Ah Paris, je t’aime! The City of Light has been charming locals and visitors alike since the 3rd century. Considered the cultural capital of the West for the longest time, it has attracted writers and artists in large due to its open-heartedness towards the advancement of creativity, culture, and artistic freedom. Many described feeling more at home in Paris than their place of birth. Many more described the city as perfect coexistence of old and new. Here are their words describing their very personal experiences. Read on to find 200+ Paris Quotes to find exactly what you’re looking for…

Find everything you’re looking for: From my favorite quotes about Paris and short Paris captions to love quotes Paris and famous words about Paris and the city’s favourite attractions, I’ve got you covered ↓↓

How do you feel about Paris?

FAVORITE PARIS QUOTES

Paris exists to remind you that your dreams are real.

Paris is always a good idea

– Audrey Hepburn as Sabrina Fairchild in Sabrina.

A walk about Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty, and in the point of Life
— Thomas Jefferson

There are only two places in the world where we can live happy: at home and in Paris
— Ernest Hemingway

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

Of all the places that I have seen in Europe, Paris is the most fascinating

— Washington Irving

A dream: a well-fit flat in Paris overlooking the Eiffel Tower.

To be a Parisian is not about being born in Paris, it is about being reborn there

— Sacha Guitry

Just add three letters to Paris, and you have paradise

― Jules Renard, French author

In Paris, I really do like to try and do nothing… but that’s impossible

— Christian Louboutin

Paris was a museum displaying exactly itself

— Jeffrey Eugenides

Ilsa: But what about us?
Rick: We’ll always have Paris – Howard Koch, Casablanca.

Paris is a place in which we can forget ourselves, reinvent, expunge the dead weight of our past — Michael Simkins

Paris is the most beautiful city in the world. It brings tears to your eyes ― Lee Radziwill

Paris has always seemed … the only city where you can live and express yourself as you please — Natalie Clifford Barney

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

I love Paris for the million reasons that everybody loves the city. It’s an incredibly romantic and beautiful place ― Alan Furst

It’s true, you never forget your first love, and for me, that will always be Paris

— Caitriona Balfe

It’s like watching Paris from an express caboose heading in the opposite direction – every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it’s really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier, rushing away from all those lights and that excitement at about a million miles an hour.

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 as Gil in a Midnight in Paris

That was the moment I fell in love with Paris and the moment that I felt that Paris had fallen in love with me.

Paris sera toujours Paris. Qu’est ce que tu veux qu’il fasse d’autre? — Frédéric Dard

That Paris exists and anyone could choose to live anywhere else in the world will always be a mystery to me — Marion Cotillard as Adriana in Midnight in Paris

You don’t go to Notre Dame to learn something; you go to Notre Dame to be somebody — Lou Holtz

Ah! la charmante chose/Quitter un pays morose/Pour Paris ― Guillaume Apollinaire, Voyage a Paris

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

In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator

— Jean Cocteau

Oh, London is a man’s town, there’s power in the air;
And Paris is a woman’s town, with flowers in her hair;
And it’s sweet to dream in Venice, and it’s great to study Rome;
But when it comes to living, there is no place like home
― Henry Van Dyke

Whether you like it or not, Paris is the beating heart of Western civilisation. It’s where it all began and ended ― Alan Furst

Though I often looked for one, I finally had to admit that there could be no cure for Paris ― Paula McLain, The Paris Wife.

Paris at dawn is one of those rare cities where you get the impression that something worthwhile could actually happen to you – Pierre Assouline, The Light of Paris.

She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris ― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary.

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris —  Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

Paris is a place where, for me, just walking down a street that I’ve never been down before is like going to a movie ― Wes Anderson

My roots are in Paris, and I will not pull them up ― Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Paris… is a world meant for the walker alone, for only the pace of strolling can take in all the rich (if muted) detail — Edmund White in The Flaneur.

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, in a letter to a friend.

In Paris, our lives are one masked ball — Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

Paris is the only place where I feel that I lead a life that I can call my own — Joan Juliet Buck

To err is human. To loaf is Parisian — Victor Hugo

To have come on all this new world of writing, with time to read in a city like Paris where there was a way of living well and working, no matter how poor you were, was like having a great treasure given to you – Ernest Hemingway in A Moveable Feast

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, The Nightingale.

