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.

I have never felt salvation in nature. I love cities above all.

Today’s city is the most vulnerable social structure ever conceived by man.

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

In Washington, the first thing people tell you is what their job is. In Los Angeles you learn their star sign. In Houston you’re told how rich they are. And in New York they tell you what their rent is.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Often an entire city has suffered because of an evil man.