Inspirational travel quotes about Paris by artists that will make you dream of the City of Light and evoke its atmosphere, wherever you are.
Few cities have touched writers, painters, and artists of all walks of life as much as Paris.
Generation of artists have been inspired but Paris’ beauty and its contradictions and some of them managed to capture morsels of the city canvas, paper and musical notes.
These are quotes about Paris by artists and personalities from the city and beyond.
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Table of Contents
Inspirational quotes about Paris, France – Paris City Quotes
“He who contemplates the depths of Paris is seized with vertigo.
Nothing is more fantastic. Nothing is more tragic.
Nothing is more sublime” – Victor Hugo
“Breathe Paris in. It nourishes the soul” – Victor Hugo
“To study in Paris is to be born in Paris!” – Victor Hugo
[About eating lunch at the Eiffel Tower, which he considered an eyesore]: “It’s the only place in Paris where I don’t have to see it“ – Guy de Maupassant“She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.” – Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
“Paris is not a city; it’s a world” – King Francois the Ist
“Whoever does not visit Paris regularly will never really be elegant” – Honoré de Balzac
“When good Americans die, they go to Paris“ – Oscar Wilde
“An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“When you see some sun, Paris is the most beautiful city in the world. It brings tears to your eyes” – Lee Radziwill
“The chief danger about Paris is that it is such a strong stimulant”
T.S. Eliot
“America is my country and Paris is my hometown” – Gertrude Stein
“I like The Eiffel Tower because it looks like steel and lace” – Natalie Lloyd
“A walk about Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty, and in the point of life” – Thomas Jefferson
“In Paris, they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language” – Mark Twain
“Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.”
John Berger
“The last time I saw Paris, her heart was warm and gay, I heard the laughter of her heart in every street café” – Oscar Hammerstein II
“A bad day in Paris, is still better than a good day anywhere else” – Unknown
Add three letters to Paris, and you have paradise
Jules Renard
“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
Whenever you are in Paris at twilight in the early summer, return to the Seine and watch the evening sky close slowly on a last strand of daylight fading quietly, like a sigh.
Kate Simon
“Paris is the city in which one loves to live. Sometimes I think this is because it is the only city in the world where you can step out of a railway station—the Gare D’Orsay—and see, simultaneously, the chief enchantments: the Seine with its bridges and bookstalls, the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Tuileries Gardens, the Place de la Concorde, the beginning of the Champs Elysees—nearly everything except the Luxembourg Gardens and the Palais Royal. But what other city offers as much as you leave a train?” – Margaret Anderson
London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation. – Gilbert Keith Chesterton
“It is perfectly possible to be enamoured of Paris while remaining totally indifferent or even hostile to the French” – James Baldwin
“You know, I sometimes think, how is anyone ever gonna come up with a book, or a painting, or a symphony, or a sculpture that can compete with a great city. You can’t.
Because you look around and every street, every boulevard, is its own special art form and when you think that in the cold, violent, meaningless universe that Paris exists, these lights.
I mean come on, there’s nothing happening on Jupiter or Neptune, but from way out in space you can see these lights, the cafés, people drinking and singing. For all we know, Paris is the hottest spot in the universe” – Owen Wilson
“Paris was a universe whole and entire unto herself, hollowed and fashioned by history; so she seemed in this age of Napoleon III with her towering buildings, her massive cathedrals, her grand boulevards and ancient winding medieval streets – as vast and indestructible as nature itself” – Anne Rice
Quotes about Paris By Ernest Hemingway
“There are only two places in the world where we can live happy — at home and in Paris”
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.
Quotes about Paris by Henry Miller
“To know Paris is to know a great deal”
“God knows, when spring comes to Paris the humbles mortal alive must feel that he dwells in paradise.
A man does not need to be rich, nor even a citizen, to feel this way about Paris”
“Paris is like a whore. From a distance she seems ravishing, you can’t wait until you have her in your arms.
And five minutes later you feel empty, disgusted with yourself. You feel tricked”
Movie quotes about Paris
“That Paris exists and anyone could choose to live anywhere else in the world will always be a mystery to me” – Marion Cotillard, Midnight in Paris
“Paris is always a good idea” – Audrey Hepburn, Sabrina
‘We’ll always have Paris’ Humfrey Bogart – Casablanca
“Maybe Paris has a way of making people forget.
Paris? No. Not this city. It’s too real and too beautiful to ever let you forget anything” – An American in Paris
“Frank Wheeler: Have you been to Paris?
April Wheeler: I’ve never really been anywhere.
Frank Wheeler: Well, maybe I’ll take you with me then, huh? I’m going back the first chance I get, I tell you. People are alive there” – Revolutionary Road
French sayings about Paris and quotes about Paris in French with translation
“Etre pauvre à Paris, c’est être pauvre deux fois” (To be poor in Paris is to be poor twice) – Emile Zola
“Le vrai parisien n’aime pas Paris, mais il ne peut vivre ailleurs” (The true Parisian does not love Paris, but couldn’t live elsewhere) – Alphonse Karr
“A Paris, vois-tu, il vaudrait mieux n’avoir pas de lit que pas d’habit” (you see, in Paris, it would be better to have no bed than no clothes) – Guy de Maupassant
“Paris outragé, Paris brisé, Paris martyrisé mais Paris libéré” (Paris outraged, Paris shattered, Paris martyred, but Paris freed!) – Charles de Gaulle
“Paris sera toujours Paris. Qu’est ce que tu veux qu’il fasse d’autre?” (Paris will always be Paris, what else do you want it to do?) – Frédéric Dard
“Elle voulait mourir, mais elle voulait aussi vivre à Paris” (She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris) – Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
I hope you enjoyed these quotes and captions about Paris and made you dream of the City of Light!