Observe how every truth and every error, each a thought of someone's mind, clothes itself with societies, houses, cities, language, ceremonies, newspapers
Oh, blank confusion! true epitome Of what the mighty City is herself, To thousands upon thousands of her sons, Living amid the same perpetual whirl Of trivial objects, melted and reduced To one identity.
Again and again I am brought up against it, and again and again I resist it: I don't want to believe it, even though it is almost palpable: the vast majority lack an intellectual conscience; indeed, it often seems to me that to demand such a thing is to be in the most populous cities as solitary as in the desert.
New York was not a romantic city at [80th]. Nobody knows who you are and you don't have to care about anybody else. It's a very cold city, I should say.
I waited for the train at Coventry; I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge, To watch the three tall spires; and there I shaped The city's ancient legend into this.
To rove about, musing, that is to say loitering, is, for a philosopher, a good way of spending time, especially in that kind of mock rurality, ugly but odd, and partaking of two natures, which surrounds certain large cities, particularly Paris.
One voice can change a room, and if one voice can change a room, then it can change a city, and if it can change a city, it can change a state, and if it change a state, it can change a nation, and if it can change a nation, it can change the world. Your voice can change the world.
But if you should take the bond of goodwill out of the universe no house or city could stand, nor would even the tillage of the fields abide. If that statement is not clear, then you may understand how great is the power of friendship and of concord from a consideration of the results of enmity and disagreement. For what house is so strong, or what state so enduring that it cannot be utterly overthrown by animosities and division?
O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?