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cities quotes

  • I am really persuaded that if we were to inquire of all the Cities which†have fallen by Siege into the Power of new Masters, who it was that subjected and overcame them, they would tell you, the Architect; and that they were strong enough to have despised the armed Enemy, but not to withstand the Shocks of the Engines, the Violence of the Machines and the Force of other Instruments of War with whichthe Architect, distressed, demolished and ruinated them.On the contrary, they would inform you that their greatest Defense lay in the Art and Assistance of the Architect.

    - Leon Battista Alberti
    ^2  Architecttura (translated by James Leoni,1755).

  • We do not look in great cities for our best morality.

    -Jane Austen
      Mansfield Park, ch.9.

  • Major cities are divided into two parts; the bits that are in the guidebook and the bits that aren't. If you don't take a guidebook, you'll see a different city.

    - Guy Browning
      In The Guardian, 21 May.

  • I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me; and to me, High mountains are a feeling, but the hum Of human cities torture.

    -Rochdale
    ^18  Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 3, stanza 72.

  • If all the Labourers in aVillage breed up several Sons to the same work there will be too many Labourers to cultivate the Lands belonging to theVillage, and the surplus Adults must go to seek a livelihood elsewhere, which they generally do in Cities.

    - Richard Cantillon
    ^4  Essay on the Nature of  Trade.

  • Tengo el impuro amor de las ciudades, y a este sol que ilumina las edades prefiero yo del gas las claridades. I have an impure love for cities, and I prefer the light coming from gaslamps rather than this sun that lights the ages.

    -Julia n  del Casal
      Bustos y rimas,'En el campo' ('In the Countryside').

  •    Otium et reges prius et beatas perdidit urbes. Often has leisure ruined great kings and fine cities.

    -Catullus full name  Gaius Valerius Catullus
    Carmina, no.51.

  • Sunset and silence! A man: around him earth savage, earth broken; Beside him two horsesa plough! Earth savage, earth broken, the brutes, the dawn-man there in the sunset, And the Plough that is twin to the Sword, that is founder of cities!

    - Padraic Colum
      Wild Earth,'The Plougher'.

  •    London, thou art of townes A per se. Soveraign of cities, someliest in sight, Of high renoun, riches, and royaltie; Of lordis, barons, and many goodly knyght; Of most delectable lusty ladies bright; Of famous prelatis in habitis clericall; Of merchauntis full of sybstaunce and myght; London, thou art the flour of Cities all.

    - Alexandre, pe'  re Dumas
    c.1501  'To the City of London', attributed to'A Rhymer of Scotland'. Dunbar was a member of the Scots party negotiating the marriage of  James I V to Margaret Tudor, and is popularly credited with the verse.

  •    Dans les villes actuelles, le seul lieu,he  las encore vers la pe  riphe  rieo  u' un the  a"  tre pourrait e"  tre construit, c'est le cimetie'  re. In today's cities, the only placeunfortunately on the outskirtsto construct a theatre is a cemetery.

    -Jean Genet
      L'EŁ  trange Mort d'†

  • Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven far journeys, after he had sacked Troy's sacred citadel. Many were they whose cities he saw, whose minds he learned of, many the pains he suffered in his spirit on the wide sea, struggling for his own life and the homecoming of his companions.

    -Homer   8c
    c.700  BC  Odyssey, bk.1, l.1^5 (translated by Richmond Lattimore).

  • The grass will grow in the streets of a hundred cities, a thousand towns; the weeds will overrun the fields of millions of farms if [tariff protection] is taken away.

    - Herbert Clark Hoover
      Presidential campaign speech, 22 Oct.

  • American life, in large cities, is a perpetual assault on the senses and the nerves; it is out of asceticism, out of unworldliness, precisely, that we bear it.

    -Joseph R(aymond) McCarthy
      'America the Beautiful', in Commentary, Sep.

  • Towered cities pleased us then, And the busy hum of men, Where throngs of knights and barons bold In weeds of peace high triumphs hold, With store of ladies, whose bright eyes Rain influence, and judge the prize Of wit or arms, while both contend To win her grace, whom all commend.

    -John Milton
    c.1631 L'Allegro, l.117^24.

  • Here, of all her cities, throbbed the true lifethe true power and spirit of America; gigantic, crude with the crudityof youth, disdaining rivalry; saneand healthyand vigorous; brutal in its ambition, arrogant in the new- found knowledge of its giant strength, prodigal of its wealth, infinite in its desires.

    - Frank Benjamin Franklin Norris
      Of Chicago. The Pit, ch.2.

  • To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.

    - George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair Orwell
      In the Observer, 8  Apr.

  • The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeplyas they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it.

    - George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair Orwell
      'Some Thoughts on the Common Toad'.

  • He that but once too nearly hears The music of forfended spheres Is thenceforth lonely, and for all His days as one who treads the Wall Of China, and, on this hand, sees Cities and their civilities And, on the other, lions. 643

    - Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
      TheVictories of Love, bk.1.

  • Until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now called kings and leading men genuinelyand adequately philosophize, that is, until political power and philosophy entirely coincide†cities will have no rest from evils, nor, I think, will the human race.

    -Plato
    Republic, bk.5,473c (translated by G M A Grube, revised by C D C Reeve).

  • Bah! I have sung women in three cities, But it is all the same; And I will sing of the sun.

    - Ezra Loomis Pound
      Personae,'Cino'.

  • The notion of a defence that will protect American cities is one that will not be achieved, but it is that goal that supplies the political magic in the President's vision.

    -James Schlesinger
      Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 6 Feb.

  • Beneath is spread like a green sea The waveless plain of Lombardy, Bounded by the vaporous air, Islanded by cities fair; Underneath Day's azure eyes, Ocean's nursling,Venice lies, A peopled labyrinth of walls, Amphitrite's destined halls.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'Lines written amongst the Euganean Hills', l.90^7.

  • I cannot remember things I once read A few friends, but theyare in cities. Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup Looking down for miles Through high still air.

    - Gary Sherman Snyder
      Riprap,'Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout'.

  • I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, council, governments, Myself not least, but honoured of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windyTroy. I am part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life.

    -Tennyson
      Poems,'Ulysses' (published1842), l.6^24.

  • These beauteous forms, Through a long absence, have not been to me As is a landscape to a blind man's eye: But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart.

    -William Wordsworth
      'Lines composed a few miles aboveTintern Abbey, on revisiting the banks of theWye',1.22^8.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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