Cities Quotes - Page 5

• It's an odd thing, but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city and possess all the attractions of the next world

  Oscar Wilde

  Travel, San Francisco, Odd Things

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “Epigrams of Oscar Wilde”, p.131, Wordsworth Editions

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• He [Caesar Augustus] found a city built of brick; he left it built of marble.
  [Lat., Urbem lateritiam accepit, mamoream relinquit.]

  Suetonius

  Bricks, Augustus Caesar, Found

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• Gigantic, willful, young, Chicago sitteth at the northwest gates.

  William Vaughn Moody

  Chicago, Young, Gates

  William Vaughn Moody (1901). “Gloucester Moors and Other Poems”

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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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• Anywhere in the world you hear a Chicago bluesman play, it's a Chicago sound born and bred.

  Ralph Metcalfe

  Play, Sound, Chicago

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• Chicago has a strange metaphysical elegance of death about it.

  Claes Oldenburg

  Chicago, Strange, Elegance

  Claes Oldenburg (1969). “Proposals for monuments and buildings, 1965-69”

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• First in violence, deepest in dirt, lawless, unlovely, ill-smelling, irreverent, new; an overgrown gawk of a - village, the "tough" among cities, a spectacle for the nation.

  Lincoln Steffens

  Chicago, Village, Dirt

  Lincoln Steffens (2012). “The Shame of the Cities”, p.163, Courier Corporation

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• Satan (impatiently) to Newcomer: The trouble with you Chicago people is, that you think you are the best people down here; whereas you are merely the most numerous.

  Mark Twain

  Thinking, People, Chicago

  Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.5704, Delphi Classics

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• A large city cannot be experientially known; its life is too manifold for any individual to be able to participate in it.

  Aldous Huxley

  Able, Life Is, Individual

  Aldous Huxley (1961). “Selected Essays”

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• Petite ville, grand renom. Small town, great renown.

  Francois Rabelais

  Towns, Small Town, Renown

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• I've reported murders, scandals, marriages, premieres and national political conventions. I've been amused, intrigued, outraged, enthralled and exasperated by Chicago. And I've come to love this American giant, viewing it as the most misunderstood, most underrated city in the world. There is none other quite like my City of Big Shoulders.

  Irv Kupcinet

  Political, Misunderstood, Chicago

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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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• 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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• Chicago is unique. It is the only completely corrupt city in America.

  Charles Edward Merriam

  Unique, America, Chicago

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• There are almost no beautiful cities in America, though there are many beautiful parts of cities, and some sections that are glorious without being beautiful, like downtown Chicago. Cities are too big and too rich for beauty; they have outgrown themselves too many times.

  Noel Perrin

  Beautiful, America, Chicago

  Noel Perrin (1999). “Third Person Rural: Further Essays of a Sometime Farmer”, p.38, David R. Godine Publisher

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• Chicago will give you a chance. The sporting spirit is the spirit of Chicago.

  Lincoln Steffens

  Giving, Chicago, Spirit

  Lincoln Steffens (1931). “The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens”, p.428, Heyday

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• Your machinery is beautiful. Your society people have apologized to me for the envious ridicule with which your newspapers have referred to me. Your newspapers are comic but never amusing. Your Water Tower is a castellated monstrosity with pepperboxes stuck all over it. I am amazed that any people could so abuse Gothic art and make a structure not like a water tower but like a tower of a medieval castle. It should be torn down. It is a shame to spend so much money on buildings with such an unsatisfactory result. Your city looks positively dreary.

  Oscar Wilde

  Beautiful, Art, People

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• Germany was the cause of Hitler as much as Chicago is responsible for the Chicago Tribune.

  Alexander Woollcott

  Chicago, Germany, Causes

  Radio broadcast, 23 Jan. 1943.Woollcott's last words before the microphone.

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

  George Santayana

  Boston, Intellectual, Firsts

  "Atoms of Thought: An Anthology of Thoughts".

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• Chicago is an October sort of city even in spring.

  Nelson Algren

  Spring, Chicago, October

  "Chicago: City on the Make" by Nelson Algren, University of Chicago Press, Ch. 7, 1987.

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

  Fred Allen

  Funny, Humor, Competition

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• I miss everything about Chicago, except January and February.

  Gary Cole

  Missing, Chicago, February

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• The city as a center where, any day in any year, there may be a fresh encounter with a new talent, a keen mind or a gifted specialist-this is essential to the life of a country. To play this role in our lives a city must have a soul-a university, a great art or music school, a cathedral or a great mosque or temple, a great laboratory or scientific center, as well as the libraries and museums and galleries that bring past and present together. A city must be a place where groups of women and men are seeking and developing the highest things they know.

  Margaret Mead

  Country, Art, School

  Margaret Mead, Rhoda Bubendey Métraux (1979). “Margaret Mead, some personal views”, Angus & Robertson

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• No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.

  Cyril Connolly

  Morning, Men, Fog

  "The Unquiet Grave". Book by Cyril Connolly, 1944.

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• Perhaps the most typically American place in America.

  James Bryce

  America, Chicago

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