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.

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

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

Cities are the abyss of the human species.

There is no solitude in the world like that of the big city.

We must consider that we shall be a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world.

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

The screech and mechanical uproar of the big city turns the citified heads, fills citified ears—as the song of birds, wind in the trees, animal cries, or as the voices and songs of his loved ones once filled his heart. He is sidewalk happy.

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

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.

One need merely visit the marketplace and the graveyard to determine whether a city is in both physical and metaphysical order.

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

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