London And Country Quotes & Sayings

Though, like Everhard, they did not dream of the nature of it, there were men, even before his time, who caught glimpses of the shadow. John C. Calhoun said: "A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks." And that great humanist, Abraham Lincoln, said, just before his assassination: "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country ... Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. — Jack London

When I was little, I grew up in a place called Hertfordshire, which is just near London, but out in the country, and I visited Pakistan in the summers to go and see my family on my dad's side. — Bat For Lashes

If I could have made the change sooner I daresay I should never have given a thought to the literary delights of Paris or London; for life in the country is the only state which has always completely satisfied me, and I had never been allowed to gratify it, even for a few weeks at a time. Now I was to know the joys of six or seven months a year among fields and woods of my own, and the childish ecstasy of that first spring outing at Mamaroneck swept away all restlessness in the deep joy of communion with the earth. — Edith Wharton

I read The Vegetarian and fell in love with it. A year later, I was invited to go and speak at the London Book Fair (which I'd never even heard of before), as they were gearing up for Korea being the market focus country in 2014. I met Max Porter there, Kang's editor at Portobello, sent him my sample, and the rest is history. — Deborah Smith

You can drive 1,000 miles across America and find yourself, whereas if you drive a few miles from Slough you're in London anyway, or you hit Wales and you're in another country! Also, wherever you are in England it's still raining. — Ricky Gervais

I cannot love people in the country, I discover, because there is always this danger that they may be acquaintances, with all the perils and choleras of acquaintance implicit in them; but in London they seem as charming as rabbits. — Sylvia Townsend Warner

I miss my kids, and they miss me. It's very difficult, but I have to do it for my country and fulfill my dreams coming to the 2012 London Olympics. — Mary Kom

The very rich, having fundamentally missed the point of urban living, have long been frustrated by the fact that it's impossible to squeeze the amenities of a country mansion - car showroom, swimming pool, cinema, servants quarters etc. - into the floor space of your average London terrace. Those without access to trans-dimensional engineering, a key Time Lord discovery, have had to resort to extending their houses into the ground. Thus proving that all that stands between your average rich person and a career in Bond villainy is access to an extinct volcano. They — Ben Aaronovitch

The twins were nineteen, soon to be twenty, but one could be excused for thinking they were younger than their actual age. Raised in an atmosphere largely devoid of authority, they had run free on a country estate with few diversions other than those they created for themselves. Their parents had spent much of their time in London society, leaving their daughters in the care of servants, governesses, and tutors. None of them had been able or willing to take a firm hand with them.
To be certain, Pandora and Cassandra were high-spirited but also affectionate, intelligent, and endearing. And they were as beautiful as a pair of pagan goddesses, both of them long-limbed and glowing with health. Pandora was perpetually disheveled and full of energy, her dark hair falling from its pins as if she'd just been running through the woods. Cassandra, the golden-haired twin, was more compliant and romantic in nature, more willing to abide by rules. — Lisa Kleypas

Ah," said Mr Jesmond, "but Christmas in England is a great institution and I assure you at Kings Lacey you would see it at its best. It's a wonderful old house, you know. Why, one wing of it dates from the fourteenth century."

Again Poirot shivered. The thought of a fourteenth-century English manor house filled him with apprehension. He had suffered too often in the historic country houses of England. He looked round appreciatively at his comfortable modern flat with its radiators and the latest patent devices for excluding any kind of draught.

"In the winter," he said firmly, "I do not leave London. — Agatha Christie

The whole scale and scope of the decorating and fashion business in this country are incomparably grander than in London. What's thrilling about America in general, and the New York fashion scene in particular, is its optimism. It makes the whole experience energizing and uplifting. — Hamish Bowles

I love Manchester. I always have, ever since I was a kid, and I go back as much as I can. Manchester's my spiritual home. I've been in London for 22 years now but Manchester's the only other place, I think, in the country that I could live. — John Simm

To represent your country at a home Olympics is something special and I'm over the moon to be selected for Team GB. I was pleased to get the qualifying time in Berlin earlier this year and my sole focus is getting in the right shape for London. — Paula Radcliffe

For 'Around the World in 80 Plates' we got to travel all over, having what was like a cross between a culinary competition and races. And in each country we had a chef Ambassador. We went to London, Barcelona, Bologna, Hong Kong, Thailand, Morocco ... It was amazing. — Curtis Stone

I have no sense of being famous - you're just working. And then you'll have a random day in London when you'll do some press and it creeps into your awareness that this goes out - that what you do every day goes out to televisions right across the country. — Karen Gillan

Victoria stared at her sister with a beaming smile. She was struck as always by the sense that Vivien was at once familiar and exotic. How was it possible to love someone and yet never understand her? Vivien belonged to a world so far removed from her own that it seemed impossible they had come from the same family, much less that they were twins.
Vivien was the first to break the silence. "It turns out you were right to refuse all my invitations to come to town. London is definitely not the place for you, country mouse. — Lisa Kleypas

Lady Sylvia McCordle: Mr Weissman
Tell us about the film you're going to make.
Morris Weissman: Oh, sure. It's called "Charlie Chan In London". It's a detective story.
Mabel Nesbitt: Set in London?
Morris Weissman: Well, not really. Most of it takes place at a shooting party in a country house. Sort of like this one, actually. Murder in the middle of the night, a lot of guests for the weekend, everyone's a suspect. You know, that sort of thing.
Constance: How horrid. And who turns out to have done it?
Morris Weissman: Oh, I couldn't tell you that. It would spoil it for you.
Constance: Oh, but none of us will see it. — Julian Fellowes

Modern nature-worship is all upside down. Trees and fields ought to be the ordinary things; terraces and temples ought to be extraordinary. I am on the side of the man who lives in the country and wants to go to London. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The uniform necessities of human nature produce in a great measure uniformity of life, and for part of the day make one place like another; to dress and to undress, to eat and to sleep, are the same in London as in the country. — Samuel Johnson

There's something about being in the country that makes you stick out like a sore thumb ? you're an anomaly. But in London there's always someone wilder and woollier. — Cornelia Parker

This is the BBC in London. You will now hear a statement from the Prime Minister." "I am speaking to you from the Cabinet room, Ten Downing Street. This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note, stating that unless we heard from them by eleven o'clock, that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now, that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently, this country is at war with Germany. — Jeffrey Archer

From the time I arrived in British East Africa at the indifferent age of four and went through the barefoot stage of early youth hunting wild pig with the Nandi, later training racehorses for a living, and still later scouting Tanganyika and the waterless bush country between the Tana and Athi Rivers, by aeroplane, for elephant, I remained so happily provincial I was unable to discuss the boredom of being alive with any intelligence until I had gone to London and lived there for a year. Boredom, like hookworm, is endemic. — Beryl Markham

I'm one of those people, in any country I'm in, if somebody could just put me in a car or a bus, I'll look out the window and say, 'OK, there's the Tower of London, there's Buckingham Palace, there's Big Ben,' and if it all takes about five minutes, perfect. I've seen all of it and I can go home. — Gilbert Gottfried

But why have you dear English Jew whose forefathers fought to enter the country of Johnny Mill, the Stuart with a little heart, saunter in Haridwar, no pubs or fish and chips' counters here, only Ganga-Jal, -the holy ale- Quaff it for the spirit and carry it to the banks of Thames in a holy grail. — Aporva Kala

This isn't some LA country rock jam reminiscing on the pyschtotropic pot pansies of Haight Ashbury . This is the soot and smut of London mate ! — Saira Viola

I walk to Oxford Street and climb on the number 8. It's freezing and it starts to rain and it's the ugliest bus I've ever seen, rattling down the ugliest streets, in the ugliest city, in the ugliest country, in the ugliest of all possible worlds. — David Thewlis

They have little in common, save for their geography, and the fact that each has a version of this city straddling this river on this island country, and in each, that city is called London. — Victoria Schwab

Only later I felt that poetry is like feeling another person lying next to you in the dark. Do you believe in poetry, in the spirit of poetry? I could see poetry in ballads, in the picture of the cathedral on the back of the postcard that my father sent my mother from London, in glaciers, peaks of mountains, river dust, Ian McEwan's covers of his books, cheap thrillers. Running gave me a gravitational pull. Running was my mother love. I was barefoot. There I was dressed in white. Matchstick legs. Hair standing up. I did not feel like a zero. I did not feel like a lost oar, unloved and unwanted, like a plant that needed water. A fleet of paper ships that needed to be mourned. I often felt homesick for the country of my mother. — Abigail George

