Cities are full of people with whom… a certain degree of contact is useful; but you do not want them in your hair. And they do not want you in theirs either.
Cities - City Quotes
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.
I have an affection for a great city. I feel safe in the neighborhood of man, and enjoy the sweet security of the streets.
Men, by associating in large masses, as in camps and cities, improve their talents but impair their virtues; and strengthen their minds, but weaken their morals; thus a retrocession in the one, is too often the price they pay for a refinement of the other.
