City and Everyday Life

There was a rocky valley between Buxton and Bakewell. . . . You enterprised a railroad . . . you blasted its rocks away. . . . And now, every fool in Buxton can be at Bakewell in half-an-hour, and every fool in Bakewell at Buxton.

Anywhere is better than Paris. Paris the cold, Paris the drizzly, Paris the rainy, Paris theDamnable. More than a hundred years ago, somebody asked Quin, “Did you ever see such a winter in all your life before?” “Yes,” said he, “last summer.” I judge he spent his summer in Paris.

Many-tower’d Camelot.

 

Duh poor guy! . . . Maybe he’s found out by now dat he’ll neveh live long enough to know duh whole of Brooklyn. It’d take a guy a lifetime to know Brooklyn t’roo an’ t’roo. An’ even den, yuh wouldn’t know it all.

Railway termini. They are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return.

 

The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

Hell is a city much like London.

A SMALL COUNTRY TOWN IS NOT THE PLACE IN WHICH ONE WOULD CHOOSE TO QUARREL WITH A WIFE; EVERY HUMAN BEING IN SUCH PLACES IS A SPY.

Sea of upturned faces.

Florence she found perfectly sweet, Naples a dream, but very whiffy. In Rome one had simply to sit still and feel.

When night Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.

Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain.

Hark! Hark! The dogs do bark, The beggars are coming to town; Some in rags, some in tags, And some in velvet gowns.

Every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay every thing open.

And when night

Earth has not anything to show more fair:

Of course I have played outdoor games. I once played dominoes in an open-air cafe in Paris.

whose wick is in permanent danger of explosion, whose blinking illumination in the coal dust exhausts and corrodes your eyes.

Where solitude endeth, there beginneth the market-place; and where the market-place beginneth, there beginneth also the noise of the great actors, and the buzzing of the poison-flies.

Surely a tired woman on her way to work at six in the morning on a subway deserves the right to get there safely.

God made the country, and man made the town.

God the first garden made, and the first city.

I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me: and to me High mountains are a feeling, but the hum Of human cities torture.

To one who has been long in city pent, ’Tis very sweet to look into the fair And open face of heaven.