So Laura is placed for us: mushrooms, crushed flowers, country matters. In London she will miss the greenhouse with its glossy tank, the appleroom, everything "earthy and warm." Laura is an anomaly in the world of easy literary symbolism: she is a spinster, completely uninterested in men. Nevertheless she belongs irrevocably to the sources of life: to earth, seeds, bulbs. — Sylvia Townsend Warner

At the beginning of my career, as a boy from Peru in London, suddenly discovering British culture and society, I looked so much at the work of the photographers Cecil Beaton and Norman Parkinson, which seemed to represent a wonderful vanished grandeur of my new country. — Mario Testino

It was a pity that movies and live TV left New York for Hollywood. London theater, movies, television - until (Britain's) money ran out - were always better than ours since the city was the political capital of the country, as well as the artistic and literary one. In L.A. we've always been slightly sealed off from real life. It's no accident that two of our most interesting directors, Woody Allen and Bob Altman, are more or less settled in the real world. — Gore Vidal

No one knew his first name, and in general he was known in the country as Beauty Smith. But he was anything save a beauty. To antithesis was due his naming. He was preeminently unbeautiful. Nature had been niggardly with him. — Jack London

I live 50 miles from London and we've got some of the highest levels of teenage and childhood poverty in the country. It's disgusting. Just because it's a rural area, it gets forgotten. — Roger Daltrey

Mitt Romney will travel to London where he will attend the Olympics opening ceremony. Of course it's going ot be weird when they're announcing all the countries, and he's like 'Got a bank account there, got one there, two bank accounts there.' — Jimmy Fallon

Not only do we end up with a vivid, surprising and soulful sense of one artist and his work, but Leigh also offers us a commanding view of a city, London, and country at the dawn of the modern age and of a man being overawed and overtaken by new technologies such as photography and the railways. As ever with Leigh, 'Mr Turner' addresses the big questions with small moments. It's an extraordinary film, all at once strange, entertaining, thoughtful and exciting. — Dave Calhoun

Look around you. Watch how people function and interact with one another. You'll see this is going on everywhere all the time. People devour each other in the name of love, or family or country. But that's an excuse; they're just hungry and want to be fed. Read their faces, the newspapers, read what it says on their T-shirts! 'I think you're mistaking me for someone who gives a shit.' 'My parents went to London but all they brought me back was this lousy T-shirt.' 'So many women, so little time.' 'Whoever dies with the most toys, wins.' They're supposed to be funny, witty, and postmodern, Miranda. But the truth is they're only stating a fact: Me. I come first. Get out of my way. — Jonathan Carroll

Nobody who had not lived there would ever understand that London was a country unto itself. They might resent it for the fact that it held more power and money than any other British city, but they could not understand that poverty carried its own flavour there, where everything cost more, where the relentless distinctions between those who had succeeded and those who had not were constantly, painfully visible. — Robert Galbraith

The breeze carried the music into the distant country plains, past the bullet trains, across the majestic cornfields and the Christmas tree farms. The music swept past the Georgia orange trees, the droning honeybees, and the shining seas of the Atlantic. It wafted past the London Pier. Young Britney wanted all of Nod to hear. — David Paul Kirkpatrick

Seven days from the time they pulled into Dawson, they dropped down the steep bank by the Barracks to the Yukon Trail, and pulled for Dyea and Salt Water. Perrault was carrying despatches if anything more urgent than those he had brought in; also, the travel pride had gripped him, and he purposed to make the record trip of the year. Several things favored him in this. The week's rest had recuperated the dogs and put them in thorough trim. The trail they had broken into the country was packed hard by later journeyers. And further, the police had arranged in two or three places deposits of grub for dog and man, and he was travelling light. — Jack London

I listen to a lot of really old western and country music. There's a lot of cool stuff in there ... all the heartbreak of the country darkness. — Theophilus London

Some of us are happy with our African hair, thank you very much. I don't want some poor Indian girl's hair. And I wish to God I could buy black hair products from black people for once. How we going to make it in this country if we don't make our own business? — Zadie Smith

We need strength and success elsewhere in our country - not by pulling London down but by building the rest of the country up. — George Osborne

When a man journeys into a far country, he must be prepared to forget many of the things he has learned, and to acquire such customs as are inherent with existence in the new land; he must abandon the old ideals and the old gods, and oftentimes he must reverse the very codes by which his conduct has hitherto been shaped. — Jack London

As it happens, I have personally been something of an enthusiast for the London Olympic games, mainly on the grounds a) that a bit of wasteland will be made nice and b) that it tends to make everybody happy that their country should be the centre of world attention for a couple of weeks in their life. — Evan Davis

