I had to spend my first time on the European continent in Paris. I studied French from grades 7 – 12 and even earned a minor in college! I wish I would have had the time to study abroad when I was younger, but I’m grateful that I was able to experience Paris in the winter of 2018. (Not to mention I was able to find such a cheap flight from the States!)
There’s something magical about wandering the halls of the Louvre and warming up with a café au lait during a light snowfall.
From the art to the food, the fashion and awe-inspiring architecture, the City of Lights has a little something for everyone.
Here are 21 quotes to inspire you to experience one of my favorite European cities:
“America is my country and Paris is my hometown.” – Gertrude Stein
“An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“A walk about Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty, and in the point of Life.” – Thomas Jefferson
“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
“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
“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
“I like The Eiffel Tower because it looks like steel and lace.” – Natalie Lloyd
“I’m not a complicated girl; she laughed, I just want to run away with you, rob a bank, fall in love and eat ice creams in Paris.” – Michael Faudet
“Just add three letters to Paris, and you have paradise.” – Jules Renard
“London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation.” – G. K. Chesterson
“Paris is a hard place to leave, even when it rains incessantly and one coughs continually from the dampness.” – Willa Cather
“Paris is always a good idea.” – Audrey Hepburn
“Paris is not a city; it’s a world.” – King Francis I
“Paris is the only city in the world that starving to death still considered art.” – Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind
“Secrets travel fast in Paris.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
“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
“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
“To know Paris is to know a great deal.” – Henry Miller
“We’ll always have Paris.” – Howard Koch
“When good Americans die, they go to Paris.” – Oscar Wilde
“Whoever does not visit Paris regularly will never really be elegant.” – Honoré de Balzac