Quotessence
Home / Topics / London Quotes

London Quotes

Browse 1792 quotes about London.

Related topics

PeopleCitiesIfsNew YorkThinkingWorldYearsParisFirstsWantHomeWayStreetsKnowsMenEnglandCountryHouseWellsFeelsLittlesLooksSaidSchoolBigsTwoDifferentFilmHas BeensBritishKindWantedMadeShowsBookFactsI CanPlayEndsNeedsStillsBornUsedRealTownsWholeGrewLongMovedAmericaShouldThreeYoungBitsChildrenCity Of LondonMovingCoursesFashionWeekArtGrew UpKidsNightBritainFeltTheatreWalksDoneGivingStatesEastJobsMeanMotherSouthWritingBelieveBoysFoundHappensIdeasWestWould BeBeautifulFeelingsLostMiddleMightNiceOlympicsRunningSeemsTravelClassClubsExcitingLos AngelesSawsActorsmore

London Quotes

“We are Henceforth-mongers, trying to make our Henceforth the most enticing. Because the secret of everyone who comes to London - who comes to any big city - is that they came here because they did not feel normal, back at home. The only way they will ever feel normal is if they hijack popular culture with their weirdness... and make the rest of the world suddenly wish to become as weird as them.”

InspirationalFameNormalLondonBelongingCity
Book:How to be Famous
Create image

“Stale beer sticks to wobbling tables. The cigarette machine flashes in the corner, mocking smokers who never have any change on them. There’s no natural light in this pub, so it’s dark and gloomy. The pain on the face of the staff tells its own story: overworked, underpaid, exploited and treated as expendable. I feel at home with them. They’re so scared they will be fired from their terrible jobs, every time I order a beer they ask me if I want any peanuts or crisps, in case between drinks I’ve turned into the dreaded mystery shopper. The air is chewy and weighs heavy on the skin. The fruit machines in the corners don’t make a sound, aware this is the last stop saloon for the drunk few who can’t afford to gamble properly. Everyone here is down to their last pint and pound.”

LifePovertyLondonAlcoholPubs
Book:Life Knocks
Create image

“But a progressive policy needs more than just a bigger break with the economic and moral assumptions of the past 30 years. It needs a return to the conviction that economic growth and the affluence it brings is a means and not an end. The end is what it does to the lives, life-chances and hopes of people. Look at London. Of course it matters to all of us that London's economy flourishes. But the test of the enormous wealth generated in patches of the capital is not that it contributed 20%-30% to Britain's GDP but how it affects the lives of the millions who live and work there. What kind of lives are available to them? Can they afford to live there? If they can't, it is not compensation that London is also a paradise for the ultra-rich. Can they get decently paid jobs or jobs at all? If they can't, don't brag about all those Michelin-starred restaurants and their self-dramatising chefs. Or schooling for children? Inadequate schools are not offset by the fact that London universities could field a football team of Nobel prize winners.”

PoliticsWealthEducationMoralityCapitalismEconomicsLondonBritainNobel PrizeProgressivismUniversities
Author:Eric Hobsbawm
Create image

“The wind picked up, shaking the trees below. She had the sense of being in the country. In the country, if a woman could not face her children, or her friends, or her family – if she were covered in shame – she would probably only need to lay herself down in a field and take her leave by merging, first with the grass underneath her, then with the mulch under that. A city child, Natalie Blake had always been naive about country matters. Still, when it came to the city, she was not mistaken. Here nothing less than a break – a sudden and total rupture – would do.”

CountryDespairLondonCityNwWillesden
Author:Zadie Smith
Create image

“There is a pointlessness of summer London more awful than anything which fogs or early afternoon twilights are able to evoke, a summer mood of yawning and glazing eyes and little nightmare-ridden sleeps in bored and desperate rooms. With this ennui, evil comes creeping through the city, the evil of indifference and sleepiness and lack of care. At such a time the long-fought temptation is wearily yielded to, and the long-dreamt-of crime is with shoulder-shrugging casualness committed at last.”

EvilSummerLondonIris MurdochEnnuiThe Nice And The Good
Book:The Nice and the Good
Create image

“(I am particularly fond of the latter model [i.e., the tree-filled residential squares of London]. which you can see followed in a lovely way in Chicago's Washington Square Park, the city's oldest. The Newberry Library sits on the north side of the square, and one of the great delights of using that excellent library involves sitting at a table and gazing through tall windows at the park's trees. Of course, this means that you don't get much work done and feel guilty later, but life consists mainly of such tradeoffs.) (The Life of Trees)”

WorkLondonChicagoTreesDaydreamingTradeoffs
Book:Wayfaring: Essays Pleasant and Unpleasant
Create image

“Lisbon, to me, is the Lisbon of Pessoa. Just like London is Woolf’s, or rather, Mrs. Dalloway’s. Barcelona is Gaudí's and Rome is da Vinci’s. You see them in every crevice and hear their echoes in every cathedral. I’d like to be the child, or rather, the mother of a city but I neither have a home nor a resting place. My race is humankind. My religion is kindness. My work is love and, well, my city is the walls of your heart.”