I'm a London lad, but I'm fascinated by America. I want to take a motorcycling trip across the country and see those wide open spaces. — Charlie Cox

In London - and forget those extra public pressures on politicians - the lovely old Sloane world of manor houses simply hasn't cut it since Big Bang in 1986, the point at which Mrs. Thatcher really started to achieve her ambition to make this country more like America - its ambition, economy, it's very tangible measures of success. — Peter York

In the new series of 'Foyle's War,' London starts to get bombed, and the country falls under heavy attack. It affects people's sense of well-being, their sense of the future and their concerns for their family and friends. — Anthony Howell

Most people live in the city and go to the country at the weekend, and that's posh and aristocratic, but actually to live in the country and come to London when you can't take it any more is different. — Damien Hirst

If someone walked along any high street anywhere in London, and probably anywhere in the country, and looked into a letting agency, they would see a sign saying, 'No benefits here.' In other words, anyone in receipt of a state benefit is not allowed to apply for a private rented flat from that agent. — Jeremy Corbyn

'The Taming Of The Shrew' is probably the first time I've worked in this country for about ten years, apart from theatre, and it's not for want of trying. It was so fantastic to work in London - it felt really glamorous. — Rufus Sewell

If you want to switch jobs, then you can come over here right now and balance the extermination budget in London while (shuffling through papers) figuring out why the hell a two-door wardrobe in the spare room of a country house is considered to be a matter of national concern! — Daniel O'Malley

Dear London, British fashion is a serious business. The British fashion industry is worth £21bn to the U.K. economy and employs 819,000 people across the country. With your help, we would like to see these numbers rise for the good of our industry, our talented designers, and our reputation worldwide. — Natalie Massenet

I didn't consider myself a fashion designer at all at the time of punk. I was just using fashion as a way to express my resistance and to be rebellious. I came from the country, and by the time I got to London, I considered myself to be very stupid. It was my ambition to understand the world I live in. — Vivienne Westwood

I love Soul, R+B, Electronic, and good pop. Really, the only thing I don't listen to is country and heavy metal. I love Marvin Gaye, John Legend, Al Green, Fat Freddys Drop, Sade, Grace Jones, Bazoo Bijou, Prince, John Lennon, London Grammar, Daft Punk, Dr John, Dusty Springfield, Peggy Lee, Gotye, and on it goes. — Jane Badler

I was very fortunate to grow up with parents who love to travel, so I traveled from a young age. My dad's a heart surgeon and goes to conferences all over the world. By the time I was seven, I traveled outside the country for the first time. We went to Paris. The next year, we went to London, and then Brussels. — Candice Accola

I think my parents had in mind that I would settle down at quite a young age, but I decided that being a housewife in a big country house wasn't for me. I wanted to leave the country, head for London and see what the world had to offer. — Alison Jackson

In other countries they speak of nobility and courtesy, in London they practise it. — Frances Xavier Cabrini

The range and variety of Chaucer's English did much to establish English as a national language. Chaucer also contributed much to the formation of a standard English based on the dialect of the East Midlands region which was basically the dialect of London which Chaucer himself spoke. Indeed, by the end of the fourteenth century the educated language of London, bolstered by the economic power of London itself, was beginning to become the standard form of written language throughout the country, although the process was not to be completed for several centuries. The cultural, commercial, administrative and intellectual importance of the East Midlands (one of the two main universities, Cambridge, was also in this region), the agricultural richness of the region and the presence of major cities, Norwich and London, contributed much to the increasing standardisation of the dialect. — Ronald Carter

A while back I heard bears have to stick leaves up their arse to stop ants crawling up there and biting them! I know the world is getting overpopulated but it isn't that crowded that things have to live up an arse. No wonder Paddington Bear left Peru for London. When you've got bears wanting to leave the country it makes me wonder what I'm doing here. — Karl Pilkington

It is very difficult to say nowadays where the suburbs of London come to an end and where the country begins. The railways, instead of enabling Londoners to live in the country have turned the countryside into a city. — Anthony Trollope

