If one had but a single glance to give the world, one should gaze on Istanbul.
—Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869) French Poet, Politician, Historian
I once spent a year in Philadelphia, I think it was on a Sunday.
—W. C. Fields (1880–1946) American Actor, Comedian, Writer
The catalogue of forms is endless: until every shape has found its city, new cities will continue to be born. When the forms exhaust their variety and come apart, the end of cities begins.
—Italo Calvino (1923–85) Italian Novelist, Essayist, Journalist
Washington is no place for a good actor. The competition from bad actors is too great.
—Fred Allen (1894–1956) American Humorist, Radio Personality
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 (1929–2007) French Sociologist, Philosopher
God the first garden made, and Cain the first city.
—Abraham Cowley (1618–67) English Poet, Essayist
Where the criminals cover their crimes by making them legal. On Washington D. C.
—Frank Lane (1896–1981) American Sportsperson, Businessperson
In the small town each citizen had done something in his own way to build the community. The town booster had a vision of the future which he tried to fulfill. The suburb dweller by contrast started with the future.
—Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American Historian, Academic, Attorney, Writer
The immense cities lie basking on the beaches of the continent like whales that have taken to the land.
—Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975) British Historian
The first thing that strikes a visitor to Paris is a taxi.
—Fred Allen (1894–1956) American Humorist, Radio Personality
Country people tend to consider that they have a corner on righteousness and to distrust most manifestations of cleverness, while people in the city are leery of righteousness but ascribe to themselves all manner of cleverness.
—Edward Hoagland (b.1932) American Essayist, Novelist
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 (1730–74) Irish Novelist, Playwright, Poet
When a village ceases to be a community, it becomes oppressive in its narrow conformity. So one becomes an individual and migrates to the city. There, finding others like-minded, one re-establishes a village community. Nowadays only New Yorkers are yokels.
—Paul Goodman (1911–72) American Novelist, Essayist
The city is an epitome of the social world. — All the belts of civilization intersect along its avenues. — It contains the products of every moral zone and is cosmopolitan, not only in a national, but in a moral and spiritual sense.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin (1814–80) American Preacher, Poet
The crime problem in New York is getting really serious. The other day the Statue of Liberty had both hands up.
—Jay Leno (b.1950) American Comedian, TV Personality
There is a time of life somewhere between the sullen fugues of adolescence and the retrenchments of middle age when human nature becomes so absolutely absorbing one wants to be in the city constantly, even at the height of summer.
—Edward Hoagland (b.1932) American Essayist, Novelist
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 (1837–99) Christian Religious Leader, Publisher
A neighborhood is a residential area that is changing for the worse.
—John Ciardi (1916–86) American Poet, Teacher, Etymologist, Translator
New York, the nation’s thyroid gland.
—Christopher Morley (1890–1957) American Novelist, Essayist
The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extra human architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish. At first glance, the rhythm may be confused with gaiety, but when you look more closely at the mechanism of social life and the painful slavery of both men and machines, you see that it is nothing but a kind of typical, empty anguish that makes even crime and gangs forgivable means of escape.
—Federico Garcia Lorca (1898–1936) Spanish Poet
How soon country people forget. When they fall in love with a city it is forever, and it is like forever. As though there never was a time when they didn’t love it. The minute they arrive at the train station or get off the ferry and glimpse the wide streets and the wasteful lamps lighting them, they know they are born for it. There, in a city, they are not so much new as themselves: their stronger, riskier selves.
—Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American Novelist, Editor, Academic