France Paris Quotes

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

This is what you British do not understand about the French. You think you must work, work, work, work and open on Sundays and make mothers and fathers with families slave in supermarkets at three o'clock in the morning and make people leave their homes and their churches and their children and go shopping on Sundays.'
'Their shops are open on Sundays?' said Benoît in surprise.
'Yes! They make people work on Sundays! And through lunchtimes! But for what? For rubbish from China? For cheap clothes sewed by poor women in Malaysia? For why? So you can go more often to KFC and get full of fried chicken? You would rather have six bars of bad chocolate than one bar of good chocolate. Why? Why are six bad things better than one good thing? I don't understand. ~ Jenny Colgan

There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison. ~ William Glasser

You'd think the sight of beautiful Place Vendôme would lift my spirits but oddly the arc of jewellery - so obviously beyond the means of a jobless person like me - only depresses me more. I plod on feeling confused, guilty even, that I should feel unhappy in a place that looks like paradise. ~ Sarah Turnbull

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

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,

It's very frustrating making a picture in Paris. We work hard all day at the studio to get a love scene just right. Then, on my way home, I see couples on every street corner doing it better. ~ Bob Hope

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

The Seine. I have painted it all my life, at all hours of the day, at all times of the year, from Paris to the sea…Argenteuil, Poissy, Vétheuil, Giverny, Rouen, Le Havre. ~ Claude Monet

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

I'd love to be a tabletop in Paris, where food is art and life combined in one, where people gather and talk for hours. I want lovers to meet over me. I'd want to be covered in drops of candle wax and breadcrumbs and rings from the bottom of wineglasses. I would never be lonely, and I would always serve a good purpose. ~ Maureen Johnson

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

There's nowhere that life feels more eternal, your dimwit youth more important, than Paris. ~ Charles Finch

That Paris exists and anyone could choose to live anywhere else in the world will always be a mystery to me. ~ Marion Cotillard

Good talkers are only found in Paris. ~ Francois Villon

In Paris, our lives are one masked ball. ~ Gaston Leroux

Paris is not a city, it is the image, the symbol of France, its today and yesterday, the reflection of its history, its geography and its hidden essence. ~ Nina Berberova

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

He wanted to tell the baby that Paris was like a poem in stone. ~ Simon Van Booy

I plan to send my liver somewhere in France, to protest foie gras (liver pate) ... I plan to have handbags made from my skin ... and an umbrella stand made from my seat. ~ Ingrid Newkirk

In 2003, Meryl Streep won a career achievement César Award, the French equivalent of an Oscar. Streep's words (my translation) acknowledged the enduring interest of French audiences in women's lives and women's stories:
"I have always wanted to present stories of women who are rather difficult. Difficult to love, difficult to understand, difficult to look at sometimes. I am very cognizant that the French public is receptive to these complex and contradictory women. As an actress I have understood for a long time that lies are simple, seductive and often easy to pass off. But the truth - the truth is always very very very complicated, often unpleasant, nuanced or difficult to accept."

In France, an actress can work steadily from her teens through old age - she can start out in stories of youthful rebellion and end up, fifty years later, a screen matriarch. And in the process, her career will end up telling the story of a life - her own life, in a sense, with the films serving, as Valeria Bruni Tedeschi puts it, as a "journal intime," or diary, of one woman's emotions and growth. No wonder so many French actresses are beautiful. They're radiant with living in a cinematic culture that values them, and values them as women. And they are radiant with living in a culture - albeit one with flaws of its own - in which women are half of who decides what gets valued in the first place. Their films transcend national and language barriers and are the best vehicles for c ~ Mick LaSalle

Hélène slowly surveyed the room. In this respectable society, amongst these apparently decent middle-class people, were there none but faithless wives? With her strict provincial morality, she was amazed at the licensed promiscuity of Parisian life. ~ Emile Zola

Through a large field that had turned a dead yellow after an early frost, past the multicoloured clapboard company houses and through a flurry of fabric hanging from clotheslines… after a few minutes he stopped at the edge of a high cliff, where a long time ago he'd been able to see the mine towers and orange smog from the steel mill way off in the distance, and he'd been able to stare for hours at the periwinkle-coloured ocean waves crashing against the jagged rocks below. At times he'd wonder what it would be like to cross the ocean. He knew from the books he'd read that he would be in Europe probably, that by plane it took hours, by boat it took weeks depending on the speed of the boat… he knew the street maps of Paris and London and Pennsylvania. He knew all the monumental buildings of the world… but he was unable to leave, if he tried to leave Nova Scotia, Mearth would lock him in the basement of his house for months, maybe even years, in the dark, isolated…
Not even wanting to consider it, he closed his eyes, the swift wind from the ocean gusting through the scraggly grass. As the sun briefly came out in a haze, a kaleidoscope of reds and golds, he lit a cigarette and tried to imagine that the mill and mines were still in their rightful place. ~ Rebecca McNutt

But France did not have a normal government: it had a collection of caffeinated intellectuals ~ Tom Reiss

