London Quotes

Alem is on holiday with his father for a few days in London. He has never been out of Ethiopia before and is very excited. They have a great few days togther until one morning when Alem wakes up in the bed and breakfast they are staying at to find the unthinkable.

“A parcel of patterns brought the plague to Eyam. A parcel sent up from London to George Vicars, a journeyman tailor, who was lodging with Mrs. Cooper in a cottage by the west end of the churchyard.”

“His father was mean with the lamps and only kept one up in front for the road ahead, so Meshak hated being out on the highway at night. He was afraid of the dark. It was not just the spirit world which frightened him, but the real world of robbers and highwaymen, especially near the forest.”

“There are little bubbles of old time in London, where things and places stay the same, like bubbles in amber. There’s a lot of time in London, and it has to go somewhere—it doesn’t all get used up at once”

″‘You got a long way to go...,’ she said, puzzled. ‘London,’ Richard told her. ‘Not just London...’ The old woman paused. ‘Not any London I know. It started to rain, then, softly. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It starts with doors.‘”

″ ‘Ah!’ says he, falling again to smiling, ‘I got my wastefulness from the same man I got the buttons from; and that was my poor father, Duncan Stewart, grace be to him! He was the prettiest man of his kindred; and the best swordsman in the Hielands, David, and that is the same as to say, in all the world, I should ken, for it was him that taught me. He was in the Black Watch, when first it was mustered; and, like other gentlemen privates, had a gillie at his back to carry his firelock for him on the march. Well, the King, it appears, was wishful to see Hieland swordsmanship; and my father and three more were chosen out and sent to London town, to let him see it at the best.’ ”

“The earth was rushing past like a river or a sea below him. Trees and water and green grass hurried away beneath. Now there was nothing but the roofs of houses sweeping along like a great torrent of stones and rocks. Chimney’s fell and tiles flew from the roofs. There was a great roaring for the wind was dashing against London like a stormy sea. Diamond, of course, at the back of North Wind was in a calm but he could hear it.”

“A goose on board! She’ll have to work her passage if she is coming with us to London.”

“The last rays of the sun catching the topsails of Sentinel. In London the gas-lights on, dinner over, the theatres filling, the dosshouses full, the city clocks striking nine.”

“My parent came from Jamaica. But because I was born in London, and live and go to school there, I never dreamt I could’ve become so fascinated by my father’s birthplace and home village.”

“We were in a taxi in some city, perhaps London. We’d just come out of a tunnel. Suddenly, the driver slammed on the brakes and started reversing as fast as he could. As we went back into the tunnel, I saw the mushroom cloud rising in front of us. It stretched up to the sky.”

“When the Greengrasses move from London to rural Norfolk, mischievous nine-year-old Polly acquires a runt piglet, whose rapid growth and uncontrollable antics surpass even Polly’s expectations”

“Ben, the middle child in a large, busy family living in London, wants a dog. His grandparents give him an embroidered picture which leads to fantasy which has a violent culmination. ”

Through them I have come to know your great England; and to know her is to love her.

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.

“Well, I know that, did I move and speak in your London, none there are who would not know me for a stranger. That is not enough for me.

“We are in Transylvania; and Transylvania is not England. Our ways are not your ways, and there shall be to you many strange things. Nay, from what you have told me of your experiences already, you know something of what strange things there may be.”

We Britons had at that time particularly settled that it was treasonable to doubt our having and our being the best of everything: otherwise, while I was scared by the immensity of London, I think I might have had some faint doubts whether it was not rather ugly, crooked, narrow, and dirty.

“I hope as you get your elths in this close spot? For the present may be a werry good inn, according to London opinions,” said Joe, confidentially, “and I believe its character do stand it; but I wouldn’t keep a pig in it myself,—not in the case that I wished him to fatten wholesome and to eat with a meller flavour on him.”

I felt that this grey monstrous London of ours, with its myriads of people, its sordid sinners, and its splendid sins, as you once phrased it, must have something in store for me.