From the magnificent Louvre, sun-speckled Seine to the quaint cafés of St Germaine, Paris is a city you’ll fall head over heels in love before long. Long been known as the most romantic city in the world, the charming ‘City of Light’ captures our imagination and makes our heart sing at the mere thought of this enchanting city.
The city of Paris is rich in historic heritage, iconic monuments, along with unique pride in the lively arts and culture scene. It’s influences in the world of art, fashion and architecture are far-reaching. Home to a plethora of attractions and activities, this contemporary city is laced with elegance, style, fine dining, exquisite wines and magical ambience that strucks a chord with all those who visit this great city.
The alluring city of Paris carries the legacy of romance since the Age of Enlightenment, and aptly dubbed as the ‘City of Love‘. Entwined with the warmth of simple pleasures in life and the picturesque charm of a 2000-year old city, Paris has touched the hearts and minds of many in some ways who have penned a few words of their unquenchable love of the city.
Here are some of the most beautifully worded captions and quotes on Paris to inspire your journey. The grand selection of quotes about Paris in this post are also ideal to accompany your lovely photos on Instagram and other social media networks.
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As a hopeless romantic, I can’t help but begin this selection of quotes on Paris with one of my favourite from Sabrina (1954), a Cinderella story, starring Harrison Ford and Julia Ormond …
1 | “I went for long walks and met myself in Paris” — Sabrina 1954.
Read along, enjoy our selection of the very best quotes on Paris, the ‘City of Love’.
Love Quotes on Paris
Love quotes about Paris
2 | “It’s true, you never forget your first love, and for me, that will always be Paris.” — Caitriona Balfe, An Irish actress and former fashion model
3 | “I love Paris for the million reasons that everybody loves the city. It’s an incredibly romantic and beautiful place.” — Alan Furst
4 | “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
5 | “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
6 | “Paris is unquestionably a city for lovers, and it has been a privilege and a delight to discover so many of its wonders by his side.” — Mary McAuliffe
7 | “There’s something about Paris, people just don’t have anything else to do there but love each other.” — Louis Garrel
quotes about Paris
8 | “It’s midnight. One half of Paris is making love to the other half.” — Ninotchka
9 | “The heart of Paris is a flower. A flower of love so pretty that we keep in our heart, that we love for life.” — Charles Trenet
10 | “Whoever does not visit Paris regularly will never really be elegant.” — Honore de Balzac, French novelist.
11 | “Paris just exudes love and romance and, for me personally, hope and joy and faith, too; it just means so much to me. That place made me feel so happy and so safe, and my spirit was just so full of joy.” — Ally Brooke
12 | “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.” — Christian Louboutin
13 | “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
14 | “A walk about Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty, and in the point of life” — Thomas Jefferson.
15 | “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
Quotes about Paris
Planning a Visit to Paris?
You may like to consider the following timeless experiences:
Timed Entrance Ticket to the Louvre Museum
Skip-the-line Tickets to Sainte-Chapelle & Conciergerie
360 degree of Paris from the Montparnasse Tower Roof Terrace
More love quotes about Paris
16 | “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, je t’aime (2006)
17 | “I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I have enjoyed it.” — JFK, at a speech in SHAPE HQ, Paris, 1961.
18 | “I’ve never seen so many Americans in Paris before. The Champs-Élysées looks just like Main Street.” — An American in Paris, 1951
19 | “I can never decide whether Paris is more beautiful by day or by night.” — Adriana, Midnight in Paris
20 | “That Paris exists and anyone could choose to live anywhere else in the world will always be a mystery to me.” — Midnight in Paris, 2011
Inspirational Quotes on Paris
Inspiring quotes about Paris
21 | “If you have ever walked in Paris, you will see that Paris will ever walk in your memories!” — Mehmet Murat Ildan
22 | “There are only two places in the world where we can live happy — at home and in Paris” — Ernest Hemingway.
23 | “An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.” — Friedrich Nietzsche.
24 | “I think Paris smells, and not just sweet but melancholy and curious, sometimes sad but always enticing and seductive. She’s a city for all the 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, The Book of Lost Fragrances
25 | “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.
