City Halfway Quotes

Language is the element of definition, the defining and descriptive incantation. It puts the coin between our teeth. It whistles the boat up. It shows us the city of light across the water. Without language there is no poetry, without poetry there's just talk. Talk is cheap and proves nothing. Poetry is dear and difficult to come by. But it poles us across the river and puts a music in our ears. It moves us to contemplation. And what we contemplate, what we sing our hymns to and offer our prayers to, is what will reincarnate us in the natural world, and what will be our one hope for salvation in the What'sToCome. ~ Charles Wright

I mean, when you grow up in the inner city and you grow up in a single-parent household, that's - those are humbling times, you know? ~ LeBron James

Being halfway through my life, I think we start feeling less invincible and we start thinking more about the important things. ~ Pamela Anderson

Vienna wasn't just a city, it was a tone that either one carries forever in one's soul or one does not. It was the most beautiful thing in my life. I was poor, but I was not alone, because I had a friend. And Vienna was like another friend. When it rained in the tropics, I always heard the voice of Vienna. And at other times too. Sometimes deep in the virgin forests I smelled the musty smell of the entrance hall in Hietzing. Music and everything I loved was in the stones of Vienna, and in people's glances and their behavior, the way pure feelings are part of one's very heart. You know when the feelings stop hurting. Vienna in winter and spring. The allés in Schönbrunn. The blue light in the dormitory at the academy, the great white stairwell with the baroque statue. Morning ridings in the Prater. The mildew in the riding school. I remember all of it exactly, and I wanted to see it again... ~ Sandor Marai

[About the wives of Weinsburg] They may only be a legend. I like to think they were real. Once the city of Weinsburg in Germany was under siege. The enemy emperor was dangerous but not unmerciful. When it became inevitable that the city would fall, the men of Weinsberg pleaded for their women, that they be allowed to flee with their lives. The emperor relented and allowed the women to leave the city with only the valuables they could carry on their backs. The day came and the gates of the city opened and the emperor watched in shock as the women stumbled through the gates nearly breaking under the weight of their husbands and fathers who they carried on their backs. Their love humbled the emperor and he declared all would be spared. ~ Nora ~ Tiffany Reisz

In this Treaty, King Charles the Simple in exchange for the Viking's loyalty and pledge of feudal allegiance, gave the city of Rouen and the area of what is present-day Upper Normandy to Rollo and his men in what established the Duchy of Normandy, named from the Frankish word for the Viking Men of the North, or Northmen - Normanii. ~ Njord Kane

New York City is a fascinating place because it's very good at using the energy in attracting some of the best and the brightest from everywhere. ~ Juan Enriquez

New York City is the most important location in the world ... it is the center for fashion, culture and finance. ~ Jared Kushner

New York is great for busy creative types. The city has a pulse that races, and you either keep up with it or you leave. ~ Raina Telgemeier

There'll be no more big powers and oppressed poor - only fairness and justice for all, and eternal happiness. So if you're looking for the perfect city and the perfect government in the perfect country with perfect people, just wait a little while longer - it's coming ~ David Berg

Beauty and the Illiterate"

Often, in the Repose of Evening her soul took a lightness from
the mountains across, although the day was harsh and
tomorrow foreign.

But, when it darkened well and out came the priest's hand over
the little garden of the dead, She

Alone, Standing, with the few domestics of the night - the blowing
rosemary and the murmur of smoke from the kilns -
at sea's entry, wakeful

Otherly beauty!

Only the waves' words half-guessed or in a rustle, and others
resembling the dead's that startle in the cypress, strange
zodiacs that lit up her magnetic moon-turned head.
And one

Unbelievable cleanliness allowed, to great depth in her, the real
landscape to be seen,

Where, near the river, the dark ones fought against the Angel,
exactly showing how she's born, Beauty

Or what we otherwise call tear.

And long as her thinking lasted, you could feel it overflow the
glowing sight bitterly in the eyes and the huge, like an
ancient prostitute's, cheekbones

Stretched to the extreme points of the Large Dog and of the Virgin.

"Far from the pestilential city I dreamed of her deserted plac ~ Odysseus Elytis

The reference point argument is as follows: do not compute odds from the vantage point of the winning gambler (or the lucky Casanova, or the endlessly bouncing back New York City, or the invincible Carthage), but from all those who started in the cohort. Consider ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The rule of law does not guarantee economic security, social status, or even minimal happiness to anyone. Thus it should not be confused either with the utopian scheme of the worldly philosophers or the divine outline of the City of God. Recognizing the human impossibility of the former and the present lack of the latter, the authors of our Constitution wisely selected as their guiding principle the rule of law which guarantees us nothing more than the absence of arbitrary coercion. Of course, the rule of law does not imply any general prohibition against affirmative government action in the protection of individuals or in pursuit of the general welfare. Rather it simply marks out certain limits to the use of any governmental coercion. ~ Noel B. Reynolds

