De Paris Quotes & Sayings

The great correspondent of the seventeenth century Madame de Sevigne counseled, "Take chocolate in order that even the most tireome company seem acceptable to you," which is also sound advice today! — Barrie Kerper

I've lived in London, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, New York, and Turin. But New York is my favorite city. It has so much energy, so much toughness. — Lapo Elkann

Chapter One The weather in Paris was unusually warm as Peter Haskell's plane landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport. The plane taxied neatly to the gate, and a few minutes later, briefcase in hand, Peter was striding through the airport. He was almost smiling as he got on the customs line, despite the heat of the day and the number of people crowding ahead of him in line. Peter Haskell loved Paris. He generally traveled to Europe — Danielle Steel

We have the sort of beautiful older woman here in Paris. People like Loulou de la Falaise and Betty Catroux, all these beautiful looking women over 60 ... So there is culture here in France that even if you are older, you can stay beautiful. — Carine Roitfeld

I go to Paris, I go to London, I go to Rome, and I always say, 'There's no place like New York. It's the most exciting city in the world now. That's the way it is. That's it.' — Robert De Niro

In Paris, I found myself surrounded by Germans; they were all over the place. They played music, and people would go and listen to them! All along rue de Rivoli, as far as you could see from place de la Concorde, there were enormous swastika banners five or six floors high. I just thought, This is impossible.
Imagine that someone comes into your home - someone you don't like - he settles down, gives orders: "Here we are, we're at home now; you must obey." To me that was unbearable. — Pearl Witherington Cornioley

The monotony of provincial life attracts the attention of people to the kitchen. You do not dine as luxuriously in the provinces as in Paris, but you dine better, because the dishes serve you are the result of mediation and study. — Honore De Balzac

In Paris extremes are made to meet by passion. Vice is constantly binding the rich to the poor, the great to the mean. — Honore De Balzac

New York is more exciting, I guess, than even Paris or London. New York's the center of something; I don't know what, really - the center of a lot of things. With all its problems and chaos and craziness, it's still a great place to live. I can't see myself living anywhere else. — Robert De Niro

Paris, as always, is swarming with Americans, and these days, it's also swarming with hamburgers. Oddly, though, it's not typically the Americans who are pursuing the perfect burger on the perfect bun with the obligatory side of perfect coleslaw; the Americans are pursuing the perfect blanquette de veau. — Robert Gottlieb

The fashions we call English in Paris are French in London, and vice versa. Franco-British hostility vanishes when it comes to questions of words and clothing. God save the King is a tune composed by Lully for a chorus in a play by Racine. — Honore De Balzac

The fascinated loathing which he (Jean Lorrain) cultivated for the decadence of fin de siecle Paris has a good deal of envy and ardent desire in it; in the words of Hubert Juin, he 'loved his epoch to the point of detestation.'

(Introduction: "The Life And Career Of Jean Lorrain) — Francis Amery

The weather in Paris was unusually warm as Peter Haskell's plane landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport. The plane taxied neatly to the gate, and a few minutes later, briefcase in hand, Peter was striding through the airport. He was almost smiling as he got on the customs line, despite the heat of the day and the number of people crowding ahead of him in line. Peter Haskell loved Paris. — Danielle Steel

I'm a really big advocate of ethical fashion. I actually have a travelling boutique called Maison de Mode, which is all about ethical fashion. I also like Maiyet from Paris. They're very Celine-esque in their silhouettes. I love their back story, too: they work with orphans in Colombia and India. — Amanda Hearst

I think London, New York, Paris, Milan, any big city has its own fashion. I don't know why they make such a big thing of Paris. I think maybe it comes from French New Wave films portraying the French girl as very feminine. — Josephine De La Baume

One day, about the middle of July 1838, one of the carriages, lately introduced to Paris cabstands, and known as Milords, was driving down the Rue de l'Universite, conveying a stout man of middle height in the uniform of a captain of the National Guard. — Honore De Balzac

