High Lords, deep Statesmen, / Duchesses, and Whores, / All ranks and stations, Publicans and Peers, / Grooms, Lawyers, / Fiddlers, Bawds, and Auctioneers; / Prudes and Coquettes, the Ugly and the Fair, / The Pert, the Prim, the Dull, the Debonair; / The Weak, the Strong, the Humble and the Proud, / All help’d to form the motley, mingled Crowd.

Count William Combe (1741-1823)

The best bribe which London offers to-day to the imagination, is, that, in such a vast variety of people and conditions, one can believe there is room for persons of romantic character to exist, and that the poet, the mystic, and the hero may hope to confront their counterparts.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

London, thou art the flower of cities all! Gemme of all joy, jasper of jocunditie.

William Dumbar (c.1459-1530)

There’s a hole in the world / Like a great black pit / And the vermin of the world / Inhabit it . . . / And it goes by the name of London.

Stephen Sondheim (b.1930), Sweeney Todd

This melancholy London – I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air.

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), letter to Katharine Tynan, 25th August, 1888