2,405 Quotes About Cities

In cities it is useless to look at the stars or to describe them, worship them, or seek direction from them. When lost, one should follow the tracks of the camels.

I love New York, even though it isn't mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it.

It was never built for the comfort and happiness of its citizens, but to astonish the world.

Cities pour forth a virus. Humans are infected and told to build cages that no one should want to live in. Or cities are a pyramid scheme: everyone is supposed to be there, I am an everybody, so I will move there and bring two others, who will bring two more.

It is no surprise this is the reputed to be the greatest city in the world. It is a blob of brick and neon connected by the arterial subway, equal parts fear and wonder. It breathes, more robotic than organic, but alive.

Compared with Baltimore, New York feels like a city-themed theme park. The difference between the two places is the difference between affectation and insanity, the eccentric and the grotesque.

It was a cruel city, but it was a lovely one; a savage city, yet it had such tenderness; a bitter, harsh, and violent catacomb of stone an steel and tunneled rock, slashed savagely with light, and roaring, fighting a constant ceaseless warfare of men and of machinery; and yet it was so sweetly and so delicately pulsed, as full of warmth, of passion, and of love, as it was full of hate.

God restores people, cities, and nations. - Hidden Treasures

Dull, inert cities, it is true, do contain the seeds of their own destruction and little else. But lively, diverse, intense cities contain the seeds of their own regeneration, with energy enough to carry over for problems and needs outside themselves.