Best Scent Quotes

It’s difficult to put words to a smell. However, these quotes do a remarkable job of capturing our most powerful sense. This curated list of quotes highlights the art, science, and emotion imbued within fragrance. Hear from perfumers, researchers, authors, actresses, artists & more. Let us know if you have other recommendations!

The Best Quotes on Scent and Fragrance

“A great scent is a world you can return to over and over – a keyhole into another realm.” – David Seth Moltz

“The sense of smell is the hair-trigger of memory.” – Mary Stewart

“With the right smell, you can create an emotional and extremely deep relationship between your brand and your customers.” – Martin Lindstrom

“Smell can entice consumers to stay longer, shop longer and purchase more.” – Elizabeth Musmanno

“Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.” – Helen Keller.

“Smell is the primordial sense, more powerful, more primitive, more intimately tied to our memories and emotions than any other. A scent can trigger spiritual, emotional or physical peace and stimulate healing and wellness.” – Donna Karan

“Odors have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions, or will. The persuasive power of an odor cannot be fended off, it enters into us like breath into our lungs, it fills us up, imbues us totally. There is no remedy for it.” – Patrick Süskind

“A woman’s perfume tells more about her than her handwriting.” – Christian Dior

“Long after one has forgotten what a woman wore, the memory of her perfume lingers.” – Christian Dior

“Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains; another, a moonlit beach; a third, a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years. Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.” – Diane Ackerman

“When I was a boy, I thought scent was contained in dewdrops on flowers and if I got up very early in the morning, I could collect it and make perfume.” – Oscar de la Renta

“A good fragrance should have a certain personality that makes people identify the scent with you.” – Shakira

“Scent is an extension of your style; it becomes your signature.” – Kenya Kinski-Jones

“The right scent can make you feel a little more stylish, but it should never eclipse who you are. It should complement who you are.” – Justin Timberlake

“I always remember my childhood house with happy memories. There was a beautiful garden, and outside my bedroom window was a jasmine vine which would open in the evenings, giving off a divine scent.” – Carolina Herrera

“Scents evoke very, very powerful memories, whether it’s the scent of someone that you know and someone that you love, or it it’s a meal that your mother made.” – Blake Lively

“Perfume is a story in odor, sometimes poetry in memory.” – Jean-Claude Ellena

“The appeal of perfume is that it is at once ephemeral and empowering. It creates a shimmering invisible armor that lingers in a room long after its wearer has gone and infuses our imagination with a subtle power, hinting at a hidden identity.” – Mary Gaitskill

“Perfume is that last and best reserve of the past, the one which when all our tears have run dry, can make us cry again!” – Marcel Proust

“Perfume is the art that makes memory speak.” – Francis Kurkdjian

“Your fragrance is your message, your scented slogan.” – Maurice Roucel

“Nothing brings to life again a forgotten memory like fragrance.” – Christopher Poindexter

“Fragrances fill the senses with the mysterious.” – Diana Vreeland

“Perfume is like music that you wear.” – Mathilde Thomas

“A perfume is an intimate object, it is the reflector of the heart.” – Emanuel Ungaro

“Scent is our most primitive sense, it’s the closest thing to the emotional brain. It penetrates you. You love it, and you want to be part of it.” – Isabelle Ramsay-Brackstone

“I felt something so intense, I could only express it in a perfume.” – Jacques Guerlain

“Scent is the fastest hit to the limbic system…an even more direct route to this part of the brain than sight. That’s why we like particular smells; they instantly connect us to happy recollections. It’s no wonder people are hungry for scent during the pandemic, because it’s the quickest possible way to feel better.” – Catherine Haley Epstein

“A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives you roses.” – Proverb

“Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.” – Vladimir Nabokov

“A study run by a retail brand showed that adding scents to their stores increased intent to purchase by 80%” – Nike study

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