Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here read more

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of exiles.

Far below and around lay the city like a ragged purple dream.
The irregular houses were like the broken read more

Far below and around lay the city like a ragged purple dream.
The irregular houses were like the broken exteriors of cliffs
lining deep gulches and winding streams. Some were mountainous;
some lay in long, monotonous rows like, the basalt precipices
hanging over desert canons. Such was the background of the
wonderful, cruel, enchanting, bewildering, fatal, great city.
But into this background were cut myriads of brilliant
parallelograms and circles and squares through which glowed many
colored lights. And out of the violet and purple depths ascended
like the city's soul, sound and odors and thrills that make up
the civic body. There arose the breath of gaiety unrestrained,
of love, of hate, of all the passions that man can know. There
below him lay all things, good or bad, that can be brought from
the four corners of the earth to instruct, please, thrill,
enrich, elevate, cast down, nurture or kill. Thus the flavor of
it came up to him and went into his blood.

Stream of the living world
Where dash the billows of strife!--
One plunge in the mighty torrent
read more

Stream of the living world
Where dash the billows of strife!--
One plunge in the mighty torrent
Is a year of tamer life!
City of glorious days,
Of hope, and labour and mirth,
With room and to spare, on thy splendid bays
For the ships of all the earth!

George Washington, with his right art upraised, sits his iron
horse at the lower corner of Union Square. . read more

George Washington, with his right art upraised, sits his iron
horse at the lower corner of Union Square. . . . Should the
General raise his left hand as he has raised his right, it would
point to a quarter of the city that forms a haven for the
oppressed and suppressed of foreign lands. In the cause of
national or personal freedom they have found refuge here, and the
patriot who made it for them sits his steed, overlooking their
district, while he listens through his left ear to vaudeville
that caricatures the posterity of the proteges.

A car is useless in New York, essential everywhere else. The same with good manners.

A car is useless in New York, essential everywhere else. The same with good manners.

Silent, grim, colossal, the Big City has ever stood against its
revilers. They call it hard as iron; they read more

Silent, grim, colossal, the Big City has ever stood against its
revilers. They call it hard as iron; they say that nothing of
pity beats in its bosom; they compare its streets with lonely
forests and deserts of lava. But beneath the hard crust of the
lobster is found a delectable and luscious food. Perhaps a
different simile would have been wiser. Still nobody should take
offence. We would call nobody a lobster with good and sufficient
claws.

If there ever was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that
Yaptown-on-the-Hudson, call New York. Cosmopolitan they call read more

If there ever was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that
Yaptown-on-the-Hudson, call New York. Cosmopolitan they call it,
you bet. So's a piece of fly-paper. You listen close when
they're buzzing and trying to pull their feet out of the sticky
stuff. "Little old New York's good enough for us"--that's what
they sing.

I went to see a band in New York. The lead singer got on the microphone, and he said How read more

I went to see a band in New York. The lead singer got on the microphone, and he said How many of you people feel like human beings tonight? Then he said How many of you feel like animals? And everyone cheered after the animals part. But the thing is, I cheered after the human being part because I did not know that there was a second part to the question.

In dress, habits, manners, provincialism, routine and narrowness,
he acquired that charming insolence, that irritating
completeness, that sophisticated read more

In dress, habits, manners, provincialism, routine and narrowness,
he acquired that charming insolence, that irritating
completeness, that sophisticated crassness, that overbalanced
poise that makes the Manhattan gentleman so delightfully small in
his greatness.