal.”
― Henry Miller (1891-1980, American novelist)
“Whether you like it or not, Paris is the beating heart of Western civilization. It’s where it all began and ended.”
― Alan Furst (1941- , American author)
“If you’re going to be sad, you might as well be sad in Paris.”
― Gossip Girl
“Paris at night is a street show of a hundred moments you might have lived.”
― Courtney Maum (American author)
Ernest Hemingway loved Paris
American author Ernest Hemingway spent years living in Paris and wrote many great observations:
“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.”
“There are only two places in the world where we can live happy: at home and in Paris.”
“But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.”
“I’ve seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.”
“Paris is so very beautiful that it satisfies something in you that is always hungry in America.”
– Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961, American writer)
‘Emily in Paris‘ quotes about Paris:
“I like Paris, but I’m not really sure Paris likes me.” – Emily
“Paris is for cheese lovers.” – Emily
“It’s Paris. Everyone’s serious about dinner.” – Mindy
“You haven’t done Paris right until you’ve had at least one wildly inappropriate affair.” – Mindy
“You’re in Paris now. I’m sure we can find you something better than peanut butter.” – Gabriel
“Paris seems like a big city but it’s really just a small town.” – Camille
The English in Paris
“London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation.”
― G. K. Chesterson (1874-1936, English writer, philosopher, art critic)
“Paris is always a good idea.”
“La Vie En Rose. It is the French way of saying, ‘I am looking at the world through rose-coloured glasses.”
“Paris is so delicious they should call it the City of Bites.”
“Paris exists to remind you that all your dreams are real.”
– Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993, British actress and humanitarian)
“I cannot tell you what an immense impression Paris made upon me. It is the most extraordinary place in the world.”
– Charles Dickens (1812-1870, English writer and social critic)
“Flowers never look so lovely as they do in Paris in the market there.”
– Agatha Christie (1890-1976, English author)
“Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.”
– John Berger (1926-2017, English art critic, novelist, painter and poet)
“Paris is well worth a Mass.”
– King Henry IV (1367-1413, English King)
“It took me some years to clear my head of what Paris wanted me to admire about it, and to notice what I preferred instead. Not power-ridden monuments, but individual buildings which tell a quieter story: the artist’s studio, or the Belle Epoque house built by a forgotten financier for a just-remembered courtesan.”
– Julian Barnes (1946- , English writer)
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