26 | “The shopping, the food, the views! Paris is a city that entrances us all — and I’m no exception.” — Michael Kors
27 | “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 French Poet & Novelist
28 | “Paris is the only place where I feel that I can lead a life that I can call my own.” — Joan Juliet Buck, American Actress and Writer
29 | “To study in Paris is to be born in Paris.” — Victor Hugo
30 | “Paris is the greatest temple ever built to material joys and lust of the eyes” — Henry James
31 | “Paris at dawn is one of those rare cities where you get the impression that something worthwhile could actually happen to you.” — Pierre Assouline, French Writer & Journalist
32 | “Paris is the most beautiful city in the world. It brings tears to your eyes” — Lee Radziwill, An American socialite.
33 | “I do not believe there is another city on earth so beautiful as Paris, nor another people with such an appreciation of the beautiful as the French …” — Edward Hopper
34 | “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
35 | “La Vie en Rose. It is the French way of saying, ‘I am looking at the world through rose-coloured glasses.” — Audrey Hepburn, Actress
quotes about Paris
36 | “…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, Author
37 | “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-Élysées — nearly everything except the Luxembourg Gardens and the Palais Royal. But what other city offers as much as you leave a train?” — Margaret Anderson
38 | “Paris at night is a street show of a hundred moments you might have lived.” — Courtney Maum
39 | “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, Poet
40 | “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
41 | “Paris may change, but in my melancholy mood,
Nothing has budged! New palaces, blocks, scaffoldings,
Old neighbourhoods, are allegorical for me,
And my dear memories are heavier than stone.” — Charles Baudelaire, ‘The Swan’, Part: ‘Parisian Scenes’, ‘The Flowers of Evil’.
quotes about Paris
42 | “Cities have gender: London is a man, Paris is a woman, and New York City a well-adjusted transexual.” — Angela Carter
43 | “When spring comes to Paris the humblest mortal alive must feel that he dwells in paradise” — Henry Miller.
44 | “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
45 | “But Paris is an ocean. Throw in a stone, but you’ll never know how deep it is.” — Honore de Balzac
46 | “Paris was a museum displaying exactly itself.” — Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot: A Novel
47 | “Paris … There you can be whatever you want to be. Totally yourself.” — Langston Hughes
48 | “Paris is a city where even the most outrageous story… is greeted with a verbal shrug: ‘Mais c’est normal!’” — Edmund White
49 | “How sweet it is to see, across the misty gloom,
A star born in the blue, a lamp lit in a room,
Rivers of chimney smoke, rising in purplish streams,
The pale of glow of the moon, transfiguring the scene.” — Charles Baudelaire, ‘Landscape’, Part: ‘Parisian Scenes’, ‘The Flowers of Evil’.
50 | “I was a free man in Paris
I felt unfettered and alive
There was nobody calling me up for favors
And no one’s future to decide” — Joni Mitchell, ‘Free Man in Paris’.
51 | “To know Paris is to know a great deal” — Henry Miller.
Quotes about Paris
52 | “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
53 | “When good Americans die, they go to Paris” — Oscar Wilde.
54 | “She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.” — Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
55 | “Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman” — John Berger.
More – Inspiring Captions and Quotes about Paris
56 | “Paris is always a good idea” — Audrey Hepburn.
57 | “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.
58 | “The passage from the big to the little is what makes Paris beautiful, and you have to be prepared to be small — to live, to trudge, to have your head down in melancholy and then lift it up, sideways — to get it.” — Adam Gopnik, Paris to the Moon.
59 | “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.
Quotes about Paris
60 | “Paris
teach me of your love
teach me of your cobbled streets
and rivers
teach me of your painters who sit by your bridges
teach me of the gardens and the cafés and the treats
teach me of the sun as it sets in the trees
teach me
for I will listen
teach me and I will paint it
with all the words it gives me.” — Atticus.