Paris has always seemed to me to be the only city in which one can live as one sees fit — Natalie Clifford Barney

How many countries. How many minds opened, how many hearts brought to maturity, how many powerful natures fulfilled!…No matter where we look, Paris turns out to have been the decisive element. Without Paris, Jefferson would not be Jefferson, Franklin would not be Franklin, Chopin would not be Chopin…Freud would not be Freud…Picasso would not be Picasso. That list could be remade a hundred times over, and in almost every domain of human activity. The role of Paris in all this is active, not passive. The people I have named did not ‘have a good time’ in Paris. Paris drove them to give of their best and defied them to fall short of it ― John Russell

Un peuple malheureux fait les grands artistes — Alfred de Musset

To study in Paris is to be born in Paris! — Victor Hugo, Les Misérables.

I can never decide whether Paris is more beautiful by day or by night

― Adriana, Midnight in Paris.

It is no accident that propels people like us to Paris. Paris is simply an artificial stage, a revolving stage that permits the spectator to glimpse all phases of the conflict. Of itself Paris initiates no dramas. They are begun elsewhere. Paris is simply an obstetrical instrument that tears the living embryo from the womb and puts it in the incubator — Henry Miller in Tropic of Cancer

It is perfectly possible to be enamoured of Paris while remaining totally indifferent or even hostile to the French — James Baldwin

Ajoutez deux lettres à Paris, et c’est le paradis

– Jules Renard

To avoid sounding like a cliche, I won’t say I want to get proposed to in Paris, but Paris. I want it to happen somewhere public where people can be excited that I just got proposed to, and everyone applauds, like in a restaurant – that, or somewhere totally secluded… in Paris ― Betty Who

Lise: Paris has ways of making people forget
Jerry: Paris? No, not this city. It’s too real and too beautiful. It never lets you forget anything. It reaches in and opens you wide, and you stay that way — An American In Paris

America is my country and Paris is my hometown – American writer Gertrude Stein

Breathe Paris in. It nourishes the soul

― Victor Hugo

The shopping, the food, the views! Paris is a city that entrances us all — and I’m no exception. 

― Michael Kors

April in Paris, chestnuts in blossom, holiday tables under the trees ― E. Y. Harburg

La Vie En Rose. It is the French way of saying, ‘I am looking at the world through rose-coloured glasses.

>> Read next:
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People wonder why so many writers come to live in Paris. I’ve been living ten years in Paris and the answer seems simple to me: because it’s the best place to pick ideas. Just like Italy, Spain… or Iran are the best places to pick saffron. If you want to pick opium poppies you go to Burma or South-East Asia. And if you want to pick novel ideas, you go to Paris — Roman Payne

Paris at night is a street show of a hundred moments you might have lived ― Courtney Maum

What an immense impression Paris made upon me. It is the most extraordinary place in the world! – English novelist Charles Dickens

–> If you’re an infatuated with this city as much as I am, these love quotes about Paris are for you….

LOVE IN PARIS QUOTES

Paris is not just a city for lovers, but a city to fall in love with.

That was the moment I fell in love with Paris and the moment that I felt that Paris had fallen in love with me.

It’s true, you never forget your first love, and for me, that will always be Paris — Caitriona Balfe

The City of Love has my heart.

I love Paris for the million reasons that everybody loves the city. It’s an incredibly romantic and beautiful place ― Alan Furst

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 love Paris tenderly and am French only by this great city: the glory of France, and one of the noblest ornaments of the world― Michel de Montaigne

Born and raised in Paris, I am deeply attached to my city; we almost have half a century of love story together, where I have been truly completely faithful! The most beautiful city in the world is my city, yeepeeee!

— Christian Louboutin

You’ll have to fall in love at least once in your life, or Paris has failed to rub off on you — A. Bucchianeri

Paris is the City of Light, of love, of beauty, of romance and of hope over fear, gratitude over cynicism and light over darkness. The light must, has before and will always prevail…. I stand with the City of Light now and forever ― Doni Belau, Girls’ Guide to Paris.