Contrary to a tenacious myth, France is not owned by California pension funds or the Bank of China, any more than the United States belongs to Japanese and German investors. The fear of getting into such a predicament is so strong today that fantasy often outstrips reality. The reality is that inequality with respect to capital is a far greater domestic issue than it is an international one. ~ Thomas Piketty

In France, religion had been considered the enemy of liberty, but in America, as George Washington expressed it, religion and morality were the 'twin pillars of freedom.' ~ D. James Kennedy

Being an African filmmaker, Africa is what's important for me. If I were to shot a film in France or elsewhere it would only be because the story that was being told was something that concerned me, and that really called me or needed to be shown on the screen. ~ Abderrahmane Sissako

Now you are walking in Paris all alone in the crowd
As herds of bellowing buses drive by
Love's anguish tightens your throat
As if you were never to be loved again
If you lived in the old days you would enter a monastery
You are ashamed when you discover yourself reciting a prayer
You make fun of yourself and like the fire of Hell your laughter crackles
The sparks of your laugh gild the depths of your life
It's a painting hanging in a dark museum
And sometimes you go and look at it close up ~ Guillaume Apollinaire

The Americans are very patriotic, and wish to make their new citizens patriotic Americans. But it is the idea of making a new nation literally out of any old nation that comes along. In a word, what is unique is not America but what is called Americanisation. We understand nothing till we understand the amazing ambition to Americanise the Kamskatkan and the Hairy Ainu. We are not trying to Anglicise thousand of French cooks or Italian organ-grinders. France is not trying to Gallicise thousands of English trippers or German prisoners of war. America is the only place in the world where this process, healthy or unhealthy, possible or impossible, is going on. And the process, as I have pointed out, is not internationalization. It would be truer to say it is the nationalization of the internationalized. It is making a home out of vagabonds and a nation out of exiles. ~ G.K. Chesterton

When France was the only reference for chefs to learn, you could go everywhere in the world, and they would copy dishes directly because they didn't have much expanded imagination or technique or knowledge. ~ Daniel Boulud

Helen leaned down over her husband and ran her lips lightly across his bare shoulder in good-bye. Maybe, someday, she would find him by the River Styx. There, they could wash all their hateful memories away, and walk into a new life together, a life that didn't have the dirty paw prints of a dozen gods and a dozen kings marring it. Such a beautiful thought.
Helen vowed that she would live a hundred lives of hardship for one life - one real life - with Paris. They could be shepherds, just as they had dreamed once when they had met at the great lighthouse long ago. She'd be anything, really, a shopkeeper, or a farmer, whatever, as long as they were allowed to live their lives and each other freely. She dressed quickly, imagining herself tending a shop somewhere by the sea, hoping that someday this dream would come true. ~ Josephine Angelini

You will do well to take advantage of Madame's short residence to get up your French a little ... You will be glad of this, my dear, when you have reached France, where you will find they speak nothing else. ~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

I'm happy to have a physical part in 'High Tension,' in 'Hereafter,' and in a lot of French movies and Belgian movies. But its not by chance directors choose me for physical parts. I like to do that. I like to tell a story also with the body. It's important, because you can tell a lot of things. ~ Cecile De France

Alaska is much larger than France and Germany - combined. Yet its population is less than one-tenth that of New York City. Keep that in mind the next time you hear some environmentalist hysteria about the danger of "spoiling" Alaska by drilling for oil in an area smaller than Dulles Airport. ~ Thomas Sowell

I felt very special in Paris, more special than I felt in London. I love London for different reasons. I've always been close to London, being English. But somehow, there's something special about living as an Englishwoman in Paris. ~ Charlotte Rampling

If I had been a dog walker, I would have been the most successful dog walker in Paris. ~ Tom Ford

I like France, where everybody thinks he's Napoleon
down here everybody thinks he's Christ. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Of course," Armand was saying to Simon, "you know that it was an American, like yourself, who nearly ruined the wine-making in France?" "We're Canadians." "But that is the same thing, surely? ~ Susanna Kearsley

Oh, in France you can't defame an idea, only a person. ~ Pierre Dukan

Do you have feelings for this kind man?"
"You shouldn't ask her such a question," Frances Catherine said. "But do you, Gillian? ~ Julie Garwood

(Jace) "Is there anything special you want to see? Paris? Budapest? The Leaning Tower of Pisa?"
Only if it falls on Sebastian's head, she thought. ~ Cassandra Clare

Never give up on the things that make you smile. ~ Paris Hilton

While the concepts of vigneron and terroir exist elsewhere in France, no community of vignerons takes all of this more seriously than the subculture, or perhaps, superculture of Burgundian vignerons. These philosopher-farmer-shamans strive to bottle the divine as the divine deserves, convinced that the blood of Christ flows from these veins of the earth. Terroir and vigneron, in Burgundy, are terms of a religion, and of all the sacraments and rituals Burgundian vignerons hold dear, none is more sacred than the marrying of a vine to earth. ~ Maximillian Potter

