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The Eiffel Tower at Sunset Overlooking Trocadero

100+ Captivating Quotes About Paris

Travel

Christine Barbara

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Article Cover Photo: © f11photo from Getty Images Pro via canva.com

This post is all about quotes about Paris and Paris captions for Instagram.

Beautiful Paris! Its famous, alluring landscapes have inspired great works of fiction, its world-class cuisine is truly incomparable and some of the greatest minds, and most talented artists, have originated from this unique city in France. Paris is as much the city of culture as it is the city of light and, indeed, the city of love! 

Many will argue that “Paris holds the key to their heart”. Seeing as Paris has seduced so many with its various charms, we could not resist putting together a list of our favourite quotes about Paris.

Whether you’re searching for a catchy Paris Instagram caption to go with that selfie you snapped in front of the Eiffel Tower or need inspiration for your next trip to France, we’ve got you covered! These quotes are guaranteed to get you thinking about all things Parisian.

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Inspirational Quotes About Paris

If you have ever walked in Paris, you will see that Paris will ever walk in your memories!

– Mehmet Murat Ildan

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

Michael Kors

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

Picture of Eiffel Tower in the spring with text overlay of one of Victor Hugo's quotes about Paris

To study in Paris is to be born in Paris!

– Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Paris is the only place where I feel that I lead a life that I can call my own.

– Joan Juliet Buck

Paris is the greatest temple ever built to material joys and lust of the eyes.

– Henry James

Paris at dawn is one of those rare cities where you get the impression that something worthwhile could actually happen to you.

– Pierre Assouline

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

– Lee Radziwill

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

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

Picture of the Champs Elysees at Night with text overlay of one of Ernest Hemingway's Quotes

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

– Ernest Hemingway

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

– Adriana, Midnight in Paris

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

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

…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

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

– Audrey Hepburn

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

Eiffel Tower at night with spotlights in the background with text overlay of one of Audrey Hepburn's quotes about Paris

Paris is always a good idea.

– Audrey Hepburn

Paris at night is a street show of a hundred moments you might have lived.

– Courtney Maum

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

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

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

– Friedrich Nietzsche 

Cities have gender: London is a man, Paris is a woman, and New York City a well-adjusted transsexual.

– Angela Carter

Picture of the Eiffel Tower surrounded by blossoms in the spring, with text overlay of one of Henry Miller's quotes about Paris

When spring comes to Paris, the humblest mortal alive must feel that he dwells in paradise.

– Henry Miller

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

But Paris is an ocean. Throw in a stone, but you’ll never know how deep it is.

– Honoré de Balzac

When Paris sneezes, Europe catches cold.

– Klemens von Metternich

Paris Instagram Captions

Add three letters to Paris, and you have paradise.

– Jules Renard 

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

– Jean Cocteau

Breathe Paris in. It nourishes the soul.

– Victor Hugo, Les Misérables.

To err is human. To loaf is Parisian.

– Victor Hugo

Picture of the Eiffel Tower and nearby carousel with text overlay of one of Natalie Lloyd's quotes about Paris

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

– Natalie Lloyd

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

– Adrian Leeds

We’ll always have Paris.

– Howard Koch, Casablanca

London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation.

– G. K. Chesterson

Secrets travel fast in Paris.

– Napoleon Bonaparte 

Though you may leave Paris, Paris never really leaves you.

– Janice Macleod

Picture of the Seine from the Eiffel Tower with a text overlay of one of Honore de Balzac's quotes about Paris

Whoever does not visit Paris regularly will never really be elegant.

– Honoré de Balzac

Every girl needs Paris.

– Eve Chase, The Wildling Sisters

In Paris, our lives are one masked ball.

– Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

Why Paris? Paris needs no reason. Paris is its own reason.

– Maureen Johnson

America is my country and Paris is my hometown.

– Gertrude Stein

Paris is not a city; it’s a world.