My name is Lev," said Lev.
"My name is Lydia," said the woman. And they shook hands, Lev's hand holding the scrunched-up kerchief and Lydia's hand rough with salt and smelling of egg, and then Lev asked, "What are you planning to do in En gland?" and Lydia said, "I have some interviews in London for jobs as a translator."
"That sounds promising."
"I hope so. I was a teacher of English at School 237 in Yarbl, so my language is very colloquial."
Lev looked at Lydia. It wasn't difficult to imagine her standing in front of a class and writing words on a blackboard. He said, "I wonder why you're leaving our country when you had a good job at School 237 in Yarbl?"
"Well," said Lydia, "I became very tired of the view from my window. Every day, summer and winter, I looked out at the schoolyard and the high fence and the apartment block beyond, and I began to imagine I would die seeing these things, and I didn't want this. I expect you understand what I mean? — Rose Tremain

Sydney enjoyed living in the country, though she took no direct part in field sports. After her marriage, there is no record of her shooting or hunting, though as a girl she rode well and often, and when she accompanied her father to Scotland in 1898 she was regarded as 'a brilliant shot'.33 As they grew up she encouraged her children to follow the hounds of the Heythrop Hunt and join their father when he fished and shot, but if they were not interested she was unconcerned. Many of her friends would have said she was a countrywoman, but she enjoyed London too. — Mary S. Lovell

I was under the impression that I warned you that in London country ways will not do, Frederica!"
"You did!" she retorted. "And although I can't say that I paid much heed to your advice it so happens that I am accompanied today by my aunt!"
"Who adds invisibility to her other accomplishments! — Georgette Heyer

I suppose it is because I have lived rather a restricted life myself that I have found so much enjoyment in remembering what I have learned in these last years about brave people and strange scenes. I have sat here day after day this winter, sleeping a good deal in my chair, hardly knowing if I was in London or the Gulf country, dreaming of the blazing sunshine, of poddy-dodging and black stockmen, of Cairns and of Green Island. Of a girl that I met forty years too late, and of her life in that small town that I shall never see again, that holds so much of my affection. — Nevil Shute

The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth
he could at the same time and by the same means adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprise of any quarter of the world
he could secure forthwith, if he wished, cheap and comfortable means of transit to any country or climate without passport or other formality. — John Maynard Keynes

Arrogant , beautiful, domineering Lord Crane, with the caring that made Stephen's heart break, and the vicious streak that made his knees bend, had chosen him among all the men's men of London, and treated him with a loyalty, generosity and almost painful honesty that made Stephen's heart hurt. And his reward was a few doled-out crumbs of Stephen's time in a country he hated. — K.J. Charles

I really like England. I like the lifestyle and the country. The history. The culture, which London is full of. The country pursuits. — Leon Max

The months came and went, and back and forth they twisted through the uncharted vastness, where no men were and yet where men had been if the Lost Cabin were true. They went across divides in summer blizzards, shivered under the midnight sun on naked mountains between the timber line and the eternal snows, dropped into summer valleys amid swarming gnats and flies, and in the shadows of glaciers picked strawberries and flowers as ripe and fair as any the Southland could boast. In the fall of the year they penetrated a weird lake country, sad and silent, where wild- fowl had been, but where then there was no life nor sign of life - only the blowing of chill winds, the forming of ice in sheltered places, and the melancholy rippling of waves on lonely beaches. — Jack London

Somerset is the first proper country county you come to in the West, which isn't dependent on London and isn't full of commuters. Somerset is full of the most fantastically interesting people. — Charles Hazlewood

It sometimes happens that the town child is more alive to the fresh beauty of the country than a child who is country born. My brother and I were born in London ... but our descent, our interest and our joy were in the north country'.
Quoted in The Tale of Beatrix Potter a Biography by Margaret Lane, First Edition p 32-33 — Beatrix Potter

I believe that if writers want their readers to care about a character, they have to care themselves. I have to root for a detective who screws up as much as Thorne does, who shares my birthday, my North London stomping ground, and my love of country music, both alt and cheesy. — Mark Billingham

When you reach England, if you come to London, pass through it quickly, for I do not at all like that city. All sorts of men crowd together there from every country under the heavens. Each race brings its own vices and its own customs to the city. No-one lives in it without falling into some sort of crime. Every quarter of it abounds in grave obscenities. The greater a rascal a man is, the better a man he is accounted. I know whom I am instructing. You have a warmth of character beyond your years, and a coolness of memory; and from these contrary qualities arises a temperateness of reasoning. I fear nothing for you, unless you live with evil companions, for manners are formed by association. — Richard Of Devizes

