What's your favorite quote about a place?

My police department was about to build a new police building. The Mayor asked our union representatives over to his office for a name for the new building.

We all sat around the Mayor’s big oak table and wrote down a name that we thought would be appropriate.

My name was selected by the Mayor.

Criminal Justice Center and would be called the CJC by the officers and civillians.

It came to life and the name still sticks today.

Each time I drive by it, I give it a salute.

The stars at night are big and bright, deep in the heart of Texas ;-)

Rupert Brooks; THE SOLDIER

If I should die, think only this of me;
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.

(Another poet killed in WWI, but not by artillery but an infected mosquito bite.Ironically, he was buried in Greece in 1915.)

This opening chapter from Charles Frazier’s -Cold Mountain
This is masterful. It really took my breath away when I read it the first time. It is much more than a description of a place. It takes you right into the heart of what he is feeling.

W.B.Yeats; THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.”

Since Yeats said it perfectly, I see no need to paraphrase. I do almost live alone in a bee-loud glade, and happy for it.

You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.
—Pooh’s Little Instruction Book, inspired by A. A. Milne

Vedi Napoli e poi Muori.

Beyond the lochs of the blood of the children of men,
beyond the frailty of the plain and the labour of the mountain,
beyond poverty, consumption, fever, agony,
beyond hardship, wrong, tyranny, distress,
beyond misery, despair, hatred, treachery,
beyond guilt and defilement; watchful,
heroic, the Cuillin is seen
rising on the other side of sorrow.

Sorley Maclean.

.

Following the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, people had signs that said:
“Eat, Drink, and be Merry! For Tomorrow, We Move To Oakland!”

“God kissed the earth just once
Right on the spot where Germany is now”
http://german.about.com/library/blmus_prinzen01e.htm

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again…”