It’s not for nothing that there are so many quotes about London. It’s one of the most beautiful cities in England and one of the most visited cities in the world.
It has something to offer to everyone, and it’s the kind of place you can explore for years and still find new things to do and see, so it’s not surprising that it is a huge source of inspiration.
If you need some of its magic, read these wanderlust-fueling sayings about London that will surely make your travel feet itch.
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*I try to keep the information on this blog as updated as possible, but I still recommend consulting the latest prices, opening hours, and other details on the official website of each site, hotel, and tour, as well as checking the updated public transport routes and timetables.
Short Travel Quotes About London
“There’s nowhere else like London. Nothing at all, anywhere.” – Vivienne Westwood
“London is the epitome of our times, and the Rome of to-day.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show.” – Samuel Johnson
“In London everyone is different, and that means anyone can fit in.” – Paddington Bear
“London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation.” – Ernest Hemingway
“New York has a great energy, but London is better.” – Jaime Winstone
“If London is a watercolor, New York is an oil painting.” – Peter Shaffer
“London is a bad habit one hates to lose.” – William Sansom
“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.” – Samuel Johnson
“I do find London exciting. Much as I hate to agree with that tedious old git Samuel Johnson, and despite the pompous imbecility of his famous remark about when a man is tired of London he is tired of life…I can’t dispute it.” – Bill Bryson
“London is a roost for every bird.” – Benjamin Disraeli
“London is on the whole the most possible form of life.” – Henry James
“I’ve been walking about London for the last thirty years, and I find something fresh in it every day.” – Walter Besant
“When I think about my ideal free day, it usually involves going into London and sitting in a nice coffeehouse with cake and coffee.” – Jonathan Stroud
“The sky over London was glorious, ochre and madder, as though a dozen tropic suns were simultaneously setting round the horizon . . . Everywhere the shells sparkled like Christmas baubles.” – Evelyn Waugh
“If you’re curious, London’s an amazing place.” – David Bailey
“History, as they say, is alive and well and living in London.” – Helene Hanff
“Go where we may, rest where we will, Eternal London haunts us still.” – Thomas Moore
“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
“Without the fog, London would not be a beautiful city. It is fog that gives it its magnificent amplitude…its regular and massive blocks become grandiose in that mysterious mantle.” – Claude Monet
“London on your own actually seems more exotic than Egypt on a tour.” – Laura Fraser
“London is like no other city I know in its ability to become beautiful. You can suddenly turn a corner and there are odd moments – of light, of weather.” – Graham Swift
“Loads of tourists must be attracted by the fact that you could spend a week in London doing nothing but visit superb museums and galleries, free.” – Simon Hoggart
“A bad day in London is still better than a good day anywhere else.” – Unknown
“London is a dizzying delight, full of pomp and pedigree, a place where high culture and cutting-edge trends feed off one another.” – Suzanne Rowan Kelleher, Donald Olson & Darwin Porter
“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
“London; a nation, not a city.” – Benjamin Disraeli
“I love being in London because it means I am breathing the same air as the Queen.” – Melissa George
“London is one of the most exciting cities in the world with so many fantastic pubs and restaurants. I would urge people to get out there and see as much as possible.” – Richard Branson
“London is one of the most exciting cities in the world, with a melting pot of cultures and diversity.” – Orlando Bloom
“There are too many things to count that I like about London.” – Andrew Wyatt
“London, how could one ever be tired of it?” – Margaret Drabble
“I didn’t really get London until I read Dickens. Then I was charmed to death by it.” – Feist
“London, with its monotonous and melancholy houses, seems like an inharmonious patchwork, as if pieced together without design. Yet it is lovable in its sprawling confusion.” – Joseph Fort Newton
“I do not think there is anything deserving the name of society to be found out of London.” – William Hazlitt
“As to London we must console ourselves with the thought that if life outside is less poetic than it was in the days of old, inwardly its poetry is much deeper.” – Goldwin Smith
“I went to London because, for me, it was the home of literature. I went there because of Dickens and Shakespeare.” – Ben Okri
“London is a city that has reinvented itself upon the remains of the past.” – Leo Hollis
“The marvelous maturity of London! I would rather be dead in this town than preening my feathers in heaven.” – Nicholas Monsarrat
“It is just great to see London going from Spring to Summer and Autumn.” – Orlando Bloom
“In London November isn’t a month, it’s a state of mind.” – Antal Szerb
“In other countries they speak of nobility and courtesy, in London they practice it.” – Frances Xavier Cabrini