At one time, you could sit on the Rue de la Paix in Paris or at the Habima Theater in Tel Aviv or in Medina and you could see a person come in, black, white, it didn't matter. You said, 'That's an American' because there's a readiness to smile and to talk to people. — Maya Angelou

I love the night passionately. I love it as I love my country, or my mistress, with an instinctive, deep, and unshakeable love. I love it with all my senses: I love to see it, I love to breathe it in, I love to open my ears to its silence, I love my whole body to be caressed by its blackness. Skylarks sing in the sunshine, the blue sky, the warm air, in the fresh morning light. The owl flies by night, a dark shadow passing through the darkness; he hoots his sinister, quivering hoot, as though he delights in the intoxicating black immensity of space. — Guy De Maupassant

Does anyone know where these gondolas of Paris come from?
[Fr., Ne sait on pas ou viennent ces gondoles Parisiennes?] — Honore De Balzac

The facts of religion were convincing only to those who were already convinced. — Simone De Beauvoir

This is what you do on your very first day in Paris. You get yourself, not a drizzle, but some honest-to-goodness rain, and you find yourself someone really nice and drive her through the Bois de Boulogne in a taxi. The rain's very important. That's when Paris smells its sweetest. It's the damp chestnut trees. — Audrey Hepburn

If you want to establish an international presence you can't do so from New York. You need the consecration of Paris. — Oscar De La Renta

It could be Paris. It could be Rio de Janeiro. It could be anywhere but home: someplace, anyplace, disorienting enough to make him notice what he wouldn't otherwise see. (The medicinal benefits of disorientation can never be overestimated.) — Bill Buford

Whoever does not visit Paris regularly will never really be elegant. — Honore De Balzac

A Dominican monk, Father Henri Didon, used it as a watchword for his pupils in sports at Arcueil College in Paris. Baron Pierre De Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics, made it the Olympic Games ideal adopted at the Antwerp Games in 1920. I never mentioned winning to my players. I mentioned constantly that all I wanted them to do was the best they could. If they're good enough, the score will be to their liking; if they're not, it won't be but that's nothing to hang their head about. Sometimes the other fellow is just better than you are. — John Wooden

THE original Alexandre Dumas was born in 1762, the son of "Antoine Alexandre de l'Isle," in the French sugar colony of Saint-Domingue. Antoine was a nobleman in hiding from his family and from the law, and he fathered the boy with a black slave. Later Antoine would discard his alias and reclaim his real name and title - Alexandre Antoine Davy, the Marquis de la Pailleterie - and bring his black son across the ocean to live in pomp and luxury near Paris. — Tom Reiss

The episcopal palace was a huge and beautiful house, built of stone at the beginning of the last century by M. Henri Puget, Doctor of Theology of the Faculty of Paris, Abbe of Simore, who had been Bishop of D - in 1712. This palace was a genuine seignorial residence. Everything about it had a grand air, - the apartments of the Bishop, the drawing-rooms, the chambers, the principal courtyard, which was very large, with walks encircling it under arcades in the old Florentine fashion, and gardens planted with magnificent trees. In the dining-room, a long and superb gallery which was situated on the ground-floor and opened on the gardens, M. Henri Puget had entertained in state, on July 29, 1714, My Lords Charles Brulart de Genlis, archbishop; Prince — Victor Hugo

Astrid," Linda called, her feet tucked under herself on the flower-print couch. "If you had a choice between two weeks in Paris France, all expenses paid, or a car - "
"Shitty Buick," Debby interjected.
"What's wrong with a Buick?" Marvel said.
" - which would you take?" Linda picked something out of the corner of her eye with a long press-on nail.
I brought their drinks, suppressing the desire to limp theatrically, the deformed servant, and fit all the glasses into hands without spilling. They couldn't be serious. Paris? My Paris? Elegant fruit shops and filterless Gitanes, dark woolen coats, the Bois de Boulogne? "Take the car," I said. "Definitely. — Janet Fitch

It's pronounced wee but spelled O-U-I. It's all you'll want to say when you're sitting at one of the thousands of little cafes that line the streets and you're looking at a menu full of foods you just want to eat for days. And then you wake up early, and the sun is rising in shades of pink over the white buildings as you make your way through the sleepy streets until you're upon the fresh markets! — Giada De Laurentiis

It was necessary that I leave Schruns and go to New York to rearrange publishers. I did my business in
New York and when I got back to Paris I should have caught the first train from the Gare de 1'Est that would take me down to Austria. But the girl I was in love with was in Paris then, and I did not take the first train, or the second or the third. — Ernest Hemingway,

We went back to the Ritz bar and Scriassine ordered two whiskies. I liked the taste; it was something different. And as for Scriassine, he, too, had the advantage of beinh new to me. The whole evening had been been unexpected, and it seemed to emit an ancient frangrance of youth. Long ago there had been nights that were unlike others; you would meet unknown people who would say unexpected thing. And, occasionally, something would happen. So many things had happened in the last five years - to the world, to Frnace, to Paris, to others. But not to me. Would nothing ever happen to me again? — Simone De Beauvoir

The air of Paris is quite different from any other. There's something about it which thrills and excites and intoxicates you, and in some strange way makes you want to dance and do all sorts of other silly things. As soon as I get out of the train, it's just as if I had drunk a bottle of champagne. What a time one could have surrounded by artists! How happy those lucky people must be, the great men who have made a name in a city like Paris! What a wonderful life they have! — Guy De Maupassant

One of the first things that greet your eye in Rouen is the beautiful monument erected to Flaubert in the very wall of the Museum, which is Rouen's holy of holies. Just across from him, in front of a dense cluster of sycamores, is his friend and pupil Guy de Maupassant. The Maupassant statue at rouen is, I think, quite as impressive as that in Paris - perhaps more so - and it is even more happily placed. Besides there is something very fitting in the idea of commemorating together the master and the pupil who surpassed him. — Willa Cather

Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half. — Charles De Montesquieu

In the '60s when I was a student, there was this campaign to destroy 75 percent of the old buildings in Paris, replacing them with modern architecture. I realized this as a dangerous utopia. This modern vision did not understand the richness of the city. Thankfully, such destruction did not happen. — Christian De Portzamparc

Lance Armstrong showed up, and I started talking to him; I saw all these people with cancer who followed him to Paris for the Tour de France, and I saw the difference he was making in their lives. That put it together for me ... having it be not so much about me, but [my being] a vehicle for it. — Michael J. Fox

I'm very Belgian, and I will die Belgian. I just have my house in the north of France because I began my career in Paris, even though I don't live there anymore. — Cecile De France

The wrought-iron gate squeaked as Lucas opened it. He lowered the rented bike down the stone steps and onto the sidewalk. To his right was the most famous Globe Hotel in Paris, disguised under another name. In front of the entrance five Curukians sat on mopeds. Lu-cas and his eighteen-month-old friend then shot out across the street and through the invisible beam of an-other security camera.
He rode diagonally across the place de la Concorde and headed toward the river. It seemed only natural. The motorcycles trailed him. He pedaled fast across the Alex-andre III bridge and zipped past Les Invalides hospital. He tried to turn left at the Rodin Museum, but Goper rode next to him, blocking his escape. — Paul Aertker

In Paris every man must have had a love affair. What woman wants something that no other woman ever wanted. — Honore De Balzac

- Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position? - c'est le pigeon, Joseph. Patrice, home on furlough, lapped warm milk with me in the bar MacMahon. Son of the wild goose, Kevin Egan of Paris. My father's a bird, he lapped the sweet lait chaud with pink young tongue, plump bunny's face. Lap, lapin. He hopes to win in the gros lots. About the nature of women he read in Michelet. But he must send me La Vie de Jesus by M. Leo Taxil. Lent it to his friend. - C'est tordant, vous savez. Moi, je suis socialiste. Je ne crois pas en l'existence de Dieu. Faut pas le dire a mon p-re. - Il croit? - Mon pere, oui. — James Joyce