The attic of your beautiful throat
is laced with owl and cobweb. Night sings north,
the need of winter. Look up and know
what will become of us is stars. ~ Linda France

I talk in that baby talk voice when I'm on TV, it's a put on. ~ Paris Hilton

Contrary to what certain comedians have led you to believe, the national French pastime is picnicking. ~ Bob Hope

I don't know why people are surprised the French don't want to help us get Saddam out of Iraq. After all, France wouldn't help us get the Germans out of France. ~ Jay Leno

I have done everything that I wanted to do, and I feel very blessed that I have been very successful on every area. So it's very exciting. There is nothing else to do. ~ Paris Hilton

In the early 1830s the writer George Sand, a woman, had a man's overcoat and a pair of boots made for her so she could have the same pleasure - to walk the streets of Paris free to look at whatever she liked. In her autobiography she writes: "I can't express the pleasure my boots gave me ... With those little iron-shot heels, I was on solid pavement. I flew from one end of Paris to the other. It seemed to me that I could go round the world. And then, my clothes feared nothing. I ran out in every kind of weather, I came home at every sort of hour ... No one paid any attention to me, and no one guessed at my disguise ... No one knew me, no one looked at me, no one found fault with me; I was an atom lost in that immense crowd. ~ Randon Billings Noble

What's improper about it?" retorted the clerk. "Everybody does it in Paris!" It was an irresistible and conclusive argument. ~ Gustave Flaubert

In France, they make you feel that you cannot be two things at the same time. You can't be French and Arabic; you can't be French and Muslim. ~ EL Seed

There is something in the quality of the French mind to which I have always felt a reluctant kinship. They are the only people I know who can leap into an enormous vocabulary of words and beat them up with the wings of their spirit into a fine hysterical eloquence. ~ Corra May Harris

I imagine the gods saying, We will
make it up to you. We will give you
three wishes, they say. Let me see
the squirrels again, I tell them.
Let me eat some of the great hog
stuffed and roasted on its giant spit
and put out, steaming, into the winter
of my neighborhood when I was usually
too broke to afford even the hundred grams
I ate so happily walking up the cobbles,
past the Street of the Moon
and the Street of the Birdcage-Makers,
the Street of Silence and the Street
of the Little Pissing. We can give you
wisdom, they say in their rich voices.
Let me go at last to Hugette, I say,
the Algerian student with her huge eyes
who timidly invited me to her room
when I was too young and bewildered
that first year in Paris.
Let me at least fail at my life.
Think, they say patiently, we could
make you famous again. Let me fall
in love one last time, I beg them.
Teach me mortality, frighten me
into the present. Help me to find
the heft of these days. That the nights
will be full enough and my heart feral. ~ Jack Gilbert

There was no experience, I thought, quite as wonderful as being an American in Paris. ~ Ann Mah

If there was a Hell, my mom said you'd go there for wearing fur coats or buying a cream rinse tested on baby rabbits by escaped Nazi scientists in France. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

On the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves ~ Charles Dickens

Workers of France, it is for the freedom of the prisoners that you will go to work in Germany! It is for our country that you will go in large numbers! ~ Pierre Laval

You don't read a poem to find the meaning of life. The opposite. I mean, you'd be foolish to. Now, some American poets present the reader with a slice of life, saying, I went to the store today, and I saw a man, and he looked at me, and I looked at him, and we both knew we were ... thieves. And aren't we all thieves? You know, this is extracting from everyday experience a statement about life, or a moral. ~ Mark Strand

Suppose he found that persistent unsparing voice at his elbow one day, claiming that Danton lacked probity; he had an answer, pat, not a logical one, but one sufficiently chilling to put logic in abeyance. To question Danton's patriotism was to cast in doubt the whole Revolution. A tree is known by its fruits, and Danton made August 10. First he made the republic of the Cordeliers, then he made the Republic of France. If Danton is not a patriot, then we have been criminally negligent in the nation's affairs. If Danton is not a patriot, we are not patriots either. If Danton is not a patriot, then the whole thing - from May '89 - must be done again. ~ Hilary Mantel

You don't ever do something just because it makes you feel good?" The assistant shrugs. "Mademoiselle, you need to spend more time in Paris. ~ Jojo Moyes

The CIA was revealed to be spying in France, not for military purposes, but for corporate purposes. So this $30 billion spook agency is now at the disposal of these oligarchic corporate structures run by the 1%. ~ Jerry Brown

Tanya, I can not tell you how Leningrad looks today. I used to say that Paris is the most beautiful in the world, and now I am ashamed. every time I come to Russia I'll bring you flowers. And as is our only tryst lost, wasted, gone, I give you my word that I will teach my children to hate war and to be good people. Secondly, apart from vodka, except the tears, I do not know how. ~ Miroslav Antic

Paris, like every pretty woman, is subject to inexplicable whims of beauty and ugliness. ~ Honore De Balzac

At last I have come into a dreamland ... ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe