Portal:London/Quote

Selected Quotations

These are quotations related to the London which appear on Portal:London.

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“ When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford. ”

Samuel Johnson, 20 September 1777. Quoted in The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791) by James Boswell

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“ Ah! my poor dear child, the truth is, that in London it is always a sickly season. Nobody is healthy in London, nobody can be. ”

Jane Austen, Emma (1816)

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“ I've been walking about London for the last thirty years, and I find something fresh in it every day. ”

Walter Besant, on his deathbed, June 1901

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“ London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained. ”

Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet (1887)

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“ London is a bad habit one hates to lose. ”

Anonymous popular saying, as quoted by William Sansom in Blue Skies, Brown Studies (1961)

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“ I don’t know what London’s coming to—the higher the buildings the lower the morals. ”

Noël Coward, ‘Law and Order’, Collected Sketches and Lyrics

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“ London doesn’t love the latent or the lurking, has neither time, nor taste, nor sense for anything less discernible than the red flag in front of the steam-roller. It wants cash over the counter and letters ten feet high. ”

Henry James, The Awkward Age (1899), Bk. I, Ch. 2

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“ 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. From a letter to Maria Gisborne (1820).

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“ Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner,
That I love London so;
Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner,
That I think of her wherever I go.
I get a funny feeling inside of me,
Just walking up and down;
Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner,
That I love London town. ”

Hubert Gregg, "Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner" (1947)

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“ London, thou art the flour of cities all! ”

William Dunbar (1460?–1520?), London

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“ London goes beyond any boundary or convention. It contains every wish or word ever spoken, every action or gesture ever made, every harsh or noble statement ever expressed. It is illimitable. It is Infinite London. ”

Peter Ackroyd, London: The Biography (2000)

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“ By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show. ”

Samuel Johnson, 11 October 1773. Quoted in The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791) by James Boswell

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“ London is a modern Babylon. ”

Benjamin Disraeli, Tancred (1847), Book V, Chapter 5.

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“ London is a splendid place to live in for those who can get out of it. ”

George Bruce, 7th Lord Balfour of Burleigh, quoted, Sayings of the Week, The Observer, 1 October 1944.

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“	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, Don Juan (1818–24), Canto X, Stanza 82

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