Cities Quotes

The city is an epitome of the social world. All the belts of civilization intersect along its avenues. It contains the products of every moral zone and is cosmopolitan, not only in a national, but in a moral and spiritual sense.

E.P. Chapin.

Cities force growth, and make men talkative and entertaining, but they make them artificial.

Emerson.

The union of men in large masses is indispensable to the development and rapid growth of their higher faculties. Cities have always been the fire places of civilization, whence light and heat radiated out into the dark, cold world.

Theodore Parker.

God the first garden made, and Cain the first city.

Cowley.

I have found by experience, that they who have spent all their lives in cities, contract not only an effeminacy of habit, but of thinking.

Goldsmith.

If you suppress the exorbitant love of pleasure and money, idle curiosity, iniquitous purpose, and wanton mirth, what a stillness would there be in the greatest cities.

Bruyere.

The city has always been the decisive battle ground of civilization and religion. It intensifies all the natural tendencies of man. From its formented energies, as well as from its greater weight of numbers, the city controls. Ancient civilizations rose and fell with their leading cities. In modern times, it is hardly too much to say, “as goes the city so goes the world.”

S.J. MC Pherson.

I bless God for cites. They have been as lamps of life along the path ways of humanity and religion. Within them, science has given birth to her noblest discoveries. Behind their walls, freedom has fought her noblest battles. They have stood on the surface of the earth like great breakwaters, rolling back or oppression. Cities, indeed, have been the cradles of human liberty. They have been the active sentries of almost all Church and state reformation.

Guthrie.

If you would know and not be known, live in a city.

Colton.

Men, by associating in large masses, as in camps and cities, improve their talents, but impair their virtues; and strengthen their minds, but weaken their morals.

Colton.

The conditions of city life may be made healthy, so far as the physical constitution is concerned. But there is connected with the business of the city so much competition, so much rivalry, so much necessity for industry, that I think it is a perpetual, chronic, whole sale violation of natural law. There are ten men that can succeed on the country, where there is one that can succeed in the city.

H.W. Beecher.

Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.

Daniel Webster.

There is no solitude more dreadful for a stranger, an isolated man, than a great city. So many thousands of men, and not one friend.

Boiste.

In the country, a man’s mind is free and easy, and at his own disposal; but in the city, the persons of friends and acquaintance, one’s own and other people’s business, foolish quarrels, ceremonies, visits, impertinent discourses, and a thousand other fopperies and diversions steal away the greatest part of our time, and leave no leisure for better and more necessary employment. Great towns are but a larger sort of prison to the soul, like cages to birds, or pounds to beasts.

Charron.