Cities Quotes (page 24)
The New ColossusNot like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she with silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses...
Emma Lazarus
His contagious conviction that our love was unique and desperate infected me with an anxious sickness; soon we would learn to treat one another with the circumspect tenderness of comrades who are amputees, for we were surrounded by the most moving images of evanesecence, fireworks, morning glories, the old, children. But the most moving of these images were the intagible relfections of ourselves we saw in one another's eyes, reflections of nothing but appearances, in a city dedicated to...
Angela Carter
Here, perhaps, is the only man in the world who, we're you to leave him alone and without money on the square of some unknown city with a population of a million, would not perish, would not die of cold or hunger, for he would immediately take care of himself, and it would cost him no effort, and no humiliation, and he would be no burden to those who took care of him, who perhaps, on the contrary, would consider it a pleasure
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Esteemed friend, citizen of Athens, the greatest city in the world, so outstanding in both intelligence and power, aren't you ashamed to care so much to make all the money you can, and to advance your reputation and prestige--while for truth and wisdom and the improvement of your soul you have no care or worry?
Socrates
Symbolic of life, hair bolts from our head[s]. Like the earth, it can be harvested, but it will rise again. We can change its color and texture when the mood strikes us, but in time it will return to its original form, just as Nature will in time turn our precisely laid-out cities into a weed-way.
Diane Ackerman
For I was reared in the great city, pent with cloisters dim, and saw naught lovely but the sky and stars. But thou, my babe! Shalt wander like a breeze. By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags. Of ancient mountains, and beneath the clouds, Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores. And mountain crags: so shall thou see and hear. The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible Of that eternal language, which thy God. Utters, who from eternity doth teach. Himself in all, and al things in...
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
It seems to me that whether it is recognized or not, there is a terrific frustration which increases in intensity and harmfulness as time goes on, when people are always daydreaming of the kind of place in which they would like to live, yet never making the place where they do live into anything artistically satisfying to them. Always to dream of a cottage by a brook while never doing anything to the stuffy house in the city is to waste creativity in this very basic area, and to hinder future...
Edith Schaeffer
Beneath the gore and smoke and loam, this book is about the evanescence of life, and why some men choose to fill their brief allotment of time engaging the impossible, others in the manufacture of sorrow. In the end it is a story of the ineluctable conflict between good and evil, daylight and darkness, the White City and the Black.
Erik Larson
On the one hand, the Republicans are telling industrial workers that the high cost of food in the cities is due to this government's farm policy. On the other hand, the Republicans are telling the farmers that the high cost of manufactured goods on the farm is due to this government's labor policy. That's plain hokum. It's an old political trick: "If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em." But this time it won't work.
Harry S. Truman
Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets, between thehouses with yellow- lit windows, and on out into the darkness of thefields. Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. Theygo on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and theydo not come back. The place they go towards is a place even lessimaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describeit at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem toknow where they are...
Ursula K. Le Guin