58 Quotes About France [+Photos] to Inspire You

written by local expert Anna Faustino

Anna is a co-founder of Adventure in You and has been traveling the world for the last 9 years. She has spent time living in Thailand, Mexico, Indonesia, and Spain and is our local expert in these areas. Her expertise on travel, gear, and building businesses have been featured on Foundr, Business Insider, Yahoo Travel, and more.

Looking for a few quotes about France to get you inspired and excited?

In this article, I walk you through my personal compilation of the best quotes about France which will inspire you to start planning a trip to this beautiful country.

Ah…France.

There is simply no place like it. Whether you’re strolling down a small cobblestone street in Nice, sitting in a cafe in Avignon, or wandering around the streets of Paris, between the food, the wine, and the plethora of amazing cafes, a trip to France is always a good idea.

Whether you’re planning a trip to France or just want some inspiration and good vibes, keep on reading and to get some awesome travel inspiration.

If you like any of the images below, feel free to Pin them on Pinterest!

Best Quotes About France

Known as one of the most popular destinations in Europe, when I first started planing my around-the-world trip, I knew I had to spend a few weeks traveling around France. While most people make a beeline towards Paris, the rest of France, especially in the South is worth traveling to. Keep reading this section below where I share some of the best quotes about France.

1. “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

2. “Every man has two countries: his own and France.” -John F. Kennedy

3. “France has the only two things toward which we drift as we grow older – intelligence and good manners.” –F. Scott Fitzgerald

4. “Here is everything I know about France: Madeline and Amélie and Moulin Rouge.” –Stephanie Perkins

5. “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

6. “I had come to the conclusion that I must really be French, only no one had ever informed me of this fact. I loved the people, the food, the lay of the land, the civilized atmosphere, and the generous pace of life.” -Julia Child

quotes about france

7. “France is like a maddening, moody lover who inspires emotional highs and lows. One minute it fills you with a rush of passion, the next you’re full of fury, itching to smack the mouth of some sneering shopkeeper or smug civil servant. Yes, it’s a love-hate relationship.” –Sarah Turnbull

8. “We gasp at the beauty of the bridges over the Seine and always feel at home when we stop in the middle of one to gaze down at the cottony wake of the Bateaux Mouches. We love the mountain air that refreshes us in the Alps, and the nighttime clouds that eat the stars over the Breton coast. We love to slow down, and France requires us to do so. In France, we find what we are missing.” –Marcia DeSanctis

9. “France is beautiful. I stood at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower today and looked up at it. There are
very few times in my life I’ve felt so small.” –Leisa Rayven

10. “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

quotes about france

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Quotes About Paris

Paris is one of those iconic cities known all over the world. The quaint cafes, the art, the culture, and of course, the many gastronomic restaurants- it is no wonder that millions of people flock here every year. If you’re looking for quotes about Paris to inspire you, look no futher.

11. “A walk about Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty, and in the point of Life.” – Thomas Jefferson

12. “To know Paris is to know a great deal.” – Henry Miller

“Paris is the only city in the world that starving still considered art.” – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

13. “When good Americans die, they go to Paris.” -Oscar Wilde

14. “London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation.” – Gilbert Keith Chesterton

15. “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

16. “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

To read our full article on quotes about Paris, check out this link which features 48+ Paris specifc quotes to help you fall in love with this beautiful city.

quotes about france

17. “Oh, London is a man’s town, there’s power in the air;
And Paris is a woman’s town, with flowers in her hair;
And it’s sweet to dream in Venice, and it’s great to study Rome;
But when it comes to living, there is no place like home.” -Henry Van Dyke

18. “A walk about Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty, and in the point of Life.” – Thomas Jefferson

19. “Whoever does not visit Paris regularly will never really be elegant.” -Honoré de Balzac

20. “Secrets travel fast in Paris.” -Napoleon Bonaparte

21. “Paris is always a good idea.” – Audrey Hepburn

22. “An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.” -Friedrich Nietzsche

23. “To study in Paris is to be born in Paris!” — Victor Hugo

24. “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

25. “I should go to Paris and jump off of the Eiffel Tower. If I took the Concorde, I could be in my next life three hours earlier.” -Woody Allen

26. “A walk about Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty, and in the point of Life.” – Thomas Jefferson

27. “Though I often looked for one, I finally had to admit that there could be no cure for Paris.” — Paula McLain

quotes about france

Quotes about French Culture

The French culture is a very unique one. Centered around “living the good life”, what I love most about the French is their never ending appreciation for good food and wine. Meals in France are an entire affair. Nothing is rushed and every bite is savored. In this section, I walk you through different quotes about France and their fascinating culture.

