Quotes about asphalt

A collection of quotes on the topic of asphalt, beauty, likeness, street.

Quotes about asphalt

Hermann Hesse photo
Kurt Vonnegut photo
George Carlin photo
Ta-Nehisi Coates photo
Anthony Watts photo
Khaled Hosseini photo
Paula Modersohn-Becker photo
T.S. Eliot photo

“And the wind shall say: "Here were decent godless people:
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls."”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

Stephen Baxter photo
David Brin photo
Sarah Dessen photo
Frances Kellor photo
Vitruvius photo

“At Jaffa in Syria and among the Nomads in Arabia, are lakes of enormous size that yield very large masses of asphalt, which are carried off by the inhabitants thereabouts.”

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book VII, Chapter III, Sec. 8

Charles Lindbergh photo

“How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life.”

Charles Lindbergh (1902–1974) American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist

Aviation, Geography, and Race (1939)
Context: A great industrial nation may conquer the world in the span of a single life, but its Achilles' heel is time. Its children, what of them? The second and third generations, of what numbers and stuff will they be? How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life. This is our modern danger — one of the waxen wings of flight. It may cause our civilization to fall unless we act quickly to counteract it, unless we realize that human character is more important than efficiency, that education consists of more than the mere accumulation of knowledge.

“On this black asphalt of violence, drugs turn your son into a walking corpse and your daughter into a merchantilistic prostitute!”

Luiz Carlos Alborghetti (1945–2009) Italian-Brazilian radio commenter, showman and political figure

Original: (pt) Neste asfalto negro de violência, as drogas transformam seu filho num cadáver ambulante e sua filha numa prostituta mercantilista!
Original: (pt) Source: [9 December 2009, Morre Luiz Carlos Alborghetti, dono do bordão 'bandido bom é bandido morto', https://extra.globo.com/tv-e-lazer/morre-luiz-carlos-alborghetti-dono-do-bordao-bandido-bom-bandido-morto-209786.html, Portuguese, Extra, Editora Globo S/A, 31 March 2019]