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Cities Quotes

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Cities Quotes

“This fair but pitiless city of Manhattan was without a soul ... its inhabitants were manikins moved by wires and springs.”

SoulCitiesSpringFairsMovedWireManhattan
Book:The Gift of the Magi and Other New York Stories: The Skylight Room, The Voice of The City, The Cop and the Anthem, A Retrieved Information, The Last Leaf, The Ransom of Red Chief, The Trimmed Lamp and more
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“Not very long ago some one invented the assertion that there were only "Four Hundred" people in New York City who were really worth noticing. But a wiser man has arisen - the census taker - and his larger estimate of human interest has been preferred in marking out the field of these little stories of the "Four Million.”

PeopleMenHumansLittlesLongHas BeensStoriesInterestCitiesMillionsFourNew YorkFieldsHundredNew York CityLong AgoWiserAssertionNoticingCensus
Book:The Complete Poetry of O. Henry (Including a Biography of the Author): From the American writer, a master of short stories, known for The Gift of the Magi, Cabbages and Kings, The Cop and the Anthem, Options, Roads of Destiny, The Four Million…
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“There is simply no room left for 'freedom from the tyranny of government' since city dwellers depend on it for food, power, water, transportation, protection, and welfare. Your right to live where you want, with companions of your choosing, under laws to which you agree, died in the eighteenth century with Captain Mission. Only a miracle or a disaster could restore it.”

WantGovernmentLawLeftWaterRoomsCitiesCenturyDependsMiracleDiedAgreeMissionsProtectionDisasterTyrannyWelfareCompanionCaptainsTransportationDwellers
Book:Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader
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“And London shops on Christmas Eve Are strung with silver bells and flowers As hurrying clerks the City leave To pigeon-haunted classic towers, And marbled clouds go scudding by The many-steepled London sky”

CitiesSkyFlowerCloudsLondonClassicShopsSilverBellsTowersPigeonsClerksHurryingChristmas EveSilver Bells
Book:Faith and Doubt of John Betjeman: An Anthology of Betjeman's Religious Verse
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“We read our mail and counted up our missions In bombers named for girls, we burned The cities we had learned about in school Till our lives wore out; our bodies lay among The people we had killed and never seen. When we lasted long enough they gave us medals; When we died they said, "Our casualties were low." They said, "Here are the maps"; we burned the cities.”

PeopleLongSaidEnoughBodySchoolGirlCitiesOur LivesLowsDiedLaysMissionsMapsMailBurnedThey SaidMedalCasualtiesBombers
Author:Randall Jarrell
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“You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we’ll look back at the first decade of the 21st century — when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we’d crossed some growth/climate/natural resource/population redlines all at once?”

ThinkingWorldYearsFirstsLooksGovernmentAsksEnergyGrowthNaturalCitiesWonderRecordsCenturyEvidenceResourcesClimatePopulationObviousDecadesPanicFlood21st CenturyThreatenedNatural ResourcesDroughtWorld PopulationConfluence
Author:Thomas Friedman
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“Like all real treasures of the mind, perception can be split into infinitely small fractions without losing its quality. The weeds in a city lot convey the same lesson as the redwoods; the farmer may see in his cow-pasture what may not be vouchsafed to the scientist adventuring in the South Seas.”

MindMayRealCitiesQualitySeaLessonsPerceptionLosingScientistSouthTreasureWeedFarmersCowsSplitsFractionsPasturesRedwoodsAdventuring
Book:A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There
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“Standing at the edge of our city, a man could feel that we had made this place of streets and dwellings in the stillness of the desert, and that we had done a brave thing... Or a man could feel that we had made this city in the desert and that it was a fake thing and that our lives were empty lives, and that we were the contemporaries of the jack rabbits.”

MenFeelsMadeDoneCitiesOur LivesStreetsStandingEmptyBraveEdgesDesertFakeStillnessRabbitsDwellingEmpty Life
Author:William Saroyan
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“There I was out in the barn playing midwife to a pregnant mare. I remember sitting there, spinning yarn in the light of a little oil lamp, a city girl who knew nothing about farming, sitting on the deel beside that mother in pain, already beginning the birthing process. All around me there was darkness and perfect silence, except for the mother's pain. It was as if the war didn't exist in those hours.”