– King Francis I

Picture of the glass pyramids at the Louvre with one of Sacha Guitry's quotes about Paris

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

– Sacha Guitry

Outside of Paris, there is no hope for the cultured.

– Moliere

Paris by day, Paris by night, under sun or rain, Paris will always be …Paris!

– Jules Renard 

The Eiffel Tower was once thought impossible to build.

– Hector Jesus Arencibia

There should be a name for the syndrome that occurs when you’re in Paris and you already miss it.

– Rosecrans Baldwin

I think there is a Paris inside us all.

– Douglas Coupland

Picture of the Eiffel Tower being Parisian townhouses with text overlay of a quote about Paris from an unknown author

A bad day in Paris is still better than a good day anywhere else.

– Unknown

Paris is so delicious they should call it the City of Bites.

– Audrey Hepburn

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

– Michael Simkins

I love Paris in the summer, when it sizzles.

– Cole Porter

I am happy in Paris.

– Zlatan Ibrahimovic

Everything begins in Paris.

– Nancy Spain

The best thing about London is Paris.

– Diana Vreeland

Paris Dream Quotes

Paris exists to remind you that all your dreams are real.

– Audrey Hepburn, Sabrina

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

Everyone dreams of living in Paris.

– Natalie Portman

Picture of girls holding balloons in front of the Eiffel Tower with a text overlay of a Paris quote by an unknown author

Some may dream in color, I dream in Paris.

– Unknown

Paris. City of love. City of dreams. City of splendour. City of saints and scholars. City of gaiety. Sink of iniquity.

– Edward Rutherfurd

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

Paris Love Quotes

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

– Alan Furst

Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.

– John Berger

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

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

Picture of hands making a heart around the Eiffel Tower with text overlay of one of Caitriona Balfe's quotes about Paris

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

– Caitriona Balfe

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

– Louis Garrel

It’s midnight. One half of Paris is making love to the other half.

Ninotchka

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

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

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

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

Paris Travel Quotes

England built London for its own use, France built Paris for the whole world.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have the feeling that I was born in Vienna in order to live in Paris.

– Romy Schneider

Image of the Eiffel Tower and nearby fountain with text overlay of one of Louisa Deasey's quotes about Paris

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

I just want to run away with you, rob a bank, fall in love and eat ice creams in Paris.

– Michael Faudet

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

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

– Christian Louboutin

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

What an immense impression Paris made upon me. It is the most extraordinary place in the world!

– Charles Dickens

It is perfectly possible to be enamored of Paris while remaining totally indifferent or even hostile to the French.

– James Baldwin

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

Picture of the Moulin Rouge with text overlay of one of T S Eliot's quotes about Paris

The chief danger about Paris is that it is such a strong stimulant.

– T.S. Eliot

You don’t go to Notre Dame to learn something; you go to Notre Dame to be somebody.

– Lou Holtz

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

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

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

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

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

Image of the Champs Elysees from the sky, at night, with a text overlay of one of Thomas Jefferson's quotes about Paris

A walk about Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty, and in the point of life.

– Thomas Jefferson

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 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

Quotes About Paris In Literature

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

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 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

Picture of the Sacre Couer in Paris at sunset with text overlay of one of Oscar Wilde's quotes about Paris

When good Americans die, they go to Paris.

– Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance, Act 1

All was embraced by her, by her volatile and enchanted populace thronging the galleries, the theaters, 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

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, Crepuscule 

Though I often looked for one, I finally had to admit that there could be no cure for Paris.

– Paula McLain, The Paris Wife

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

She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.

– Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

Picture of buildings in Paris with text overlay of one of Jeffrey Eugenides quotes about Paris

Paris was a museum displaying exactly itself.

– Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot: A Novel


If you loved reading all about Paris quotes and are looking for more inspiring quotes to use, be sure to check out our other collections of travel quotes including:



LAST UPDATED ON:
08/02/2023


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