Cities quotes
4.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside cities — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas."
"I journeyed to London, to the timekept City, Where the River flows, with foreign flotations. There I was told: we have too many churches, And too few chop-houses."
"Humans turn the places they live into great crowded piles of mud and stone, like the nests termites build--but what happens when in all the world there are termite hills left but no bush?"
"Of course, I had a paradigm of a certain city in my head when I wrote these stories, a city that inspired my imagination, but it was only inspiration."
"I travel a lot, so when I arrive in a city, I like to go to good local bookshops and make a selection based on how I'm feeling and what I'm thinking. The book I pick usually seems to have a definite karmic connection!"
"It seems like the rebellions never stop, in the city, in the compound, anywhere. There are just breaths between them, and foolishly, we call those breaths “peace"."
"I brought you the truth about our city and the reason we are in it. If you aren't thanking me for it, you should at least do something about it instead of sitting here on this mess you made, pretending it's a throne!"
"My name is Tobias Eaton," Tobias says. "I don't think you want to push me off this train." The effect of the name on the people in the car is immediate and bewildering: they lower their weapons. They exchange meaningful looks. "Eaton? Really?" Edward says, eyebrows raised. "I have to admit, I did not see that coming." He clears his throat. "Fine, you can come. But when we get to the city, you've got to come with us." Then he smiles a little. "We know someone who's been looking for you, Tobias Eaton."
"It's stupid to miss a thing when there are so many people to miss instead, but I miss this train already, and all the others that carried me through the city, my city, after I was brave enough to ride them. I brush my fingers over the car wall, just once, and then jump."
"in the big city nobody has time to make friends. The big city is a big solitude."
"So this is where people come to live; I would have thought it is a city to die in."
"To rove about, musing, that is to say loitering, is, for a philosopher, a good way of spending time, especially in that kind of mock rurality, ugly but odd, and partaking of two natures, which surrounds certain large cities, particularly Paris."
"I once went on the most grueling radio tour. Living in hotel rooms, sleeping in the backs of rental cars as my mom drove to three different cities in one day."
"Let the river roll which way it will, cities will rise on its banks."
"If we tire of the saints, Shakspeare is our city of refuge."
"The test of civilization is the power of drawing the most benefit out of cities."
"In our large cities, the population is godless, materialized,--no bond, no fellow-feeling, no enthusiasm. These are not men, but hungers, thirsts, fevers, and appetites walking. How is it people manage to live on,--so aimless as they are? After their peppercorn aims are gained, it seems as if the lime in their bones alone held them together, and not any worthy purpose."
"What is the city in which we sit here, but an aggregate of incongruous materials, which have obeyed the will of some man?"
"In the Greek cities, it was reckoned profane, that any person should pretend a property in a work of art, which belonged to all who could behold it."
"Cities give not the human senses room enough. We go out daily and nightly to feed the eyes on the horizon, and require so much scope, just as we need water for our bath."