LoveHeartCountryHomeMotherReligionHouseWorkRaceKindnessHumanEnglandLondonBritainChildHumankindSpainCityRestKamandKojouriKamand KojouriSeePlaceStateBarcelonaUnited KingdomHearPortugalEchoWoolfCreviceCathedralPessoaCommuneGaudiProvinceDa VinciLisbonDallowayRegion
Author:Kamand Kojouri
Create image

“There are days when I feel like I’ve seen enough, done enough, felt enough. When I call my wandering days over and slowly accept the quiet life from here on. When the dreams of making waves are a vague memory and the songs I meant to sing feel more like a finished painting, something to just observe and hang on the wall from now on, to those who wish to observe it. But then the night falls and the morning rise and horizons are calling once again and I’m on my way. Forests fresh and pastures new. And most of the time I’m fine with this. I’m learning to be fine with this. So maybe that’s what settling into this world means. To simply, and as hard as it is, just settle into your own way of living—your own pace, your own rhythm—and not think too much about it. Just wake up and let your legs wander where they need to wander no matter where that may lead and just simply trust your path. There is a difference between what you want and what you wish to want. What you’d like to do and what you wish you’d like to do. I’m learning to not wish, but just do.”

HomeMovingArtistLostLondonWanderBerlinNomadVagabond
Book:Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving
Create image

“They say the lost ones seek the cities because there they can be alone but not lonely and I dare to say that the streets of London shaped my muscles, the way my eyes work and wander. The city taught me how to see the moon and not just the top of the finger pointing to it, which I always did before. The city taught me that a home is not where you rest your head; it's nothing permanent, and neither is it a city or a country or a friend. The city taught me how to leave and to be left and it taught me that it is possible for flowers to grow from the concrete because I’ve seen people flower and bloom during the worst of storms, because it’s simply necessary. It’s about survival. The necessary breaths to go on.”

HomeLostNew YorkLondonWanderCityBerlinNomadBig City
Book:Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving
Create image

“And just wait until you see how soft and green the countryside is in summer! How gentle and floral, filled with honeysuckles and primroses, narrow laneways and hedgerows... These foreign words, spoken with a romantic longing that Ada could not understand and did not trust, she had turned over with the dispassionate interest of an archaeologist building a picture of a distant civilization. She had been born in Bombay, and India was as much a part of her as the nose on her face and the freckles that covered it. She didn't recognize words like "soft" and "gentle" and "narrow": her world was vast and sudden and blazing. It was a place of unspeakable beauty- of brilliant flowers on the terrace and sweet swooning fragrance in the dead of night- but also of mercurial cruelty. It was her home.”

HomeLondonNatures BeautyBombayDifferences Between
Book:The Clockmaker's Daughter
Create image

“Cutting my roots and leaving my home and family when I was 18 years old forced me to build my home in other things, like my music, stories and my journey. The last years I have more or less constantly been on my way, on the road, always leaving and never arriving, which also means leaving people. I’ve loved and lost and I have regrets and I miss and no matter how many times you leave, start over, achieve success or travel places it’s other people that matter. People, friends, family, lovers, strangers – they will forever stay with you, even if only through memory. I’ve grown to appreciate people to the deepest core and I’m trying to learn how to tell people what I want to tell them when I have the chance, before it’s too late. …”

LoveInspirationalStoriesHomeMotivationalHappinessSuccessMotivationLostNatureMemoriesInspiringMusicFamilyLearningJourneyFriendsTravelRootsLeavingLondonSelf DiscoveryGoodbyeBeginningBerlinSwedenWanderingTravellingPlacesMy JourneyNew StartSongwriterGrow UpThe Glass ChildCharlotte ErikssonNew BeginningStart OverJourneyingVagabondingThe RoadOn My Way
Author:Charlotte Eriksson
Create image

“She'd headed out early, walking the short distance to Kew Gardens and arriving as it opened, taking an hour to explore the grounds before her meeting. The huge expanses of green immediately soothed her as she wandered. She barely scratched the surface of what the great gardens had to offer, but gazed in awe at the spectacular Alpine House, the elegant Nash Conservatory, and sweltered in the giant Victorian glasshouse. She stopped to admire the succulent garden and the giant lilies in the Waterlily House, some of the pads of the Victoria amazonica more than a meter across, before wandering into the Rose Pergola, through a tunnel of blooms, rambling roses--- including the 'Danse Des Sylphes' and the pink-blossomed 'Mary Wallace', she read--- trained to climb in an arch over her head.”

