I’ve left slivers of my heart all around the world. Unsurprisingly, London (closely followed by Paris) has claimed the lion’s share of my dear heart. Here are 25 of my favorite provocative thoughts/quotes/sayings about London that always manage to put a smile on my face.

1) You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford. -Samuel Johnson

2) The man who can dominate a London dinner table can dominate the world. -Oscar Wilde

3) A bad day in London is still better than a good day anywhere else. -Unknown

4) Keep calm and go to London. -Unknown

5) Nothing is certain in London but expense. -William Shenstone

6) London is a modern Babylon. -Benjamin Disraeli 

7) I think London’s sexy because it’s so full of eccentrics. -Rachel Weisz

8) London, thou art the flower of cities all! Gemme of all joy, jasper of jocunditie. -William Dunbar

9) A mighty mass of brick, and smoke, and shipping, / Dirty and dusty, but as wide as eye / Could reach, with here and there a sail just skipping / In sight, then lost amidst the forestry / Of masts; a wilderness of steeples peeping / On tiptoe through their sea-coal canopy; / A huge, dun cupola, like a foolscap crown / On a fool’s head – and there is London Town. -Lord Byron

10) You are now / In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow / At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore / Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more / Yet in its depth what treasures! -P.B. Shelley

11) The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane. -Stephen Fry

12)  If London is a watercolor, New York is an oil painting. -Peter Shaffer

13) 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

14) 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 

15) London, London, London town / You can toughen up or get thrown around. -Kano

16) It is not the walls that make the city, but the people who live within them. The walls of London may be battered, but the spirit of the Londoner stands resolute and undismayed. -George VI

17) There are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappear — the city of London and the South Seas. -Herman Melville

18) 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

19) I don’t know what London’s coming to — the higher the buildings the lower the morals. -Noël Coward

20) 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

21) Yes, London. You know, fish, chips, cup o tea, bad food, worse weather, Mary-fucking-Poppins. London! -Dennis Farina

22) The truth is, that in London it is always a sickly season. Nobody is healthy in London, nobody can be. –Jane Austen 

23) I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air — or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances, I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained. -Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

24) Oh, I love London Society! It is entirely composed now of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics. Just what Society should be. –Oscar Wilde

25) Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner / That I love London so / Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner / That I think of her wherever I go / I get a funny feeling inside of me / Just walking up and down / Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner / That I love London town. -Hubert Gregg

For more wanderlust and life inspiration, check out: 25 Favorite Quotes About Paris | A Collection of Inspiring Travel Quotes | 50 Favorite Quotes About Women | Around the World in 52 Proverbs | 25 Favorite Quotes About Los Angeles

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