61 | “Paris is the city in which one loves to live.” — Margaret C. Anderson
62 | “After my best friend jumped off the bridge, I knew that I was next. So-Paris. With forty dollars and a one-way ticket.” — James Baldwin
63 | “Paris can be like the land of the Lotus-Eaters. You can’t leave.” — Edmund White
64 | “I was born in Paris, and I haven’t moved, except until now — I live in the suburbs and I hate it.” — Luc Ferrari
65 | “The law, in its majestic impartiality, forbids the rich and poor alike to sleep under the bridges of Paris.” — Anatole France
66 | “Let’s go to Paris.Take me there and never look back” — Lana Del Rey
67 | “Though I often looked for one, I finally had to admit that there could be no cure for Paris.” — Paula McLain, The Paris Wife
68 | “Lock me in your heart, and throw away the key.” — anon
69 | “Paris is the only city in the world where starving to death is still considered an art.” — Carlos Ruiz Zafon
70 | “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
71 | “In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator.” — Jean Cocteau, French poet and novelist.
72 | “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 cafés, 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
73 | “I never had the idea of moving to Paris and becoming something. I liked the idea of living in Paris because it seemed to have so many parts of life I really enjoyed. The people there seemed to prize literature, and art, food and drinking, a more hedonistic way of living.” — Rosecrans Baldwin, Author
74 | “Good talkers are only found in Paris.” — Francois Villon, a 15th century French poet, thief and vagabond.
75 | “I first came to Paris one year ago. It was 1899, the summer of love. I knew nothing of the Moulin Rouge, Harold Zidler or Satine. The world had been swept up in the Bohemian Revolution. And I travelled from London to be part of it.” — Christian, played by Ewan McGregor in Moulin Rouge.
76 | “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 and hour.” — Sylvia Plath, Author, The Bell Jar
77 | “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, An Irish novelist.
78 | “Oh I hated New York — that Park Avenue crowd — so I fled to Paris to work on my book, and I was always going to this café with Jean-Jacques, and Dickie used to play his saxophone outside and I would see him, and he would see me, and he would play My Funny Valentine. It wasn’t until later that I realised he only knows about six songs.” — The Talented Mr Ripley, 1999
79 | “That’s what makes Paris, Paree” — April in Paris, 1952 musical.
80 | “Paris loves lovers” — Silk Stockings, 1957.
Quotes about Bridges of Paris
With the meandering River Seine running through the heart of Paris, the city is home to thirty-seven bridges and footbridges spanning across the Seine, connecting the Left Bank and the Right Bank. Amongst these are some of the well-known and the oldest in the city such as Pont Neuf (1578), Pont Marie (1604) and Pont Alexandre III (1900). Here are two of the most famous bridges quotes on Paris.
81 | “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.
82 | “It was always pleasant crossing bridges in Paris.” — Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
Quotes about Paris and its delectable Food
83 | “Paris is so delicious they should call it the City of Bites.” — Audrey Hepburn
84 | “If you were in Paris, your food might as well glitter.” — Michelle Gable, Author
85 | “I have been in Paris for almost a week and I have not heard anyone say calories, or cholesterol, or even arterial plaque. The French do not season their food with regret.” — Mary-Lou Weisman, Author
86 | “We are outside again, walking, when he takes a bite and stops dead. “Wow,” he says after a minute. Then, “Wow,” again. I smile. Everyone remembers their first taste of Paris. This will be his.” — Kristin Hannah, Author
87 | “Ultimately, I want to prepare food that will be recognized equally in Tokyo, London and Paris. I am after that universally, that transcendence.” — Charlie Trotter, Author
Quotes about Paris and food
88 | “Whoever would have guessed that in the land of cheap sausages and mashed potatoes there could be such a change which would actually bring the French from Paris every weekend to invade Britain en masse to eat great food and drink great wine.” — Robin Leach, Author
89 | “In Paris and later in Marseille, I was surrounded by some of the best food in the world, and I had an enthusiastic audience in my audience in my husband, so it seemed only logical that I should learn how to cook ‘la cuisine bourgeoise’ — good, traditional French home cooking” — Julia Child, Author
90 | “Brioches are a light, pale yellow, faintly sweet kind of muffin with a characteristic blob on top, rather like a mushroom just pushing crookedly through the ground. Once eaten in Paris, they never taste as good anywhere else.” — M.F.K. Fisher, Author
91 | “When I first went to Paris in 1965, I fell in love with the small, family-owned restaurants that existed everywhere then, as well as the markets and the French obsession with buying fresh food, often twice a day.” — Alice Waters, Author
Instagram Captions: Quotes about Paris
92 | “Breathe Paris in. It nourishes the soul.” — Victor Hugo
93 | “I like The Eiffel Tower because it looks like steel and lace” — Natalie Lloyd.