Sitting there, alone in a foreign country, far from my job and everyone I know, a feeling came over me. It was like remembering something I’d never known before or had always been waiting for, but I didn’t know what. Maybe it was something I’d forgotten or something I’ve been missing all my life. All I can say is that I felt, at the same time, joy and sadness. But not too much sadness, because I felt alive. Yes, alive. That was the moment I fell in love with Paris. And I felt Paris fall in love with me — Paris Je T’Aime

Paris is so very beautiful that it satisfies something in you that is always hungry in America — Ernest Hemingway

Every city has a sex and an age which have nothing to do with demography. Rome is feminine. So is Odessa. London is a teenager, an urchin, and this hasn’t changed since the time of Dickens. Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman —  John Berger

I always thought falling in love was hard, but now I realize that was the easy bit. It’s staying in love that‘s the hard part ― Alexandra Potter

I fly to Paris and discover how to make love to God — Ann Voskamp

There’s something about Paris, people just don’t have anything else to do there but love each other — Louis Garrel

At five o’clock Paris always has a current of eroticism in the air.

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

We belong to this earth. Now I can see the truth … I love you on this earth of ours. Love me, do! — Simone de Beauvoir

It’s midnight. One half of Paris is making love to the other half ― Melvyn Douglas in Ninotchka.

There has been a marvellous joyous carnival of mourning for Edith Piaf and Jean Coctaeau, and it was real! They died as they had lived, with style and grace and their proper eccentricity; and Paris loves anybody who can live anarchically and be delightful entertainment at the same time. So do I ― Katherine Anne Porter, in a letter to Flannery O’Connor.

This is the basis for the joy of love when there is joy; we feel that our existence is justified — Jean-Paul Sartre

Paris is the destination for brokenhearted American women. I think men go there and have their hearts broken, but women come there with their hearts broken — Whit Stillman

–> Continue reading for even more lovely Parisian quotes…

DREAMING ABOUT PARIS QUOTES

A dream: a well-fit flat in Paris overlooking the Eiffel Tower.

Paris exists to remind you that your dreams are real.

I think Paris smells not just sweet but melancholy and curious, sometimes sad but always enticing and seductive. She’s a city for the all senses, for artists and writers and musicians and dreamers, for fantasies, for long walks and wine and lovers and, yes, for mysteries ― M. J. Rose

Paris is a city of dreams.

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 time when urged business requires their presence elsewhere – Julien Green.

At last I have come into a dreamland ― Harriet Beecher Stowe

I love Milan because it’s my home town. But Paris is the dream city: even when you’re stressed out in shows, you look around, and everything is so beautiful ― Bianca Balti

Of course I think of the past and of Paris, what else is there to remember? — Djuna Barnes

–> A couple of my favorite quotes from Paris comin’ right up….

SHORT PARIS CAPTIONS

Paris is calling and I must go.

Paris exists to remind you that your dreams are real.

Just add three letters to Paris, and you have paradise

― Jules Renard, French author

Paris is always a good idea – Audrey Hepburn as Sabrina Fairchild in Sabrina.

London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation – G. K. Chesterson

When Paris sneezes, Europe catches a cold ― Austrian statesman Prince Metternich.

Paris is the greatest temple ever built to material joys and lust of the eyes – Henry James

Eiffel hard for this city.

Paris n’est pas une ville, c’est un pays – François 1er

When good Americans die, they go to Paris —  Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Paris is not a city; it’s a world ― King Francis I

It’s Paris. You don’t come here for the weather — Adrian Leeds

Paris was the cross-roads of the world ― Lesley Blanch

Sorry for what I said when I wasn’t eating a crêpe by the Eiffel Tower.

To know Paris is to know a great deal – Henry Miller

Paris, I louvre you

Paris is a city of dreams.

If you’re going to be sad, you might as well be sad in Paris

La belle, la brave, la raw, la rainy — Dorothy Parker

Let’s go to Paris. Take me there and never look back – Lana Del Rey

La vie est belle

Secrets travel fast in Paris —  French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.

Good talkers are only found in Paris — French poet Francois Villon

Paris est une fête – Ernest Hemingway

With an apple I will astonish Paris —  French aritst Paul Cézanne

Paris ain’t much of a town — Babe Ruth

Tout commence à Paris – Nancy Spain

I love Paris in the summer, when it sizzles —  Composer and songwriter Cole Porter

Paris, France is exciting and peaceful ― Gertrude Stein

[Paris is a] divine section of eternity — E. E. Cummings

I am happy in Paris ― Zlatan Ibrahimovic

Than like a perfumed Paris turn and fly — Henry Longfellow

Excuse my French, but I’m in France.

