Cities Quotes - Page 4

• 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, Names, People

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

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• White swan of cities slumbering in thy nest . . . White phantom city, whose untrodden streets Are rivers, and whose pavements are the shifting Shadows of the palaces and strips of sky.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Swans, Sky, Rivers

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1912). “The complete poetical works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow”, p.1218, Library of Alexandria

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• To one who has been long in city pent, ’Tis very sweet to look into the fair And open face of heaven, — to breathe a prayer Full in the smile of the blue firmament.

  John Keats

  Sweet, Nature, Prayer

  "To One Who Has Been Long in City Pent" l. 1 (1817)

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• That is the way to lay the city flat, To bring the roof to the foundation, And bury all, which yet distinctly ranges, In heaps and piles of ruin.

  William Shakespeare

  Foundation, Way, Ruins

  William Shakespeare (2012). “The Tragedy of Coriolanus”, p.67, Hackett Publishing

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• Through this broad street, restless ever, ebbs and flows a human tide, wave on wave a living river; wealth and fashion side by side; Toiler, idler, slave and master, in the same quick current glide.

  John Greenleaf Whittier

  Fashion, Ebb And Flow, Rivers

  John Greenleaf Whittier (2012). “The Works of Whittier, Volume III (of VII) Anti-Slavery Poems and Songs of Labor and Reform”, p.95, tredition

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• I have found by experience that they who have spent all their lives in cities contract not only an effeminacy of habit, but of thinking.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Thinking, Habit, Found

  Oliver Goldsmith (1834). “An inquiry into the present state of polite learning. The Bee. History of Cyrillo Padovano. Life of Dr. Parnell. Life of Lord Bolingbroke. Prefaces and introductions”, p.136

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• During my eleven years as a New York City public school teacher, I saw firsthand the impact that poverty has on the classroom. In low-income neighborhoods like Sunset Park, where I taught, students as young as five years old enter school affected by the stresses often created by poverty: domestic violence, drug abuse, gang activity.

  Sal Albanese

  Teacher, New York, Stress

  "Education’s Elephant in the Room: Poverty" by Sal F. Albanese, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 10, 2013.

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

  John Berger

  Believe, Men, Paris

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

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• A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.

  Charles Dickens

  Reflecting Upon, Profound, Personality

  A Tale of Two Cities bk. 1, ch. 3 (1859)

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• It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.

  Charles Dickens

  Inspirational, Death, Book

  A Tale of Two Cities bk. 3, ch. 15 (1859)

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• Every city has a sex and an age which have nothing to do with demography. Rome is feminine. So is Odessa. London is a teenager, an urchin, and, in this, hasn't changed since the time of Dickens. Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.

  John Berger

  Sex, Teenager, Believe

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

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• That's great advertising when you can turn Chicago into a city you'd want to spend more than three hours in.

  Jerry Della Femina

  Chicago, Three, Want

  Jerry Della Femina (2010). “From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harb: Front-Line Dispatches from the Advertising War”, p.35, Simon and Schuster

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• I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and heart to get there. That's how I saw it, and see it still.

  Ronald Reagan

  Wall, Ocean, Blessed

  Farewell Address to the Nation, delivered 11 January 1989, Washington D.C.

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• Rome is the city of echoes, the city of illusions, and the city of yearning.

  Giotto di Bondone

  Travel, Echoes, Rome

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• And one by one the nights between our separated cities are joined to the night that unites us.

  Pablo Neruda

  Long Distance Relationship, Night, Separation

  Pablo Neruda (2009). “The Captain's Verses/Los Versos Del Capitan”, p.119, New Directions Publishing

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• New York, the nation's thyroid gland.

  Christopher Morley

  New York, Literature, Rehabilitation

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• City of prose and fantasy, of capitalist automation, its streets a triumph of cubism, its moral philosophy that of the dollar. New York impressed me tremendously because, more than any other city, it is the fullest expression of our modern age.

  Leon Trotsky

  New York, Philosophy, Expression

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• Tower'd cities please us then, And the busy hum of men.

  John Milton

  Men, Towers, Busy

  'L'Allegro' (1645) l. 117

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• It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try to keep up with Chicago-she outgrows his prophecies faster than he can make them. She is always a novelty; for she is never the Chicago you saw when you passed through the last time.

  Mark Twain

  Trying, Chicago, Lasts

  Mark Twain (2014). “Life On The Mississippi”, p.643, Jazzybee Verlag

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• I get out of the taxi and it's probably the only city which in reality looks better than on the postcards, New York.

  Milos Forman

  New York, Reality, Looks

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• There's only one thing for Chicago to do, and that's to move to a better neighborhood.

  Herman Fetzer

  Moving, Chicago, Neighborhood

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• A facade of skyscrapers facing a lake and behind the facade, every type of dubiousness.

  E. M. Forster

  Lakes, Chicago, Type

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• Chicago was a town where nobody could forget how the money was made. It was picked up from floors still slippery with blood.

  Norman Mailer

  Blood, Chicago, Towns

  Norman Mailer (2016). “Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968”, p.88, Random House

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• There was no need to inform us of the protocol involved. We were from Chicago and knew all about cement.

  Groucho Marx

  Chicago, Needs, Protocol

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• I give you Chicago. It is not London and Harvard. It is not Paris and buttermilk. It is American in every chitling and sparerib. It is alive from snout to tail.

  H. L. Mencken

  Paris, Giving, Chicago

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