Talie

“In both the old and the new quarters a pitch of foulness and filth was reached that the lowest serf's cottage scarcely achieved in medieval Europe. It is almost impossible to enumerate objectively the bare details of this housing without being suspected of perverse exaggeration. But those who speak glibly of urban improvements during this period, or of the alleged rise in the standards of living, fight shy of the actual facts: they generously impute to the town as a whole benefits which only the more favored middle-class minority enjoyed; and they read into the original conditions those improvements which three generations of active legislation and massive sanitary engineering have finally brought about.”
― Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects

“His words fell on Sara like the first touch of sun hitting a plant after a long winter.”
― Stuart Turton, The Devil and the Dark Water

“He was obsessed with the fear of making a mistake. Sometimes he was convinced it was impossible to do anything else, and that if anyone got anything right it was purely by chance.”
― Ismail Kadare, The Palace of Dreams

“The masters of the underground citadel are committed to a 'war' they cannot bring to an end, with weapons whose ultimate effects they cannot control, for purposes that they cannot accomplish.”
― Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects