57 Quotes About France That Will Inspire Your Next Trip

France is a beautiful destination with plenty of places to discover. From enchanting villages like Riquewihr to the stunning Palace of Versailles, it’s a country that doesn’t disappoint. In this post, you will find the most beautiful quotes about France. These can be used to accompany your Instagram pictures or to inspire your next trip.

The captions in this post range from short ones to funny and inspirational ones. And you’ll also find some quotes about France in French, along with their translation, at the end of this post.

I’m always on the lookout for other beautiful quotes to add to this post and am updating it regularly. Feel free to let me know in the comments if you think a beautiful quote is missing from this list!

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Read: What is France Famous for? 26 Interesting Facts

Quotes about France

Short captions about France

1. “My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece.” – Claude Monet

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

3. “I like France, where everybody thinks he’s Napoleon.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

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

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

6. “In France, cooking is a serious art form and a national sport.” – Julia Child

7. “If the French were really intelligent, they’d speak English.” – Wilfrid Sheed

8. “In France, history is paralyzing.” – Jean Paul Gaultier

9. “I like Ireland because it means I’m near France.” – Harry Harrison

Inspirational quotes about France

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

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

12. “It is not what France gave you but what it did not take from you that is important.” – Gertrude Stein

13. “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

14. “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

15. “I just love France, I love French people, I love the French language, I love French food. I love their mentality. I just feel like it’s me. I’m very French.” – Olga Kurylenko

16. “I love France. It’s got the sun down at the bottom, the alps for skiing, and all that wine and food.” – Paul Hollywood

17. “It’s really a drag to sit around when you’re old, and think, ‘Ah, gee, I never went to France.’ Go to France. Life is very short; you’ve got to pack it all in there.” – Grace Slick

18. “I wanted to get far away from those who believed in cruelty, so then I went to France, a land of true freedom, democracy, equality and fraternity.” – Josephine Baker

19. “In France, they call the beauty of youth ‘the evil beauty.’ You don’t have it because of you but because you’re born with it. The other kind of beauty is your own work, and it takes forever.” – Monica Bellucci

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

21. “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

22. “I knew no one in France, I was utterly ignorant of the language, I did not know what I should do when once there; but I was not yet one-and-twenty, and I had a great stock of courage, of inexperience—which is sometimes a great help—and a strong desire to be my very best.” – David McCullough

Funny quotes about France

23. “How can anyone govern a nation that has 240 different kinds of cheese?” – Charles de Gaulle

24. “If it were not for the government, we should have nothing to laugh at in France.” – Nicolas Chamfort

25. “I love the French language… it’s a delightful language, especially to curse with. It’s like whopping your ass with silk.” – Oscar Wilde

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

27. “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

28. “France is the only country where the money falls apart and you can’t tear the toilet paper.” – Billy Wilder

29. “Maybe it can’t be proven statistically, but it’s a safe bet that any given American on his or her first trip to France will at some point remark with indignation that he or she had thought the French were supposed to be so polite. – Jack Iams

30. “I have been in Paris for almost a week and I have not heard anyone say calories, or cholesterol, or even arterial plaque. The French do not season their food with regret.” – Mary-Lou Weisman

31. “Every year there’s a jury at the Cannes Film Festival. Getting on the jury is very competitive in France. Not because the French love cinema, but because they love to judge.” – Craig Ferguson

32. “France is a country that loves to change government as long as it is always the same.” – Honoré de Balzac

Other quotes about France

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

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

35. “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

36. “France has a clear and define policy… the French know what they want.” – Anton Chekov

37. “France may be the only country in the world where the rich are sometimes brilliant.” – Lillian Hellman

38. “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 Paris, France

Paris is one of the most famous cities in the world and since there are so many quotes about this city, I wrote an entire post about them: 86 Best Quotes About Paris to Inspire Your Next Trip.

You can find some of the most famous ones below.

39. “Breathe Paris in. It nourishes the soul.” – Victor Hugo

40. “I cannot tell you what an immense impression Paris made upon me. It is the most extraordinary place in the world.” – Charles Dickens

41. “As an artist, a man has no home in Europe except in Paris.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

42. “Paris is not a city, it’s a world.” – King Francois I

43. “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

44. “We’ll always have Paris.” – Howard Koc

45. “I want to be adopted by the French. I want to go live in Paris.” – Asia Argento

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

47. “That Paris exists, and anyone could choose to live anywhere else in the world will always be a mystery to me.” – Midnight in Paris

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

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

50. “Whoever does not visit Paris regularly will never be elegant.” – Honoré de Balzac

51. “…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

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

Captions about France in French

53. “La France est le coeur du monde.” – Portuguese proverb
“France is the heart of the world”

54. “Je veux vivre en France” – Unknown
“I want to live in France.”

55. “La France – le plus beaux royaume après celui du ciel.” – Grotius
“France – the most beautiful kingdom after heaven.”

56. “La France ne peut être la France sans la grandeur.” – Charles de Gaulle
“France cannot be France without grandeur.”

57. “En France, on n’a que trois spécialités: la litérature, la fesse et la bouffe.” – Michel Audiard
“In France, we only have three specialities: literature, the behind and food.”

Quotes about France – Final thoughts

And voila, these were the best quotes about France and the French! I hope you have found exactly what you were looking for and that these captions will inspire your next trip.

Don’t hesitate to let me know if you think a beautiful quote is missing. I’m updating this post frequently.

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