It is men who make a city, not walls or ships.

I even gave up, for a while, stopping by the window of the room to look out at the lights and deep, illuminated streets. That’s a form of dying, that losing contact with the city like that.

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

The seeds of civilization are in every culture, but it is city life that brings them to fruition.

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?

Divine nature gave the fields; human art built the cities.

What is the city but the people?

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

Does anybody really want to attend to cities other than to flee, fleece, privatize, butcher, or decimate them?

The life of the city never lets you go, nor do you ever want it to.

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.

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.