Karel Čapek

“ Go and have a look at Oxford Street and Regent Street and the Strand, and see what fine houses people have built to hold goods, commodities, things; for the produce of man has its value. A shirt would lose in value if it were to be sold within such drab and plain walls; but man can live there, i.e. sleep, eat repulsive food, and beget children.
Perhaps some one more expert would lead you to more picturesque places, where even dirt is romantic and squalor decorative; but I have strayed into a maze of small streets and cannot find my way out. ”

“ The horrible thing in East London is not what can be seen and smelt, but its unbounded and unredeemable extent. Elsewhere poverty and ugliness exist merely as a rubbish-heap between two houses, like an unsavoury nook, a cesspool or unclean offal ”

“ The streets are very unsightly with their filthy cobbles, with their swarms of children on the pavement, with their queer Chinese types who flit like shadows past shops which are still queerer, with their drunken seamen, with their Philanthropic Shelters, with their battered-looking youths, and with their stench of scorched rags ”