A collection of famous sayings that celebrate (and poke fun at) London.
When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford. -Samuel Johnson
I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air – or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances, I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained. -Arthur Conan Doyle
London, thou art the flower of cities all! Gemme of all joy, jasper of jocunditie. -William Dunbar
I don’t know what London’s coming to — the higher the buildings the lower the morals. -Noël Coward
One of the the things she most liked about the city -apart from all its obvious attractions, the theatre, the galleries, the exhilarating walks by the river- was that so few people ever asked you personal questions. -Julia Gregson
A mighty mass of brick, and smoke, and shipping, / Dirty and dusty, but as wide as eye / Could reach, with here and there a sail just skipping / In sight, then lost amidst the forestry / Of masts; a wilderness of steeples peeping / On tiptoe through their sea-coal canopy; / A huge, dun cupola, like a foolscap crown / On a fool’s head – and there is London Town. -Lord Byron
The man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world. -Oscar Wilde
It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside. -Arthur Conan Doyle
The truth is, that in London it is always a sickly season. Nobody is healthy in London, nobody can be. -Jane Austen
In London, love and scandal are considered the best sweeteners of tea. -John Osborne
This melancholy London – I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air. -William Butler Yeats
The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane. -Stephen Fry
Do you realise that people die of boredom in London suburbs? It’s the second biggest cause of death amongst the English in general. Sheer boredom. -Alexander McCall Smith
If London is a watercolor, New York is an oil painting. -Peter Shaffer
Nothing is certain in London but expense. -William Shenstone
You will recognize, my boy, the first sign of old age: it is when you go out into the streets of London and realize for the first time how young the policemen look. -Sir Seymour Hicks
I like the spirit of this great London which I feel around me. Who but a coward would pass his whole life in hamlets; and for ever abandon his faculties to the eating rust of obscurity? -Charlotte Brontë
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 in Sweeney Todd
I’m leaving because the weather is too good. I hate London when it’s not raining. -Groucho Marx
London, London, London town / You can toughen up or get thrown around. -Kano
I believe we shall come to care about people less and less. The more people one knows the easier it becomes to replace them. It’s one of the curses of London. -Ambrose Bierce
It is not the walls that make the city, but the people who live within them. The walls of London may be battered, but the spirit of the Londoner stands resolute and undismayed. -George VI
A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income. -George Bernard Shaw
There are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappear — the city of London and the South Seas. -Herman Melville
The best bribe which London offers to-day to the imagination, is, that, in such a vast variety of people and conditions, one can believe there is room for persons of romantic character to exist, and that the poet, the mystic, and the hero may hope to confront their counterparts. –Ralph Waldo Emerson
You are now / In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow / At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore / Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more / Yet in its depth what treasures! –Percy Bysshe Shelley
London is a modern Babylon. -Benjamin Disraeli
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Images: Caitlin House, Adrian Clark, Gabriel Villena