City Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

There is a fine sense of freedom that comes from wandering about a familiar city with no particular destination in mind, with no one to meet, no duties, no obligations. I had nothing to do and a thousand nameless, sun-drenched streets to do it in.

I guess I was seeking some balance in the wildlife of the city as Rachel Carson sought it in nature. In unbalanced times, balance is as difficult to come by as Parsifal's Grail.

I walk along the city streets you used to walk along with me,
And every step I take recalls how much in love we used to be.
Oh, how can I forget you?
When there is always something there to remind me

Now, at the little southern black college where I went to school, we had no megadorms. We were cool at the right times and academic at the right times.... Boston University, where I did my Master's … most students had no time for sonic war, and the rest vented their humors in the city, not in the dorms. Ohio State was nicely spread out, and I lived in an apartment complex where noisy shit-for-brains undergrads were even less welcome than tweedy black bachelors.

Neal Stephenson

If a well were sunk at our feet in the midst of the city of Norwich, the diggers would very soon find themselves at work in that white substance almost too soft to be called rock, with which we are all familiar as "chalk".

Thomas Henry Huxley

A man may make his way across the Atlantic in a skiff, for all I know; but if you are intending to cross the sea, take my advice, and secure passage in a first-class steamer, and you will be more likely to get there. So it is with these heathen millions. I do not know but some of them may drift, and we shall find them in the city of God. But I do know that by giving them the gospel, by building up and supporting among them a Christian church, we shall greatly multiply their chances for heaven.

Charles Henry Fowler

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.

Ursula K. Le Guin

The odour rising from the newly opened depths was intolerable, and at length the quick-eared Hawkins thought he heard a nasty, slopping sound down there. Everyone listened, and everyone was listening still when It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness.

H. P. Lovecraft

The true Negro does not want integration... He realizes his potential is far better among his own race... It will destroy our race eventually... In one northern city, a pastor friend of mine tells me that a couple of opposite race live next door to his church as man and wife... It boils down to whether we are going to take God's Word as final.

As usual, the future will be different. Philadelphia's responses to global warming and market cooling, high fuel and food prices, health unsurance, mortgages, student debt and war will decide whether our future here becomes vastly better or vastly worse. Whether we're the Next Great City or Next Great Medieval Village.

But that in any city, in any cluster of people, there a few people who are awake at this hour, who are both awake and dancing, and it's here that we need to be. That if we are living as we were this week, that we had to be awake with the people who are still dancing.

No doubt Carter would describe the underground city in excruciating detail, with exact measurements of each room, boring history on every statue and hieroglyph, and background notes on the construction of the magical headquarters of the House of Life. I will spare you that pain. It's big. It's full of magic. It's underground. There. Sorted.

How absurd it must seem for an immortal soul to be destined for Heaven or Hell, and yet be sitting in a kitchen, as a maid, or to see oneself objectified as a mechanic! how falsely the usual sunrise waked us, the clock dial, the city street the job! How wrongfully people find themselves in these systems — our time isn't there, our space isn't there, our space isn't even here... the whole social story of waking, and certainly the day of the mechanic, is false.

Most things, even the greatest movements on earth, have their beginnings in something small. An earthquake that shatters a city might begin with a tremble, a breath. Music begins with a vibration... And God created the whole universe from an atom no bigger than a thought.

It wasn't until Salt Lake City that I began to be a real addict. I would go down to the library two or three times a week to bring away three or four books each time, without any direction.

Wallace Stegner

My heart has become as hard as a city street,
The horses trample upon it, it sings like iron,
All day long and all night long they beat,
They ring like the hooves of time.

The silver medals I won in Salt Lake City didn't give me anything. Last year I set myself the goal of winning the World Cup and lining up a long series of wins. It was my private challenge.

Love is a God, who cooperates in securing the safety of the city.

People don't dream all their lives of escaping the hellish countries they live in and pay their life savings to underworld types for the privilege of being locked up in a freezing, filthy, stinking container ship and hauled like cargo for weeks until they finally arrive in Moscow or Beijing or Baghdad or Kabul. People risk their lives to come here—to New York. The greatest city in the world, where dreams become reality.

O Brother! Not every sea hath pearls; not every branch will flower, nor will the nightingale sing thereon. Then, ere the nightingale of the mystic paradise repair to the garden of God, and the rays of the heavenly morning return to the Sun of Truth—make thou an effort, that haply in this dustheap of the mortal world thou mayest catch a fragrance from the everlasting garden, and live forever in the shadow of the peoples of this city. And when thou hast attained this highest station and come to this mightiest plane, then shalt thou gaze on the Beloved, and forget all else.

What do you want — a cliff over a city?
A foreland, sloped to sea and overgrown with roses?
These people live here.

Muriel Rukeyser

The first time that I went to the United States was in 1974... I was 20 years old. America was in crisis. The dollar was at a low. The Watergate scandal had already erupted. And I still remember this vision I had of New York, which was a huge, fascinating city, dirty and violent. And I've been to the U.S. regularly, but what impresses me most in this large nation is its capacity to overcome hardship and return to the heights.

François Hollande

- Report...

She was poor but she was honest,
And her parents was the same,
Till she met a city feller,
And she lost her honest name.

Will you really sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are 50 righteous men within the city. Will you, then, sweep them away and not pardon the place for the sake of the 50 righteous who are inside it? It is unthinkable that you would act in this manner by putting the righteous man to death with the wicked one so that the outcome for the righteous man and the wicked is the same! It is unthinkable of you. Will the Judge of all the earth not do what is right?

The thing generally raised on city land is taxes.

Charles Dudley Warner