By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted, but it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked.

The seeds of civilization are in every culture, but it is city life that brings them to fruition.

A large city cannot be experientially known; its life is too manifold for any individual to be able to participate in it.

Towns oftener swamp one than carry one out onto the big ocean of life.

Just as language no longer has anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connection with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.

The first requisite to happiness is that a man be born in a famous city.

There is a city in which you find everything you desire—handsome people, pleasures, ornaments of every kind—all that the natural person craves. However, you cannot find a single wise person there.

If the present be compared with the remote past, it is easily seen that in all cities and in all peoples there are the same desires and the same passions as there always were.

A hick town is one where there is no place to go where you shouldn’t go.

Does anybody really want to attend to cities other than to flee, fleece, privatize, butcher, or decimate them?

Great cities must ever be centers of light and darkness, the home of the best and the worst of our race, holding within themselves the highest talent for good and evil.

The country only has charms for those not obliged to stay there. 

It is men who make a city, not walls or ships.