The contest, " said Pott, "shall be prolonged so long as I have health and strength, and that portion of talent with which I am gifted. From that contest, sir, although it may unsettle men's minds and excite their feelings, and render them incapable for the discharge of the every-day duties of ordinary life; from that contest, sir, I will never shrink, till I have set my heel upon the Eatanswill Independent. I wish the people of London, and the people of my country to know, sir, that they may rely upon me; - that I will not desert them, that I am resolved to stand by them, sir, to the last. — Charles Dickens

Countries with the best-resourced medical services have the best outcomes for physical illness (it is better to have a heart attack in Washington or London than in rural Africa) whereas precisely the opposite is the case for mental illness (developing nations with limited psychiatric resources have better outcomes and lower suicide rates). — Richard Bentall

Fashion understands itself; good-breeding and personal superiority of whatever country readily fraternize with those of every other. The chiefs of savage tribes have distinguished themselves in London and Paris, by the purity of their tournure. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why did she want to stay in England? Because the history she was interested in had happened here, and buried deep beneath her analytical mind was a tumbled heap of Englishness in all its glory, or kings and queens, of Runnymede and Shakespeare's London, of hansom cabs and Sherlock Holmes and Watson rattling off into the fog with cries of 'The game's afoot,' of civil wars bestrewing the green land with blood, of spinning jennies and spotted pigs and Churchill and his country standing small and alone against the might of Nazi Germany. It was a mystery to her how this benighted land had produced so many great men and women, and ruled a quarter of the world and spread its language and law and democracy across the planet. — Elizabeth Aston

Before Elfrida Phipps left London for good and moved to the country, she made a trip to Battersea Dogs' Home, and returned with a canine companion. It took a good, and heart-rending, half hour of searching, but as soon as she saw him, sitting very close to the bars of his kennel and gazing up at her with dark and melting eyes, she knew he was the one. She did not want a large animal, nor did she relish the idea of a yapping lap dog. This one was exactly the right size. Dog size. — Rosamunde Pilcher

I've been actively engaged with mythic imagery ever since I picked up that Rackham book, but it really came into focus for me when I moved from London to the country. As I walked the extraordinary landscape of Dartmoor, I looked at the trees and the rocks and the hills and I could see the personality in those forms ... then they metamorphosed under my pencil into faeries, goblins and trolls. After Alan and I published "Faeries", he moved on from the subject of faery folklore to illustrate Tolkien and other literary works ... while I discovered that my own exploration of Faerieland had only just begun. In the countryside, the old stories seemed to come alive around me; the faeries were a tangible aspect of the landscape, pulses of spirit, emotion, and light. They "insisted" on taking form under my pencil, emerging on the page before me cloaked in archetypal shapes drawn from nature and myth. I'd attracted their attention, you see, and they hadn't finished with me yet. — Brian Froud

[The Edwardian era] was a time of booming trade, of great prosperity and wealth in which the pageant of London Society took place year after year in a setting of traditional dignity and beauty. The great houses - Devonshire, Dorchester, Grosvenor, Stafford and Lansdowne House - had not yet been converted into museums, hotels and flats, and there we danced through the long summer nights till dawn. The great country-houses still flourished in their glory, and on their lawns in the green shade of trees the art of human intercourse was exquisitely practised by men and women not yet enslaved by household cares and chores who still had time to read, to talk, to listen and to think. — Violet Bonham Carter

I admitted it to myself.
I had all kinds of dreams. I wanted to go skiing again and get fast and good. I wanted to go to London too someday. I wanted to fall in love.i wanted to own a bookstore or a restraunt and have people come in and say, "Hi, Cedar," and I wanted from ride a bike down the streets in a little town in a country where people spoke a different language. Maybe my bike would a basket and maybe the basket would have flowers in it. I wanted to live in a big city and wear lipstick and my hair in bun and buy groceries and carry them home in a paper bag. My high heels would click when I climbed the stairs to my apartment. I wanted to stand at the edge of a lake and listen. — Ally Condie

It's a unique situation as well because England is a small country, so it makes it easy for the fans to travel. If we play down in London, they get buses and we'll get three or four thousand fans come down. They'll all sit in the same area and show their support for the team. — Claudio Reyna