“London is my most compelling lover; I am hooked on it, for all its mistreatment. Expensive and demanding and, if you know where to look, beautiful.” – Alice Vincent
“There’s someone for everyone, here in London, they always say.” – Philip Hensher
“London is a cluster of communities, great and small, famous and unsung; a city of contrasts, a congregation of diversity.” – Roy Porter
“London is a huge shop, with a hotel on the upper storeys.” – George Gissing
“It was a rule of London life that anybody could be anybody” – John Lanchester
“There’s only one London. That’s it. We are what we are.” – Craig Taylor
“The best thing about the Eye is the journey. It’s not like the Eiffel tower, where you get in a dark lift and come out on to a platform at the top. The trip round is as important as the view.” – Julia Barfield
“To a lover of books the shops and sales in London present irresistible temptations.” – Edward Gibbon
“And there is London! England’s heart and soul. By the proud flowing of her famous Thames, She circulates through countless lands and isles Her greatness; gloriously she rules, At once the awe and sceptre of the world.” – Robert Montgomery
“To walk alone in London is the greatest rest.” – Virginia Woolf
“London is a modern Babylon.” – Benjamin Disraeli
“London underground took me on a tour of all the hidden places, the disused shafts and staircases… that was very interesting.” – Ruth Rendell
“The Thames is liquid history.” – John Burns
“To the outsider, London is a sightseer’s theme park, a rich assembly of landmarks and historic buildings, where blue plaques chronicle the passing of time right back to the Middle Ages.” – Unknown
“You don’t live in London. You play London – to win. That’s why we’re all here. It is a city full of contestants, each chasing one of a million possible prizes: wealth, love, fame. Inspiration.” – Caitlin Moran
“London is the most multicultural, mixed-race place on Earth.” – JJ Feild
“London’s like a forest … we shall be lost in it.” – Mary Elizabeth Braddon
“What I love about London is the energy and the creativity. Culturally, it is such a happening city, from the cuisine to the fashion.” – Monika Chiang
“Londoners slag off London because, deep down, we know we are living in the greatest city in the world.” – David Mitchell
“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
“From the top of the bus she could see the vast bowl of London spreading out to the horizon: splendid shops with mannequins in the window, interesting people and already a much bigger world.” – Julia Gregson
“Italy and London are the only places where I don’t feel to exist on sufferance.” – E.M. Forster
“I travel continuously, and I see many cities, but there is nowhere like London.” – Norman Foster
“London and Fog! When these two come together, it is time to be a writer!” – Mehmet Murat Ildan
“The London streets are paths of loveliness; the very omnibuses look like colored archangels, their laps filled full of little trustful souls.” – Evelyn Underhill
“The funny thing is, London is an incredibly interesting city. It’s very sexy and it’s very different, with the Thames winding through it like a snake.” – Mel Smith
“Yet, like the sea and the gallows, London refuses nobody.” – Peter Ackroyd
“Most cities have a centre surrounded by suburbs, but London has numerous centres: it’s the model of a twenty-first century metropolis.” – Hans-Ulrich Obrist
“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
“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
“There are little pockets of old time in London, where things and places stay the same, like bubble in amber.” – Neil Gaiman
“And yet London is a solid city, in spite of the broken images it evokes in the mind of a wanderer like myself. There is a grandeur there, an impersonal power of endurance that is somehow comforting beneath the rot.” – James Wright
“There is always a romance that we leave behind in London, and always London enlocks that flower for us, and keeps it fresh, so that when we come back we have our romance again.” – Stella Benson
“All my life I’ve wanted to see London. […] I wanted to see London the way old people want to see home before they die.” – Helene Hanff
“This beautiful city is so vast it holds the story of every soul who’s ever walked along the banks of the Thames.” – Susannah Conway
“London is one of the most fascinating, historic, amazing cities in the world!” – Sophie Kinsella
“Nothing falls like London Rain. Nothing heals me like you do.” – Heather Nova
“The interesting thing about London is that there are always stylish surprises around every corner.” – Natalie Massenet
“I like the spirit of this great London which I feel around me.” – Charlotte Brontë
“Big Ben… hearing the chimes makes me feel at home.” – Jane Birkin
“London isn’t a stodgy place. Trend-setting London is to the United Kingdom what New York City is to the United States: the spot where everything happens first (or ultimately ends up).” – Donald Olson
“I love the fact you can walk down a street in London and get lost, even though you’ve lived here 20 years.” – Stephen Moyer
“I miss that London thing of walking outside and bumping into mates and going, ‘Do you want to get a pint?'” – Lena Headey
“Someday when peace has returned to this odd world I want to come to London again and stand on a certain balcony on a moonlit night and look down upon the peaceful silver curve of the Thames with its dark bridges.” – Ernie Pyle
