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I just said in conversation:

Le plus fort dans tout ça, c’est qu’elle ne s’en est jamais rendu compte, alors qu’on croyait tout laisser transparaître d'une façon on ne peut plus évidente !

In English, you use the cliffhanger-ish phrasing "The beauty of it all is that ..." to introduce a punchline. The word "beauty" here has no relevance to « physionomie », but rather denotes one particularly good quality or interesting element that stands out from the rest.

I cannot seem to find any dictionary entry or webpage that mentions "Le plus fort dans tout ça, c’est que ..." as the equivalent of "The beauty of it all is that ...". Without much to back up my assumptions, I'm not sure of this.

How do French speakers usually express this idea?

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  • "of it all" is fairly transferable, perhaps contributing to a lack of material on the particular expression with "beauty"
    – Luke Sawczak ♦
    Nov 20, 2017 at 11:39

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Your sentence is fine. Le plus fort dans tout ça, c'est que... is idiomatic French. I would possibly drop dans tout ça though to keep the formal/literary register of the remaining sentence.

We can also use le plus beau here instead of le plus fort with no change in meaning.

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  • How would you express the sentence I said less formally?
    – Con-gras-tue-les-chiens
    Nov 24, 2017 at 16:11
  • Relaxed spoken French: Le pire, c'est qu'elle a jamais rien vu alors que nous on croyait qu'on avait tout fait en se faisant remarquer !
    – jlliagre
    Nov 24, 2017 at 16:35

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