London Quotes (page 13)
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And they went further and further from her, being attached to her by a thin
thread (since they lunched with her) which would stretch and stretch, get thinner and thinner as they walked across London; as if ones friends were attached to ones body, after lunching with them, by a thin thread, which (as dozed there) became hazy with the sond of bells, striking the hour or ringing to service, as a single spiders thread is blotted with rain –drops, and, burdened, sags down. So she slept. And...
Virginia Woolf
Beware of the insipid vanities and idle dissipations of the metropolis of England; Beware of the unmeaning luxuries of Bath and of the stinking fish of Southampton."
"Alas! (exclaimed I) how am I to avoid those evils I shall never be exposed to? What probability is there of my ever tasting the dissipations of London, the luxuries of Bath, or the stinking fish of Southamption?...
Jane Austen
From the top of the staircase she sees the London train, modern and elegant, and she tells herself again: Whether it's good luck or bad to be born onto this earth, the best way to spend a life here is to let yourself be carried along, as I am moving at this moment, by a cheerful, noisy crowd moving forward.
Milan Kundera
At the age of fifteen he had bought off a twopenny stall in the market a duo-decimo book of recipes, gossip, and homilies, printed in 1605. His stepmother, able to read figures, had screamed at the sight of it when he had proudly brought it home. 1605 was 'the olden days', meaning Henry VIII, the executioner's axe, and the Great Plague. She thrust the book into the kitchen fire with the tongs, yelling that it must be seething with lethal germs. A limited, though live, sense of history. And...
Anthony Burgess
I found cause to wonder upon what ground the English accuse Americans of corrupting the language by introducing slang words. I think I heard more and more different kinds of slang during my few weeks' stay in London than in my whole "tenderloin" life in New York. But I suppose the English feel that the language is theirs, and that they may do with it as they please without at the same time allowing that privilege to others.
James Weldon Johnson
Anyone who has the temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware of [two] facts: first, that of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness; second, that there are twenty-five elderly gentlemen living in the neighbourhood of London who resent any slight upon her genius as if it were an insult to the chastity of their aunts.
Virginia Woolf