... Even the idea of a city never entered his mind. It was as if he had walked under the millimeter of haze just above the inked fibers of a map, that pure zone between land and chart, between distances and legends, between nature and storyteller. The place they had chosen to come to, to be their best selves, to be unconscious of ancestry. Here, apart from the sun compass and the odometer mileage, and the book, he was alone, his own invention. He knew during these times how the mirage worked, the fata morgana, for he was within it. ~ Michael Ondaatje

What is it, fundamentally, that allows us to recognize who has turned out well? That a well-turned out person pleases our senses, that he is carved from wood that is hard, delicate, and at the same time smells good. He has a taste only for what is good for him; his pleasure, his delight cease where the measure of what is good for him is transgressed. He guesses what remedies avail against what is harmful; he exploits bad accidents to his advantage; what does not kill him makes him stronger. Instinctively, he collects from everything he sees, hears, lives through, his sum: he is a principle of selection, he discards much. He is always in his own company, whether he associates with books, human beings, or landscapes: he honors by choosing, by admitting, by trusting. He reacts slowly to all kinds of stimuli, with that slowness which long caution and deliberate pride have bred in him: he examines the stimulus that approaches him, he is far from meeting it halfway. He believes neither in 'misfortune' nor in 'guilt': he comes to terms with himself, with others: he knows how to forget - he is strong enough; hence everything must turn out for his best. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

In Rio, 1.4 million of the 6.3 million people live in favelas, or slums. They are all over the city, but favelas are not always a problem - sometimes they can be a solution, if you have the right public policies. ~ Eduardo Paes

England is my home. London is my home. New York feels like, if I have to spend a year living in an unfamiliar city, this is a pretty lovely one to spend a year in, but I will be going home at the end of it, certainly. ~ Daniel Radcliffe

Sometimes at night I would look out and up at the glow rising up around me through the plastic and it would just make me shudder. It reminded me of larvae. We were like pale grubs in our eggs. When I got the horrors like that, I requested a little yellow pill from the dial-a-doc and flopped down into the fuzz along with everyone else. ~ Stevie O'Connor

The city yawns and stretches. A lazy Sunday morning opens its eyes. Cesar's always loved it down here. The water flowing beneath him. The city surrounding the ancient river. A bright green canopy of trees far off in the distance. Cesar's always appreciated the beauty. He's always thought it was a perfect juxtaposition of urban and God. ~ Daniel Abbott

To look back upon the past year, and see how little we have striven and to what small purpose: and how often we have been cowardly and hung back, or temerarious and rushed unwisely in; and how every day and all day long we have transgressed the law of kindness; -it may seem a paradox, but in the bitterness of these discoveries, a certain consolation resides. Life is not designed to minister to a man's vanity. He goes upon his long business most of the time with a hanging head, and all the time like a blind child. Full of rewards and pleasures as it is - so that to see the day break or the moon rise, or to meet a friend, or to hear the dinner-call when he is hungry, fills him with surprising joys - this world is yet for him no abiding city. Friendships fall through, health fails, weariness assails him; year after year, he must thumb the hardly varying record of his own weakness and folly. It is a friendly process of detachment. When the time comes that he should go, there need be few illusions left about himself. Here lies one who meant well, tried a little, failed much: -surely that may be his epitaph, of which he need not be ashamed. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

A brother who's helped by a brother is like a strong city. ~ Therese De Lisieux

I'm Magnus." He smiled, showing blinding white teeth.
"Magnus Bane."
"Are we long-lost friends, by any chance?" Simon said.
"Just wondering."
"No, we never got along all that well," said Magnus.
"Long-lost acquaintances? Compadres? My cat liked you. ~ Cassandra Clare

In the days and months I spent walking through the various communities of this city, I found that Chicago did not work for everyone, however. ~ Jane Byrne

The coronavirus pandemic is going to be the biggest event of our lifetime. Bigger than 9/11. As if 9/11 happened in every city on earth at the same time. ~ Oliver Markus Malloy

If I thought this would turn into a history lesson, I would have picked a better classroom than a city street.
-Grimalkin ~ Julie Kagawa

What a place to put a city, right on the front line of absolute zero. No wonder a cow burned it down. ~ Mark Helprin

Put thy whole trust in God and let Him be thy fear and thy love, He will answer for thee Himself, and will do for thee what is best. Here hast thou no continuing city,(3) and wheresoever thou art, thou art a stranger and a pilgrim, and thou shalt never have rest unless thou art closely united to Christ within thee. ~ Thomas A Kempis

I am a stranger in this city, but this city gave me
a new life! ~ Avijeet Das

Seeing New York in the movies is what made me want to live in Manhattan one day. I eventually got my wish, and the city has never disappointed me. ~ Robert Osborne

There were honeys from across the city - Westport, Hollander Ridge, Gwynn Oak, Northwood. They were everything from redbone to yo-yo darkskin. The dimes among them carried Benetton bags, were dolled up like Lily Powers - finger waves, a head of dyed blond, and eyes like enchanted daggers. I saw we were outnumbered, as brothers who try the civilized way always are. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

It's not magic; it's hard work by vested people who share a vision for God's kingdom in their city. An influential church is nothing more than a bunch of believers who get in the game and live on mission. ~ Jen Hatmaker