The common where we had walked the previous evening was a deserted tract of land, typical of Surrey, looking as if it might be miles from any habitation, while only a few deciduous trees divided it from country studded with bungalows. Some of the land showed traces of heath fires, charred roots and stones lying about on the blackened ground. Walking there was not at all like being in the country. Agriculture seemed as remote as in a London street. This waste land might have been some walled-in space in the suburbs where business men practised golfstrokes; or the corner of a cinema studio used for shooting wilderness scenes. It had neither memories of the past nor hope for the future. — Anthony Powell

Hunting because of the 2004 Hunting Act. This is not a good advertisement for legislation. Yet, to appreciate the full force of the sham, recall, in wonder, the great ruptures between town and country, left and right, liberals and animal-welfare nuts, that preceded the ban. The march of 400,000 wax-jacketed pro-hunt protesters through London, the 700 hours of parliamentary debates devoted to the issue, the threat from Labour backbenchers to oppose all government business unless the ban was brought - it was madness. Even at the time, it seemed so: a dilettantish, illiberal, class-infused blot on what was otherwise a British golden age, for politics and the economy - as even the ban's reluctant main architect, Tony Blair, later admitted. A man not given to regrets, the then prime minister considered the ban one of his biggest. "God only knows," he reflected, what the point of it was. — Anonymous

The morning has broken - I had thought of the morning like an egg that had split with a crack and was spreading. Before us lay all the green of the green country of England, with its rivers and it's roads and it's hedges, it's churches, it's chimneys, it's rising threads of smoke. The chimneys grew taller, the roads and rivers wider, the threads of smoke more thick, the farther off the country spread; until at last, at the farthest point of all, they made a smudge, a stain, a darkness - a darkness, like the darkness of the coal in a fire - a darkness that was broken, here and there, where the sun caught panes of glass and the golden tips of domes and steeples, with glittering points of light.
'London,' I said 'Oh, London! — Sarah Waters

Dean Mohamet, a Muslim landowner from Patna who had followed his British patron to Ireland. There he soon eloped with, and later marries, Jean Daly, from a leading Anglo-Irish family ... In 1807 Dean Mohamet moved to London where he opened the country's first Indian owned curry restaurant, Dean Mohamet's Hindoostanee Coffee House : ... He finally decamped to Brighton where he opened what can only be described as Britain's first oriental massage parlour and became "Shampooing Surgeon to Kings George IV and William IV. " — William Dalrymple

Ask any school-boy up to the age of fifteen where he would spend his holidays. Not one in five hundred will say, "In the streets of London," if you give him the option of green fields and running waters. It is, then, a fair presumption that there must be something of the child still in the character of the men or the women whom the country charms in maturer as in dawning life. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

I love going to London for a couple of days but I need to be in the country. I like the silence, the smell and the seasonal changes, especially in spring and summer. I really feel that I belong there. — Philippa Gregory

We live in the country, and I have a huge library there. When we go to London for the winter I never know which books to take. I never know what I am going to need. That's the only disadvantage. — Mordecai Richler

The admiration of the whole country was given to London, and all the other great cities in the land braced themselves to take their bit as and when it came and not to be outdone. Indeed, many persons seemed envious of London's distinction, and quite a number came up from the country in order to spend a night or two in town, share the risk, and "see the fun". We had to check this tendency for administrative reasons. *** — Winston S. Churchill

I've lived in a flat in Westminster in London for over 20 years; and I also have a house in the country, down in Somerset, so I have the best of both worlds. — Marti Webb

I loved every place I lived and traveled. London, Paris, Rome, Venice. I fell hard for Central America and Mexico. In each country, I had fantasies that I could live there. — Frances Mayes

Recently I have been working in the country, where, carving in the open air, I find sculpture more natural than in a London studio, but it needs bigger dimensions. A large piece of stone or wood placed almost anywhere at random in a field, orchard, or garden, immediately looks right and inspiring. — Henry Moore

But this city is a world of its own, a country within a country. People are used to taking the old and making it news; and used, too, to taking the new and making it old. Every glass of water from its taps, it is said, has passed six times through the kidneys of another, and every scrap of its land has been trodden on, fought over, dug up and broken down for centuries. — Amanda Craig

I was always told at school I was posh, then I came to London, and here I'm told I have a country accent. — Jessica Raine

Had the heavens fallen and mixed themselves with the earth, had the people of London risen in rebellion with French ideas of equality,* had the Queen persistently declined to comply with the constitutional advice of her ministers, had a majority in the House of Commons lost its influence in the country, - the utter prostration of the bereft husband could not have been more complete. — Anthony Trollope