2,405 Quotes About Cities

In merging nature and culture the most successful cities combine such universal needs as maintaining or restoring contact with the cycles of nature, with specific, local characteristics.

Now when I hear birdsong, I feel an entry to that understory. When I am feeling too squeezed on the ground, exhausted by everything in my care, I look for a little sky. There are always birds flying back and forth, city birds flitting around our human edges, singing their songs.

Now that I have definitely begun to live I find myself more and more convinced that civilization with its trappings and artificialities is not so good as nature.

... civilization—a word that simply means "living in cities..."Excerpt From: Standage, Tom. “A History of the World In 6 Glasses.

We are all proprietary toward cities we love. 'Ah, you should have seen her when I loved her!' we say, reciting glories since faded or defiled, trusting her to no one else; that others should know and love her in her present fallen state (for she must fall without our vigilant love) is a species of betrayal.

Clarice, the glorious city, has a tormented history. Several times it decayed, then burgeoned again, always keeping the first Clarice as an unparalleled model of every splendor, compared to which the city’s present state can only cause more sighs at every fading of the stars.

Each new Clarice, compact as a living body with its smells and its breath, shows off, like a gem, what remains of the ancient Clarices, fragmentary and dead.

More than any city I know, San Francisco is made up of discrete neighborhoods, each with its own unique aura. The main reason for this is its terrain. Its convoluted landscape defines San Francisco's neighborhoods, endowing each of them with a specific terroir.

Ant swarming CityCity full of dreamsWhere in broad day the specter tugs your sleeve