PARIS QUOTES
quotations about Paris, France
Paris is a city of gaieties and pleasures, where four fifths of the inhabitants die of grief.
CHAMFORT
The Cynic's Breviary
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
Paris, My Sweet: A Year in the City of Light
Paris is a feast, but the banquet has become painfully expensive.
ANTHONY DIAS BLUE
attributed, Sandra Gustafson's Great Eats in Paris
In Paris I find everything that appeals to me: lights, noises in the night, places where one has fun according to one's liking, a sympathetic and tolerant world, in sum, a true civilization.
COUNTEE CULLEN
notebook, 1928
Paris is for lovers, artists, and lost souls.
ERIN HEADLEY
Breathing Paris
To study in Paris is to be born in Paris!
VICTOR HUGO
Les Misérables
Is not Paris a vast field in perpetual turmoil from a storm of interests beneath which are whirled along a crop of human beings, who are, more often than not, reaped by death, only to be born again as pinched as ever, men whose twisted and contorted faces give out at every pore the instinct, the desire, the poisons with which their brains are pregnant; not faces so much as masks; masks of weakness, masks of strength, masks of misery, masks of joy, masks of hypocrisy; all alike worn and stamped with the indelible signs of a panting cupidity?
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Girl with the Golden Eyes
Experiencing Paris is practically a literary tradition.
JAMIE COX ROBERTSON
A Literary Paris
In Paris, everything's for sale: wise virgins, foolish virgins, truth and lies, tears and smiles.
EMILE ZOLA
The Attack on the Mill and Other Stories
A few observations upon the soul of Paris may explain the causes of its cadaverous physiognomy, which has but two ages--youth and decay: youth, wan and colorless; decay, painted to seem young.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Girl with the Golden Eyes
France is going to endure and I'll tell you why. If you are in a war of culture and lifestyle with France, good f***ing luck. Go ahead, bring your bankrupt ideology. They'll bring Jean-Paul Sartre, Edith Piaf, fine wine, Gauloise cigarettes, Camus, camembert, madeleines, macarons, and the f***ing croquembouche. You just brought a philosophy of rigorous self-abnegation to a pastry fight, my friend.
JOHN OLIVER
statement on 11-13-2015 terrorist attacks on Paris, Last Week Tonight
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
Paris is, for example, the biggest African city in the world. It just happens not to be in Africa.
ANDREW HUSSEY
Paris: The Secret History
The provinces are provinces; they are only ridiculous when they mimic Paris.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Pierrette
I often go away just for the pure joy of coming back to my wonderful Paris.
SARAH BERNHARDT
"Bernhardt Triumphs in New Role", Theatre Magazine, 1920
Paris is the happiest city in the world tonight. All Paris is dancing in the streets.
LARRY LESUEUR
radio broadcast following the 1944 Liberation of Paris
Paris dictates fashion to the whole world.
MARIA CALLAS
Women's Wear Daily, December 20, 1958
Paris is always a good idea.
AUDREY HEPBURN
Sabrina
The old Paris is no more (the form of a city changes faster, alas! than a mortal's heart).
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
attributed, Four French Symbolist Poets
Contrary to its legend, Paris does not offer many distractions; or, those distractions that it offers are like French pastry, vivid and insubstantial, sweet on the tongue and sour in the belly.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country