I love as you come into Paris, you've got the Arch de Triomphe and all that crazy traffic. Then I love the drive from Paris down to Antibes and you veer off east in through the Alps and you come into the south of France on the mountain road as opposed to the freeway. — Luke Goss

In Paris, when certain people see you ready to set your foot in the stirrup, some pull your coat-tails, others loosen the buckle of the strap that you may fall and crack your skull; one wrenches off your horse's shoes, another steals your whip, and the least treacherous of them all is the man whom you see coming to fire his pistol at you point blank. — Honore De Balzac

Paris is in a tranquil state; the infernal cabal that besieges me appears guided by foreigners. This idea consoles me, for nothing is so painful as being persecuted by one's own fellow-citizens. — Marquis De Lafayette

I learned to read at the age of five, in Brother Justiniano's class at the De la Salle Academy in Cochabamba, Bolivia. It is the most important thing that has ever happened to me. Almost seventy years later I remember clearly how the magic of translating the words in books into images enriched my life, breaking the barriers of time and space and allowing me to travel with Captain Nemo twenty thousand leagues under the sea, fight with d'Artagnan, Athos, Portos, and Aramis against the intrigues threatening the Queen in the days of the secretive Richelieu, or stumble through the sewers of Paris, transformed into Jean Valjean carrying Marius's inert body on my back. — Mario Vargas-Llosa

Each region of Paris is celebrated for the interesting treasures which are to be found there. There are ear-wigs in the timber-yards of the Ursulines, there are millepeds in the Pantheon, there are tadpoles in the ditches of the Champs-de-Mars. — Victor Hugo

To have one's mother-in-law in the country when one lives in Paris, and vice versa, is one of those strokes of luck that one encounters only too rarely. — Honore De Balzac

Over a quarter of a century ago she and Vernon had made a household for almost a year, in a tiny rooftop flat on the rue de Seine. There were always damp towels on the floor then, and cataracts of her underwear tumbling from drawers she never closed, a big ironing board that was never folded away, and in the one overfilled wardrobe dresses , crushed and shouldering sideways like commuters on the metro. Magazines, makeup, bank statements, bead necklaces, flowers, knickers, ashtrays, invitations, tampons, LPs, airplane tickets, high heeled shoes- not a single surface was left uncovered by something of Molly's, so that when Vernon was meant to be working at home, he took to writing in a cafe along the street. And yet each morning she arose fresh from the shell of this girly squalor, like a Botticelli Venus, to present herself, not naked, of course, but sleekly groomed, at the offices of Paris Vogue. — Ian McEwan

A mountain in labour shouted so loud that everyone, summoned by the noise, ran up expecting that she would be delivered of a city bigger than Paris; she brought forth a mouse. — Jean De La Fontaine

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

"Naming Tokyo" kicked off at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in June, and it's going to travel to various art institutions for years to come. Every time it is shown, I'm developing the research and involving more and more people in it. The final conclusion of the work would eventually be to put up street signs in Tokyo with my names on them. — Aleksandra Mir

Suicide, moreover, was at the time in vogue in Paris: what more suitable key to the mystery of life for a skeptical society? — Honore De Balzac

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

Give a Paris woman at bay four-and-twenty hours, and she will overthrow a ministry. — Honore De Balzac

Will anyone understand it outside Paris? That is open to doubt. The special features of this scene, full of local colour and observations, can only be appreciated in the area lying between the heights of Montmartre and the hills of Montrouge, in that illustrious valley of flaking plasterwork and gutters black with mud; a valley full of suffering that is real, and of joy that is often false, where life is so hectic that it takes something quite extraordinary to produce feelings that last. — Honore De Balzac

