Town Quotes
More Town Quotes
In Ko« hln, a town of monks and bones, And pavements fang'd with murderous stones And rags, and hags, and hideous wenches; I counted two and seventy stenches, All well defined, and several stinks! Ye Nymphs that reign o'er sewers and sinks, The river Rhine, it is well known, Doth wash your city of Cologne; But tell me, Nymphs, what power divine Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?
Samuel Taylor Coleridge— 1828 'Cologne', first published in Friendship's Offering (1834), as 'Lightheartedness in Rhyme', no.4.
It makes me itchy, this wry fatalism, but it doesn't make me itch nearly as much as the heroes of so many other modern novels for whom stalking the savage libido is more fun than kinship or community; who will leave town either to find their callow selves, as if they'd lost anything important, or, more transgressively, to kill a bear, a bull, a whale, a unicorn, a hippogriff, a signifier or, preferably, their fathers.
john leonard— "The Accidental Matriarch", The New York Times (20 May 2001)
We want a good architect and town Planner to help us in preparing a scheme for [Bhubaneshwar]...The remuneration which will be paid to Dr. H Otto Koenigsberger, may be settled by mutual agreement.
— Ravi Kalia quoting a letter addressed by Premier Mahtab of Orissa to the Mysore Government in December 1947, in “Bhubaneswar: From a Temple Town to a Capital City (1994)”, p,125
If the street life, not the Whitechapel street life, but that of the common but so-called respectable part of town is in any city more gloomy, more ugly, more grimy, more cruel than in London, I certainly don't care to see it. Sometimes it occurs to one that possibly all the failures of this generation, the world over, have been suddenly swept into London, for the streets are a restless, breathing, malodorous pageant of the seedy of all nations.
willa cather— Ch. 5 (22 July 1902)
Until last year, although this town was barely fifty miles from Denver, the road had been bad and only a handful of visitors had chanced on it. The increasing tendency for people to take mountain vacations, however, since the sea had become too filthy to be tolerable, could not be ignored. The road now was excellent and the area had exploded.
john brunner— January “SNOW JOB”
Let every man, every corporation, and especially let every village, town, and city, every county and State, get out of debt and keep out of debt. It is the debtor that is ruined by hard times.
rutherford b. hayes— Diary (13 July 1879).
The World Heritage properties situated in the northern parts of Mali have been subjected to destructive attacks since they were occupied by armed rebel groups in April this year [2012]. In Timbuktu, nine mausoleums have been desecrated , including two at the Mosque of Djingareyber, the most important mosque in the town.
— UNESCO, in Creation of a Special Fund for the Safeguarding of Mali’s World Heritage sites (25 July 2012)
The deil cam fiddlin thro'the town, And danc'd awa wi' th' Exciseman; And ilka wife cries, auld Mahoun, I wish you luck o'the prize, man!
Robert Burns— 1792 'The Deil's awa wi' th' Exciseman', stanza1.
On the geometric level, we see certain physical elements repeated endlessly, combined in an almost endless variety of combinations... It is puzzling to realize that the elements, which seem like elementary building blocks, keep varying, and are different every time that they occur .... If the elements are different every time that they occur, evidently then, it cannot be the elements themselves which are repeating in a building or town; these so-called elements cannot be the ultimate "atomic" constituents of space.
christopher alexander— Cited in: Peter Coad (1992, p. 152)
We got up at four in the morning, that first day in the east. On the evening before we had climbed off a freight train at the edge of town, and with the true instinct of Kentucky boys had found our way across town and to the race track and the stables at once. Then we knew we were all right.
Sherwood Anderson— "I Want to Know Why"
When men were all asleep the snow came flying,In large white flakes falling on the city brown,Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town.
robert bridges— London Snow, l. 1-4 (1890).
