Anonymous
The United States was born in the country and moved to the city in the nineteenth century.
Arnold Matthew 1822-1888
‘Thyrsis'
And that sweet City with her dreaming spires,
She needs not June for beauty's heightening.
Camus Albert 1913-1960
As a remedy to life in society, I would suggest the big city. Nowadays it is the only desert within our reach.
Disraeli Benjamin 1804-1881
Lothair
London: a nation, not a city.
Emerson Ralph Waldo 1803-1882
What is the city in which we sit here, but an aggregate of incongruous materials, which have obeyed the will of some man?
Herbert George 1593-1633
The chicken is the country's, but the city eats it.
Holmes Oliver Wendell 1809-1894
The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the
centre of each and every town or city.
Jacobs Jane
In small settlements everyone knows your affairs. In the big city, everyone does not - only those you choose to tell will know about you.
This is one of the attributes of cities that is precious to most city people.
Keats John 1795-1821
‘To one who has been long in city pent'
To one who has been long in city pent,
‘Tis very sweet to look into the fair
And open face of heaven.
Mandale W.R.
‘Pop Goes the Weasel'
Up and down the City Road,
In and out the Eagle,
That's the way the money goes -
Pop goes the weasel!
Milton John 1608-1674
Areopagitica (of London)
Behold now this vast city; a city of refuge, the mansion-house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with his protection.
Milton John 1608-1674
Paradise Lost
As one who long in populous city pent,
Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,
Forth issuing on a summer's morn to breathe
Among the pleasant villages and farms
Adjoined, from each thing met conceives delight.
Morris Desmond 1928-
The Human Zoo
The city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo.
Nicias c.470-413 BC
For a city consists in men, and not in walls nor in ships empty of men.
Norris Kathleen
There is no solitude in the world like that of the big city.
Proverbs and Sayings
A great city, a great solitude.
Sandburg Carl 1878-1967
‘Chicago'
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders.
Shakespeare William 1564-1616
Antony and Cleopatra
The city cast
Her people out upon her, and Antony,
Enthroned I' the market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too
And made a gap in nature.
Shakespeare William 1564-1616
Coriolanus
What is the city but the people?
Shelley Percy Bysshe 1792-1822
‘Lines written amongst the Euganean Hills' (Venice)
Sun-girt city, thou hast been
Ocean's child, and then his queen;
Now is come a darker day,
And thou soon must be his prey.
Tennyson Alfred Lord 1809-1892
‘The Gardener's Daughter'
News from the humming city comes to it
In sound of funeral or of marriage bells.
Thomson James 1834-1882
‘The City of Dreadful Night'
The City is of Night; perchance of Death,
But certainly of Night.
White E.B. 1899-1985
At present, I am a sojourner in the city again, but here in the green warmth of a city backyard,
I see only the countenance of spring in the country.