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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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

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

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.