“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, door, passsage, door. Mayfair to Piccadilly to Soho to the Strand.” – Anna Quindlen
“Tea at the Ritz is the last delicious morsel of Edwardian London. The light is kind, the cakes are frivolous and the tempo is calm, confident and leisurely.” – Helen Simpson
“The Ritz in London has an old-fashioned charm, with waiters wearing tails and white gloves. The dining room is exquisite, with immaculate service and ornate details.” – Anton du Beke
“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
“If the parks be “the lungs of London” we wonder what Greenwich Fair is – a periodical breaking out, we suppose – a sort of spring rash.” – Charles Dickens
“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
“The Thames is no ordinary waterway, it is the golden thread of our nation’s history.” – Winston Churchill
“Aesthetically, London is just beautiful; it’s a gorgeous city. The architecture, monuments, the parks, the small streets – it’s an incredible place to be.” – Sara Bareilles
“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.” – Bram Stoker
“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
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Long London Captions
“Walking along the road after nightfall, I thought all at once of London streets, and, by a freak of mind, wished I were there. I saw the shining of shop-fronts, the yellow glistening of a wet pavement, the hurrying people, the cabs, the omnibuses–and I wished I were amid it all.” – George Gissing
“There’s something very special about seeing history so clearly in front of you through that architecture that you just don’t get in the U.S. If I was asked to choose where I’d most like to live, I would always choose London.” – Charlie Cox
“Dickens’ London was a place of the mind, but it was also a real place. Much of what we take today to be the marvellous imaginings of a visionary novelist turn out on inspection to be the reportage of a great observer.” – Judith Flanders
“London is like a dream come true. As I ramble through it I am haunted by the curious feeling of something half-forgotten, but still dimly remembered, like a reminiscence of some previous state of existence. It is at once familiar and strange.” – Joseph Fort Newton
“It is the glory of London that it is always ending and beginning anew, and that a visitor, with a good eye and indefatigable feet, will find in her travels all the Londons she has ever met in the pages of books, one atop the other, like the strata of the Earth.” – Anna Quindlen
“London was so rich, and also so green, and somehow so detailed: full of stuff that had been made, and bought, and placed, and groomed, and shaped, and washed clean, and put on display as if the whole city was for sale.” – John Lanchester
“Behind everything in London is something else, and, behind that, is something else still; and so on through the centuries, so that London as we see her is only the latest manifestation of other Londons, and to love her is to plunge into ancestor-worship.” – H.V. Morton
“The appearance presented by the streets of London an hour before sunrise, on a summer’s morning, is most striking even to the few whose unfortunate pursuits of pleasure, or scarcely less unfortunate pursuits of business, cause them to be well acquainted with the scene. There is an air of cold, solitary desolation about the noiseless streets which we are accustomed to see thronged at other times by a busy, eager crowd, and over the quiet, closely-shut buildings, which throughout the day are swarming with life and bustle, that is very impressive.” – Charles Dickens
“Behind every door in London there are stories, behind every one ghosts. The greatest writers in the history of the written word have given them substance, given them life. And so we readers walk, and dream, and imagine, in the city where imagination found its great home.” – Anna Quindlen
“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 so.” – Hubert Gregg
“London – beautiful, immortal London – has never been a ‘city’ in the simplest sense of the word. It was, and is, a living, breathing thing, a stone leviathan that harbours secrets underneath its scales. It guards them covetously, hiding them deep within its body; only the mad or the worthy can find them.” – Samantha Shannon
“London is not a city, London is a person. Tower Bridge talks to you; National Gallery reads a poem for you; Hyde Park dances with you; Palace of Westminster plays the piano; Big Ben and St Paul’s Cathedral sing an opera! London is not a city; it is a talented artist who is ready to contact with you directly!” – Mehmet Murat Ildan
“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
“What an amazing thing is the coming of spring to London. The very pavements seem ready to crack and lift under the denied earth; in the air is a consciousness of life which tells you that if traffic stopped for a fortnight grass would grow again in Piccadilly and corn would spring in pavement cracks where a horse had spilt his ‘feed’. And the squares of London, so dingy and black since the first October gale, fill week by week with the rising tide of life, just as the sea, running up the creeks and pushing itself forward inch by inch towards the land, comes at last to each remote rock pool.” – H. V. Morton