Take me back to Paris.

PARIS EIFFEL TOWER QUOTES

A dream: a well-fit flat in Paris overlooking the Eiffel Tower.

I should go to Paris and jump off of the Eiffel Tower. If I took the Concorde, I could be dead three hours earlier ― Woody Allen, Everyone Says I Love You.

I like The Eiffel Tower because it looks like steel and lace ― Natalie Lloyd.

Sorry for what I said when I wasn’t eating a crêpe by the Eiffel Tower.

I refer of course to the soaring wonder of the age known as the Eiffel Tower. Never in history has a structure been more technologically advanced, materially obsolescent, and gloriously pointless all at the same time – Bill Bryson

Every time I look at the Eiffel Tower, it completely blows my mind – Brian Fallon

The Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower. They’re monumental. They’re straight out of Page 52 in your school history book — Billy Crystal

The Eiffel Tower is nine hundred eighty-four feet high. On a clear day, you can see eighty-five miles from the top. It has three elevators. Each elevator can carry sixty-three people. It cost about one million dollars to build Eiffel Tower — Suzy Kline

You show up in Paris, and on the drive from the airport to the hotel you’re like, ‘This is so cool! I want to see something! I want to go to the Eiffel Tower!’ And then you leave the next morning. You think, Oh, I didn’t get to do anything. I tell people: I’ve been just about everywhere, but I’ve seen nothing — Taylor Lautner

Eiffel in love with this city at first sight.

FUNNY QUOTES ABOUT PARIS

When Paris sneezes, Europe catches a cold ― Austrian statesman Prince Metternich.

The first thing that strikes a visitor to Paris is a taxi — Fred Allen

When good Americans die, they go to Paris —  Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray.

If I weren’t acting, I would own my own chocolate shop in Paris. I would be a nice, overweight person that makes chocolate all day long ― Emma Bell

Paris, I louvre you

To err is human. To loaf is Parisian

— Victor Hugo

The only time France wants us to go to war is when the German Army is sitting in Paris sipping coffee — Regis Philbin

We can stand here like the French, or we can do something about it — Marge Simpson

Sorry for what I said when I wasn’t eating a crêpe by the Eiffel Tower.

The Louvre is a morgue; you go there to identify your friends – Jean Cocteau

In Paris, you’re as far as possible from the land of pleasant smiles — Kanye West

Another well-known Paris landmark is the Arc de Triomphe, a moving monument to the many brave women and men who have died trying to visit it — Dave Barry

Paris is a city of gaieties and pleasures, where four fifths of the inhabitants die of grief — Nicolas Chamfort

Eiffel hard for this city.

I like Frenchmen very much, because even when they insult you they do it so nicely — Josephine Baker

Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half — Charles de Montesquieu

For in Paris, whenever God puts a pretty woman there (the streets), the Devil, in reply, immediately puts a fool to keep her — Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly

Paris was all so… Parisian. I was captivated by the wonderful wrongness of it all – the unfamiliar fonts, the brand names in the supermarket, the dimensions of the bricks and paving stones. Children, really quite small children, speaking fluent French! ― David Nicholls

France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country. France has usually been governed by prostitutes — Mark Twain

Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion — Norman Schwartzkopf

The last time the French asked for ‘more proof,’ it came marching into Paris under a German flag — David Letterman

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, The Innocents Abroad.

Paris is the only city in the world where starving to death is still considered an art

— Carlos Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind

Cities have sex: London is a man, Paris is a woman, and New York City a well-adjusted transsexual ― Angela Carter

The objects of which Paris folks are fond– literature, art, medicine and adultery — Mark Twain

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 ― Henry Miller

The French language, like Paris, has attempted, through its Academy, to retain its purity, to fight the advancing tides of Franglais and international prefabrication. English, by comparison, is a shameless whore ― Stephen Fry

If Sex and the City taught us anything, it’s that Paris is the only city in the world that New Yorkers actually fantasize about – Elizabeth Bard

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NOTRE DAME CAPTIONS ABOUT PARIS

You don’t go to Notre Dame to learn something; you go to Notre Dame to be somebody — Lou Holtz

Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral — R.I. Stevenson

After Notre Dame, what is there? — Ara Parseghisan

I feel comfortable singing in the great cathedrals of the world because I spent so much time as a child singing in church. And it isn’t very different. Of course, nothing looks quite like Notre Dame de Paris ― Jessye Norman

Walking at random through the streets, we came by chance upon the Cathedral of Notre Dame. I shall long remember my first impression of the scene within. The lofty gothic ceiling arched far above my head and through the stained windows the light came but dimly – it was all still, solemn and religious

— Bayard Taylor

God has a plan for everybody’s life, so there was obviously a reason why He wanted me to go to Notre Dame. Everything happens for a reason — Justin Tuck

THE LOUVRE QUOTES FOR PARIS

Paris, I louvre you

Someday my paintings will be hanging in the Louvre.

[Vincent Van Gogh] – Irvin Stone, Lust for Life

You should definitely visit the Louvre, a world-famous art museum where you can view, at close range, the backs of thousands of other tourists trying to see the Mona Lisa

— Dave Barry

It took me twenty years to discover painting: twenty years looking at nature, and above all, going to the Louvre

— Pierre-Augustine Renoir

The Louvre! The Louvre has me in its clutches. Every time I’m there rich blessings rain down upon me. I am coming to understand Titian more and more and learning to love him. And then there is Botticelli’s sweet Madonna, with red roses behind her, standing against a blue-green sky. And Fiesole with his poignant little biblical stories, so simply told, often so glorious in their colors

— Paula Modersohn-Becker

What I am trying to say is that it is not without any value. The value of copies is that they can direct us towards the original. I was recently at the Louvre Museum and I was filming people who were viewing the Mona Lisa. I noticed the number of ordinary people, astonished, mouths agape, standing still for long stretches looking at the work, and I wondered, Where does this come from? Are these people all art connoisseurs? They are like me; through the years, we’ve seen this work in our schoolbooks or art history books, but when we stand before the original, we hold our breath

— Abbas Kiarostami

I’ve been lucky enough to win an Oscar, write a best-seller – my other dream would be to have a painting in the Louvre. The only way that’s going to happen is if I paint a dirty one on the wall of the gentlemen’s lavatory

— David Niven

The Louvre is a morgue; you go there to identify your friends

— Jean Cocteau

I went to the Louvre in Paris, and I saw all the paintings and the Mona Lisa. You don’t really see something like that every day. I was looking at it, and everything else in the room just shut out. Like, Leonardo Da Vinci painted this thing – this is unreal that he touched that. It had this crazy effect on me

— Brian Fallon

The Louvre for me is a wonderful experience. Because it continues; it didn’t get cut off. It was actually a continuous involvement all the way, and a lot of people have come and gone, come and gone; but I’m still here

— I.M. Pei

There is no reason why the Louvre should be your favourite gallery just because it has the grandest collections in France, any more than Kew should necessarily be a favourite garden because it has the largest assemblage of plants, or Tesco your chosen shop because it has the widest variety of canned beans

— Jim Crace

I know my little ‘dirty drawings’ are never going to hang in the main salons of the Louvre, but it would be nice if – I would like to say ‘when,’ but I better say ‘if’ – our world learns to accept all the different ways of loving. Then maybe I could have a place in one of the smaller side rooms

— Tom of Finland

The Louvre is a good book to consult, but it must only be an intermediary. The real and immense study that must be taken up is the manifold picture of nature

— Paul Cezanne

I’ve been fortunate to have been in Paris a dozen times, where I’ve gone to the Louvre. I’m very big on Impressionistic paintings

— Shawn Crahan

The Louvre is the book in which we learn to read. We must not, however, be satisfied with retaining the beautiful formulas of our illustrious predecessors. Let us go forth to study beautiful nature, let us try to free our mids from them, let us strive to express ourselves according to our personal temperaments. Time and reflection, moreover, little by little modify our vision, and at last comprehension comes to us

— Paul Cezanne

–> What is your favorite quote on Paris?