Disputing about those already made. I therefore never answered M. Nollet, and the event gave me no cause to repent my silence; for my friend M. le Roy, of the Royal Academy of Sciences, took up my cause and refuted him; my book was translated into the Italian, German, and Latin languages; and the doctrine it contain'd was by degrees universally adopted by the philosophers of Europe, in preference to that of the abbe; so that he lived to see himself the last of his sect, except Monsieur B
, of Paris, his eleve and immediate disciple. What gave my book the more sudden and general celebrity, was the success of one of its proposed experiments, made by Messrs. Dalibard and De Lor at Marly, for drawing — Benjamin Franklin

Almost halfway down the aisle, she saw someone she wasn't expecting, and she almost stumbled on her satin heels.
Kingsley Martin stood at the end of a pew, his arms crossed. He was wearing a tuxedo as well. Just like any other guest. What was he doing here? He was supposed to be in Paris! He was supposed to be gone!
He looked directly at Mimi.
She heard his voice loud and clear in her head. Leave him.
Why should I? What do you promise me?
Nothing. And everything. A life of danger and adventure. A chance to be
yourself. Leave him. Come with me. — Melissa De La Cruz

She was beautiful and lithe, with soft skin the color of bread and eyes like green almonds, and she had straight black hair that reached to her shoulders, and an aura of antiquity that could just as well have been Indonesian as Andean. She was dressed with subtle taste: a lynx jacket, a raw silk blouse with very delicate flowers, natural linen trousers, and shoes with a narrow stripe the color of bougainvillea. 'This is the most beautiful woman I've ever seen,' I thought, when I saw her pass by with the stealthy stride of a lioness, while I waited in the check-in line at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris for the plane to New York. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The country is provincial; it becomes ridiculous when it tries to ape Paris. — Honore De Balzac

The Victorian language of flowers began with the publication of 'Le Language des Fleurs,' written by Charlotte de Latour and printed in Paris in 1819. To create the book - which was a list of flowers and their meanings - de Latour gathered references to flower symbolism throughout poetry, ancient mythology, and even medicine. — Vanessa Diffenbaugh

Another well-known Paris landmark is the Arc de Triomphe, a moving monument to the many brave women and men who have died trying to visit it. — Dave Barry

I'd love to follow the Tour de France one day. It's a really exciting spectacle. I've only seen it once as it was coming into Paris and that was very exciting for me. I have memories of that. — Bryan Ferry

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

One never sees Paris for the first time; one always sees it again ... — Edmondo De Amicis

But again that sense of peace descended, that spell of perfect happiness, and I was traveling back through the years to the little French church of my childhood as the hymns began. Through my tears I saw the shining altar. I saw the icon of the Virgin, a gleaming square of gold above the flowers; I heard the Aves whispered as if they were a charm. Under the arches of Notre Dame de Paris I heard the priests singing Salve Regina. — Anne Rice

At night I would climb the steps to the Sacre-Coeur, and I would watch Paris, that futile oasis, scintillating in the wilderness of space. I would weep, because it was so beautiful, and because it was so useless. — Simone De Beauvoir

A hundred years after his death, a statue of Lavoisier was erected in Paris and much admired until someone pointed out that it looked nothing like him. Under questioning the sculptor admitted that he had used the head of the mathematician and philosopher the Marquis de Condorcet - apparently he had a spare - in the hope that no one would notice or, having noticed, would care. In the second regard he was correct. The statue of Lavoisier-cum- Condorcet was allowed to remain in place for another half century until the Second World War when, one morning, it was taken away and melted down for scrap. — Bill Bryson

I wholeheartedly welcomed Charles de Gaulle eulogy of French valour, to which he attributed the liberation of Paris. — Coco Chanel

I see myself as quite feminine. But many people seem to think differently about that; sometimes people mistake me for a man. In Paris I often hear 'bonjour monsieur'. — Saskia De Brauw

