METROPOLIS, n. A stronghold of provincialism.Id., "One Kind of Officer," p. 96:
As the greatest cities are most provincial, so the self-complacency of aristocracies is most frankly plebeian.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Thursday, January 01, 2026
Big Cities
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?), The Devil's Dictionary, Tales, & Memoirs, ed. S.T. Joshi (New York: The Library of America, 2011), p. 560 (from The Devil's Dictionary):