It beareth the name of Vanity Fair, because the town where 't is kept is lighter than vanity.
john bunyan— Part i. (The Pilgrim's Progress (1678))
You can't appreciate home till you've left it, money till it's spent, your wife till she's joined a women's club, nor Old Glory till you see it hanging on a broomstick on the shanty of a consul in a foreign town.
o. henry— "The Fourth in Salvador"
A whole street's belief in Sunday's roast beef gets dashed against the Co-op,To either cut down on beer or the kids' new gear, it's a big decision in a town called malice.
paul weller— Town Called Malice
Elsdon was once a market town as some say, and a city according to others; but as the annals of the parish were lost several centuries ago, it is impossible to determine what age it was either the one or the other. There are not the least traces of the former grandeur to be found, whence some antiquaries are apt to believe that it lost both its trade and charter at the Deluge.
charles dodgson— Quoted in Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (1898), p. 4
People who get higher pay are more willing to relocate--especially to undesirable locations at the company's behest... A corporate secretary may change companies in the same town; a corporate executive is more likely to change towns with the same company. A talented corporate secretary sees an invitation to relocate as an invitation; a future corporate executive sees an invitation to relocate as an opportunity--and an obligation.
warren farrell— p. 93-94. (Part IV: Where do we go from here)
If the city is on the sea, we should choose ground close to the harbor as the place where the forum is to be built; but if inland, in the middle of the town.
vitruvius— Chapter VII "The Sites for Public Buildings" Sec. 1
On a bus ride into town, I wondered out loud, "Why am I going to town?" As I looked around at the billboards and the stores I thought, "Why do I look around?" And I kissed the filthy ground... the first dry spot I found... I didn't have to wonder why I was laying down.
aaron weiss— Carousels.
With the revival of the popularity of the road in the pursuit of healthful and enjoyable exercise,cycli ng, a new era of prosperity has set in for the old town ... now the favourite rendevous of wheelmen from all parts on tour through the district.
— Illustrated Bedfordshire, 1895
...was conceived as a modern new town based on neighborhood planning concept by the internationally acclaimed urban planner, Dr.H. Otto Koenigsberger.
— Urban Odisha, in Perspective Plan – VISION 2030 and Comprehensive Development Plan for Bhubaneswar – Cuttack Urban Complex: A Concept Paper
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, the fort changed its form from a residential town into a modern garden or empty space where only the palace and temple remained...This spatial transformation of the ort was a crucial part of a city improvement project in Mysore, which tried to beautify the capital at the same time as endeavuoring to meet modern demands of sanitation and hygiene…In this process, the modern Western idea of improvement and the traditional kingly role as a protector of dharma were somehow reconciled ad mutually strengthened.
— Aya Ikegame, in "Princely India Re-imagined: A Historical Anthropology of Mysore from 1799 to ...", P.120
A few pen-and-ink sketches of scenery and character may not be irrelevant; as serving to mark, palpable contrasts between the past and present, country and town, nature and art, illiterate and literary society - man almost in a state of semi-barbarism, and man enlightened by art, science, and refinement.
— John Britton (1850) Personal and literary memoir of the author. p. 27
Ah me, why did they build my house by the road to the market town?
rabindranath tagore— Rabindranath Tagore, Gardener, 4.
And now I'd like to settle down, In Oklahoma in my home town.
— Leodie Jackson, Ramblin' Okie
Men look after they wot not what, but men buy harness fast; the King's menial men and the Duke of Clarence's are many in this town.
— Sir John Paston on the eve of Clarence's rebellion, June 1471. Reprinted in Richard the Third (1956)
There's a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu, There's a little marble cross below the town, There'sa broken-heartedwomantendsthegrave of Mad Carew, And theYellow God forever gazes down.
j. milton hayes— 1911The Green Eye of theYellow God. US Republican statesman and 19th President (1877-81). Under his presidency, the country recovered commercial prosperity, and his policy included the reform of the civil service and the conciliation of the Southern states.
In a world that had become a salvage operation, the general supply evolved into Union Grove's leading industry. When every last useful thing in town had been stripped from the Kmart and the United Auto, the CVS drugstore, and other trading establishments of the bygone national chain-store economy, daily life became a perpetual flea market centered on the old town dump.
james howard kunstler— Chapter 5, p. 28
