The French personal pronouns (analogous to English I, we, you, and so on) reflect the person and number of their referent, and in the case of the third person, its gender as well (much like English's distinction between him and her, except that French draws this distinction among inanimate nouns as well). They also reflect the role they play in their clause: subject, direct object, indirect object, or other.
The personal pronouns display a number of grammatical particularities and complications not found in their English counterparts: some of them can only be used in certain circumstances; some of them change form depending on surrounding words; and their placement is largely unrelated to the placement of the nouns they replace.
Read more about French Personal Pronouns: Overview, Subject Pronouns, Direct-object Pronouns, Indirect-object Pronouns, Reflexive Pronouns, Disjunctive Pronouns, The Pronoun y, The Pronoun en, Clitic Order
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“It was not reason that besieged Troy; it was not reason that sent forth the Saracen from the desert to conquer the world; that inspired the crusades; that instituted the monastic orders; it was not reason that produced the Jesuits; above all, it was not reason that created the French Revolution. Man is only great when he acts from the passions; never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination.”
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881)
“Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt—for “woman.””
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“In the meantime no sense in bickering about pronouns and other parts of blather.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)