OTHER QUOTES ABOUT PARIS AND FRANCE

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

Whoever does not visit Paris regularly will never really be elegant — French novelist Honoré de Balzac

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 —  Irish poet James Joyce

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. All was embraced by her, by her volatile and enchanted populace thronging the galleries, the theatres, the cafes, giving birth over and over to genius and sanctity, philosophy and war, frivolity and the finest art; so it seemed that if all the world outside her were to sink into darkness, what was fine, what was beautiful, what was essential might there still come to its finest flower. Even the majestic trees that graced and sheltered her streets were attuned to her–and the waters of the Seine, contained and beautiful as they wound through her heart; so that the earth on that spot, so shaped by blood and consciousness, had ceased to be the earth and had become Paris – Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire.

Paris is a wonderful city. I can’t say I belong to an especially anglophone community — Marilyn Hacker

No one has the right to change Paris, the protesters say, and argue that the city is the patrimony of all mankind — John Vinocur

Paris is a hard place to leave, even when it rains incessantly and one coughs continually from the dampness — Willa Cather

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 ― Ernest Hemingway

Paris is the happiest city in the world tonight. All Paris is dancing in the streets

— Larry LeSueur

People come to Paris, to the capital, to give their lives a sense of belonging, of an almost mythical participation in society. 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 where my family are, but it’s not really home now because I have dear friends in London and dear friends in New York — Clemence Poesy

The national characteristics… the restless metaphysical curiosity, the tenderness of good living and the passionate individualism. This is the invisible constant in a place with which the ordinary tourist can get in touch just by sitting quite quietly over a glass of wine in a Paris bistro — Lawrence Durrell

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 — Ernest Hemingway

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

But coming [to Paris] has been a wonderful experience, surprising in many respects, one of them being to find how much of an American I am — Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Everything ends this way in France – everything. Weddings, christenings, duels, burials, swindlings, diplomatic affairs – everything is a pretext for a good dinner — Jean Anouilh

A final reminder. 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

I am going to enjoy life in Paris I know. It is so human and there is something noble in the city… It is a real city, old and fine and life plays in it for everybody to see — Katherine Mansfield in a letter to a friend.

She’s one of those third year girls who gripe my liver… You know, American college kids. They come over here to take their third year and lap up a little culture… They’re officious and dull. They’re always making profound observations they’ve overheard — Gene Kelly as Jerry Mulligan in An American In Paris

…anywhere is better than Paris. Paris the cold, Paris the drizzly, Paris the rainy, Paris the damnable. More than a hundred years ago somebody asked Quin, Did you ever see such a winter in all your life before? Yes, said he, Last summer. I judge he spent his summer in Paris. Let us change the proverb; Let us say all bad Americans go to Paris when they die. No, let us not say it for this adds a new horror to Immortality — Mark Twain, The Letter Writer.

C’est joli la Bretagne et puis c’est pas loin de la France — Coluche

Aimer, ce n’est pas se regarder l’un l’autre, c’est regarder ensemble dans la même direction — Antoine de Saint-Exupery

London is satisfied, Paris is resigned, but New York is always hopeful. Always it believes that something good is about to come off, and it must hurry to meet it ― Dorothy Parker

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

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

I like Paris because I find something here, something of integrity, which I seem to have strangely lost in my own country. It is simplest of all to say that I like to live among people and surroundings where I am not always conscious of ‘thou shalt not.’ I am colored, and wish to be known as colored, but sometimes I feel that my growth as a writer has been hampered in my own country. And so–but only temporarily–I have fled from it — Jessie Fauset

Paris is a city where even the most outrageous story of incest and murder is greeted with a verbal shrug: ‘Mais c’est normal!’ – Edmund White

Yes, it was too late, and Sabina knew she would leave Paris, move on, and on again, because were she to die here they would cover her up with a stone, and in the mind of a woman for whom no place is home the thought of an end to all flight is unbearable
— Milan Kundera

It is a good thing to go to Paris for a few days if you have had a lot of trouble, and that is my advice to everyone except Parisians ― Muriel Spark.

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

The Côte d’Azur is the greenhouse where the roots grow. Paris is the shop where the flowers are sold ― French writer Jean Cocteau

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, American poet

…the great merit of the place is that one can arrange one’s life here exactly as one pleases…there are facilities for every kind of habit and taste, and everything is accepted and understood ― Henry James, in a letter to a friend.

There is never any ending to Paris, and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. Paris was always worth it, and you received return for whatever you brought to it

― Ernest Hemingway, in A Moveable Feast.

