Forget six counties overhung with smoke, / Forget the snorting and piston stroke, / Forget the spreading of the hideous town; / Think rather of the pack-horse on the down, / And dream of London, small, and white, and clean.

William Morris (1834-1896)

Hell is a city much like London – A populous and a smoky city.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

I love thee, London! for thy many men, / And for thy mighty deeds and scenes of glory.

Philip James Bailey (1816-1902), London, The Angel World and Other Poems

London has changed enormously and so have the English in the past decade. They’re more like Americans and more like Europeans, too. They’re always eating out, and when they’re at home they don’t cook the way they did ten years ago. They’re all sitting around in cafés, like the Continentals, drinking coffee and chattering and watching the world go by.

Doris Lessing (1919-2013), interview, The Progressive, June 1999

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 (b.1972), London, Religion and Poetry: Being Selections Spiritual and Moral