London is a bad habit one hates to lose.

Anon

Sir, if you wish to have a just notion of the magnitude of this city, you must not be satisfied with seeing its great streets and squares, but must survey the innumerable little lanes and courts. It is not in the showy evolutions of buildings, but in the multiplicity of human habitations which are crowded together, that the wonderful immensity of London consists.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), The Life of Samuel Johnson

London’s like a bad set of teeth. There are gaps, there are bad dental bridges just about holding on and there are rotting stumps that needed to be pulled ages ago.

John Lawton (b.1949), Then We Take Berlin

And London shops on Christmas Eve / Are strung with silver bells and flowers / As hurrying clerks the City leave / To pigeon-haunted classic towers, / And marbled clouds go scudding by / The many-steepled London sky.

John Betjeman (1906-1984), Christmas

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