City Life Quotes - Page 3

• 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; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

  William Wordsworth

  Beauty, Morning, Lying

  'Composed upon Westminster Bridge' (1807)

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• The city is loveliest when the sweet death racket begins. Her own life lived in defiance of nature, her electricity, her frigidaires, her soundproof walls, the glint of lacquered nails, the plumes that wave across the corrugated sky. Here in the coffin depths grow the everlasting flowers sent by telegraph.

  Henry Miller

  Love, Sweet, Wall

  Henry Miller (1963). “Black spring”, Grove Pr

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• The Metropolis should have been aborted long before it became New York, London or Tokyo.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  New York, Should Have, Cities

  "The Age of Uncertainty". Book by John Kenneth Galbraith, 1977.

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• As an artist one has no home in Europe except in Paris.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Art, Home, Europe

  "Why I Am so Clever".

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• Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.

  John Berger

  Believe, Men, Cities

  John Berger (2011). “Keeping a Rendezvous”, p.101, Vintage

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• Just as language has no longer anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connection with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Air, Cities, Names

  "Worpswede". Book by Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903.

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• The cities of the world are concentric, isomorphic, synchronic. Only one exists and you are always in the same one. It's the effect of their permanent revolution, their intense circulation, their instantaneous magnetism.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Cities, World, Revolution

  Jean Baudrillard (1990). “Cool Memories”, p.85, Verso

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• The cities of America are inexpressibly tedious. The Bostonians take their learning too sadly; culture with them is an accomplishment rather than an atmosphere; their Hub, as they call it, is the paradise of prigs. Chicago is a sort of monster-shop, full of bustles and bores. Political life at Washington is like political life in a suburban vestry. Baltimore is amusing for a week, but Philadelphia is dreadfully provincial; and though one can dine in New York one could not dwell there.

  Oscar Wilde

  New York, Dine In, Philadelphia

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.1023, GENERAL PRESS

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• The great city is that which has the greatest man or woman: if it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in the whole world.

  Walt Whitman

  Men, Cities, Leaves Of Grass

  Walt Whitman (2016). “Poems by Walt Whitman”, p.74, Read Books Ltd

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• Washington is no place for a good actor. The competition from bad actors is too great.

  Fred Allen

  Funny, Humor, Cities

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• All things atrocious and shameless flock from all parts to Rome.

  Tacitus

  Rome, Cities, Shameless

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• Cities give us collision. 'Tis said, London and New York take the nonsense out of a man.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  New York, Men, Cities

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.371

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• Whenever the pressure of our complex city life thins my blood and numbs my brain, I seek relief in the trail; and when I hear the coyote wailing to the yellow dawn, my cares fall from me - I am happy.

  Hamlin Garland

  Nature, Fall, Cities

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• I go to Paris, I go to London, I go to Rome, and I always say, 'There's no place like New York. It's the most exciting city in the world now. That's the way it is. That's it.'

  Robert De Niro

  New York, Rome, Cities

  "Robert De Niro: the ultimate viewing guide" by Angie Errigo, www.empireonline.com. February 23, 2016.

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• There are a number of things wrong with Washington. One of them is that everyone is too far from home.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Home, Numbers, Cities

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• Cities are distinguished by the catastrophic forms they presuppose and which are a vital part of their essential charm. New York is King Kong, or the blackout, or vertical bombardment: Towering Inferno. Los Angeles is the horizontal fault, California breaking off and sliding into the Pacific: Earthquake.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Kings, New York, Earthquakes

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• Boston was a moral and intellectual nursery, always busy applying first principles to trifles.

  George Santayana

  Boston, Cities, Intellectual

  "Atoms of Thought: An Anthology of Thoughts".

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• She missed the built environment of New York City. It was only in an urban landscape, amid straight lines and architecture, that she could situate herself in human time and history. She missed people. She missed human intrigue, drama and power struggles. She needed her own species, not to talk to, necessarily, but just to be among, as a bystander in a crowd or an anonymous witness.

  Ruth Ozeki

  New York, Drama, Struggle

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• Either these - unsaved people are to be evangelized, or the leaven of communism and infidelity will assume such enormous proportions that it will break you in a reign of terror such as this country has never known.

  Dwight L. Moody

  Country, Cities, People

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• Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.

  Samuel Johnson

  Death, Home, Night

  Samuel Johnson (1820). “The Poems of Dr. Samuel Johnson. To which is Prefixed, a Life of the Author”, p.30

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• But look what we have built low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace. Cultural centers that are unable to support a good bookstore. Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums. Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promenaders. Expressways that eviscerate great cities. This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities.

  Jane Jacobs

  Cities, Support, Vandalism

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• The most important thing in life is your family. There are days you love them, and others you don't. But, in the end, they're the people you always come home to. Sometimes it's the family you're born into and sometimes it's the one you make for yourself.

  Candice Bergen

  Home, Things In Life, People

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• One has not great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound.

  Jane Austen

  Cities, Sound, Birmingham

  'Emma' (1816) ch. 36 (Mrs Elton)

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• [Cities] are not like suburbs, only denser. They differ from towns and suburbs in basic ways, and one of these is that cities are, by definition, full of strangers.

  Jane Jacobs

  Cities, Definitions, Way

  Jane Jacobs (2016). “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”, p.30, Vintage

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• We cannot afford merely to sit down and deplore the evils of city life as inevitable, when cities are constantly growing, both absolutely and relatively. We must set ourselves vigorously about the task of improving them; and this task is now well begun.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Cities, Evil, Tasks

  Theodore Roosevelt (1926). “The Works of Theodore Roosevelt”

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