“London has the trick of making its past, its long indelible past, always a part of its present. And for that reason it will always have meaning for the future, because of all it can teach about disaster, survival, and redemption. It is all there in the streets. It is all there in the books.” – Anna Quindlen
“Noon comes with bells on, because this is London, and London is a city of bells. From its heart to its ragged edges, they bisect the day in a jangle of sound: peals and tinkles and deep bass knells. They ring from steeples and clocktowers, from churches and town halls, in an overlapping celebration of the everyday fact that time passes.” – Mick Herron
“I got to the top and looking down upon London. Well, I realised I’d arrived. The sky was scattered with cumulus. The red, pink and orange came from everywhere. I looked towards The North, East, South and West. I have them in the palm of my hand. I own London. In that sense London owns me.” – Scarlet West
“Live your life in any way, London says. It encourages defiance. I loved what it gave me, who it allowed me to be. On the nights I could afford a minicab home, I rolled down the window while crossing the river and watched the lights on the water, knowing most late-night minicabbers were reaffirming their love of London with the same view. I loved its messiness, its attempts at order. I loved the anonymity it afforded.” – Craig Taylor
“London always reminds me of a brain. It is similarly convoluted and circuitous. A lot of cities, especially American ones like New York and Chicago, are laid out in straight lines. Like the circuits on computer chips, there are a lot of right angles in cities like this. But London is a glorious mess. It evolved from a score or so of distinct villages, that merged and meshed as their boundaries enlarged. As a result, London is a labyrinth, full of turnings and twistings just like a brain.” – James Geary
“I like walking round London at night, I do it all the time. Not for no reason, just cos… it’s home, innit? It’s brilliant, you can’t ever get bored of London cos even if you live here for like a hundred and fifty years you still won’t ever know everything about it. There’s always something new. Like, you’re walking round somewhere you’ve known since you was born and you look up and there’s an old clock on the side of a building you never seen before, or there’s a little gargoyley face over a window or something. Don’t you think it’s cool?” – Richard Rider
“I love London. I love everything about it. I love its palaces and its museums and its galleries, sure. But also, I love its filth, and damp, and stink. Okay, well, I don’t mean love, exactly. But I don’t mind it. Not any more. Not now I’m used to it. You don’t mind anything once you’re used to it. Not the graffiti you find on your door the week after you painted over it, or the chicken bones and cider cans you have to move before you can sit down for your damp and muddy picnic. Not the everchanging fast food joints – AbraKebabra to Pizza the Action to Really Fried Chicken – and all on a high street that despite its three new names a week never seems to look any different. Its tawdriness can be comforting, its wilfulness inspiring. It’s the London I see every day. I mean, tourists, they see the Dorchester. They see Harrods, and they see men in bearskins and Carnaby Street. They very rarely see the Happy Shopper on the Mile End Road, or a drab Peckham disco. They head for Buckingham Palace, and see waving above it the red, white and blue, while the rest of us order dansak from the Tandoori Palace, and see Simply Red, White Lightning, and Duncan from Blue. But we should be proud of that, too. Or, at least, get used to it.” – Danny Wallace
Funny London Quotes
“London is a splendid place to live in for those who can get out of it.” – George John Gordon Bruce
“The first twenty-four hours of a young man’s life in London usually settled his eternity in heaven or hell.” – George Williams
“Yes, London. You know, fish, chips, cup o tea, bad food, worse weather, Mary-fucking-Poppins. London!” – Dennis Farina (Snatch)
“Oh, I love London Society! It is entirely composed now of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics. Just what Society should be.” – Oscar Wilde
“I’m leaving because the weather is too good. I hate London when it’s not raining.” – Groucho Marx
“In London, love and scandal are considered the best sweeteners of tea.” – John Osborne
“Nothing is certain in London but expense.” – William Shenstone
“Paris is a woman but London is an independent man puffing his pipe in a pub.” – Jack Kerouac
“When it’s three o’clock in New York, it’s still 1938 in London.” – Bette Midler
“Take a perfect day, add six hours of rain and fog, and you have instant London.” – Unkown
“A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income.” – George Bernard Shaw
“London, a city where creativity and innovation have always flourished, provides a significant home for Starbucks and a significant gateway into Europe.” – Howard Schultz
“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
“How can you ever be late for anything in London? They have a huge clock right in the middle of the town.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“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
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