If you’re looking for the best London quotes for Instagram, then you’ve found the right blog post. I’ve gathered dozens of inspiring phrases about the English city, to match your travel photos! And if you haven’t visited London yet, don’t worry. I’m sure these London quotes will ignite your wanderlust!

London is not only one of the best places to visit in England but also a perfect destination for all history, culture, art, architecture, and music lovers. After all, the so-called “Big Smoke” city is one of the most visited sites in Europe and the world!

Over its many centuries of history, London has inspired thousands of famous artists and personalities to express their feelings for it. And today it continues to delight tourists and travelers, who come from all over the world to explore the beautiful capital of England (and the United Kingdom).

So, do you want to learn 50+ Best London Quotes (For Your Instagram Captions)? Keep reading!

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Best London Quotes by Famous Artists

Almost all of the London quotes that I found were from artists. Which is no surprise at all, right? Painters, authors, writers, playwrights, poets, actors, directors, composers, designers, fashion designers, fashion models… the list goes on when the common subject is London!

Best London Quotes by English and British Artists

1. “London is a city of clubs and private houses. You have to be a member.” – Alec Waugh (novelist)

2. “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.” – Arthur Conan Doyle (writer and physician)

3. “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 (author and screenwriter)

4. “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 (writer and social critic)

5. “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? – a sort of spring rash.” – Charlotte Brontë (novelist and poet)

6. “If you’re curious, London’s an amazing place.” – David Bailey (fashion and portrait photographer)

7. “New York has a great energy, but London is better.” – Jaime Winstone (actress)

8. “The truth is, that in London it is always a sickly season. Nobody is healthy in London, nobody can be.” – Jane Austen (novelist)

9. “In London, love, and scandal are considered the best sweeteners of tea.” – John Osborne (playwright, screenwriter, and actor)

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10. “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 fools-cap crown On a fool’s head – and there is London Town.” – Lord Byron (poet and peer)

11. “I don’t know what London’s coming to — the higher the buildings the lower the morals.” – Noël Coward (playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer)

12. “I travel continuously, and I see many cities, but there is nowhere like London.” – Norman Foster (architect and designer)

13. “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 (biographer, novelist, and critic)

14. “If London is a watercolour, New York is an oil painting.” – Peter Shaffer (playwright, screenwriter, and novelist)

15. “I think London’s sexy because it’s so full of eccentrics.” – Rachel Weisz (actress)

16. “In some of the great cities of Europe – Paris, Vienna, Prague, and Brussels – tourists bored with life above ground can descend below. All these cities have sewer museums and tours, and all expose their underbelly willingly to the curious. But not London, arguably the home of the most splendid sewer network in Europe.” – Rose George (journalist and author)

17. “By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show.” – Samuel Johnson (writer, poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor, and lexicographer)

18. “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 (writer, poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor, and lexicographer)

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19. “The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane.” – Stephen Fry (actor, broadcaster, comedian, director, and writer)

20. “London perpetually attracts, stimulates, gives me a play and a story and a poem, without any trouble, save that of moving my legs through the streets… To walk alone through London is the greatest rest.” – Virginia Woolf (writer)

21. “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 (writer)

22. “There’s nowhere else like London. Nothing at all, anywhere.” – Vivienne Westwood (fashion designer and businesswoman)

23. “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 (Trinidad and Tobago-born British writer)

24. “I’ve been walking about London for the last 30 years, and I find something fresh in it every day.” – Walter Besant (novelist and historian)

25. “London, thou art the flower of cities all! Gemme of all joy, jasper of jocunditie.” – William Dunbar (poet)

26. “London is a bad habit one hates to lose.” – William Sansom (novelist, travel and short story writer)

27. “Nothing is certain in London but expense.” – William Shenstone (poet)

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Best London Quotes by Other Artists

28. “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 (Indian actor and model)

29. “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 (American author, journalist, and opinion columnist)

30. “I went to London because, for me, it was the home of literature. I went there because of Dickens and Shakespeare.” – Ben Okri (Nigerian poet and novelist)

31. “Fashion needs fresh blood, and London is the most creative place for that.” – Donatella Versace (Italian fashion designer, businesswoman, socialite, and former model)

32. “I’m leaving because the weather is too good. I hate London when it’s not raining.” – Groucho Marx (American comedian, actor, writer, stage, film, radio, and television star)

33. “There are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappear — the city of London and the South Seas.” – Herman Melville (American novelist, short story writer, and poet)

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34. “London is like a woman with too many years to encourage confession.” – Louise Closser Hale (American actress, playwright, and novelist)

35. “Oh, I love London Society! It is entirely composed now of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics. Just what Society should be.” – Oscar Wilde (Irish poet and playwright)

36. “The man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.” – Oscar Wilde (Irish poet and playwright)

37. “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 (novelist and travel writer)

38. “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 (American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist, and poet)

39. “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 (American singer-songwriter, actress, author, and producer)

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Best London Quotes by Famous Personalities

If you think that only artists express how they feel about this city – which has four UNESCO World Heritage Sites – think again! There are countless London quotes written or uttered by the military, heads of state, philosophers, historians, and former Kings of England (and the United Kingdom)!

Best London Quotes by English and British Personalities

40. “London is a modern Babylon.” – Benjamin Disraeli (statesman, politician, and former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom)

41. “London is a splendid place to live in for those who can get out of it.” – George Bruce (Scottish peer and banker)

42. “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 (former King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth)

43. “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 (historian and journalist)

44. “On March 4th, 1830, I arrived in London, where a new world seemed opened to me.” – Henry Bessemer (inventor)

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45. “London is the clearing-house of the world.” – Joseph Chamberlain (statesman)

46. “The interesting thing about London is that there are always stylish surprises around every corner.” – Natalie Massenet (British-American fashion entrepreneur, and former journalist)

47. “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 (business magnate, investor, and author)

48. “London is a cluster of communities, great and small, famous and unsung; a city of contrasts, a congregation of diversity.” – Roy Porter (historian)

49. “London’s greatest strength is our diversity, and it’s wonderful to see Londoners celebrating our capital’s different traditions, determined to stand up to division.” – Sadiq Khan (politician and current Mayor of London)

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Best London Quotes by Other Personalities

50. “I feel at home when I go to London.” – Didier Drogba (Ivorian former professional footballer)

51. “I don’t know where football will take me because, in football, you never know, but for sure, as a family, our home will be in London.” – José Mourinho (Portuguese professional football manager and former player)

52. “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 (American Baptist minister)

53. “How can you ever be late for anything in London? They have a huge clock right in the middle of the town.” – Jimmy Kimmel (American television host, comedian, writer, and producer)

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