“No rural community, no suburban community, can ever possess the distinctive qualities that city dwellers have for centuries given to the world.”

A kitten is the most irresistible comedian in the world. Its wide-open eyes gleam with wonder and mirth. It darts madly at nothing at all, and then, as though suddenly checked in the pursuit, prances sideways on its hind legs with ridiculous agility and zeal.

If we go to church we are confronted with a system of begging so complicated and so resolute that all other demands sink into insignificance by its side.

Everybody is now so busy teaching that nobody has any time to learn.

I am seventy years old, a gray age weighted with uncompromising biblical allusions. It ought to have a gray outlook, but it hasn’t, because a glint of dazzling sunshine is dancing merrily ahead of me.

The sanguine assurance that men and nations can be legislated into goodness, that pressure from without is equivalent to a moral change within, needs a strong backing of inexperience.

While art may instruct as well as please, it can nevertheless be true art without instructing, but not without pleasing.

Resistance, which is the function of conservatism, is essential to orderly advance.

The dog is guided by kindly instinct to the man or woman whose heart is open to his advances. The cat often leaves the friend who courts her, to honor, or to harass, the unfortunate mortal who shudders at her unwelcome caresses.

There is no liberal education for the under-languaged.

The delusions of the past seem fond and foolish. The delusions of the present seem subtle and sane.

Where there is no temptation, there is no virtue.

Just as we are often moved to merriment for no other reason than that the occasion calls for seriousness, so we are correspondingly serious when invited too freely to be amused.

A man who owns a dog is, in every sense of the words, its master; the term expresses accurately their mutual relations. But it is ridiculous when applied to the limited possession of a cat.

The human race may be divided into people who love cats and people who hate them; the neutrals being few in numbers, and, for intellectual and moral reasons, not worth considering.

There is something frightful in being required to enjoy and appreciate all masterpieces; to read with equal relish Milton, and Dante, and Calderon, and Goethe, and Homer, and Scott, and Voltaire, and Wordsworth, and Cervantes, and Molière, and Swift.

The pessimist is seldom an agitating individual. His creed breeds indifference to others, and he does not trouble himself to thrust his views upon the unconvinced.

Cities like Portland, Seattle, and Long Beach, which have made these investments in their infrastructure, are seeing not only health advantages, but also a lot more exchange in the community, which leads to better policy-making and stronger communities.

Like every other place, I guess, Kansas City was quite a different city when I was a youngster there. They had quite a few clubs, and we had what we used to call jam sessions every night.

I haunted streets, whorehouses, police stations, courtrooms, theater stages, jails, saloons, slums, madhouses, fires, murders, riots, banquet halls and bookshops.

That’s immediately how I gauge how healthy a city is-by the amount of tags. It’s just in direct competition with advertising. It’s still one of the last things that hasn’t been corrupted.

I am really enthusiastic about my new council position because part of my satisfaction in life is feeling like I have done something. With this responsibility I hope I can accomplish things for the City of Williamstown and the people.

Nor shall the seeker reach his goal unless he sacrifice all things. That is, whatever he has seen, and heard, and understood (before), all must he set at naught, that he may enter the Realm of the Spirit, which is the City of God.

If most American cities are about the consumption of culture, Los Angeles and New York are about the production of culture – not only national culture but global culture.

My work doesn’t speak about individuals (it’s not portraiture in the traditional sense), it tries to speak about life in general in cities of the West – which is where I live and what I understand.