The city of Leonia refashions itself every day: every morning the people wake between fresh sheets, wash with just-unwrapped cakes of soap, wear brand-new clothing, take from the latest model refrigerator still unopened tins, listening to the last-minute jingles from the most up-to-date radio. On the sidewalks, encased in spotless plastic bags, the remains of yesterday's Leonia await the garbage truck. Not only squeezed tubes of toothpaste, blown-out light bulbs, newspapers, containers, wrappings, but also boilers, encyclopedias, pianos, porcelain dinner services. It is not so much by the things that each day are manufactured, sold, bought, that you can measure Leonia's opulence, but rather by the things that each day are thrown out to make room for the new. So you begin to wonder if Leonia's true passion is really , as they say, the enjoyment of new things, and not, instead, the joy of expelling, discarding, cleansing itself of a recurrent impurity. The fact is that street cleaners are welcomed like angels. Italo Calvino
About This Quote

The above quote is a poignant and thought-provoking one. It is hard to imagine that people do not take pride in the quality of their work and the beauty of the city they live in. But, if we think about it, we can see that people would rather throw things away than keep them and work hard to make them look good. This quote shows how little people care about the society they live in, but just want to have fun. It also shows that even when people have nice things, they throw them away when they get tired of them or maybe when they don't want to work for them anymore.

Source: Invisible Cities

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