I do not know what I thought Paris would be like, but it was not that way. It rained nearly every day ― Hemingway, from private papers in the collection of the John F. Kennedy Library.

Frankly I, though I may seem a rather solemn serious bespectacled person, though I am a registered and accepted candidate for a doctorat at the University of Paris, though I am head and shoulders deep in dusty tomes on dry dead dusty divinities, I am going crazy, spring-struck, moon-struck…I feel like an entire Pompeian frieze of little red naked people dancing, I feel like a room full of orgiastic and rather indecent Greek vases…I feel like standing on my head on top of a taxi-cab, like making a proposal of marriage to eighteen elderly spinsters, like jumping into the Seine… And all this caused by six fine days and the prospect of demobilization ― John Dos Passos, in a letter to a friend.

I am in Paris. Yes ma’am, I made it back. I came up from Berlin, stopped here ten days, fought a losing battle against my deepest inclinations, pulled myself out by the hair and went to Madrid… Madrid is a lovely enchanting city, and there was almost ready for me a kind of penthouse full of sunlight, a roof garden, and so on. I gave one look at it all, returned to the hotel and went to bed and wept bitterly for eleven hours… Why? Because I had seen Paris and could not endure the thought of being anywhere else ― Katherine Anne Porter, in a letter to friends.

ah… the bewildering beauty of Paris ― Allen Ginsberg

The tranquil majesty of the architectural lines, the wonderful blurred winter lights, the long lines of lamps garlanding the avenues & the quays—je l’ai dans mon sang [I have it in my blood] — Edith Wharton

I can never tire of speaking of the bridges of Paris. By day and by night have I paused on them to gaze at their views; the word not being too comprehensive for the crowds and groupings of objects that are visible from their arches

— James Fenimore Cooper

Respirer Paris, cela conserve l’âme

– Victor Hugo

Paris outragée, Paris libérée, Paris martyrisés, mais Paris libérée – Charles de Gaulle

Paradoxically, the freedom of Paris is associated with a persistent belief that nothing ever changes. Paris, they say, is the city that changes least. After an absence of twenty or thirty years, one still recognizes it
— Marguerite Duras, Tourist in Paris, Outside: Selected Writings

At night I would climb the steps to the Sacre-Coeur, and I would watch Paris, that futile oasis, scintillating in the wilderness of space. I would weep, because it was so beautiful and because it was so useless

— Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter.

One of the first drawings I did in Paris – I wasn’t thinking of doing drawings, but somehow or other, I kept drawing – I bought a hyacinth flower with a lot of leaves, just to make me feel like spring 

― Ellsworth Kelly

Unknown in Paris, I was lost in the great city, but the feeling of living there alone, taking care of myself without any aid, did not at all depress me. If sometimes I felt lonesome, my usual state of mind was one of calm and great moral satisfaction 

― Marie Curie

I’d sometimes go to Paris by myself – it was an easy two-hour train ride – to get a break from the everyday grind, to walk around a big city, ride a subway, feel the energy of a world capital 

― Chris Pavone

The bohemian life that reigned in Paris until the end of the ’50s is gone. The artists had more time to think, to reflect; success didn’t come so suddenly 

― Pontus Hulten

I think that taking night trains or meeting someone on the road is pretty romantic. I’ve done a couple of things like that. I’ve surprised someone in Paris. And hopefully, when you surprise someone, they’re happy to see you 

― John Cusack

Paris can be like the land of the Lotus-Eaters. You can’t leave 

― Edmund White

One gets a good look at one’s country from this perspective, and one learns to see one’s nation with double eyes, to feel what we have got and what we have not got. I’ve learned more about America in one month in Paris than I could in one year in New York. Looking at this country makes all the unimportant phases of the American problem fade somewhat and render the true problem more vivid

― Richard Wright

Every traveler knows too well the endless quest for the perfect travel bag: the one that’s stylish enough to carry through Paris, sturdy enough to tote around Peru, and – most important – doesn’t make your shoulder sag even before you’ve loaded it up with everything you need for a day of sightseeing
— Hanya Yanagihara

Paris… There you can be whatever you want to be. Totally yourself — Langston Hughes

I hope you enjoyed this collection of Paris Quotes. Are you planning on visiting soon? If so, aaaah take me with!

Paris dreaming,

Rai