London is like the grave in one respect – any man can make himself at home there; and whenever a man finds himself homeless elsewhere, he had better either die or go to London.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), Sketch of the Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne

Living in London is like being an inmate of a reformatory school. Everywhere you turn you run into some regulation designed for your own protection. The Government is like the School Matron with her keys jangling at her waist. She orders you about, good-humouredly enough, but all the same, in no uncertain terms.

Charles Ritchie (1906-1955), The Siren Years: A Canadian Diplomat Abroad 1937-1945

I walk to Oxford Street and climb on the number 8. It’s freezing and it starts to rain and it’s the ugliest bus I’ve ever seen, rattling down the ugliest streets, in the ugliest city, in the ugliest country, in the ugliest of all possible worlds.

David Thewlis (b.1963), The Late Hector Kipling

Private courts, / Gloomy as coffins, and unsightly lanes / Thrilled by some female vendor’s scream, belike / The very shrillest of all London cries, / May then entangle our impatient steps; / Conducted through those labyrinths, unawares, / To privileged regions and inviolate, / Where from their airy lodges studious lawyers / Look out on waters, walks, and gardens green.

William Wordsworth (1779-1850), The Prelude

London is the clearing-house of the world.

Joseph Chamberlain (1836-1914), speech at Guildhall, 19th January, 1904