Cities Quotes - Page 19

• Long, long ago the country bore the country-town and nourished it with her best blood. Now the giant city sucks the country dry, insatiably and incessantly demanding and devouring fresh streams of men, till it wearies and dies in the midst of an almost uninhabited waste of country.

  Oswald Spengler

  Country, Men, Long Ago

  Oswald Spengler, Charles Francis Atkinson (1961). “The Decline of the West...: Perspectives of world-history”

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• In place of a world, there is a city, a point, in which the whole life of broad regions is collecting while the rest dries up. In place of a type-true people, born of and grown on the soil, there is a new sort of nomad, cohering unstably in fluid masses, the parasitical city dweller, traditionless, utterly matter-of-fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful, deeply contemptuous of the countryman and especially that highest form of countryman, the country gentleman.

  Oswald Spengler

  Country, Clever, People

  Oswald Spengler (1991). “The Decline of the West”, p.25, Oxford University Press, USA

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• It is the Late city that first defies the land, contradicts Nature in the lines of its silhouette, denies all Nature. It wants to be something different from and higher than Nature. These high-pitched gables, these Baroque cupolas, spires, and pinnacles, neither are, nor desire to be, related with anything in Nature. And then begins the gigantic megalopolis, the city-as-world, which suffers nothing beside itself and sets about annihilating the country picture.

  Oswald Spengler

  Country, Land, Suffering

  Oswald Spengler (1991). “The Decline of the West”, p.246, Oxford University Press, USA

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• When I started writing Tales of the City I was one year away from being a mental illness. It wasn't until 1975 that the American Psychiatric Association took homosexuality off the list of mental illnesses - and in many states, including the state of North Carolina where I grew up, homosexuality was a crime. An arrestable crime. It still is, in many parts of the world.

  Armistead Maupin

  Writing, Years, North Carolina

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• If a large city can, after intense intellectual efforts, choose for its mayor a man who merely will not steal from it, we consider it a triumph of the suffrage.

  Frank Moore Colby

  Men, Office, Effort

  Frank Moore Colby (1904). “Imaginary Obligations”

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• I was in Nauvoo on the 26th of May, 1846, for the last time, and left the city of the Saints feeling that most likely I was taking a final farewell of Nauvoo for this life. I looked upon the temple and city as they receded from view and asked the Lord to remember the sacrifices of His Saints.

  Wilford Woodruff

  Farewell, Sacrifice, Views

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• And believe me, to have been in the city of Tuscaloosa in October when you were young and full of Early Times and had a shining Alabama girl by your side--to have had all that and then to have seen those red shirts pour onto the field, and, then, coming behind them, with that inexorable big cat walk of his, the man himself, The Bear--that was very good indeed.

  Howell Raines

  Girl, Believe, Cat

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• Rather than hearing from the city council president, you'd hear from sources all across the country.

  Jack Kelley

  Country, President, Hearing

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• Everything seems to be going faster and faster. It's really harder to create something that endures. The New York City Ballet has succeeded in doing that.

  Robert Caro

  New York, Ballet, Faster

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• The New York City Ballet is obviously speaking to a whole new generation and bringing it the same wonder and beauty that it brought previous generations

  Robert Caro

  New York, Talking, Ballet

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• In the looking, I found the cities within me.

  Suketu Mehta

  Found

  Suketu Mehta (2009). “Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found”, p.3, Vintage

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• The war tried to kill us in the spring. As grass greened the plains of Nineveh and the weather warmed, we patrolled the low-slung hills beyond the cities and towns. We moved over them and through the tall grass on faith, kneading paths into the windswept growth like pioneers. While we slept, the war rubbed its thousand ribs against the ground in prayer.

  Kevin Powers

  Prayer, Spring, War

  Kevin Powers (2012). “The Yellow Birds”, p.8, Hachette UK

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• People in cities may forget the soil for as long as a hundred years, but Mother Nature's memory is long and she will not let them forget indefinitely.

  Henry A. Wallace

  Mother, Nature, Memories

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• A warlike nation like the Germans, without either cities, letters, arts, or money, found some compensation for this savage state in the enjoyment of liberty. Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism.

  Edward Gibbon

  Art, History, Desire

  Edward Gibbon (1854). “The history of the decline and fall of the Roman empire, with notes by Milman and Guizot. Ed. by W. Smith”, p.359

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• It was Rome, on the fifteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.

  Edward Gibbon

  Fall, Writing, Rome

  Memoirs of My Life ch. 6 (1796)

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• I have visited Australia several times, and I always try to make a point of going to Melbourne because it's almost my favorite city there, Melbourne and Sydney. But I shouldn't say that because I haven't been everywhere-and I'm very fond of Perth too!

  Jackie Collins

  Australia, Trying, My Favorite

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• Invite the best and brightest to compete for a grand prize to come up with designs, including new zoning, building codes and so forth, for New Orleans that could make it safe from water, and let the state and city pick the plan that works best for Louisiana.

  Billy Tauzin

  New Orleans, Water, Design

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• The universe is but one great city, full of beloved ones, divine and human, by nature endeared to each other.

  Epictetus

  Compassion, Brotherhood, Beloved

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• There is insufficient support for the police and safety and law enforcement, in general, in the city council.

  Steve Chabot

  Law, Safety, Support

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• The police chief of Hiroshima welcomed me eagerly as the first Allied correspondent to reach the city.

  Wilfred Burchett

  Police, Firsts, Chiefs

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• I call Los Angeles the city of alternatives. If you don't like mountains, we got the ocean. If you don't like Knott's Berry Farm, we've got Disneyland. If you don't like basketball, we've got the Clippers.

  Arsenio Hall

  Basketball, Ocean, Mountain

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• In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion; in order to serve others better, one has to hold them at a distance for a time. But where can one find the solitude necessary to vigor, the deep breath in which the mind collects itself and courage gauges its strength? There remain big cities.

  Albert Camus

  Distance, Order, Solitude

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.157, Vintage

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• We are a most solitary people, and we live, repelled by one another, in the gray, outcast cities of Cain.

  Edward Dahlberg

  People, Solitude, Cain

  Edward Dahlberg (1967). “Alms for Oblivion”, U of Minnesota Press

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• Those who have past much of their lives in this great city, look upon its opulence and its multitudes, its extent and variety, with cold indifference; but an inhabitant of the remoter parts of the kingdom is immediately distinguished by a kind of dissipated curiosity, a busy endeavour to divide his attention amongst a thousand objects, and a wild confusion of astonishment and alarm.

  Samuel Johnson

  Past, Confusion, Curiosity

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy, Francis Pearson Walesby (1825). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D..: The Adventurer and Idler”, p.41

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• One who is slow to anger is better than the mighty; one who rules his spirit, than he who takes a city.

  Solomon

  Anger, Spirit, Management

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