37 Inspiring French Quotes

When it comes to expressing profound thoughts and emotions, the French language shines with its elegance and depth. French literature and philosophy have gifted the world with timeless quotes that inspire reflection, passion, and a zest for life. In this collection, we delve into 37 inspiring French quotes that capture the beauty of the human experience, offering wisdom and encouragement in moments of reflection. Whether you are a Francophile, a lover of languages, or simply seeking inspiration, these quotes will stir your soul and kindle your imagination. Join us as we explore these gems of French eloquence and the universal truths they convey.

1. “There is only one cure for grey hair. It was invented by a Frenchman. It is called the guillotine.” - Wodehouse

2. “I did not want to be taken for a fool – the typical French reason for performing the worst of deeds without remorse.” - Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly

3. “Ceux qui revent eveilles ont conscience de 1000 choses qui echapent a ceux qui ne revent qu'endormis.The one who has day dream are aware of 1000 things that the one who dreams only when he sleeps will never understand.(it sounds better in french, I do what I can with my translation...)” - Edgar Allan Poe

4. “On ne se souvient pas des jours, on se souvient des instants.” - Cesare Pavese

5. “Etre dans le vent, c'est avoir le destin des feuilles mortes.” - Jean Guitton

6. “J'ai toujours préféré la folie des passions à la sagesse de l'indifférence.” - Anatole France

7. “The only French word I know is oui, which means “yes,” and only recently did I learn it’s spelled o-​u-​i and not w-​e-​e.” - Stephanie Perkins

8. “Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to speak French.” - P.G. Wodehouse

9. “What's the trick to remembering that a sandwich is masculine? What qualities does it share with anyone in possession of a penis? I'll tell myself that a sandwich is masculine because if left alone for a week or two, it will eventually grow a beard.” - David Sedaris

10. “Almost anything is edible with a dab of French mustard on it.” - Nigel Slater

11. “Adieu, mon cher vieux. Relis et rebûche ton conte. Laisse-le reposer et reprends-le, les livres ne se font pas comme les enfants, mais comme les pyramides, avec un dessin prémédité, et en apportant des grands blocs l´un par-dessus l´autre, à force de reins, de temps et de sueur, et ça ne sert à rien! et ça reste dans le désert! mais en le dominant prodigieusement. Les chacals pissent au bas et les bourgeois montent dessus, etc.; continue la comparaison.” - Gustave Flaubert

12. “An old walrus-faced waiter attended to me; he had the knack of pouring the coffee and the hot milk from two jugs, held high in the air, and I found this entrancing, as if he were a child's magician. One day he said to me - he had some English - "Why are you sad?""I'm not sad," I said, and began to cry. Sympathy from strangers can be ruinous."You should not be sad," he said, gazing at me with his melancholy, leathery walrus eyes. "It must be the love. But you are young and pretty, you will have time to be sad later." The French are connoisseurs of sadness, they know all the kinds. This is why they have bidets. "It is criminal, the love," he said, patting my shoulder. "But none is worse.” - Margaret Atwood

13. “The scent of him was subtle, beautifully fresh, and she couldn’t think clearly. No man had ever brought out these intense feelings in her. Chris Augustine was dangerous and she could get lost in his arms.” - Suzan Battah

14. “Deux choses sont infinies : l’Univers et la bêtise humaine. Mais, en ce qui concerne l’Univers, je n’en ai pas encore acquis la certitude absolue.” - Albert Einstein

15. “I transform "Work" in its analytic meaning (the Work of Mourning, the Dream-Work) into the real "Work" - of writing.) for: the "Work" by which (it is said) we emerge from the great crises (love, grief) cannot be liquidated hastily: for me, it is accomplished only in and by writing.” - Roland Barthes

16. “ma chère penchons sur les filons géologiques (my dear let us lean on geographical veins)” - Aimé Césaire