28. “France is the most civilized country in the world and doesn’t care who knows it” – John Gunther

29. “France is to me the heroine in the romance of all the nations of all time.” –William Arthur Sirmo

30. “The spectacle of this lovely nation, with its great agricultural wealth and its cultural riches , continually stepping on its own toes, made me wonder if France suffered a kind of national neurosis.” –Julia Child

31. “The French air cleans up the brain and does good – a world of good.” – Vincent Van Gogh

32. “You should definitely visit the Louvre, a world-famous art museum where you can view, at close range, the backs of thousands of other tourists trying to see the Mona Lisa.”—Dave Barry

33. “Boy, those French. They have a different word for everything.”—Steve Martin

34. “True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee. But why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large glasses of whiskey I don’t know.”—P.J. O’Rourke

35. “Every Frenchman wants to enjoy one or more privileges; that’s the way he shows his passion for equality.”—Charles de Gaulle

36. “Everyone remembers their first taste of Paris.” –Kristin Hannah

quotes about france

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Quotes about French Food

French food has made waves in the culinary world for years, making it renowned. It is the building block of many culinary methods and styles which is also why it is so iconic.

If you’re looking for fun quotes about the delicious french food, this section is dedicated to just that! A lot of these quotes are mentioned by Julia Child, popular American Cook who mastered the French cuisine.

37. “How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese” – Charles de Gaulle

38. “The best way to execute French cooking is to get good and loaded and whack the hell out of a chicken.”- Julia Child

39. “Once you understand the foundations of cooking – whatever kind you like, whether it’s French or Italian or Japanese – you really don’t need a cookbook anymore.”- Thomas Keller

40. “I still feel that French cooking is the most important in the world, one of the few that has rules. If you follow the rules, you can do pretty well.”- Julia Child

41. “I hate France. It’s like the whole country’s on a diet.” –Gordon Korman

“Cook with butter in the North, olive oil in the South.” –Alain Bremond-Torrent

42. “In France, cooking is a serious art form and a national sport. I think the French enjoy the complication of the art form and the cooking for cooking’s sake. You can talk with a concierge or police officer about food in France as a general rule. It is not the general rule here. Classical cuisine, which I hope we are going back to, means certain ways of doing things and certain ways of not doing things. If you know classical French cooking you can do anything. If you don’t know the basics, you turn out slop.” – Julia Child

quotes about french food

43. “Now nothing is real except French wine.” -Conrad Kent Rivers

44. “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

45. “The flavors melted in my mouth- warm chocolate and melted butter and the flaky sweet crust. This was what I loved about France. A keen appreciation for the simplicity and sweetness of life. The French seemed to savor their minutes along with their food.” –Melanie Dobson

46. “Other countries drink to get drunk, and this is accepted by everyone; in France, drunkenness is a consequence, never an intention. A drink is felt as the spinning out of a pleasure, not as the necessary cause of an effect which is sought: wine is not only a philtre, it is also the leisurely act of drinking.” -Roland Barthes

47. “The tastes of France are changing and we are the last of the banquet.” –Jonathan Grimwood

48. “God, it’s good to be eating in France again.” –Jack Iams

quote about french food

Looking for tips on traveling around France? Click here to read our in-depth guide with tons of France Travel Tips

South of France Quotes

One of my favorite memories of traveling around France is the roadtrip we did in the South of France. There, we visited Nice, Avignon, and so many other small historical villages which we absolutely loved. To me, traveling around the South of France, and the rest of the French countryside gave me a real feel of what France is really like. In this section, I walk you through some of the best quotes about the South of France.

49. “On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera, about had way between Marseilles and the Italian border, stands a large, proud, rose-colored hotel” – F. Scott. Fitzgerald

50. “The easy glamour of the French Riviera in the 1960s – inspired by Rome Schneider’s character in La Piscine – mixed with garden elements. Blueprint, botanical, lattice, Queen Anne’s lace and folly prints are paired with cleaner silhouettes and proportions in a fresh palette of green, white, and coral.” – Tony Burch

51. “No matter what their background, the southern French are fascinated by food.” -Peter Mayle

52. “If you could have walked on the planet before humans lived here, maybe the Ivory Coast would have seemed more beautiful than La Côte d’Azur.” -Dejan Stojanovic

53. “The whole future of art is to be found in the South of France. In fact, if you’re of the creative persuasion, the South of France is the only place to go on holidays as the pace of life will let you relax to the max and the sight of it will both heal your soul and inspire your work.” – Vincent Van Gogh

quotes about france

French Riviera Instagram Captions

The French Riviera is a place that is frequented by the rich and famous. Known for its stunning blue waters, and warm Mediterranean weather, it is no wonder this place is considered paradise on earth. If you’re looking for Instagram captions for France or the French Riviera in general, here are a few of my favorite picks!

54. “The Mediterranean is in my DNA. I’m fine inland for about a week, but then I yearn for a limitless view of the sea, for the colours and smells of the Italian and French Riviera.” -Alain Ducasse

55. “I always say ”morning” instead of ”good morning”. If it was a good morning, I would be on a yacht in Saint-Tropez.” -Unknown

56. “Saint-Tropez has a face glow that is amazing – you can put it on without makeup, and your skin just glows” -Chrissy Teigen

57. “The South of France is one of my favorite places in the world.” -M. Ward

58. “You were never told that Saint-Tropez is paradise?” -Karl Lagerfeld

quotes about france

And there you have it!

A collection of stunning France quotes that will instantly make you fall in love with France! Now on to you. Which one of these quotes did you love the most? Let me know in the comment section below.

If you’re looking for more inspiration, check out our list of other quotes.

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