LondonRosesKew Gardens
Book:The Botanist's Daughter
Create image

“Andrei sometimes wondered how much a river would change Los Angeles. He pictured a long stream of water that divided the city, much like the River Thames or the Seine. Rivers nourished. The water happily rewrote the aisles of streetlamps and transformed one’s nighttime walk into a feature film. It carried boats filled with a surveying crowd that waved back at any brandishing hand on land that tried. It fostered lunch dates, amusing dares, and a reference for the lost. Andrei had spent one summer abroad and met these rivers. He was astonished at the difference in conversations the Europeans had with him. They were simple and alive. The pubs helped. The accents, too. Was it the rain that reminded? he speculated. The museums? The red buses? The cheap flights to any neighboring country? So—what was it about the geography of LA that made connection impossible? Just then, the sun glared at him. He glared back.”

SocietyLonelinessEuropeRiversLondonFranceCaliforniaLos AngelesRiver ThamesRiver Seine
Book:A Happy Ghost
Create image

“It is nine o'clock, and London has breakfasted. Some unconsidered tens of thousands have, it is true, already enjoyed with what appetite they might their pre-prandial meal; the upper fifty thousand, again, have not yet left their luxurious couches, and will not breakfast till ten, eleven o'clock, noon; nay, there shall be sundry listless, languid members of fast military clubs, dwellers among the tents of Jermyn Street, and the high-priced second floors of Little Ryder Street, St. James's, upon whom one, two, and three o'clock in the afternoon shall be but as dawn, and whose broiled bones and devilled kidneys shall scarcely be laid on the damask breakfast-cloth before Sol is red in the western horizon. I wish that, in this age so enamoured of statistical information, when we must needs know how many loads of manure go to every acre of turnip-field, and how many jail-birds are thrust into the black hole per mensem for fracturing their pannikins, or tearing their convict jackets, that some M'Culloch or Caird would tabulate for me the amount of provisions, solid and liquid, consumed at the breakfasts of London every morning. I want to know how many thousand eggs are daily chipped, how many of those embryo chickens are poached, and how many fried; how many tons of quartern loaves are cut up to make bread-and-butter, thick and thin; how many porkers have been sacrificed to provide the bacon rashers, fat and streaky ; what rivers have been drained, what fuel consumed, what mounds of salt employed, what volumes of smoke emitted, to catch and cure the finny haddocks and the Yarmouth bloaters, that grace our morning repast. Say, too, Crosse and Blackwell, what multitudinous demands are matutinally made on thee for pots of anchovy paste and preserved tongue, covered with that circular layer - abominable disc! - of oleaginous nastiness, apparently composed of rancid pomatum, but technically known as clarified butter, and yet not so nasty as that adipose horror that surrounds the truffle bedecked pate  de  foie gras. Say, Elizabeth Lazenby, how many hundred bottles of thy sauce (none of which are genuine unless signed by thee) are in request to give a relish to cold meat, game, and fish. Mysteries upon mysteries are there connected with nine o'clock breakfasts.”

CultureFoodEnglandLondonJournalismBreakfastEnglishVictorianUnited KingdomVictorian EraUkVictorian Age
Book:Twice Round the Clock, or the Hours of the Day and Night in London
Create image

“My novels are set in a global space and pace. However, I have never visited most of the places. I wrote my first book in London but the story took the reader to places in Mexico, Denmark and Russia, and carefully avoided London. I access these global locations with my feet planted in front of my computer. I will use my internet connection to carefully enter the streets of a foreign city and find out how long it will take my main character to get from the airport to the city center – and if there are any shortcuts on the way. I wanted to do something new. The world is becoming a global village and we have to understand these different cultures. There is a Danish culture, an Israeli culture and so on. So if you want to go to Denmark, then read the book.”

WorldBookCharacterSpaceFeetStreetsReaderComputerLondonRussiaStorySomething NewPaceMexicoNovelsShortcutsGlobalDifferent CulturesPlacesDenmarkAirportCulturesGlobal VillageSetInternet ConnectionEnterFirst BookCity CenterLocationsOn The WayDanish CultureIsraeli CultureForeign CityGlobal LocationsGlobal Space
Author:Enock Maregesi
Create image