Fragmentarily the City is nothing, but collectively it is gigantic . . .

Charlotte Riddell (1832-1906), City and Suburb

The City is a world within itself. Centred in the heart of the metropolis, with its innumerable capacities for commercial pursuits, it presents at first sight, to a stranger, a most mysterious and unfathomable labyrinth of lanes and alleys, streets and courts, of lanes thronged with bustling multitude whose various occupations, though uniting in one grand whole, seem to have no direct association with each other.

Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), Lothair

I came to London. It had become the center of my world and I had worked hard to come to it. And I was lost.

V. S. Naipaul (1932-2018)

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 (1815-1856), Villette

London is a roost for every bird.

Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), Lothair