IfsLittlesWarLightPainRememberMotherGirlProcessHoursPerfectCitiesSilenceDarknessSittingOilPregnantLampsFarmingSpinningBarnsMidwifeYarnBirthingMaresCity Girl
Author:Diet Eman
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“Who would have believed that the daughters of that mighty city would one day be wandering as servants and slaves on the shores of Egypt and Africa, or that Bethlehem would daily receive noble Romans, distinguished ladies, brought up in wealth and now reduced to beggary? I cannot help them all, but I grieve and weep with them, and am completely absorbed in the duties which charity imposes on me. I have put aside my commentary on Ezekiel and almost all study. For today we must translate the precepts of the Scriptures into deeds; instead of speaking saintly words, we must act them.”

HelpingTodayWealthCitiesStudyDutyOne DayDaughterSlaveCharityDeedsNobleScriptureWanderServantGrievingShoreTranslateEgyptDistinguishedCommentaryBethlehemBeggaryEzekiel
Author:St. Jerome
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“Never was there a dingier, uglier, less picturesque city than London ... it is really wonderful that so much brick and stone, for centuries together, should have been built up with so poor a result.”

ShouldHas BeensTogetherPoorResultsCitiesWonderfulCenturyBuiltStonesShould HaveLondonBricksShould Have BeenPicturesque
Book:Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Letters, Diaries, Reminiscences and Extensive Biographies: Autobiographical Writings of the Renowned American Novelist, Author of
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“Nothing so evil as money ever grew to be current among men. This lays cities low, this drives men from their homes, this trains and warps honest souls till they set themselves to works of shame; this still teaches folk to practise villainies, and to know every godless deed. But all the men who wrought this thing for hire have made it sure that, soon or late, they shall pay the price.”

KnowsMenMadeStillsSoulHomeEvilPayCitiesTeachHonestHe ManGrewLateLowsShameLaysTrainFolksCurrentsDeedsMade ItPay The PricePractiseWarpVillainy
Book:Antigone
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“The great cry that rises from our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this, that we manufacture everything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages.”

MenFormSpiritCitiesCryShapesAdvantageDeedsSugarSteelManufacturingBlastCottonPotteryFurnaces
Book:Selections From the Works of John Ruskin
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“We are close to dead. There are faces and bodies like gorged maggots on the dance floor, on the highway, in the city, in the stadium; they are a host of chemical machines who swallow the product of chemical factories, aspirin, preservatives, stimulant, relaxant, and breathe out their chemical wastes into a polluted air. The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again.”

LongBodyLastsFacesNightCitiesAirProductsCivilizationWasteMachinesBreatheChemicalsHostFactoriesHighwaysLast NightStadiumsBack AgainDance FloorAspirinStimulantsMaggots
Book:Cannibals and Christians
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“We need – more urgently than architectural utopias, ingenious traffic disposal systems, or ecological programmes – to comprehend the nature of citizenship, to make serious imaginative assessment of that special relationship between the self and the city; its unique plasticity, its privacy and freedom.”

NeedsSelfCitiesSpecialSeriousUniquePrivacyTrafficCitizenshipImaginativeUtopiaEcologicalAssessmentProgrammesIngeniousSpecial RelationshipPlasticityPrivacy And Freedom
Book:Soft City: Picador Classic
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“Should a person on returning from the city discover his house to be in flames, let him examine well the change which he has received from the chair-carrier before it is too late; for evil never travels alone.”

ShouldWellsPersonsEvilHouseCitiesLateFlamesToo LateChairsCarrier
Book:THE KAI LUNG FANTASY SERIES: The Wallet of Kai Lung, Kai Lung's Golden Hours & Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat: The Transmutation of Ling, The Story of Yung Chang, The Probation of Sen Heng, The Experiment of the Mandarin Chan Hung, The Confession of Kai Lung, The Vengeance of Tung Fel and more
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