In Paris, the greatest expression of personal satisfaction known to man is the smirk on the face of a male, highly pleased with himself as he leaves the boudoir of a lady. — Honore De Balzac

Have you ever taken a good look at a public garbage can in Paris, a paving stone in Rio de Janeiro, or a doorway in Dublin? Trust me -- the man or woman responsible for making those utilitarian objects was creating art. — Shawn Coyne

There were office-worn gents with yellow faces, bent backs, and one shoulder set slightly higher than the other from spending hours hunched over desks. And their sad, anxious faces spoke volumes about their domestic troubles, never-ending money worries, and all those old hopes which had been dashed for good; for they all belonged to the army of poor threadbare drudges who just about make ends meet in some dismal plasterboard house with a flowerbed for a garden in the rubbish-and-slag-heap belt on the outskirts of Paris. — Guy De Maupassant

I always loved bulbs, and I use light a lot in my shows. In my office in Paris, I have 300 bulbs. — Alexandre De Betak

In 1980, business at my company, Chuck E. Cheese's, was thriving and I was feeling flush. So I bought a very large house on the Champ de Mars in Paris, right between the Eiffel Tower and the Ecole Militaire. The home was quite amazing: At six stories, it spanned 15,000 square feet and featured marble staircases and a swimming pool in the basement. — Nolan Bushnell

I have heard Silvius, an excellent physician of Paris, say that lest the digestive faculties of the stomach should grow idle, it were not amiss once a month to rouse them by this excess, and to spur them lest they should grow dull and rusty; and one author tells us that the Persians used to consult about their most
important affairs after being well warmed with wine. — Michel De Montaigne

My roots are in Paris, and I will not pull them up. — Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

All the buildings lining rue de Conservatoire are constructed of cream marble or limestone. When I went outside today, the sky was pale and fierce, on the very cusp of rain. From the top of the church and the conservatory, the contrast was almost imperceptible, as if marble and air danced cheek to cheek. — Eloisa James

By nature independent, gay, even exuberant, seductively responsive and given to those spontaneous sallies that sparkle in the conversation of certain daughters of Paris who seem to have inhaled since childhood the pungent breath of the boulevards laden with the nightly laughter of audiences leaving theaters, Madame de Burne's five years of bondage had nonetheless endowed her with a singular timidity which mingled oddly with her youthful mettle, a great fear of saying too much, of going to far, along with a fierce yearning for emancipation and a firm resolve never again to compromise her freedom. — Guy De Maupassant

Since 2000, I've been based in Paris at the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville, curating the programme there. Internationally, it's a very open situation that goes beyond national boundaries; directors and curators move from one country to another, which has opened up the museum landscape. — Hans Ulrich Obrist

Descartes' Meditations; doubt rise and results in clear and distinct ideas. all in the mind and all innate. Spinoza bakes the best cake, love God intellectually. Oh! God, he should have stuck to polishing glasses or gotten married. Then dear Philosopher we what mettle your are of. Soren Kierkgaard is the king of leer; life is a disease unto death, he proclaimed till death claimed him early. And Nietzche? following Schopenhauer's Superman- was nursed by his sister despite crying foul of the female race and died a wreck man. All theory no practice. Sartre was better , loyal to Simon De ... Both lay next to each other in Paris, witout marrying. — Aporva Kala

I like Paris. They don't talk so much of money, but more of sex — Vera De Bosset

Virtue, my pet, is an abstract idea, varying in its manifestations with the surroundings. Virtue in Provence, in Constantinople, in London, and in Paris bears very different fruit, but is none the less virtue. — Honore De Balzac

I never rebel so much against France as not to regard Paris with a friendly eye; she has had my heart since my childhood ... I love her tenderly, even to her warts and her spots. I am French only by this great city: the glory of France, and one of the noblest ornaments of the world. — Michel De Montaigne

I used to ask myself, 'Sergei, would you rather spend your money on drink or women?' and thanks to the club, I spend it on both and am called a patron of the arts. — Melika Dannese Lux