Earth hath not anything to show more fair Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty This city now doth like a garment wear The beauty of the morning, silent, bare Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie Open unto the fields and to the sky […]
Cities - City Quotes
Towers in a modern town are a frill and a survival; they seem like the raised hands of the various churches, afraid of being overlooked, and saying to the forgetful public, Here I am! Or perhaps they are rival lightning rods, saying to the emanations of divine grace, Please strike here!
Who knows when some slight shock, disturbing the delicate balance between social order and thirsty aspiration, shall send the skyscrapers in our cities toppling?
Being asked by a young nobleman, what was become of the gallantry and military spirit of the old English nobility, (Johnson) replied, “Why, my Lord, I’ll tell you what is become of it; it is gone into the city to look for a fortune.”
A transition from an author’s book to his conversation is too often like an entrance into a large city, after a distant prospect. Remotely, we see nothing but spires of temples and turrets of palaces, and imagine it the residence of splendor, grandeur, and magnificence; but when we have passed the gates, we find it […]
Match me such marvel save in Eastern clime, A rose-red city “half as old as Time!”
Where the vast cloudless sky was broken by one crow I sat upon a hill – all alone – long ago; But I never felt so lonely and so out of God’s way, As here, where I brush elbows with a thousand every day.
What is London? Clean, commodious, neat; but, a very few things indeed excepted, an endless addition of littleness to littleness, extending itself over a great tract of land.
Comfort it is to say: ‘Of no mean city am I!’
The modern city is ugly not because it is a city but because it is not enough of a city, because it is a jungle, because it is confused and anarchic, and surging with selfish and materialistic energies.
