Do you suppose that will change the sense of the morals, the fact that we can’t use morals as a means of judging the city because we couldn’t stand it? And that we’re changing our whole moral system to suit the fact that we’re living in a ridiculous way?

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

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

The more men are massed together, the more corrupt they become. Disease and vice are the sure results of overcrowded cities.

The life of the city never lets you go, nor do you ever want it to.

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

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

Divine nature gave the fields; human art built the cities.

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

Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another.

I even gave up, for a while, stopping by the window of the room to look out at the lights and deep, illuminated streets. That’s a form of dying, that losing contact with the city like that.

No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.

My ideas are clear. My orders are precise. Within five years, Rome must appear marvelous to all the people of the world—vast, orderly, powerful, as in the time of the empire of Augustus.