94 | “London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation.” — G.K. Chesterson
95 | “Just add three letters to Paris, and you have PARADISE” — Jules Renard.
96 | “Secrets travel fast in Paris” — Napoleon Bonaparte.
97 | “It’s Paris. You don’t come here for the weather.” — Adrian Leeds
Quotes about Paris
98 | “In Paris, our lives are one masked ball.” — Gaston Leroux, from the novel, The Phantom of the Opera.
99 | “We’ll always have Paris.” — Howard Koch, Casablanca, 1942
100 | “Every girl needs Paris.” — Eve Chase, The Wildling Sisters
101 | “Though you may leave Paris, Paris never really leaves you.” — Janice Macleod
102 | “Why Paris? Paris needs no reason. Paris is its own reason.” — Maureen Johnson
103 | “America is my country and Paris is my home town.” — Gertrude Stein
104 | “Paris is not a city, it’s a world” — King Francis I.
105 | “To be a Parisian is not about being born in Paris, it is about being reborn there.” — Sacha Guitry
106 | “Outside of Paris, there is no hope for the cultured.” — Moliere
107 | “Paris by day, Paris by night, under sun or rain, Paris will always be … Paris!” — Jules Renard
108 | “The Eiffel Tower was once thought impossible to build.” — Hector Jesus Arencibia
109 | “There should be a name for the syndrome that occurs when you’re in Paris and you already miss it.” — Rosecrans Baldwin
Quotes about Paris
110 | “I think there is a Paris inside us all.” — Douglas Coupland
111 | “I love Paris in the summer, when it sizzles.” — Cole Porter
112 | “A bad day in Paris is still better than a good day anywhere else.” — Unknown
113 | “I am happy in Paris.” — Zlatan Ibrahimovic
114 | “Paris is a place in which we can forget ourselves, reinvent, expunge the dead weight of our past.” — Michael Simkins
115 | “Everything begins in Paris.” — Nancy Spain
116 | “The best thing about London is Paris.” — Diana Vreeland
Dream Quotes on Paris
Quotes about Paris
117 | “Paris exists to remind you that all your dreams are real” — Audrey Hepburn
118 | “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
119 | “Everyone dreams of living in Paris.” — Natalie Portman
120 | “Some may dream in colour, I dream in Paris.” — Unknown
121 | “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
122 | “Paris streets at night … the kind of city you could carry off to bed with you, curl up with it as you gazed out your window into its lights and darkness, nestle into the haunting dream of it as you fall asleep.” — Laura Florand
Travel Quotes on Paris
Quotes about Paris
123 | “The chief danger about Paris is that it is such a strong stimulant” — T.S. Eliot
124 | “England built London for its own use, France built Paris for the whole world.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
125 | “I have the feeling that I was born in Vienna in order to live in Paris.” — Romy Schneider
126 | “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: A True Story of Hidden Art, Lost Romance, and Family Reclaimed.
Quotes about Paris
127 | “I just want to run away with you, rob a bank, fall in love and eat ice creams in Paris.” — Michael Faudet, Author
128 | “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
129 | “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
130 | “In Paris, I really do like to try and do nothing…but that’s impossible.” — Christian Louboutin
131 | “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
132 | “What an immense impression Paris made upon me. It is the most extraordinary place in the world” — Charles Dickens.
133 | “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 or something. Just wandering the city is entertainment.” — Wes Anderson
134 | “It is perfectly possible to be enamored of Paris while remaining totally indifferent or even hostile to the French.” — James Baldwin
Quotes about Paris
135 | “You don’t go to Notre Dame to learn something; you go to Notre Dame to be somebody.” — Lou Holtz
136 | “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
137 | “… you just never know where life will take you. You search for answers. You wonder what it all means. You stumble, 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
138 | “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
139 | “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
Quotes about Paris
140 | “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
141 | “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 Époque house built by a forgotten financier for a just-remembered courtesan” — Julian Barnes, Author
Quotes about Paris
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141 Very Best Quotes on Paris first published at timelesstravelsteps.com – quotes about Paris