17. “I have not been able to discover whether there exists a precise French equivalent for the common Anglo-American expression 'killing time.' It's a very crass and breezy expression, when you ponder it for a moment, considering that time, after all, is killing us.” - Christopher Hitchens

18. “Kilmartin wrote a highly amusing and illuminating account of his experience as a Proust revisionist, which appeared in the first issue of Ben Sonnenberg's quarterly Grand Street in the autumn of 1981. The essay opened with a kind of encouragement: 'There used to be a story that discerning Frenchmen preferred to read Marcel Proust in English on the grounds that the prose of A la recherche du temps perdu was deeply un-French and heavily influenced by English writers such as Ruskin.' I cling to this even though Kilmartin thought it to be ridiculous Parisian snobbery; I shall never be able to read Proust in French, and one's opportunities for outfacing Gallic self-regard are relatively scarce.” - Christopher Hitchens

19. “I was deeply interested in the little family history which he detailed to me with all that candor which a Frenchman indulges whenever mere self is the theme.” - Edgar Allan Poe

20. “That’s the key, you know, confidence. I know for a fact that if you genuinely like your body, so can others. It doesn’t really matter if it’s short, tall, fat or thin, it just matters that you can find some things to like about it. Even if that means having a good laugh at the bits of it that wobble independently, occasionally, that’s all right. It might take you a while to believe me on this one, lots of people don’t because they seem to suffer from self-hatred that precludes them from imagining that a big woman could ever love herself because they don’t. But I do. I know what I’ve got is a bit strange and difficult to love but those are the very aspects that I love the most! It’s a bit like people. I’ve never been particularly attracted to the uniform of conventional beauty. I’m always a bit suspicious of people who feel compelled to conform. I personally like the adventure of difference. And what’s beauty, anyway?” - Dawn French

21. “But genius, and even great talent, springs less from seeds of intellect and social refinement superior to those of other people than from the faculty of transforming and transposing them. To heat a liquid with an electric lamp requires not the strongest lamp possible, but one of which the current can cease to illuminate, can be diverted so as to give heat instead of light. To mount the skies it is not necessary to have the most powerful of motors, one must have a motor which, instead of continuing to run along the earth's surface, intersecting with a vertical line the horizontal line which it began by following, is capable of converting its speed into lifting power. Similarly, the men who produce works of genius are not those who live in the most delicate atmosphere, whose conversation is the most brilliant or their culture the most extensive, but those who have had the power, ceasing suddenly to live only for themselves, to transform their personality into a sort of mirror, in such a way that their life, however mediocre it may be socially and even, in a sense, intellectually, is reflected by it, genius consisting in reflecting power and not int he intrinsic quality of the scene reflected.” - Marcel Proust

22. “Donc, il faudra que je meure et flotte comme écume sur la mer et n'entende jamais plus la musique des vagues, ne voit plus les fleurs ravissantes et le rouge soleil. Ne puis-je rien faire pour gagner une vie éternelle?” - Hans Christian Andersen

23. “His tightly fitting jeans were unmistakably French.” - Francine Pascal

24. “I know of no other place that is so fascinating yet so frustrating, so aware of the world and its own place within it but at the same time utterly insular. A country touched by nostalgia, with a past so great - so marked by brilliance and achievement - that French people today seem both enriched and burdened by it. 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

25. “For Sayonara, literally translated, 'Since it must be so,' of all the good-bys I have heard is the most beautiful. Unlike the Auf Wiedershens and Au revoirs, it does not try to cheat itself by any bravado 'Till we meet again,' any sedative to postpone the pain of separation. It does not evade the issue like the sturdy blinking Farewell. Farewell is a father's good-by. It is - 'Go out in the world and do well, my son.' It is encouragement and admonition. It is hope and faith. But it passes over the significance of the moment; of parting it says nothing. It hides its emotion. It says too little. While Good-by ('God be with you') and Adios say too much. They try to bridge the distance, almost to deny it. Good-by is a prayer, a ringing cry. 'You must not go - I cannot bear to have you go! But you shall not go alone, unwatched. God will be with you. God's hand will over you' and even - underneath, hidden, but it is there, incorrigible - 'I will be with you; I will watch you - always.' It is a mother's good-by. But Sayonara says neither too much nor too little. It is a simple acceptance of fact. All understanding of life lies in its limits. All emotion, smoldering, is banked up behind it. But it says nothing. It is really the unspoken good-by, the pressure of a hand, 'Sayonara.” - Anne Morrow Lindbergh

