LONDON QUOTES IV
quotations about London
London always reminds me of a brain. It is similarly convoluted and circuitous. A lot of cities, especially American ones like New York and Chicago, are laid out in straight lines. Like the circuits on computer chips, there are a lot of right angles in cities like this. But London is a glorious mess. It evolved from a score or so of distinct villages, that merged and meshed as their boundaries enlarged. As a result, London is a labyrinth, full of turnings and twistings just like a brain.
JAMES GEARY
"On London", All Aphorisms, All the Time
London, with its monotonous and melancholy houses, seems like an inharmonious patchwork, as if pieced together without design. Yet it is lovable in its sprawling confusion.
JOSEPH FORT NEWTON
Preaching in London: A Diary of Anglo-American Friendship
To the outsider, London is a sightseer's theme park, a rich assembly of landmarks and historic buildings, where blue plaques chronicle the passing of time right back to the Middle Ages.
ANONYMOUS
publicity material distributed to the audience in a preview screening, Dirty Pretty Things
London is the clearing-house of the world.
JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN
speech at Guildhall, London, Jan. 19, 1904
London is like a great bird-cage. She, that innocent, gentle and single-hearted, is fluttering in there along with other millions. She can't get out. She's at the mercy of any cold-eyed, rapacious brute who will get her into a corner.
MAURICE HEWLETT
Mrs. Lancelot
London is a huge shop, with a hotel on the upper storeys.
GEORGE GISSING
New Grub Street
Sir, if you wish to have a just notion of the magnitude of this city, you must not be satisfied with seeing its great streets and squares, but must survey the innumerable little lanes and courts. It is not in the showy evolutions of buildings, but in the multiplicity of human habitations which are crowded together, that the wonderful immensity of London consists.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The Life of Samuel Johnson
There's a hole in the world
Like a great black pit
And the vermin of the world
Inhabit it ...
And it goes by the name of London.
STEPHEN SONDHEIM
Sweeney Todd
London is the epitome of our times, and the Rome of to-day.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Conduct of Life
You know what London's like on Sunday? About as lively as a wet night at Stonehenge.
RICHARD GORDON
Nuts in May
London is a city that has reinvented itself upon the remains of the past.
LEO HOLLIS
London Rising: The Men Who Made Modern London
London has now become almost like a gigantic frog! With its long tongue it draws curious insects from all over the world inside itself!
MEHMUT MURAT ILDAN
William Shakespeare
London's like a black-browed brute that gets an unholy influence over you.
ROBERT SMYTHE HICHENS
The Woman with the Fan
The fret and fever of the day are o'er,
And London slumbers, but with murmurs faint,
Like Ocean, when she folds her waves to sleep:
'Tis the pure hour for poetry and thought;
When passions sink, and man surveys the heavens,
And feels himself immortal.
ROBERT MONTGOMERY
"Reflections on London by Midnight", Religion and Poetry: Being Selections Spiritual and Moral
The streets of London have their map, but our passions are uncharted. What are you going to meet if you turn this corner?
VIRGINIA WOOLF
Jacob's Room
London is a city that offers all kinds of temptations, and whenever I go for a walk I discover things that I would like to bring back as souvenirs. But my resources are very limited. I cannot buy anything, and I make a point of taking my walks a good distance from these riches.
SOSEKI NATSUME
Spring Miscellany and London Essays
London is a world by itself. We daily discover in it more new countries, and surprising singularities, than in all the universe besides.
THOMAS BROWN
Amusements Serious and Comical, Calculated for the Meridian of London
When it's three o'clock in New York, it's still 1938 in London.
BETTE MIDLER
attributed, The Unofficial Guide to London
Living in London is like being an inmate of a reformatory school. Everywhere you turn you run into some regulation designed for your own protection. The Government is like the School Matron with her keys jangling at her waist. She orders you about, good-humouredly enough, but all the same, in no uncertain terms.
CHARLES RITCHIE
The Siren Years: A Canadian Diplomat Abroad 1937-1945
It is difficult to speak adequately or justly of London. It is not a pleasant place; it is not agreeable, or cheerful, or easy, or exempt from reproach. It is only magnificent.
HENRY JAMES
The Notebooks of Henry James