City and Everyday Life

Boston State-House is the hub of the solar system.

 

The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town or city.

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

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

Don't knock the weather nine-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation if it didn't change once in a while.

Taxes are the price we pay for civilization.

The splendour falls on castle walls

 

The official world, the corridors of power.

 

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.

 

Like shadows of the plumbing that is all that is left of the great city.

 

Fresh from brawling courts And dusty purlieus of the law.

 

The long mechanic pacings to and fro, The set gray life, and apathetic end.

 

Many-tower’d Camelot.

 

London, thou art the flower of Cities all.

 

Who knows when some slight shock, disturbing the delicate balance between social order and thirsty aspiration, shall send the skyscrapers in our cities toppling?

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.

A well known American writer said once that, while everybody talked about the weather, nobody seemed to do anything about it.

[ Quoting an “American joke” :] In Boston theyask, How much does he know? in New York, How much is he worth? in Philadelphia, Whowere his parents?

All the modern inconveniences.

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.

The widder eats by a bell; she goes to bed by abell; she gits up by a bell—everything’s so awful reg’lar a body can’t stand it.

[ Concluding words of the Barsetshire novels :] To meBarset has been a real county, and its city a real city, and the spires and towers have been before my eyes, and the voices of the people are knownto my ears, and the pavement of the city ways are familiar to my footsteps. . . . I have been induced to wander among them too long by my love of old friendships, and by the sweetness of old faces.

Our life is frittered away by detail. . . . Simplify, simplify.

What was the use of my having come from Oakland it was not natural to have come from there yes write about it if I like or anything if I like but not there, there is no there there.