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

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

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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