There’s no doubt that London is one of the greatest cities on Earth. Being the center of the world for centuries, the city acted as a beacon to some of the greatest writers and poets in history, so it’s not surprising that there are countless quotes about London.
In my London quotes collection, I’ll give you the 77 phrases that describe the vibe of this amazing city the best or at least give you a chuckle. So you’ll get to know the city before you even visit. How cool is that? (and when you decide to visit, make sure to check out my London itinerary guide).
Are you ready to become a Londoner?
Let’s go!
My Favourite Quotes About London
I love all of my London quotes, but the following ten are my absolute favorites. Let’s see if you agree with me.
1 – “London is like a smoky pearl set in a circle of emeralds.”
– William Henry Rideing
2 – “In London, everyone is different, and that means anyone can fit in.”
– Paddington Bear
3 – “London is a bad habit one hates to lose.”
– William Sansom
4- “I’ve been walking about London for the last 30 years, and I find something fresh in it every day.
– Walter Besant
5 – “Paris is a woman but London is an independent man puffing his pipe in a pub.”
– Jack Kerouac
6 – “I travel continuously, and I see many cities, but there is nowhere like London.”
– Norman Foster
7 – “It is difficult to speak adequately or justly of London. It is not a pleasant place; it is not agreeable, or cheerful, or easy, or exempt from reproach. It is only magnificent.”
– Henry James
8 – “London opens to you like a novel itself… It is divided into chapters, the chapters into scenes, the scenes into sentences; it opens to you like a series of rooms, doors and passages. Mayfair to Piccadilly to Soho to the Strand.”
– Anna Quindlen
9 – “The interesting thing about London is that there are always stylish surprises around every corner.”
– Natalie Massenet
10 – “If you’re curious, London’s an amazing place.”
– David Bailey
Famous London Quotes
My collection continues with the most famous quotes about London. There’s a big chance you know every single one, but I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy them once again. I mean, there’s a reason for them to be the most famous London quotes – they are just that good.
11 – “The man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.”
– Oscar Wilde
12 – “By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show.”
– Samuel Johnson
13 – “A bad day in London is still better than a good day anywhere else.”
– Anonymous
14 – “Oh, I love London society! It is entirely composed now of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics. Just what society should be.”
– Oscar Wilde
15 – “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
16 – “London, baby!”
– Joey from Friends
17 – “In London, love and scandal are considered the best sweeteners of tea.”
– John Osborne
18 – “London is a modern Babylon.”
– Benjamin Disraeli
19 – “London is a world by itself. We daily discover in it more new countries, and surprising singularities, than in all the universe besides.”
– Thomas Brown
20 – “London goes beyond any boundary or convention. It contains every wish or word ever spoken, every action or gesture ever made, every harsh or noble statement ever expressed. It is illimitable. It is Infinite London.”
– Peter Ackroyd
Funny London Quotes
This section is full of quotes about London that will bring a smile to your face. I am always looking to grow this one, so please share if you think of anything funny to add.
21 – “Do you realise that people die of boredom in London suburbs? It’s the second biggest cause of death amongs the English in general. Sheer boredom…”
– Alexander McCall Smith
22 – “London’s like one of the flash women at Frisco – fine to look at, cruel as the snow.”
– Joseph Hatton
23 – “Yes, London. You know, fish, chips, cup o tea, bad food, worse weather, Mary-f*-Poppins. London!”
– Dennis Farina
24 – “Please, mind the gap.”
– London Underground
25 – “London is a huge, stony desert: even boredom feels endless there.”
– Sándor Márai
26 – “How can you ever be late for anything in London? They have a huge clock right in the middle of the town.”
– Jimmy Kimmel
27 – “There are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappear — the city of London and the South Seas.”
– Herman Melville
28 – “Having the Thames of my life.”
– Anonymous
29 – “Money can’t buy you happiness, but it can buy you a ticket to London.”
– Anonymous
30 – “Nothing is certain in London but expense.”
– William Shenstone
31 – “A person who is tired of London is not necessarily tired of life; it might be that he just can’t find a parking place.”
– Paul Theroux
32 – “Take a perfect day, add six hours of rain and fog, and you have instant London.”
– Anonymous
33 – “One of the the things I most liked about the city – apart from all its obvious attractions, the theatre, the galleries, the exhilarating walks by the river – was that so few people ever asked you personal questions.”
– Julia Gregson
34 – “The English mist is always at work like a subtle painter, and London is a vast canvas prepared for the mist to work on.”
– Arthur Symons
35 – “London is too full of fogs and serious people. Whether the fogs produce the serious people, or whether the serious people produce the fogs, I don’t know.”
– Oscar Wilde
36 – “I’m leaving because the weather is too good. I hate London when it’s not raining.”
– Groucho Marx
Short Quotes About London
If you came here looking for quick inspiration or a great Instagram caption – this is the section for you.
37 – But London is a glorious mess.”
– James Geary
38 – “To walk alone in London is the greatest rest.”
– Virginia Woolf
39 – “New York has a great energy, but London is better.”
– Jaime Winstone
40 – “LonDONE.”
– Anonymous
41 – “I think London’s hot because it’s so full of eccentrics.”
– Rachel Weisz
42 – “London is a labyrinth, half of stone and half of flesh.”
– Peter Ackroyd
43 – “London is an endless skirmish between angles and emptiness.”
– China Miéville
44 – “I like the spirit of this great London which I feel around me.”
– Charlotte Brontë
45 – “All you need is love and a vacation in London.”
– Anonymous
46 – “London’s greatest strength is our diversity.”
– Sadiq Khan
47 – “London is a roost for every bird.”
– Benjamin Disraeli
48 – “London is a splendid place to live in for those who can get out of it.”
– George Bruce
49 – Live. Love. London.
– Anonymous
50 – “The parks be the lungs of London.”
– Charles Dickens
51 – “There’s no time to be bored in London.”
– Anonymous
52 – “Keep calm and go to London.”
– Anonymous
53 – “The Thames is liquid history.”
– John Burns
54 – “London is my cup of tea.”
– Anonymous
55 – “Fragmentarily the City is nothing, but collectively it is gigantic…”
– Charlotte Riddell
More London Quotes
The last category is full of quotes about London that just don’t fit the previous sections. They are still awesome, though, so don’t miss them.
56 – “The streets of London have their map, but our passions are uncharted. What are you going to meet if you turn this corner?”
– Virginia Woolf
57 – “I don’t know what London’s coming to — the higher the buildings, the lower the morals.”
– Noel Coward
58 – “One thing about London is that when you step out into the night, it swallows you.”
– Sebastian Faulks
59 – “It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.”
– Sherlock Holmes
60 – “In many ways, London is like a great big pinata, and everyone who lives here is like an excited, blindfolded child with a heart full of hope and a big flailing stick. Aim that stick right and London will split at the seams like a ruptured spleen, showering you with the most extraordinary places to visit, places like you won’t find anywhere else in the world. Get it wrong and the chances are you’ll lose your footing and end up in a frustrated, eyeless heap.”
– Paul Carr
61 – “In this city 300 languages are spoken and the people that speak them live side by side in harmony. This city typifies what I believe is the future of the human race and a future where we grow together and we share and we learn from each other.”
– Ken Livingstone
62 – “I drive a motorbike, so there is the whiff of the grim reaper round every corner, especially in London.”
– Benedict Cumberbatch
63 – “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
64 – “I long to go through the crowded streets of your mighty London, to be in the midst of the whirl and rush of humanity, to share its life, its change, its death, and all that makes it what it is.”
– Dracula
65 – “The vibe of London as a city is captivating. It’s both fast-paced and extremely rushed but still has the calmness that would attract any big-city person.”
– Ali Fazal
66 – “A city like London was always going to be a paradox, the best of it so very riddled with the opposite, so Swiss-cheesed with moral holes.”
– China Miéville
67 – “I have often amused myself with thinking how different a place London is to different people.”
– James Boswell
68 – “I went to London because, for me, it was the home of literature. I went there because of Dickens and Shakespeare.”
– Ben Okri
69 – “Would I were in an alehouse in London. I would give all my fame for a pot of ale, and safety. “
– W. Shakespeare
70 – “London is a cluster of communities, great and small, famous and unsung; a city of contrasts, a congregation of diversity.”
– Roy Porter
71 – “When exploring London, you will come across lots of excitement by chance, so try to take everything in rather than just rushing around to all of the major tourist haunts.”
– Richard Branson
72 – “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
73 – “My Dad says that being a Londoner has nothing to do with where you’re born. He says that there are people who get off a jumbo jet at Heathrow, go through immigration waving any kind of passport, hop on the tube and by the time the train’s pulled into Piccadilly Circus they’ve become a Londoner.”
– Ben Aaronovitch
74 – “London’s like a monster with one hundred arms … as wide as it’s long. It’s noisy. It’s dirty. It’s everything. You’ll see.”
– Kevin Crossley-Holland
75 – “London is a friend whom I can leave knowing without doubt that she will be the same to me when I return, tomorrow or forty years hence, and that, if I do not return, she will sing the same song to inheritors of my happy lot in future generations.”
– Stella Benson
76 – “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
77 – “The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilized, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane.”
– Stephen Fry
And if you need some extra inspiration, you can check my mountain, adventure and travel quotes or even the Paris and Rome ones or have a laugh with these 25 curious facts about London.
That’s all from me, I hope you enjoyed my collection of awesome quotes about London!
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If you haven’t planned your trip there yet, find out how I plan my trips!
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Those quotes pushed me to embark on a quest around the world. See my impossible bucket list of 1700+ adventures!
What’s your favourite travel quote?
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