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.
—Rumi, c. 1250Quotes
There is no solitude in the world like that of the big city.
—Kathleen Norris, 1931The life of the city never lets you go, nor do you ever want it to.
—Wallace Stevens, 1952No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.
—Cyril Connolly, 1944By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted, but it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked.
—Book of Proverbs, c. 350 BCThe seeds of civilization are in every culture, but it is city life that brings them to fruition.
—Susanne K. Langer, 1962What is the city but the people?
—William Shakespeare, 1608A hick town is one where there is no place to go where you shouldn’t go.
—Alexander Woollcott, c. 1935If 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.
—Niccolò Machiavelli, c. 1513The first requisite to happiness is that a man be born in a famous city.
—Euripides, c. 415 BCCities are the abyss of the human species.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762The country only has charms for those not obliged to stay there.
—Édouard Manet, c. 1860It is men who make a city, not walls or ships.
—Thucydides, 410 BC