As a remedy to life in society I would suggest the big city. Nowadays, it is the only desert within our means.
—Albert Camus (1913–60) Algerian-born French Philosopher, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist, Author
Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
I once spent a year in Philadelphia, I think it was on a Sunday.
—W. C. Fields (1880–1946) American Actor, Comedian, Writer
Cities force growth, and make men talkative and entertaining, but they make them artificial.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
City life is millions of people being lonesome together.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
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
Towns are excrescences, gray fluxions, where men, hurrying to find one another, have lost themselves.
—E. M. Forster (1879–1970) English Novelist, Short Story Writer, Essayist
Towns oftener swamp one than carry one out onto the big ocean of life.
—D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Essayist, Literary Critic
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
How many of us are able to distinguish between the odors of noon and midnight, or of winter and summer, or of a windy spell and a still one? If man is so generally less happy in the cities than in the country, it is because all these variations and nuances of sight and smell and sound are less clearly marked and lost in the general monotony of gray walls and cement pavements.
—Lin Yutang (1895–1976) Chinese Author, Philologist
And that sweet city with her dreaming spires,
She needs not June for beauty’s heightening…
—Matthew Arnold (1822–88) English Poet, Critic
Commuter—one who spends his life in riding to and from his wife; And man who shaves and takes a train, and then rides back to shave again.
—E. B. White (1985–99) American Essayist, Humorist
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
Cities give us collision. ‘Tis said, London and New York take the nonsense out of a man.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
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 (1929–2007) French Sociologist, Philosopher
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
An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
One has not great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound.
—Jane Austen (1775–1817) English Novelist
All great art is born of the metropolis.
—Ezra Pound (1885-1972) American Poet, Translator, Critic
I wanted to get out and walk southward toward the park through the soft twilight, but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild, strident argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair. Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American Novelist
All things atrocious and shameless flock from all parts to Rome.
—Tacitus (56–117) Roman Orator, Historian
Washington is no place for a good actor. The competition from bad actors is too great.
—Fred Allen (1894–1956) American Humorist, Radio Personality
What else can you expect from a town that’s shut off from the world by the ocean on one side and New Jersey on the other?
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) (1862–1910) American Writer of Short Stories
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
The life of our city is rich in poetic and marvelous subjects. We are enveloped and steeped as though in an atmosphere of the marvelous; but we do not notice it.
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) French Poet, Art Critic, Essayist, Translator
There are a number of things wrong with Washington. One of them is that everyone is too far from home.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American Head of State, Military Leader
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
We do not look in our great cities for our best morality.
—Jane Austen (1775–1817) English Novelist
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
—Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American Biographer, Novelist, Socialist
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