26. “The French doctor - the French, they are a very logical race and make good doctors - says: "M'sieu, they have all been on the wrong track - ("Jane Brown's Body")” - Cornell Woolrich

27. “Ça va. Nap time is over.” - Nenia Campbell

28. “Delight is délice, délit is a misdemeanour''Well, it's bloody close...''Well, they often are....” - Alan Hollinghurst

29. “The French always make our sort happy because, like us, they know how to love, they're just as good at playing the accordion, and they've made a real art of their inability to bake proper bread.” - Saša Stanišić

30. “It was not the way Curve smelled that Colin liked - not exactly. It was the way the air smelled just as Lindsey began to jog away from him. The smell of perfume left behind. There's not a word for that in English, but Colin knew the French word: sillage. What Colin liked about Curve was not its smell on the skin but its sillage, the fruity sweet smell of its leaving.” - John Green

31. “Que les poètes morts laissent la place aux autres. Et nous pourrions tout de même voir que c'est notre vénération devant ce qui a été déjà fait, si beau et si valable que ce soit, qui nous pétrifie, qui nous stabilise et nous empêche de prendre contact avec la force qui est dessous, que l'on appelle l'énergie pensante, la force vitale, le déterminisme des échanges, les menstrues de la lune ou tout ce qu'on voudra.” - Antonin Artaud

32. “Je ne regrette rein.” - Christina Lauren

33. “Je suis à toi.” - Christina Lauren

34. “Une lutte qui semble perdue, est la plus excitante.” - Jacques Tardi

35. “En la forest de Longue Attentechevauchant par divers sentiersm'en voys, ceste année présenteoù voyage de Desiriers.Devant sont aller mes fourrierspour appareiller mon logisen la Cité de Destinée.Et pout mon cœur et moy ont prisl'ostellerie de Pensée.Dedans mon livre de penséej'ay trouvé escripvant mon cœurla vraie histoire de douleurde larmes toute enluminée.In het Woud van Lang Verwachtente paard op pad, dolenderwijs,zie ik mijzelf dit jaar bij machtetot Verlangens' verre reis.Mijn knechtstoet is vooruitgegaanom 't nachtverblijf vast te bereiden,vond in Bestemming's Stad gereedvoor dit mijn hart, en mij ons beiden,de herberg, die Gedachte heet.In 't boek van mijn gepeinzen alvond ik dan, schrijvende, mijn hart;het waar verhaal van bitt're smartverlucht met tranen zonder tal.Charles d'Orléans” - Hella S. Haasse

36. “The West is a civilization that has survived all the prophecies of its collapse with a singular stratagem. Just as the bourgeoisie had to deny itself as a class in order to permit the bourgeoisification of society as a whole, from the worker to the baron; just as capital had to sacrifice itself as a wage relation in order to impose itself as a social relation—becoming cultural capital and health capital in addition to finance capital; just as Christianity had to sacrifice itself as a religion in order to survive as an affective structure—as a vague injunction to humility, compassion, and weakness; so the West has sacrificed itself as a particular civilization in order to impose itself as a universal culture. The operation can be summarized like this: an entity in its death throes sacrifices itself as a content in order to survive as a form.” - The Invisible Committee

37. “Les hommes sensibles préfèrent sortir le soir au matin, la nuit au jour, et la beauté des femmes mûres à celle des jeunes filles.” - Paul Léautaud